The lure was instantaneous. Dair was restless, as was Robbie, and feeling hemmed in by the fort near Inverlochy. But there were still concerns to be addressed. "They're not yet at the shielings," he said. "Still on winter fodder, close to Glenlyon's house."

"Which makes it all the bolder." Robbie shrugged. " 'Tis easier in the summer, when the shielings have people in them and the cows go on the braes, but where is the risk in that? 'Tis greater if we go now . . . and all the more irksome to Glenlyon."

Irking Glenlyon was not necessarily what Dair wished to do, being more interested in cattle than in spilling blood. But one could not go cattle-lifting without irritating the laird who owned them. MacIain was proof of that, whenever MacDonald cattle were stolen.

But then, it was Robbie's nature to revel in irking folk. Particularly Campbell folk, though he had less reason than MacDonalds. The heir of Appin, plain and simple, enjoyed stealing cattle no matter whose they were. Highland wealth was measured in cows, but Robbie didn't do it for wealth. He did it for the risk.

Dair did it for the cattle. "Well," he said at last, "MacIain will want to know."

Robbie snorted. "MacIain will want to come. "

Dair, smiling, shook his head as he rose. "He has a new book from France. He'll not be free for days."

Robbie rose as well, catching up Dair's unfinished whisky to swallow it down himself. " 'Tis a waste of time, books. They canna lift a sword, nor bed a bonnie la.s.s."

Dair grinned. "Nor steal a Campbell cow."

Robbie, rounding the table, reached up to slap a shoulder. "Nor drink good usquabae."

There were, Dair thought wryly, countless things books could not do, yet also those they could. But he didn't say it to Robbie, who wouldn't understand. He will keep on counting the things they CANNA do all the way to Glen Lyon! "Rouse your tacksmen," he said. "I'll go up to tell MacIain, then gather a few MacDonalds."

"Only a few," Robbie cautioned, "or we'll have no fun at all."

Two.

Shouting awakened Cat. Peat motes filled the shieling, floating on dawn light let in through cracks in the walls and the time-rent leather door-curtain. She rolled over on beaten earth, half-tangled in her plaid, and sat up rigidly, blinking bleariness out of her eyes even as Una awoke.

-I dinna ken those voices-At first there was alarm; then a spurt of relief, the dissipation of shock. Cat tugged the twisted loop of plaid from under her hips as she looked at Una, whose face was gray as oatmeal porridge. "If 'tis trouble, Angus and the others will stop it."

Then she heard a m.u.f.fled shout, a strangled outcry; a thump against the wall knocked crumbling peat to the beaten floor and relief was instantly banished.

Cat scrambled to her feet even as Una gasped a prayer, yanking wool aside to jerk sgian dhu from beneath heavy, still-damp skirts. She had carried one ever since the MacDonald raid on Glen Lyon following Killiecrankie two years before. No doubt Una would complain it wasn't a woman's task to go about with a knife gartered below her knee, but that did not disturb Cat unduly. Una wasn't a muckle-headed fool always. She'll no' complain till the danger is pa.s.sed.

"Step away, Una." Cat motioned her back. "Give them naught to catch if they come through the door-"

Even as she spoke the curtain was jerked aside and men spilled into the shieling, men she didn't know, Highlanders all, in kilts and breeks and bonnets -not Campbells., none of them!-bent on some violence. Cat, recoiling even as Una did, was s.n.a.t.c.hed abruptly back ten years to when MacIain of Glencoe had come to Chesthill demanding word with her father.

She was small suddenly, so small, infinitely insignificant to the huge Laird of Glencoe- But the old memory faded, replaced by one more recent: MacDonalds in her house, tearing down her mother's curtains.

Even as she fetched up against the peat wall farthest from the interlopers, outrage kindled. It damped fear, gave her something else on which she could focus attention. As a child she had been spectacularly helpless in MacIain's grasp; seven years later a Stewart claymore tip teasing her throat had forced compliance. But she was no longer a child. Now she was full grown and angry, very angry, so angry she looked to it for courage, and found a cold, deliberate strength in place of helplessness.

The men cl.u.s.tered inside the door. That they were astonished was plain; they stared at her in amazement. "Jesu," someone whispered. Another crossed himself, muttering of red-haired women and bad omens.

A wild, unbridled laugh bubbled up, was swallowed back only with effort. They didna expect to find us here! It was the cattle raid all over again, when young, inexperienced MacDonalds had caught Campbells in place of cows.

And then she thought of her oldest brother, of six-years-dead Robbie, long rotted in the ground like Norse bones in the barrows. Memory gave her a weapon. Recollection lent her strength. She shut her hand more tightly on the the sgian dhu's stag-horn handle. They'd not take her blade this time.

A sandy-haired man strode through the curtainless door, letting dawn come into the shieling. He was not tall-was shorter, in fact, than she-but what he lacked in height was made up for in width, in a compact, vital strength. There was an edge to his presence that made her unable to look away, like a mouse transfixed by cat.

Anger ebbed. She made a soft noise in her throat. Her hand on the sgian dhu was abruptly damp with sweat. She forgot dead brothers, forgot the raid that had won her a calf, then lost it, much as it lost her a brother. She recalled another time, another raid, and a Stewart in place of MacDonalds.

This time, there was no claymore. He was like other men, like all the men in the shieling, armed with dirk and sgian dhu, but this time there was no sword.

His smile was very broad, the glint in blue eyes p.r.o.nounced. "A bonnie la.s.s," he said, "trysting with her man."

Shocked, Cat was unable to answer. She had expected recollection, laughter, ridicule, the degradation such as she had suffered before, not the provocative overture of man to woman she had witnessed in her brothers when they soft-talked a Campbell woman. For this manner of battle she was wholly unprepared.

Cat felt a flicker of fear solidify, expand to fill her chest. She was experienced in derision both subtle and blatant, tuned like a harp peg to the song she believed he intended to play. But the notes this time were different, and the words she did not know.

He stopped before her. Smiling, he extended fingers to catch an errant lock of her hair- Instantly Cat brought up her hand with the deadly, sharp sgian dhu, nicking impudent knuckles. She was distantly pleased to see his shock, to watch him s.n.a.t.c.h back his hand and press fingers to his mouth.

"You will not." She was relieved to hear the steadiness of her voice. In the face of his vulgarity some of her courage crept back to steady fragile pride. "These are Campbell lands-go home to your Glencoe hovels, to your Stewart castle keeps. Leave my woman and me in peace."

The man tilted his head, measuring her as he took away from his mouth the bloodied knuckles. 'Boy-faced la.s.s,' he had called her. A 'lad with b.r.e.a.s.t.s.' Surely he would remember.

Cat could not forget.

Softly he said, "I am heir of Appin; no one, man or woman, tells me where I am to go or what I am not to do."

She hated him for that, for what and who he was, for what he had done and proposed to do; she did not doubt that, given leave, whatever it was he did would compromise self-confidence, erode self-esteem. "I do," she said clearly. "A Campbell tells you to go."

He laughed. "Appin does as he chooses!"

She wanted to put the knife to his throat so he felt the lick of its blade. He and men like him-men like Dair MacDonald-reduced in the name of arrogance the pride and spirit of other people. "Appin does as he chooses?" She matched him glare for glare. "Then he's no man at all, aye?-but a spoiled, selfish sw.a.n.kie wi'out the sense of the cows he's come to steal from men better than he."

She had struck well. The light in Stewart's eyes faded. Something of anger replaced it, tightening the line of his shoulders, robbing his posture of grace.

"Robbie. "

Cat jumped. The voice rang out clearly, cutting through the cl.u.s.ter of men inside the door. They broke and made way, all the MacDonalds, though some of the Stewarts were slow. And then he was through them all, stepping into the room, and she saw him very clearly.

Something inside her leaped, then burned away into ash. He is no better than Stewart.

"Robbie," Dair MacDonald said quietly, "we've come for cows, not women."

Robbie. His name was Robbie. It made her bitterly angry. He besmirched her brother's memory by tainting his name.

"Look at her!" Stewart cried.

"I see her," Alasdair Og said steadily.

"Bluidy fool," Cat declared. "I am Glenlyon's daughter. Shall I cut out that tongue from your mouth to stop your foolish noise, or let him do it himself?"

For an instant she saw surprise in Dair's whisky-colored eyes; had he not known her at all? But he must have-how could a man forget whom he had humiliated?

Surprise faded from his eyes, replaced by intensity. "Cat," he said-overly familiar, she thought-"you'd do better to hold your own tongue."

Stewart's head jerked around. "D'ye know this la.s.s, then? Is she waiting here for you?"

MacDonald's tone was unchanged, though his mouth twitched a little. " 'Twas your idea to come here; how could I have planned it?"

It cleared the blackness from Stewart's face, lending it merriment. "Aye, so it was!" He grinned, good temper restored. "And you'd no' be looking to another woman wi' Jean in your house!"

Cat glared at Dair. Anger made it easy for her to speak so blatantly of a topic women avoided. "Hold my tongue? Well, I willna. Not if it puts me in his bed . . . I've better taste than that!"

Dair took a single noiseless step into the center of the shieling. He stood very close to Stewart, though he did not touch him. "This is not our way, Robbie-would you risk Letters of Fire and Sword?"

Stewart's head snapped around. "D'ye think Glenlyon would go so far as to involve the Crown? They've a bit to think about now, those Privy Council men . . . they wouldna involve themselves."

"What more would give them reason to put us to the horn?" Dair asked. "Ewan Cameron of Lochiel tells Colonel Hill at Fort William that he and his Camerons will no' raise arms, and you ken as well as I there are MacDonalds and Stewarts who have done the same. But we've not, have we, either of us?-'twill be the excuse they need to send Sa.s.senachs against us!"

She could not keep quiet, not with a MacDonald standing surety for her. Campbell pride would not permit it. Cat seized the opening and inserted the blade with care. "I'm doubting the earls of Breadalbane and Argyll would ignore what was done here . . . likely they'd see to it the Appin Stewarts were made over into MacGregors!"

She might as well have slapped Stewart's face with a glove as tell him that. He turned burning eyes upon her and said something in Gaelic so distorted by fury she could not understand it. Cat doubted anyone did; his temper, now, was unchecked.

"Robbie." Again Dair MacDonald, who moved forward quietly, smoothly, casually inserting a shoulder between Cat and Robert Stewart as he swung slowly to face his friend. "I'm asking you to let her be."

"Why?" It was thrust out between Robbie's teeth, extruded like a blow. "What is it to you if I want a kiss of the la.s.s? What is she to you? Your enemy, MacDonald-as much as Glenlyon himself! You've heard-had a taste of her tongue, aye?-sharp as an adder's bite!"

"Robbie," Dair said quietly, "no kisses of this la.s.s."

Stewart challenged him immediately. "What will you do to stop me?"

"Knock you senseless where you stand and carry you home myself." Dair grinned. "You are outnumbered, aye?-we're ten men to your four."

She could not hold her tongue. She did not trust MacDonald's motives. "And what have you done with mine? Have you dirked them all in their sleep?"

Dair did not look at her; he was too intent on Stewart. "I'll take you to them, la.s.s, as soon as we have Robbie's answer."

Stewart looked at Cat, at her sgian dhu, then back at MacDonald. A muscle leaped beside his mouth. "Christ, MacDonald-d'ye think I care so much? She's only a Campbell quean-there are others to be had, and more willing than the bizzem. She isna worth fighting over!" He slapped Dair on the arm in a gesture of restored goodwill, but Cat saw his eyes. He was not wholly reconciled, no matter what he said. "Dinna fash yerself, MacDonald . . . we've cattle to acquire!"

Dair glanced at Cat. She saw the twitch of his mouth, though the smile did not blossom. "We stopped because of the storm; we didna ken you were here. But then we saw your garrons, and the gillie before your door."

Cat thought of Angus, of the shouts outside the shieling. "Did you harm him?"

"A wee scratch on the neck," Dair explained, "when he tried to pull free of my men. He's with the others now, held in another shieling."

"I want to see them."

"And I told you I'd take you to them." Dair turned to stare directly at Stewart, as if challenging him to refuse.

Robbie swung away abruptly, plaid flaring from his shoulder.

Appeased, Dair turned to her. "Come out of the shieling, Cat . . . I'll take you to your men."

The Earl of Breadalbane, awaiting the arrival of his cousin Glenlyon's daughter, drank fiery usquabae as the sun went down and reread a portion of the Master of Stair's latest correspondence from Flanders regarding the recalcitrant Highlanders and his proposal to tame them. It pleased him that Stair put into writing his own confidence in Breadalbane's ability. It pleased him mightily.

The earl called his gillie to him. When Sandy Campbell came, his master smiled upon him. "Send word to the clans. All of them, aye?-no' just Campbells, Sandy. Have it said-have them reminded, aye?-that I am not merely an earl, but a chief even as they are, and that I am well cognizant of the demands upon the honor of his fellow chieftains."

He savored the peat-water flavor of his whisky, weighing words before he spoke them. "Tell them also they are right to distrust the words of a Sa.s.senach, to distrust that man Hill at Fort William who even now plots against them, and should look to a fellow Highlander, a chief in his own right, to lead them out of war into a time of peace. There is honor to be satisfied in any such undertaking, and I willna have it overlooked by Lowland Scot, Sa.s.senach, or Dutch king."

The gillie waited mutely.

Breadalbane finished the whisky and set the cup aside. "I value their words, Sandy, as I value their pride. Tell them to come to Achallader in late June, and we will each of us have something to say of the future of Stuart Scotland." When the gillie had gone Breadalbane poured more whisky and smiled at the closed door. "Achallader," he murmured, "so that no chief can but see for himself what I have lost to the MacDonalds. And when, in the ruins of my castle, I welcome even pawkie, thieving MacIain of Glencoe into our confederacy despite the evidence of his enmity, they will count me sincere!"

Dair pulled Cat out of the shieling, relieved her of sgian dhu before she could protest, and took her immediately to the closest shieling but twenty paces away. He pulled the leather curtain aside and escorted her inside where other MacDonalds waited, watching Glenlyon's men.

He saw the blossoming of relief in every Campbell face, followed almost instantly by humiliation that they'd failed to keep her safe.

Cat ignored him utterly and looked from one to the other. "They are cattle thieves," she said plainly. "What do you expect of them but to come in the night like thieves, aye?-and set the dirks against your throats!"

He looked sharply at the Campbells. As one they stared at her, startled as he by her vehemence. Then the one she had called Angus began to smile, though he had the grace-or the wisdom, aye?-to attempt to hide it from his captors.

"They canna keep us," she went on, with a scathing glance at the MacDonald clansmen, "and we'll no' be killed for the silence. I am Glenlyon's daughter; they know about MacGregors and what happens to proscribed clans."

The color was back in their faces and the brightness in their eyes. Now they were angry men hungry for redress. Dair sensed the renewed alertness of the captured Campbells and the accompanying tension in his own men. He grabbed an arm and yanked her back out of the shieling before she could say anything else that might stir them to revolt.

"Christ, MacDonald-will ye stop pulling me this way and that like a muckle-headed stirk-?"

He ignored the latter protest. "Fierce words, aye?-and likely to get them killed." He took her around the side. "We've no' harmed them save for a lump or two; d'ye want worse on your head?"

Cat stumbled over a stone, recovered stiffly, and turned to face him, ignoring the arm still clasped in his grip. "I willna let them be ashamed for being trapped by Glencoe men," she declared. "There's no honor in your clan. Why should they expect it?"

The virulence of her tone took him aback. Then the words settled themselves to pierce his pride. "Then perhaps I should let Robbie have his kiss and see what you say then, aye?"

Her expression was briefly anguished, then hardened into a commingling of frustration and bitter anger. "In G.o.d's name, MacDonald, what d'ye expect me to say?"

He opened his mouth to respond, but lost the train of his thought. He knew what he had intended to say, but it now lay tantalizingly out of reach, blown away on the rising breeze that lifted a lock of loose red hair and carried it forward to drape in unintentional coyness across one p.r.o.nounced, oblique cheekbone.

"Well?" she prodded, and he recalled she had posed him a question.

He looked away from the strand of hair and the face from which she impatiently pulled it. "I would expect you to say-to suggest to them they make no attempt to fight."

"Why? Would you? Is that what you would say and do, in my place?"

It was irrefutable logic, especially from a Campbell, and he found it intensely annoying. Dair lost interest altogether in the hair and the cheek and scowled at her.

"Dinna show me that black look, MacDonald," she snapped. " 'Tis Glen Lyon we're in, not Glencoe."

"But we have the weapons."

"And we our tongues, aye?-" She was clearly unabashed by his perceived victory. "-which you well ken, being a Highlander, is as much a weapon as a dirk if wielded properly. D'ye expect us not to use them?"