Lady Of The Glen Part 15

If he would agree to handfast . . . But he had not, not formally. She had believed it unnecessary; they lived openly together according to handfast tradition when no kirk was near for a proper wedding, nor a proper minister, but there were bindings even upon such agreements. There were intentions to be declared. Irregular marriage was a marriage in fact, so long as the intent was there.

There were three circ.u.mstances of such marriage sanctioned by Scottish law: by mutual consent declared sincerely before two witnesses; by promise of marriage followed almost immediately by the bedding, subsequently proved by witnesses; and by living together openly a year and a day as husband and wife.

But they had consented to nothing save their own desires. Dair had made her no promise, nor had she made him one; and their cohabitation had been so intermittent that no one could claim with certainty they had reached a year and a day unless one st.i.tched together all the parts of the years.

According to Scottish law, if they did not mutually consent to a continuation of the relationship after the year and a day, both were free to part. Even if only one of them desired to part.

Jean's st.i.tches wavered until she steadied them, hoping Lady Glencoe did not see. I gave him his freedom too long! She had taken enjoyment of him as he had taken it of her. In the beginning there had been no need for more, no need for promises; he had come back to her always, despite separations, and she had found it enough. Jean knew she was enough; no man, sharing her bed, was left unsatisfied.

But Dair MacDonald was unlike other men. His soul was complicated, his needs more complex. He was not a man well contented by nothing beyond the bedding; he wanted more of a woman than Jean was prepared to give. She was not capable of surrendering more than she had, because she did not comprehend what it was he wanted. What more is there for a man to have than the use of a woman's body?

He had spoken of spirit, of ideals; of the hidden inner s.p.a.ces that made a person whole, more than just a body. She had found it incomprehensible, and told him so in the only way she knew: by stopping his mouth with her own; by silencing his questions, his ponderings, turning his mind from such confusing things as these to the issues of the flesh.

One day he stopped asking. One day he stopped sharing. Jean found it both respite and relief; she understood intimately the needs of the human body and did not care to speak of spirit, of ideals, of the hidden inner s.p.a.ces. Such things were beyond her ken. Such issues made her uneasy.

It was then, only then, that she saw Dair begin to make the keys and to hold them in his hands, demanding that she take them, to unlock and open the door to the multiplicity of incompatibilities she could not understand and dared not acknowledge.

Too often she took the keys. Too often she opened the door. Too often the door, thus opened, spilled out the small desperate fears that fashioned additional keys, until she slammed shut that door and opened instead the one that led to the room housing the well-used bed.

It was the only key she could make. But he used it much less often.

Her fingers worked deftly as she listened to the others in MacIain's house. It was men's talk, this, and none of it her business; she was Stewart, not MacDonald, with less enmity toward Campbells despite occasional dirkings over stolen cattle. The Appin Stewarts owed feudal fealty to the Earl of Argyll, himself a Campbell, and though time had weakened such bonds, there remained tradition in it, and Highlanders honored tradition. The Appin Stewarts had long been allies of the Glencoe MacDonalds, but there was knowledge between them of the ancient order of things.

As the men spoke she tied a knot in the yarn, then bit it off without taking her eyes from MacIain, his oldest son, and the man who visited them. A Campbell he was, but entering the MacDonald house under the surety of hospitality, a sacred bond no Highlander would dare break. He spoke diffidently, raising between them no spectre of bad blood, courteously accepting the offered whisky and MacIain's gruff wishes for his health.

Jean watched the eyes. MacIain's were sheltered in deep sockets beneath bushy ramparts of brows, indistinguishable in lamplight; John's were, as was his wont, quietly contemplative; while the Campbell messenger, knowing where he was, wore the expression of a man counting the minutes of his life, wondering when he might at last be walked to the door so he might escape the lair.

She wondered what Dair would say, to hear the Campbell speak. He was less constrained than John in saying what he thought, but he was a careful man; she knew he would offer no language that might be construed as offense, though his eyes, masked in their thoughts to all but those who knew him well, would declare without reservation what he thought.

He couldna hide his heart. Not from me. Jean threaded her needle again and began work on another stocking, while the Campbell man explained the Earl of Breadalbane desired MacIain of Glencoe to come to Achallader. He said nothing at all of how MacIain and his men, on their way home from Killiecrankie, had burned the castle to the ground, but the memory lay between them. Jean could see it clearly.

She expected MacIain to laugh; did the man truly believe he might fall for such a ruse?

But MacIain did not laugh. He listened thoughtfully, then asked the Campbell who else had agreed to come.

"Stewarts," the man answered promptly, and Jean thought of Robbie; he would be asked next. "And Macleans, and Camerons. Even MacDonald of Glengarry, hosting Major General Thomas Buchan and Sir George Barclay."

"They'll come?" John blurted. "They represent King James."

"They represent the Stuart cause," the Campbell said, "as does my master, the earl."

This week, Jean thought cynically. What does Breadalbane want that he lies so glibly, and sends gillies out as well to spread the falsehoods?

"So many clans," MacIain observed, "answering to a Campbell."

"This isna a Campbell summons," the earl's man insisted quietly. "'Tis in the name of Scotland, and the future of King James."

"Well, then." MacIain's smile was measuring in the thicket of his beard. "We'll no' stay home, will we, when the realm's at stake. 'Twas MacDonalds that held it first . . . but you're no' to ken that, aye?-when the Campbells came so much later." As the Campbell bit his lip on a retort, the old man bared his teeth in a ferocious grin. "There's no man in all of Scotland who has more care for the realm than Alasdair MacDonald, himself a direct descendant of the Lords of the Isles, once kings of Gaeldom. 'Twould hardly be a proper gathering, would it, if he stayed home!"

Robert Campbell, called Glenlyon, stood upon a hillock not far from Chesthill and stared down the track. From its crown he could look upon part of the glen, marking his house, the outbuildings; the cl.u.s.ter of lesser dwellings nearby; the smoke-blackened huts of peat and wood scattered across undulant, rock-scarped land.

Glen Lyon.

Twenty-five miles of fertile valley, boundaried at either end by Loch Tay and Loch Lyon, called many things by many men made humble by its beauty, among them Glen of the Black Water, and the Glen of Crooked Stones. Rich in fir trees and salmon, it had been coveted by many clans throughout the centuries: MacDairmuids, MacArthurs, MacCallums and MacGregors, and lastly by Stewarts, from whom the first Campbell, Black Colin, took it by right of arms. Eventually that ownership had been ratified by Crown Charter, leaving neighboring clans to raid cattle as they would, but unable to steal back the lands on which the cattle roamed.

It was the current fifth Laird of Glenlyon's cross that he had sold away for debts what his ancestors had kept and cultivated for two hundred years.

He was summoned now to Stirling, to serve at last the commission given him by the latest Earl of Argyll, Breadalbane's rival as had been his father before him. At eight shillings a day Glenlyon felt himself poorly paid and his stature ill-used; had antic.i.p.ated silver for his debts, not a captaincy. But it was done and he was called. There were duties to attend in Argyll's new regiment.

He said it aloud. " 'Captain Robert Campbell.' "

A plain, unmelodious sound. But if he were to be a proper laird again, a man of whom bards sang, he must prove himself worthy. He would serve as told to serve, in any enterprise, and let the world see that Robert Campbell, direct descendant of Black Colin Campbell who first took Glen Lyon for his own, was more than merely a drukken man owing silver to every soul.

Dair moved quietly, crossing rain-damped turf with no sound in his footsteps. He thought she might be gone, returning inside to her woman-but Cat, too, had lingered. She was unaware of his approach and therefore was free of acrimony for such men as MacDonalds. He found he desired very much to make the moment last, and the innocence of it, so he might look on her without such feud-born folly as would corrupt them otherwise.

He wondered if she wished it; if the thought crossed her mind; or was she too warped by ancient-bred enmity that she could not think for herself? For that matter, am I? . . . But men had the greater freedom, to look at a woman and think of things other than blood and battle, and the repercussions of them. A woman must be circ.u.mspect, and chaste, disdaining such crudities, while a man could look and think without hiding so much of himself.

It was easier, Dair felt, to divorce such thoughts from a mind when that mind was taken up with other curiosities. A woman was bound by convention in all things, and not the least of them the knowledge of such necessities as names.

Looking at Cat Campbell, Dair wished it otherwise; that for one moment in time they might set aside such things as enmity and heritage to think of themselves instead.

She leaned against the shieling with head tipped back, eyes closed, folded arms in crimson sleeves all atangle in pale plaid, as if she were chilled and sought the warmth of wool-or hugged herself against unexpected incursions in her spirit.

He knew what such things were. It was easier to deny them than to give in to them, the impulses that lured a man or woman into looking aslant at things instead of meeting them frontwise. If one looked aslant at a thing, the certainties of life became uncertainties, such as the need for enmity between Campbells and MacDonalds.

He had looked aslant. He was certain no longer of anything but that he had tangled himself in a skein-knot too complex to undo . . . and that it was far easier to ignore what he wanted to explore, lest he lose himself altogether in an issue too volatile, too impossible to ponder.

But Dair knew very well that even impossibilities found ways of being pondered despite a man's wishes. It was the curse of imagination that lent a Scot the magic to make the songs and sagas, giving life to voice and pipes; to create of unreality the potential for something more.

He hesitated briefly, then walked on until he paused before the shieling, before the woman there. He had only to put out a hand and touch her sleeve, but he would do no such thing. She would revile him for it, and he would, seeing her afresh-and despite resolution-be hard-pressed to touch no more than cloth.

Her vein-blued lids were fringed with fine, red-gold lashes less vivid than her hair. He was loath to disturb her, but did because he must; when he spoke her name quietly from so near she jumped like a startled hare. He saw an awakening in her face akin to his own regrets, and regretted hers more: a brief, fleeting innocence banished by comprehension, by the realization of who he was, of who she was, and how the truths in their nakedness were more painful than kind-meant lies.

There were no secrets in the honesty of the bones underlying duplicitous flesh; she hardened, as he watched, like mortar under the sun.

"Come inside." He spoke more harshly than intended; but harshness diverted truth, and truth he could not afford. "There will be rain again; will you drown yourself outside merely to spite Robbie?"

She, being Campbell, desired to refuse a MacDonald; he saw it clearly, and grieved. But a quick glance at decaying skies told her he spoke no falsehood. Cat stared at him a moment from the mortared mask of her face -is she expecting a chisel?-then turned away abruptly and preceded him into the shieling as he pulled aside the curtain.

Inside, Robbie Stewart prowled restlessly like a Scottish wildcat, ill content to bide his time. "Well?" he asked abruptly, swinging to face them. "Well, Alasdair Og, what becomes of our moonlight ride?"

There was little desire in Dair for conversation. He raised a plaid-draped shoulder in a pa.s.sive half-shrug; his mind was not on cattle. "We could go back." Robbie said nothing, waiting. There was more he should say; he said what he could. "And return later."

It was something, it was enough, though Stewart's expression was baleful. " 'Tis not how I entertain, sending my guests. .h.i.ther and thither like a clutch of day-old chicks."

The image was so inconsequential that Dair laughed aloud, relieved to fasten his mind on something entirely innocuous. "Day-old chicks, indeed! I doubt Glenlyon would call us so . . . and as for entertaining, have you no' had a bonnie ride?"

Robbie scowled, though his eyes flicked momentarily to Cat consideringly, as if he intended to make a crude comment. But he didn't, being more disposed to growl at Dair. "If I wanted to ride the glen, I could have stayed home in Appin."

Cat's muted tone was nonetheless ironic. "In your stolen castle."

Caught by surprise, Stewart nearly gaped. He swung toward her, plaid flaring, astonishment remolding his features. The expression was so alien to his features that Dair, equally startled by Cat's declaration, paid less attention to her than to his astounded friend. He laughed aloud at Robbie. " 'Twas a blow you didna expect!"

Robbie ignored him altogether. "Stolen?" Then, more strongly, "Stolen! 'Tis no such thing, you muddleheaded bizzem! Castle Stalker belongs to the Stewarts!"

Glenlyon's daughter smiled. Dair felt his own mouth mimicking its irony. Give her a dirk, this la.s.s-she's a match for the man- "Oh, no, I think not," Cat countered lightly. Then, with a deliberate pause, "Dinna you ken your history?"

"Dinna I ken-" Stewart cut off his response abruptly, color rising in his face. He was not a remarkably handsome man, was Robbie, but there was a ruthlessness in manner, eyes, and mouth that attracted certain women as much as legacy and reputation.

Dair's amus.e.m.e.nt dissipated. Cat isna a woman for that- As if sensing that thought, Robbie Stewart tucked ruthlessness away. He could be charming when he chose; he knew how to lure women. Dair had seen them answer such summons avidly.

"Tutor me, la.s.s," Stewart invited. "Tell me my history."

Dair saw contempt show itself briefly in her eyes, then she dismissed it as if understanding emotions might become weapons turned upon herself. Evenly she said, "Castle Stalker is a Campbell castle."

"Was," Robbie retorted; Dair was surprised she got that much of him.

Cat shook her head. "More than eighty years ago an Appin Stewart traded it to a Campbell for an eight-oared boat. A boat, man! 'Twas a silly thing to do, but 'twas done . . . except the Appin Stewarts refused to honor the bargain."

Unexpectedly, Robbie grinned. "Wouldna you?"

Cat scowled. " 'Twas a bargain-"

" 'Twas nonsense," Robbie said firmly. "They were in their cups, the both of them . . . and the Stewart no' called Silly-Headed for naught." He chewed thoughtfully at his cheek, then bestowed upon her yet again his bright-eyed grin. "Would ye care to come and see it, the castle you claim as Campbell?"

Cat's face was tense and white. "My father is the drukken man. D'ye think I'm in my cups, to be so baothaire as that?"

Robbie's smile was diminished under an abrupt, focused intensity that was nearly tangible. Dair, being male and not impervious to similar needs-who had felt his own urges as they sat talking on the hillside-knew what it was, realized what it portended. Cat, wholly innocent, clearly did not; she gazed warily at Stewart with no comprehension of such things as male desire and the sometimes overwhelming impulse to satisfy it immediately with few preliminaries, without explanation.

Stewart said, "I think you're a bonnie la.s.s." And he put out his hand to touch her, as he had done before.

It shifted abruptly from baiting to stalking. Dair tensed, poised to move, but Cat brought up the hand clasping the sgian dhu he had returned to her. Even as Robbie reached, Stewart blood was renewed on the blade. "Christ-"

Her words were spoken quietly over Robbie's blurted protest. "Dinna touch me, Stewart."

Dair waited. Robbie was unpredictable; even he did not know what Stewart might do. He knew only that Cat would not thank him for fighting her battles-and that he would, despite her wishes, despite Robbie's intent, prevent the young heir of Appin from harming Glenlyon's daughter.

'Twill set us at odds . . . It would do more than that; it invited dissolution of the sometimes turbulent bond they shared, but Dair could see no other alternative. He would not risk Cat Campbell now, not even to Robert Stewart. He had in youth and manhood, despite her ignorance, despite her blatant resentment, committed too much of himself.

But the bond yet held, and with no need to break it; Robbie swore and sucked a finger, a.s.sessed her anger briefly, then turned from her entirely and cast a murderous scowl at Dair. "Have you lost your wits, man, leaving her a knife? 'Tis twice she's cut me, now!"

The tension snapped like morning ice beneath a dirk handle. Dair, relaxing, could not suppress a smile. "I thought she might require it, knowing you so well."

"Aye, well . . ." Stewart's black scowl faded. He was high-humored again, if rueful. "No' so much blood lost that I'll die of it. And worth it, I'll swear, to see the la.s.s color up."

The la.s.s duly colored up, which infuriated her as much as amused Robbie. She looked instead at Dair. "What will you do with me and my men?"

"Send you home," he answered. "We came for cows, no' you."

Robbie's sandy brows arched up. "And will we take her up to Glenlyon's door, where he can hang us before midday?"

"I wasna going home." Cat hesitated as they looked at her, startled, then explained more fully. "I was bound for Kilchurn Castle. And if you'll give me leave, I'll be on my way again."

Dair's attention focused abruptly. "Kilchurn . . . Breadalbane's there, they say. What d'ye have to do with Grey John?"

Cat's chin rose. " 'Tis a Campbell concern."

"Campbell concerns are often MacDonald concerns-"

"-and Stewart," Robbie interjected.

"-and therefore of interest to me." Dair did not so much as glance at Robbie; he wanted truth from Cat. "Why would Glenlyon send his daughter to Breadalbane?"

Cat offered no answer. It was Robbie who fashioned one. "He's sons, has the earl . . ." His slow smile filled his face, lighting up his eyes. "Which are you meant for? The heir, likely; Duncan's as yet unwed . . ." Robbie's tone was thoughtful. "Breadalbane hates his heir." As Cat stared, he shrugged. " 'Tis well-known, la.s.s . . . Duncan Campbell is no' the son he wants to inherit his tides; he'd prefer the second son-though he, I think, is wed." Again the negligent shrug, but a glint in shrewd eyes belied the laziness of the tone. "There was talk of my sister Jean wedding wi' Duncan Campbell a year ago . . ." He slid a bright glance at Dair. "Was there no'?"

Dair, who did not at this moment desire to think of Jean, remembered it vividly; they had both of them, he and Jean, protested vigorously to Robbie, who had enjoyed the incident.

He baits both of us now, even as he did Jean and me . . . Yet he answered with a careless shrug; he would give no satisfaction.

The Stewart's grin widened. " 'Tis no' so bad a match, when all is said and done; Stewarts and Campbells have wed before." His look on Cat was openly suggestive. "But my Jean would have naught of him, being a bold, brave Stewart-and being disposed to take no man for husband who might yet be disinherited." The glint in his eyes made it quite clear he understood how mercenary the words sounded; but Dair knew Robert Stewart was not a man much troubled by what others thought. "Being disposed instead to have a MacDonald in her bed"-he cast a glance at Dair-"where t.i.tles are less important than the wielding of the sword."

The vulgarity burned crimson in Cat's cheeks. But it was not at Robbie she looked, nor at Dair she could; she fixed her eyes instead on the brooch of his plaid. "Well then," she said, "will you be letting us go on?"

Dair was less compelled to answer than to contemplate possibilities. A wholly inexplicable intransigence left him indisposed to consider seeing her wed to any man, one of Breadalbane's sons or no. He had not risked Robbie's wrath for this . . . And Duncan Campbell is not the man for her, either. Christ, everyone knows his own father despises him; what marriage would that be?

It was folly, such thinking. He thought it nonetheless, moved by a hostile belligerence alien to his nature. "Is it true?"

His brooch lost its fascination; Cat met his condemnation with equal belligerence. "And if I said no? Would you let me go the sooner?"

He scowled at her even as she scowled back. "I would not."

"Then aye, 'tis true." Color moved in her face beneath the pale surface of flesh, like a curl of newborn wavelet breaking free of wind-kissed loch. "I'm not worth so much, aye?-to keep me from one or the other."

Robbie snickered. Dair knew what he thought; a man like Robert Stewart might ask payment in something other than coin and would measure her worth by that. He would not look at Robbie to see collusion there; Stewart would expect a crude witticism, or even implied agreement.

Dair looked straight at Cat and shook his head. "I said it before: we came for cows, not you."

"Then release us."

Stewart sighed and folded his arms across a plaid-slashed chest. "La.s.sie, la.s.sie, have ye no wits? My name isna Baothaire, so you willna call me Silly-Headed . . . if we let you and your braw laddies go, they'll be setting about dirking us the first moment we look away." He cast a bright glance at Dair. "Though the entertainment 'twould make the ride worthwhile."

Dair ignored Robbie. "We'll send you down the glen," he told Cat with a glance at Una. "You and your woman and two Campbell men-the rest will bide here a wee bit."

Robbie nodded. "Until we have what we've come for."

Cat was astonished. "You dinna mean to steal the cows now!"

Dair frowned as he saw Robbie's grin expand; such risk would garnish the task. "We'd do best heading home to Glencoe."