Chapter Sixteen #2
“Do ye love him, Ismay?” Joan asked her, hurrying to sit near them on Ismay’s bed.
“Aye, do ye?” Hilary echoed.
“I dinna think I do,” she told them, thoughtfully considering her own answer. “I have loved but one man in my life, and it doesna feel the same with the chief.”
“Yer father doesna count, Ismay!” Hilary slapped her arm playfully.
Hilary and Joan knew about Ismay’s father, Baron of Raigmore, Lord John Drummond. Of course, she hadn’t told them her father was a MacPherson. The same one who rescued Chief MacDonald’s wee murderer years ago.
“How can he not count?” Ismay demanded. “If not—”
“For goodness sake!” Hilary sat up and gave her an impatient look. “Do ye truly not know the difference?”
When she shook her head, Joan took her hand and held it as if Ismay were the sorriest, most pathetic being to ever live.
“Ismay,” Joan began breathlessly. “Being in love is unlike anything else in our lives. Being in love makes ye feel consumed by the other person. Thoughts of him haunt and overwhelm ye while ye go aboot yer day. Ye dinna care aboot food or sleep. When ye are with him, the sight of him could fill the rest of yer days. The sound of him is like the familiar sound of bagpipes when ye have been lost and finally found yer way home. Would ye do anything fer the Lochiel, Ismay?”
“Aye,” Ismay told her without any hesitation.
Her two friends offered her knowing smiles.
Ismay’s eyes opened wide. “I’m in love?”
Hilary nodded. “With the Lochiel.”
“Nae, I canna be.”
“Why not?” they both asked.
“I have stayed here too long. If I dinna keep moving, I will be found.”
“Found by who?”
She told them bits about Chief MacRae and how he chopped off her hair.
“The Lochiel will kill him if he comes near ye!” Joan assured her.
“I dinna want him or my mother to find me. Who knows what they will do? What if they bring MacRae soldiers and they hurt ye or Hilary? I never planned on staying at Tor Castle. The Lochiel knows as much.”
“Nonsense!” Hilary finally huffed after staring at Ismay as if she had gone mad. “Ye canna leave us to the Lochiel after he has lost another woman he loved.”
“Hilary, ye are overreaching,” Ismay assured her. “He doesna love me.” Even when she said it, she didn’t believe it. Still, what did she know about being in love? It was already proven. She knew nothing.
“Enough of this,” she told them, scrambling off the bed. Once out of it, she yanked open the window curtains and pulled her friends out of her bed.
In love or not, she was not going to spend days pining as if he were already dead.
He wasn’t. He promised.
*
Constantine waited along the river at the Fords of Arkaig on the Achnacarry side, securing the only ford on the river with about a thousand men.
They waited for the MacKintoshes to arrive.
Word had already reached the southern end of Achnacarry that, as he and Miss Drummond had suspected, some of the other clans of the Chattan had pledged their arms to the MacKintoshes.
When the MacGregors of Breadalbane had arrived to pledge their aid to the Camerons, Constantine was happy to welcome them.
They were allies and had fought together at Glen Fruin.
The MacGregors were mostly outlaws—like him.
The difference being, the MacGregors had all the English laws against them.
Because they were always fighting for their lives, or their names, they were known for their passionate fighting and terrifying swords.
Constantine was glad to have them on his side.
While he hunkered down to wait, he thought about Alison’s parents.
He hoped his in-laws had left the castle as promised.
He didn’t want Ismay’s ears to hear the things the MacMillans spewed about him.
He didn’t want to think of them now. In fact, it had been some time since their accusing, hateful eyes haunted his wakeful thoughts.
Since he met Miss Drummond, he hardly thought of anyone else.
“Lochiel!” Geoffry ran toward him from across the glen. His face was red and his breath, short. “MacKintosh must have discovered that we blocked the ford. He has moved his men, aboot a thousand strong, two miles west of here.”
“Gather the men,” Constantine ordered. “Tell Rauf MacDonald to remain here with fifty of his best men to keep the ford secured.” He looked around for his messenger and called him over.
“Find Ennis Cameron of Erracht. Tell him to take a number of his men, via boats, to the northern side of Loch Arkaig. They are to take down the MacKintosh’s rear force. ”
“What of us?” Geoffry asked, ready to gather the men.
Constantine couldn’t deny that his blood rushed through his blood like liquid fire bursting through a mountaintop.
He might not enjoy taking lives, but he was born for battle.
“We will make the eighteen-mile march around the head of Loch Arkaig. There, we will outflank the enemy and attack from the west. We will have him covered on every side.”
Geoffry smiled. “A good plan, Lochiel.”
Lachlan appeared hurrying toward them before Geoffry set off to his task. “Lochiel, the Baron of Argyll has arrived in the camps, bringing with him about three hundred Campbells. He seeks a word with ye.”
What the hell were the Campbells doing here?
They were rumored to be part of the Chattan.
If they had come to fight for the MacKintoshes, Constantine would put the MacGregors to the enemy’s arses.
The two clans were fierce enemies. Even more so than the Camerons and MacKintoshes.
The Campbells tried to have the MacGregor name abolished in the proscriptive acts of the MacGregors fifty-four years ago under King Charles l.
If the baron saw even a trace of the MacGregors here, on the side of the Camerons, war would break out and it would take him longer to get back to Tor Castle.
He would soon find out why they were here by granting the Campbell lord an audience. Only Geoffry and Lewis went with him. If the Campbells committed any treachery after calling for an audience, his two cousins were all he needed.
When they arrived in the Campbell camp, the baron promptly informed him why he was there. A good thing too, it gave Constantine time to call off his forces.
“I have arrived with three hundred of my most skilled men,” the baron boasted. “I advise ye, as I will advise the MacKintosh chief, that I will add my forces to the battle and fight against whomever initiates this fight.”
Aye, Constantine was born for war. And he’d fought his share. He was also born to love Ismay Drummond and he wanted to do that in peace. “Why?” he asked Campbell.
“Why question it. Just agree to peaceful terms and this feud will end.”
“What terms?”
“The MacKintoshes must agree to sell the disputed territory. Ye must agree to purchase it.”
Constantine didn’t flinch. If the terms weren’t fair, he wouldn’t agree to them. “Purchase what is already mine?”
The baron cast him a sly smile. “The land was never yers. Yer kin took it. Aye, it had been seemingly abandoned by the MacKintoshes. But they have the deeds. They own the land.”
“How much?” Constantine asked, wanting to be done here and either fight or go home.
“Pay MacKintosh 25,000 merks.”
Constantine was a bit surprised by the fair amount. He narrowed his eyes on the Campbell. “What of his sons and his cattle? He made demands that I will never agree to.”
The baron smiled and nodded. “Aye, I’ve heard aboot his sons and his cattle.
His first son is dead due to consequences he brought upon himself.
His second son stabbed ye with a dirk. And the cattle…
well, seeing we are in Lochaber, ye have protection and there is nothing he can do about his herd.
” He stopped for a moment and looked Constantine over. “Ye are a formidable enemy, Cameron.”
Constantine nodded. “An enemy neither John MacKintosh nor ye wants opposin’ ye.”
Campbell let out a boisterous laugh but nodded. “Ye agree then?”
“I do,” Constantine let him know.
“Verra well. I am certain MacKintosh will agree, as well. He doesna want to face my men.” Campbell motioned one of his men forward and instructed him to send for John MacKintosh.
“The exchange will take place in Clunes,” he advised Constantine.
“Three days from now the Cameron/MacKintosh feud will end.”
They wouldn’t be fighting. A sense of relief washed over Constantine. He didn’t want to pay for the land the MacKintoshes had practically given up. But if it ended the long feud, he would buy the land and shut them all up.
*
Constantine sent most of his men back to their homes, and rode toward Clunes with his four cousins by his side.
He would rather be heading home to Tor and…
to Miss Drummond. Ismay. He’d kept her kiss from his thoughts all day, else the memory of her soft sweet lips would consume him and compel him to think on nothing else.
Which would not have gone well with the Baron of Argyll.
But now, riding in silence, he let himself remember the sight of her, the scent of her coming close, stretching upward to kiss him. His heart crashed against his ribs like a fishing boat caught on the tumultuous sea, shattering from a power against which he was helpless.
When she had clutched his plaid and pulled him down, he felt the power of lightning go through him, stilling his blood flowing through his veins and turning it into liquid fire.
He’d held her in his arms. Mayhap, he shouldn’t have, but he had.
He had never wanted to let her go. He’d felt every inhalation of her breath against him.
Her heart thumping, same as his. He wanted to relish seemingly winning her heart.
Was that what he wanted? To win her heart?
Mayhap. Mayhap he hadn’t known it was what he wanted until the notion of it felt so real.
Pushing Alison and his daughter out of his thoughts when they would have come to plague him was easier than he’d expected.
As he neared Clunes with the real possibility of an end to the Cameron/MacKintosh feud in sight, and a bonnie lass waiting for him in his castle—a lass he wanted to kiss again, he finally felt a touch of peace within him.
That peace didn’t last long.
Signing the agreement between the clans in the witness of the Chattan Confederation went peaceably enough—if one didn’t count Ronald MacKintosh muttering an oath when Constantine dipped his quill into the inkwell and Geoffry muttering back that he was going to hack Ronald into pieces and feed him to the wild animals if he made another sound.
Constantine’s peace was still held firmly intact after he paid MacKintosh 25,000 merks and then drank to peace with his men in a tavern a half league from Gairlochy.
It ended with a patron who sat at a wooden table stained with rings from hundreds of cups. He wore a thick woolen plaid in shades of blue and green and a blue bonnet atop his oily yellow hair. The cup from which he drank contributed to the stained table when he set it down.
When they were done having a drink, Constantine and his cousins rose to leave. Following behind them, Constantine was the last one to reach the door.
“Tastes like piss,” the stranger complained, swiping his knuckles across his thick lips. He looked at Constantine watching him from the door and chuckled, exposing a row of yellowed teeth. “There is nothing else aroond, so ’twill have to do, aye?”
Constantine turned away. He didn’t care who this stranger was. He preferred to let Miss Drummond flit around in his head over talking to a man with airs about him that reminded Constantine of a few Cromwellians who wished they hadn’t met Lochiel of Lochaber.
“Alistair MacRae,” the stranger introduced himself. “Clan Chief of the MacRaes of Beauly.”
Constantine set his hand on the door. MacRaes. He thought hard about whether the Camerons and MacRaes were enemies. He couldn’t recall any battles with them. He was sure he remembered hearing that the MacRaes were staunch supporters of the MacKenzies.
Constantine looked over his shoulder at him. If he didn’t need to kill or maim the man, there was nothing else to say to him, so without reciprocating the introduction, he pushed open the door to the tavern. He saw his cousins waiting for him outside.
“I’m stopping in every burgh, nae matter how small, to find her. Mayhap ye have seen her?”
Constantine halted his steps and returned his attention to him. “Who?”
“My betrothed.”
“Yer betrothed fled from ye?” Could this be…? Constantine took a step closer to him, his dark gaze locked onto the stranger.
The man’s lips grew tight belying the friendliness of his smile. “I didna say she fled, good friend.”
“I said nothin’ to give ye the impression that we are good friends,” Constantine countered with a warning thread in his tone.
“Ah,” the man laughed without any mirth. “Fergive me, ye surely didna say anything of the sort.”
“What aboot yer betrothed?” Constantine steered him back to the previous topic.
“Alas, my dear Ismay disappeared from her home and I fear she may have been abducted.”
Constantine’s world rocked back and forth. He put his fingers to his head as if that might still him. Was he moving? Did this bastard say Ismay? He was the cruel betrothed from whom she’d fled. She was correct about him searching for her. He had come as close as Gairlochy?
“I’m heading back to Beauly, but I’m asking everyone I meet…so tell me, I beg ye, have ye mayhap seen her passing this way? She has hair the color of autumn leaves.”
Constantine thought he might be ill if he had to listen to this swine speak of her another instant. He had to get home to her. MacRae was close. Constantine had to reach her first.
“She has the face of a goddess,” the fool continued, taking his life into his own hands. “And the tongue of a viper.” Did he realize he was scowling while he spoke of her? “She’s bewitching and if a man is no’ careful he will find himself charmed beyond good reason.”
Constantine did his best to conceal his trembling muscles. “Is that what ye’re tellin’ everyone ye meet?” he asked him through his ground jaw. “That she is dangerous?”
“Och, she is,” MacRae insisted.
Constantine wanted to kill him for trying to force Ismay to marry him. But he didn’t have to kill him. The bastard was heading to his home in Beauly. Still, before Constantine leaped for MacRae’s throat, he stormed out of the tavern.
He needed to get back to the castle…back to Ismay Drummond.