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you’re naught but a lass. Men’s things, Cat.”
    “You mean to drink his whisky.”
    Robbie grinned. “Och, we’ve done that, already.”
    “Then what? You’ve bedded Mairi, drunk the laird’s whisky—though that he left any for you is a shock, aye?—so what is there left to do?”
    “Men’s things,” he answered, still grinning.
    Cat sat up. The day now was ruined. Robbie had come to tease her after all, to remind her yet again she could do nothing they, as males, would do. “ ’Tisn’t fair,” she muttered.
    “What?” Robbie rolled over yet again, this time shifting onto a hip and elbow. He peered at her out of brilliant blue-green eyes. Her own eyes. “That you’re naught but a lass?”
    And a plain-faced one, at that. She waited for him to say it. But this time, unaccountably, Robbie did not.
    “Och, Cat . . .” He grinned and slapped one of her knobby knees with the flat of a callused hand. A man’s hand, broad and strong, but the slap was not so heavy as to harm her. “ ’Tis the way of the world, lassie—men do what men do, and women—well. . .” Robbie laughed. “Women please their men.”
    “As Mairi pleases you.”
    He lay back again and shut his eyes. “For now, aye?”
    For now. And then he would turn to another. He was the laird’s son; would be laird himself, one day. There were lasses aplenty for Robbie. Who for me? she wondered, and then was shamed by the question. And even more shamed by the male face manifesting before her eyes, hiding within her head: with white teeth a’gleaming and silver in his hair.
    “D’ye mean to catch us supper, then?” Robbie asked idly.
    Cat hitched a shoulder, though he could not see it. “Canna.”
    Robbie laughed softly. “Not singing to fish, no. I dinna think they have ears.”
    She stared hard at the ground, hating to admit it. “I lost my hook.”
    “Again?”
    She made no answer. Hooks were dear in the Highlands.
    After a moment Robbie sat up, eyed her, marked her shame, her sullenness, then smiled crookedly. “Aye, well—come along, then.” He rose, bent down and caught her hand and pulled her to her feet. “I’ll fetch you one of mine.”
    This once, this first time, he was not teasing. Cat could tell the difference. It astonished her.
    She decided perhaps Mairi Campbell was good for her brother after all, if she softened his temperament.
     
    MacIain of Glencoe gathered his sons together at a tiny table in the common room of a prosperous Inveraray tavern. Tonight they would sleep on the beaten floor, wrapped in their plaids, because there were no rooms to be had. Quarters had run out, rented or usurped in robust fashion by thousands of jubilant Highlanders heading home from victory.
    Dair squatted on his low stool, guarding his wine cup from spillage by establishing an elbow as ward on either side, then wrapping his hands around the dented pewter. He leaned forward, shoulders hunched, and inspected the common room with a single sweeping glance as he raised the cup to his mouth. The wine was sweeter than he preferred, but the ale casks were empty. His father and brother drank whisky.
    Inveraray was much larger than Inchinnan. The army amassed by the Marquis of Atholl to defeat Argyll and subdue other malcontents who might support someone other than King James—though now it appeared potential pretenders were dead—no longer was required to take the field of a battle already won, its leader executed, but to reap the rewards. Atholl had promised that clans joining his own men would be paid in more than coin, but in plunder.
    Dair glanced at his father. Atholl in fact promised Argyllshire, which would please MacIain.
    Scattered throughout the tavern were clutches of men Dair recognized, tacksmen and gillies clustered as chicks around the hens who were their lairds: MacDonalds from Keppoch and Glencoe, Stewarts from nearby Appin. He knew none of the Stewarts personally, though his father did; MacIain knew everyone. Dair met