Jennifer Roberson (33 page)

The heir of Appin lifted his voice against the distance. “Did ye ken it, then? That I would be coming for you?”

But not so soon, so soon.
Dair moved to the other side of the garron and stood quietly before the horse. He wore a dirk and
sgian dhu,
but wanted to use neither against Robbie. He would prefer to settle it with fists, when words would not do. And with
him,
they would not. Not ever with Robbie Stewart.

“So.” Robbie reined up. With him was a tail of men nearly as impressive as a laird’s, though of less ceremony. They were young and hard-faced all, with pistols tucked into kilt belts. “Are ye ready, then?”

Dair drew in a deep breath. Robbie showed no inclination to dismount; did he intend to ride him down?

“Well?” Stewart’s expression was quizzical. “Has he gone lame, your garron—or d’ye mean to
walk
to Loch Linnhe?”

“Loch Linnhe?” Dair echoed blankly.

“Aye, where the boats are!” Robbie frowned. “Surely MacIain was brought word.” He paused, assessing Dair’s expression. “The
boat,
man! I thought ye kent what I mean!” He flung out an arm meant to suggest direction. “A supply boat is on its way up the coast of Lorn, bent on replenishing the stores at Fort William. We canna let that happen when our own people are hungry.” He grinned, blue eyes alight. “And great romantic pirates we’ll make, aye? Spanish pistols, Scottish dirks—they’ll ken they’ve met their betters, those pawkie Sassenachs!”

“Pirates . . .” Dair took himself in hand. It would be gey easy to leave off responsibilities to play pirate with Robbie Stewart. “I meant to go to Jean.”

Robbie frowned, then waved an illustrative hand. “Och, no, Jean’s not home. She’s gone off to visit some old bizzem . . . was gone when I got home from Achallader.” He grinned. “Bring her back plunder, MacDonald—she’ll kiss you for it!”

“When . . .” Dair began again.
I canna do this
—
’tis too easy. . . .
He scrubbed a hard hand through his windblown hair.
I canna DO this. . . .
“When is she expected back? Jean?”

Stewart whooped a laugh. “Good Christ, can you no’ tame your cock, Alasdair Og? You’ll be bedding her forbye, once we’ve English plunder!” The laughter died, though brows arched up. “D’ye come with us, then? ’Twill be a tale to tell, once we’ve won the boat.”

Jean not at home.

Jean elsewhere.

Robbie did not know.

Relief was overwhelming. Dair mounted his garron and sent him climbing hastily up to the higher track. He reined in by Robbie, grinning widely.

Jean was not at home . . . and for the moment, the day, perhaps so long as a week, he and her volatile brother could yet be friends, even pirates, bent upon Sassenach booty.

Dair raised eloquent brows in a mirror of Robbie’s habit. “What will Breadalbane say, to have you break the treaty?”

Robbie swore virulently. “Holy Christ, man, ’tis naught to
me
what Grey John says. He’s no laird of mine!”

Dair laughed. “No more is any man who stands in Appin’s way when he wants to serve himself!”

“Aye, well . . .” Robbie grinned. “And who will
you
be serving?”

“MacIain,” Dair declared promptly, and knew it for the truth.

 

Within hours Jean was forgotten. Powder and smoke burned in Dair’s eyes, lingered unpleasantly in his nostrils, lent a metallic tang to his mouth. He heard shouting, swearing, muttering in Gaelic, furtive splashing in the water; wooden planks beneath his feet creaked in counterpoint to the motion of the ship as it floated without direction. It was theirs now, the
Lamb,
and all the supplies meant for Fort William would be parcelled out instead to Appin and Glencoe.

He turned toward the rail to look at the crew members gone over the side in a panicked bid for escape. It did not matter to him if they made good their attempt; it wasn’t a fight to the death he was after, just provisions for Glencoe in place of Sassenach soldiers.

“Robbie—
no!”
Dair lunged and caught the outstretched arm Stewart raised, yanking it aside. “Dinna shoot, Robbie—’tis naught but plunder we’ve lifted, and a boat . . . if you kill anyone, we’ll hang for it! ”

Robbie snarled an oath and jerked his arm away, clutching the pistol. “Christ, MacDonald—” He turned hastily, leaning against the rail to steady himself as he searched again for the Englishmen. The Spanish pistol was clutched in one powder-burned hand. “There!”

The pistol came up. Dair saw from the tail of his eye the bedraggled, lake-soaked crewmen scrambling their way onto the shore from the waters of Loch Linnhe, running awkwardly in pursuit of safety. Some were bloodied, he knew, some actually wounded, but no man killed. Not yet.

“Damn you, Robbie—” This time Dair did not hold back. He struck the pistol away without regard for Robbie’s hand, and was satisfied to see the weapon spinning harmlessly toward the water. Better a lost pistol than a lost life. “D’ye want to hang for this?”

“Neither to hang nor be imprisoned!” Robbie shouted back. “Have you lost your spine, MacDonald? They’ll bear witness against us!”

“Have
you
lost your wits?” Dair countered. “Let them go, Robbie—by the time they’ve made their way to Fort William, we’ll have the plunder safe home. No need to compound the crime.” He glanced again shoreward and was pleased to see the Sassenachs disappear into heather and gorse. “They’ll carry the tale, aye, but they dinna ken who we are.”

“Scots!”

“Och, aye, Scots,” Dair said in disgust, “but have you kent a Sassenach who can tell us apart? ’Tis one advantage, our names—how many MacDonalds and Stewarts are there in the Highlands?”

Robbie was breathing hard. He leaned his spine against the rail and glared at Dair, nursing a finger cut from the blow to his hand. “They’d kill us as soon as find out.”

“They didna kill us here, did they?” Dair cast a quick, assessive glance over the English ship. It had not been difficult to take her with two boats of their own borrowed from Ballachulish along with some helpful MacDonalds, and a quick swarming attack that left them in possession of supply ship and her cargo. Shots fired, dirks unsheathed, a bit of blood and flesh, but no man dead of it. “We’re too close to Glencoe—’tis the obvious place . . .” He looked at Robbie. “Appin.”

The younger Scot was instantly diverted. His grin, behind the mask of grime, was brilliant. “You’d trust all this plunder to me?”

“Would you risk lifting from
me?”
Dair grinned back wolfishly. “I dinna think so, Robbie . . . aye, we’ll sail her to Appin lands, then parcel out the plunder. The glens have need of such.”

“And the pawkie bastards in the fort can starve.” Robbie’s anger was forgotten, as well as the wounded finger smearing blood into powder-sooted linen shirt. “Aye, we’ll have her into an Appin harbor . . . will you come with us?”

Dair shook his head. “I’ll go home to Glencoe—snoove back through the heather before the troops are out. . . . I’ll tell MacIain what we’ve done. These men here from Ballachulish can carry Glencoe’s share back home.” He glanced shoreward. “Put me off a mile or two down the coast, aye?”

Robbie nodded absently, already lost in thought. He turned to his Stewarts and shouted orders to bring the boat around and sail her back toward Appin.

Dair nodded to himself, pleased to see Robbie so distracted. It would serve his purpose to be put ashore, where he would not, despite his words, go at once to Glencoe. Troops would likely search there first; it would be best if he were nowhere to be found, and no one in Glencoe to know his whereabouts.

So close to Glencoe, the Sassenach governor Colonel John Hill would make the obvious connection. Ignorant of Highlanders, of Highland clans and ways, he would not think of Robbie or of his Appin Stewarts.

And to MacDonald lands the Williamite governor would send his Sassenach soldiers.

“Let him,” Dair murmured. Robbie and the boat would be safe in Appin lands, and
he,
being wise, would take himself entirely elsewhere. He suppressed a grin of sheer delight and anticipation.
They will all of them, even Robbie, least expect me to go where I most want to be.

In his private quarters, John Hill unrolled the map upon the table, arranged it, weighted it down at four corners with inkhorns and books. When he was satisfied with its placement he looked at the man who stood on the other side of the table. “If you please, Captain Fisher, show me where this incident occurred.”

Captain Fisher did please. He planted a definitive forefinger on the map. “Here,” he said succinctly, eyebrows locked together balefully over the flattened bridge of his misshapen nose. “Out of Ballachulish, from the smaller stem of the loch. Two boats, perhaps two dozen men. Scotch pirates, Governor. Bloody heathen savages!”

Hill nodded amicably, but forebore to correct the crude terminology. He did not entirely blame London-born, sea-reared Fisher for being so out of sorts; the man had lost his ship, his cargo; had had to swim to shore and skulk for two days through the wild Highland terrain, all the while trying desperately to avoid “heathen Scotch pirates.”

In truth, Hill was no happier; Fort William badly needed the supplies now on their way elsewhere. “You are certain no one was killed?”

“No, sir, we all made it to shore safely, and all are here with me. But wounds aplenty, sir, from pistols and those bloody Highland short swords—begging your pardon, Governor.”

“Dirks,” Hill said absently, looking again at the map. His own finger traced a path. “From Ballachulish—here . . . to here, where the
Lamb
was . . .” he mused. “Yes, I see it—Glencoe is but miles up the glen . . . it would be an obvious target to MacIain’s people, more food for their mouths and less for ours, whom they detest. . . .” Hill nodded; it made perfect sense to an old soldier, if not to an old sailor. He glanced from the map to Captain Fisher. “Did you hear any names called out?”

“MacDonald,” Fisher answered promptly, “as you said. And Stewart—like their Papist king, the foolish old bastard.”

“Different clan, I think,” Hill said diffidently, but did not explain the details to Fisher of how Stewart became Stuart at the whimsy of a Scots—not
Scotch
—queen who spoke more French than Gaelic; how a single clan could become more than one in time, so large, so piecemeal, so scattered throughout the country.

It was a simple thing for John Hill to piece the truth together despite the paucity of evidence. He knew the map very well, and the clans who lived by its boundaries. “Think, if you please, Captain. Can you recall who was in command?”

Fisher glowered. “I don’t understand their bloody heathen tongue!” he declared curtly, then mitigated it as he recalled to whom he spoke. “Sir.”

“Ah, no, of course not; why should you?” Hill agreed mildly. “But I must ask you to think again, Captain Fisher. . . was there one man who spoke the ‘bloody heathen tongue’ more than the others? With pronounced authority?”

Fisher considered it, and nodded. “Young man, aye, sir. Sandy-haired, wearing the colored wool. Not tall, but well-made. And barefoot, like them all.” He grimaced. “Bloody savages!”

Hill nodded patiently; it served nothing, with men like Fisher, to debate the truth. “Is there anyone else you recall? Another man who might have answered this one back more often than the others?” No MacDonald would take orders from a Stewart; he would command his own clanspeople.

Fisher’s expression cleared. “Yes, of course, sir . . . ah, I take your meaning! Indeed, there was this young man who did most of the jabbering in the Scotch tongue, but another had as much to say. I marked him well, sir. Young face, old hair.”

Hill’s attention sharpened. “Graying early, was he?”

“Yes, sir. He wore no hat, sir. He was nearly gray as myself, Governor, but twenty years or more younger.”

“MacDonald . . .” Hill murmured. “MacIain’s son—what, John? John, I think . . . perhaps. Indeed, perhaps—the old fox’s sons, they say, will be white-headed before they are forty . . .” But more telling yet: “And they’ve none of them signed the treaty. Nor will.
This
is their declaration, their defiance.” He looked more pointedly at Fisher. “Good captain, I thank you. I believe you have solved their identities for me, if it please God.” He moved the weights aside and began to reroll the map. “I do thank you, sir. You have saved me wasted effort.”

Fisher was taken aback by the Hill’s abrupt decisiveness. “Your pardon, Governor, sir—but what do you mean to do?”

Hill examined the parchment roll, then slid it carefully back into its leather storage tube, taking care not to tear the edges. “Catch them,” he said succinctly. “I have troops, Captain Fisher, fine English troops. If it please God, I will send half of them to Glencoe and half of them to Appin.” He smiled. “Despite their heathen tongue, Captain, Scottish foxes are no different than English ones. They will go to ground in territory they know best.”