Kilgannon (44 page)

"Yes," I said, and watched his expression close. "And I congratulate myself on my escape." I wrapped my hand around his neck, drew him to me, and kissed him again until he smiled.

"Yer a one." He stretched himself next to me and leaned on one elbow, his other hand on my stomach. My flat stomach. I stroked his face, watching his hair frame his cheekbones.

"I would like to have children with you, my love," I said.

"And I with ye, lass," he said, his eyes finding mine. "Get yerself well and we'll see what time brings." He looked out over the loch and glen and back to me. "I want ye well. I canna live without ye, Mary Rose. And when yer well, then we'll just have to practice. No doubt we're just doing it wrong."

"No doubt," I laughed, and he kissed me again, then sobered. "
Mary
, are ye upset with me that I plan to sell the Diana?"

I turned onto my side to face him. "Upset? Why would I be upset, Alex? It's your ship."

"Aye, it is for a bit again anyway," he agreed.

"I would be upset if you sold the Mary Rose or Gannon's Lady" I said. "But I'd never seen the Diana before you brought her home. As far as I'm concerned, anything that reminds us of Malcolm is not welcome here. I think it for the best. Why do you ask?"

"Ah, well, Thomas is
no’ so
pleased. He thinks we could use her to start trading with the colonies."

"But you told me she was the oldest of all the brigs and that she needed repair. That's not a good ship to send on a far voyage."

"Aye, but we could have fixed her up. No, lass, I'm going to sell her because she reminds me of what is not mine any longer. Do ye ken what I mean? Malcolm and I used to play on her when we were lads, and he took her without a thought of what had been. I canna feel the same. When I look at her all I see is Malcolm."

"And what did Angus think?"

"It was his idea to sell her."

"That doesn't surprise me. What will you do with the money?"

"I havena decided." "Life is better now without him," I said quietly.

He nodded. "Aye, yer right, it is. And certainly more peaceful, no? But I canna help wondering what he's doing." I stroked his cheek but said nothing, thinking of the baby that Leitis had lost. Or gotten rid of. I had not asked many questions when Berta told me. Alex looked into the distance, lost in his own thoughts, and I watched the clouds, no threat today, pass behind his head. Suddenly he tensed and sat up, looking down the hill, sheltering his eyes with a hand. He swallowed a curse as he stood.

"What is it?" I sat up and rearranged my skirts as I saw the boy, Thomas's Liam, scrambling up the path below us.

"A runner coming for us," he growled, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "All I wanted was an hour in the sun."

"What do you suppose it is?"

"Either we've received a message or someone's in the loch. Or someone's dead. It had better not be less."

"Sir," Liam said between gulps of air. "I am sorry to disturb ye, but my da said to tell ye a boat is in the loch and it looks like the MacKinnon and to apologize if yer angry."

"The MacKinnon." Alex's expression grew serious. He glanced at me and raised his eyebrows as if to say he knew no more than I. But he did, I was sure. The MacKinnon's visit worried him, not surprised him. And I was certain it had something to do with James Stewart. "Thank ye, lad,"he said to Liam. 'Tell yer da that he was right to fetch me.

I'm on my way. Go and find Angus."

"Aye, sir." The boy nodded and darted back down the path.

I scrambled to my feet. "What does it mean?"

Alex looked out over the glen and then turned, his eyes slowly focusing on me. "I'm not sure, but something's in the wind again." He straightened his shoulders and pulled me to him fiercely. "We'll know soon enough," he said. "We have five minutes and then I must go and find out. Kiss me, lass, and we'll use the time well."

The MacKinnon stayed for two days, the only two perfect days of the summer. The first morning he was with us, Alex hastily arranged a hunting party and went off with most of the men, their work left undone in their hurry. The women stared after them as they left and muttered among themselves. I said nothing, but a feeling of foreboding surrounded me as. I stood on the top step at the outer gate, watching Alex ride to the end of the loch and into the trees at the far side, his blond hair brilliant under the green bonnet. I felt an apprehension I had never felt before. And I could not shake the fear all day. It hung over me like a personal cloud though I spent the day in the sun, forsaking my own work. The boys and I rowed out onto the loch, and I watched them fish but catch nothing. They had been annoyed at having been left behind and were irritable at first, but soon their spirits rose, and by the end of the afternoon they were their usual good-natured and silly selves. They sang as we rowed ashore and carried their fishing poles as though they were weighted down.

The men arrived in the evening's gloom and settled in for a night's drinking. Alex had spent last night talking with the MacKinnon as well and he had come to bed in the wee hours, angry and smelling of whisky. When I had questioned him he had said only that, yes, it was James Stewart they were discussing, but, no, he'd not agreed to anything. This morning he'd explained that MacKinnon was here to get him to agree to raise the clan and to help raise the Highlands. He said he had no intention of doing either, but Alex had spent the day and the evening with the MacKinnon and although he was leaving in the morning, I feared that he might yet prove successful. The summer was bringing more than bad weather.

Tonight Alex was thoughtful as he prepared for bed and kissed me absently on the forehead. When he did not finish undressing but sat on the chair in front of the fireplace lost in thought, I climbed from the bed and went to kneel in front of him, asking him to tell me what was happening. His gaze, which had been far away, returned to me and he smiled wryly.

"I am being besieged, lass, and I am resisting. We've held our ground this time, but I fear this willna be the last. MacKinnon wants me to join the Earl of Mar in the east. Bobbing John Erskine. Ye ken why they call him Bobbing John?" I shook my head. "Mar was verra important under Queen Anne, and when King Geordie dinna recognize his worth he was most put out." Alex yawned. "Mar wrote a fawning letter to George, but that dinna work; Geordie dinna give him a place in his government. So now Bobbing John is leading a rebellion against the King. MacKinnon says all the clans are rising, but I've heard differently, and I said I needed more time and more information before I decided." He stroked my hair. "Dinna look at me that way, lass, I've not agreed to anything. Dinna fear that I am off to war. I've told ye I dinna like James Stewart." His smile was tired. "They'll be off in the morning, and no doubt this will pass as all the other rumors have. Put it from yer mind."

But I could not. And neither could Alex. The news spread quickly of the MacKinnon's visit, and within a week Murdoch was in the hall telling Alex of the other clans that were joining the rising. The MacKinnon had gone to visit the Macleans as well.

"And ye, Murdoch? Are the Macleans joining?" Alex asked his friend. His face was calm, but his hand gripped mine behind my skirts. Murdoch nodded and my heart contracted. Alex sounded undisturbed. "Are ye indeed?" he asked. "And what, besides a split head, do ye think of gaining from this exercise, Maclean?"

Murdoch shrugged. "I dinna ken if we'll be successful, Alex, but I canna stay under King Geordie's yoke the more. Ye ken what happened to the letter all the chiefs sent?"

"No, what?" Alex poured more whisky in Murdoch's glass as he listened to the other man's story of outrage. After George's accession to the throne a letter accepting his sovereignty had circulated the Highlands, signed by many but not all. That letter, like the one accepting Sophia as Anne's heir, had never reached Kilgannon. But the Macleans had signed it, hoping for peace.

Murdoch sighed. "He wouldna even open it. Wouldna even open it, Alex. He dinna read it. Well, he canna read English, but it wasna even read to him, he was that disinterested. It's an insult."

"Aye, it is that," said Alex, nodding.

"And ye ken what happened to my cousin?" Murdoch's eyes were bright. I watched him talk, this enormous man who was Alex's closest friend outside the clan, and I thought of Morag. She and Murdoch had married at Dunvegan in Skye in the early summer, on a rainy—what else this year?— day in June. The talk at the wedding had not been of the beautiful bride, though she had been, or of the fortunate groom, but of James Stewart. When the dancing was well under way, Morag had approached and embraced me. I'd murmured something polite in response as she followed my gaze across the room to where Murdoch and Alex stood with a group of men.

"Who knows how long I'll have my husband home. Or ye yers." Her eyes met mine, a deep sadness overlaying the happiness of the day. "James Stewart might have other plans. I've been foolish, Mary," she sighed, "keeping him waiting for so long while I was waiting for Alex. I
dinna
ken how much he meant to me, and now I may lose him. I have no wish to be a bride and a widow at once." She'd left me staring after her, and I remembered the moment now as I listened to her husband's arguments. Morag, I thought, I would not have wished this for you.

We had visitors or letters almost daily, and although I tried to believe Alex would not agree to join the rebellion, my hopes dimmed with every discussion. Angus worked the men very hard, drilling them in swordplay and horsemanship until they dropped, and the meadow was filled with the sounds of men shooting their pistols at targets. Only an idiot would not know what it meant, but I pretended to myself until the day Alex marched into the library.

"Mary," he said. "I must talk with ye." I looked up from the accounts I was working on and then glanced at Jamie, sprawled on the floor next to the desk, his nose in a book and his dog at his side. I nodded at Jamie, and Alex looked around the desk. "Jamie, lad," he said calmly, "go and read yer book elsewhere and take Robert the Bruce with ye. I must talk with Mary the now." Jamie looked at his father in surprise.

"Aye, Da," he said, but gave me a puzzled glance as he left. I watched him go through the door and then turned back to Alex.

"Well?" I asked. Alex was pacing in front of the fireplace.

"
Mary
," he said abruptly. "I've sold the Diana?"

"Good. Did you get a good price?" I straightened my papers.

"Aye." He stopped in front of me, and I put the papers down and watched him. "And I bought pistols with the money."

"Pistols."

"Aye." Blue eyes met mine. "I'm simply being cautious."

"Cautious," I said. "You bought guns to be cautious?"

"Aye. My men must have the best."

"When did you do this?" "Last week." "You did not tell me." "No."

"I see." I concentrated on the trim waist that I had so many times put my arms around. The waist of a stranger. "You did not tell me."

"Every time I started to, I thought of how angry ye'd be and I dinna want to argue with ye about this as we argued about Malcolm and Robert. Dinna look at me like that, Mary Rose. I dinna mean to not tell ye. I just—"

"Did not tell me."

He looked at me without flinching. "Aye. That's the truth of it, lass." I said nothing. His belt was worn at the buckle. "Mary, lass, look at me. I am simply being cautious. I dinna ken what will happen. But even if we do not join, it may come to us. We must be prepared. I was simply—"

"Preparing to go to war," I said flatly. He was silent, and we looked at each other. "Alex, are you going to join the rebellion?"

"I dinna ken,
Mary
. At this point, no."

"At this point."

"Aye."

"But that may change." "I will tell ye if it does."

"Don't tell me, Alex. I won't want to hear it. I'll never forgive you if you leave. Never." He studied me for a moment, then nodded and left me alone with my fears.

That evening Alex and I climbed to the top of the keep to watch the sunset. We stood in silence, Alex preoccupied, as always these days. I sighed heavily as I watched his profile, afraid to ask for his thoughts. At last he reached for me, draping an arm around my shoulders and kissing my hair. "Beautiful, no?" He gestured to the sunset before us, magnificent tonight, the rose fading into the indigo line of the horizon, broken only by the uneven shapes of the islands offshore.

"Yes," I said, and wrapped my arms around his waist. "Alex?"

"Hmmm?"

"Do you remember when we met?" His eyes, focused and amused now, found mine, and he nodded.

"Aye, lass, I'm
no ‘so
old that I'm forgetting things yet. I remember it well." "Do you remember telling me that it would be as I wished?" I could feel him stiffen under my arms and I waited.

"Lass, I promised only to give ye what I can, not what I canna. I am aware of yer wishes, Mary Rose. Dinna mistake me, lass, I love ye more than my life, but I must do what is best for all of Kilgannon,
no’ just
me." He paused and looked at the sunset, then back to me. "Look at me, lass. Look at Angus and Matthew and Thomas. What do ye see? Ye see Gaels, Mary. We're
no’ bred
to sit by the side of the road and watch the others go by. We were bred to be warriors, and that's what we are. Someday the world may have no need of us, but that's what we are. That's what Gannon was, ye ken, and that blood has come down to me." He sighed. "I must listen to what they're saying, the MacKinnon and Murdoch and the others, before I decide, and I must make my decision based on more than my own wishes. If I tell the clan to rise they will, and they will abide if I say no. I must be right and I must decide soon." He kissed my forehead. "Mary, I have always told ye what's in my heart, and I willna change it the now. What I would like more than anything is to let the rest of the world carry on without us, and if I thought I'd be successful, that's just what I'd do."