Arran hadn’t heard that name in several years. Tom Dunn was a controversial figure in these parts. Some regarded him as a loyal patriot of Scotland and the Highlands. Others considered him a traitor to Scotland. Dunn had been friend to the Mackenzies for as long as Arran could remember, but in recent years, he’d heard some unsettling things about the man.

It had begun after the official union of Scotland and England. Dunn had settled in London to capitalize on the new connections. Or spy for the English, depending on whom one believed. “Lined his pockets with English gold,” Arran had heard one man say. There was no proof of it, but since the union, rumors about everyone flowed like a burning river through these hills.

“What of him?” Arran asked.

“I’ve no’ spoken to the man, but I’ve heard something interesting from Marley Buchanan.” MacLeary paused to pour whisky into a glass. “Dunn told Buchanan that your Norwood has been...what’s the word, then, lads...mi-onorach,” he said with a swirl of his hand.

There was not an exact translation for the word, but Arran understood MacLeary—he meant Margot’s father was involved in something dishonest.

“In what way?”

“They say he’s making bedfellows of the French in the war against England to keep his pockets full, aye? But when suspicion was cast at him, he blamed it on you. Said he had no knowledge of any dealings with the French but had heard that you are plotting with them.”

Arran was stunned. “I trade with the French openly and honestly. And lawfully by the Acts of Union.”

“It’s no’ your trade he impugns, lad. He insinuates that you mean to bring French troops to Balhaire and, together with your Highland men, support the effort to put James Stuart on the throne.”

Arran stared at MacLeary. James Stuart was the surviving son of King James II, who had been displaced from the throne before Arran was born. James Stuart lived in the French courts and practiced Catholicism. His half sister and reigning queen of England, Queen Anne, had been raised as a Protestant. The queen had no surviving children, and her health was not good. It had been decreed by the Acts of Succession that when she died, her successor would likewise be a Protestant. Therefore, her brother, James Stuart, would have no claim to the throne. It would go to the queen’s nearest living Protestant relative, George Hanover.

There were many in Scotland, and even a few in England, who believed that the rightful heir to the throne was the queen’s half brother and son of King James II. Moreover, there were many who would prefer to see that line of Stuarts restored to the throne sooner rather than later. Those who actively sought that end were known as Jacobites.