Amanda Scott (19 page)

Ian laughed, as did the others, but Rory noted that his cousin still seemed wary and ill at ease. Seeing no reason to coddle him, he said bluntly, “I thought you went into Lochaber, hunting eagles, Ian. What business brings you here?”

Glancing at Mary again, Ian looked for a moment as if he would not answer, but then he squared his shoulders and faced Rory directly. “I suppose you will tell my father, but I won’t deny why I’m here even so. I love Mary, Cousin Rory. I have loved her since the day I first set eyes upon her.”

“And you, mistress?” Rory looked at her.

She felt the poultice. “That should be heated again, I think, sir.”

“It’s barely started to cool,” he protested. “Answer my question.”

Diana said quickly, “What difference does it make what she feels? Neither the Campbells nor the Macleans would countenance such a union.”

Her eyes bright with tears, Mary snatched up the poultice and fled.

When Ian moved to follow her, Rory said firmly, “One moment, lad. Surely you know that Mistress Diana is right. Your father would see you dead and buried before he would let you marry a Maclean, no matter how she spells the name.”

“Aye,” Bardie agreed. “That’s plain fact, that is.”

“Perhaps not,” Ian said. “Campbells have married Macleans before.”

“In the distant past, perhaps.”

“Many times,” Ian insisted. “Marriage between factions is an excellent way to fortify any truce between them, Cousin Rory. You must know that.”

Rory frowned. “First there has to be a real truce, Ian.”

“But there is! There has been no killing for six years, no rebellion, no—”

“No defiance of the lawful authorities?

He looked at Diana.

She glared back at him, but with telltale color in her cheeks. The light outside had faded, and someone had lighted lamps in the parlor. The maidservant, he supposed. She had come in and gone out several times since his arrival.

Diana said, “None of that matters a whit. If Balcardane did not stop it, Black Duncan or the Macleans most certainly would.”

“But, Diana—” Ian began.

“As for your stupid notion of bolstering a truce,” she snapped, turning on him, “I know of at least one Campbell-Maclean union like that, that nearly took the life of the bride. Although she was the Campbell, just thinking about what her loving husband tried to do to her makes me shiver.”

“Is that the Lady Rock tale?” Ian demanded.

“It is.” To Rory she said, “Back in the days when the Macleans were still struggling with the Macdonalds to fill the void left after the fall of the Lord of the Isles, they formed an uneasy alliance with the Campbells of Argyll and fortified it with more than one intermarriage. Some of those couples may have got on well enough, but Lachlan Maclean was the sort of man who only wanted a thing till he got it. Becoming bored with his wife, Lady Elizabeth Campbell, who happened to be the Earl of Argyll’s sister, he began casting his eye about for a new wife. But he could not just send Lady Elizabeth back to her brother, or tell him she had somehow disappeared, so he marooned her on a rock in the Firth that disappears at high tide.”

“Pleasant fellow,” Rory said, watching the way the lamplight set highlights dancing in her ebony hair. “That’s why they called it the Lady Rock, I expect.”

“Right,” Ian said. “It lies near where the Sound of Mull meets the Firth.”

“Midway between Lismore and Craignure,” Diana said. “I could see it from my window at home.”

“Are you talking about the Lady Rock?” Mary asked, returning with a fresh poultice that sent a cloud of steam rising from the basin in which she held it.

Eyeing the steam with misgiving, Rory said, “Your cousin is explaining why it is unwise for Campbells to marry Macleans.”

“I don’t see that the Lady Rock story proves that at all,” Mary said. “They had an unhappy union, to be sure, but I don’t think either side behaved well.”

“Though it pains me to say it, that Maclean was stupid,” Diana said. “Thinking Lady Elizabeth had drowned, he reported her death to the Campbells.”

“I remember that tale now,” Rory said. “His announcement was premature, was it not? Unbeknownst to him, a pair of passing fishermen had rescued her and taken her to Argyll.”

“That’s right,” Ian said.

“Well, I hesitate to confide this,” Rory said, tensing as Mary laid the hot poultice across his chest. “It was one of my ancestors, the Thane of Cawdor, who avenged the attempt on Lady Elizabeth’s life. He was also her brother, you see, and shortly afterward he paid a visit to your Maclean in Edinburgh.”

“A visit!” Diana exclaimed indignantly. “He sneaked into Maclean’s bedchamber, taking him by surprise, then dirked him in his bed!”

“I heard it was a fair fight,” Rory said calmly.

“Well, I never heard that.”

Bardie said, “’Tis some hundreds of years in the past. Stands tae reason that hereabouts they’d tell the version that makes the Macleans look best, and that his lordship would hear only the Campbell’s side. ’Tis likely, I’m thinking, that there’s but a whisker’s worth o’ truth in both stories, lass.”

“Bardie’s right,” Ian said, a note of relief in his voice. “I only mentioned other unions because I hoped you might put the notion in my father’s head, Cousin Rory. If it came from you, he’d be bound to listen.”

“You give me more credit than he would, I fear,” Rory said.

Ian began to protest, but Mary silenced him with a look.

“The poultice is cooling, my lord,” she said, putting her hand on it. “Morag will have the next one warm by now. Ian, love, please tell her to bring it to me.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Rory said. “I am grateful for all you have done, but I mean to get back to Balcardane tonight.”

“But you cannot,” Diana said. She bit her lip, and he knew that she wished she had not spoken. Still, it was a sign that she cared whether he lived or died.

He was beginning to take quite an interest in Mistress Diana, and while he knew that nothing could come of it, he was glad she had not tried to freeze him out of her life altogether. He had promised Patrick to keep an eye on her, and by heaven, he meant to do just that. Although he was as loyal to his clan as any man, he had never understood those who refused to make friends among the opposition.

“You should rest, sir,” Mary said.

“I promise you, I shall,” he said. “But I’ll do my resting at Balcardane.”

“Best let him have his way,” Ian said with a sigh. “If he does not show up tonight, my father and Duncan will think you’ve abducted him.”

“That’s right,” Rory said, giving the poultice to Mary and looking around for the shirt Diana had brought him.

Bardie handed it to him. “I’ve got a string for your sixpence, too,” he said.

Rory smiled and shook his head, but the dwarf said, “Ye’ll wear it, or Mary will be thinking it’s her fault if ye die.”

“Well, I don’t want her to think that. You’ll come with me, Ian?”

“Oh, aye, of course I will. I don’t want your death on
my
conscience either.”

“You will take horses, sir,” Diana said.

“I am perfectly stout,” he told her.

“Nonetheless, you will not walk to Balcardane. Ian would take the shortest, most difficult route without thinking twice about it.”

“I’ll take him by the long road if Mary says I must,” Ian said.

“You’ll take horses,” Mary told him. “There are at least two good ones in the barn, Diana, if one of them can ride the bay with the white stockings.”

“White Boots? Certainly. Neil will not mind.” She was still watching Rory, and when he caught her eye he saw color flood her cheeks.

Mary said, “I’ll tell Morag then. Take the sixpence, sir,” she added, handing it to him. She had affixed Bardie’s string to it, he saw.

He took it from her and tied it around his neck. It rested lightly on bare skin where he had left the shirt open at the top instead of tying its lace.

“If the coin disappears, don’t fret, sir,” Mary told him. “It is meant to do so, they say, for then you can be sure all the poison has left you. I’ll tell Morag to have someone saddle the horses now.”

Ian was helping him shrug into his coat again, without James Stewart’s waistcoat, when the front door opened and another young man entered. This one was as dark as Diana, but his face was longer than hers and his eyes deeper set. For a moment Rory wondered if he could be the fugitive who had escaped from Stalker. Even before the thought completed itself, however, he saw how young the lad was—at least a year or more younger than Ian—and knew he was not Allan Breck.

“We wondered where you’d got to, Neil,” Diana said.

“I told you, we sailed to Mull to climb Dun da Ghaoithe. And don’t ask if I called on any of our old tenants,” he added, “because I didn’t.”

“Aye, you did say you would go today,” she said calmly. “Make your leg to Lord Calder, if you please. This is my brother, Sir Neil Maclean, my lord.”

The lad hesitated, a frown darkening his brow, but then he said, “How do you do, sir? Are you kin to Gentle Ian?”

“I have that honor,” Rory said.

“Then you are welcome here. I remember now,” he added, looking at his sister. “You said he was here yesterday when that villain Glenure served his notice.”

“I did,” Diana said coolly. “Mind how you speak of those who are not present to defend themselves, if you please.”

He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “Since when do you care what I say about Red Colin? Allan says far worse than I do, and you never reprove him.”

She shot him a look from under her brows.

Flushing bright red, he said defensively, “Never mind that. When is supper?”

Rory wondered if young Neil had been among the group that assaulted him. He could not imagine Mary or Ian taking part in such an event, but it occurred to him that he could imagine Bardie helping to plan the assault, at least, if not actually taking part in it.

He dismissed these thoughts as unworthy of one who owed most of the present group a debt of gratitude, and began to make his farewells. He noted though, that when the horses were ready, young Sir Neil made no secret of his relief at their departure, even when he saw that Rory had borrowed his gelding to ride.

“You see what comes of giving a Campbell the ran of this house,” Neil said to Mary and Diana when the others had gone. “Now he’s bringing his deuced kith and kin to call. I expect we’ll soon be serving supper to Balcardane and his lady.”

Diana said coolly, “I brought his lordship here, Neil. Would you have had me leave him to the mercy of a wildcat, or to the putrefaction of his wounds?”

Neil shrugged petulantly. “I don’t care what becomes of him. Devil take it, Diana, are you mad? We attacked the man just a few days ago, and now we’re nigh onto offering him a bed in our house. You even gave him White Boots to ride!”

Exchanging a look with Mary, Diana decided not to mention that they had wanted Calder to spend the night. Seeing him on his feet, smiling and at ease, she had known he was nearly as stout as he claimed to be. Yet she could not rid herself of the thought that for him to be out in the dark was dangerous. With a sigh, she told herself that before long she would be thinking she had acquired Mary’s gift.

Her feelings about his lordship were double edged. When she chanced to think about the moment she had first seen him with the writhing, snarling wildcat clawing at him, she felt the same shiver of fear race up her spine that she had felt then. He was not a small man. He was large and clearly accustomed to taking care of himself. Yet in that moment she had known he was as vulnerable as any other man in such a predicament. He might have managed without her help to fling the cat off, and to chase it away. But one accurate slash at eyes or throat, and he would have been blinded, or dead. Either thought was too horrid to contemplate.

Helping Morag and Mary get supper to the table, she reminded herself yet again that he was a Campbell like any other Campbell, but to her mind’s ear, the phrase sounded stale and inadequate, even untrue. He was as different as a man could be from any Campbell she had met before.

Calder had Ian’s kindness, insofar as he had refrained from betraying her to Patrick Campbell or, as far as she knew, to anyone else. More than that, he had treated her with consistent civility and a complete lack of the umbrage one expected to meet with in a Campbell. Ian did not count. That young man had no loyalties that anyone could discern, and no strong passion for anything or anyone except the creatures of the forest and Mary Maclaine.

Even his passion for her cousin was not what Diana would want from a man she loved. Ian clearly adored Mary. No one could doubt that. But he was content to watch her, to serve her, to be at her beck and bay, to worship her without question. If he knew she had a temper, Diana had never seen any sign of it. He certainly had none himself. She could not imagine Gentle Ian taking up a sword even to defend Mary’s honor, or knocking down a man to avenge an insult. Not that she could imagine any man insulting Mary. No one did.

It was not that folks feared her. Mary’s gift set her apart from other women, and although the occasional outlander might be tempted to think her a witch, even they thought her a good one because of her knowledge of the healing herbs. Local folk were soon able to convince the wary that she merely possessed a mysterious, awesome gift. Diana believed that people loved Mary, much as they did Ian, for her generous spirit and peaceful nature. But Allan Breck had insisted more than once that there was an element of real fear, too, no matter what anyone else claimed.

“They fear the lass will see their passing one day,” he had said on more than one occasion. Diana wondered if he had merely spoken his own fear aloud.

“I saw Dugald today,” Neil said, cutting into her reverie as he took his place at the table.

“Why did you not bring him here?” she demanded. “Did he speak of Mam?”

“Of course, he did,” Neil said. “He came to say that she is homesick and wants to return. I warned him not to let her do so.”

“Did you tell him about the eviction notice?” Mary asked him, putting the last of the steaming platters on the table.