The Devil’s Due

by Boucher, Rita

  Once more, Duncan pulled her close, keeping his own anger at bay in the face of Kate’s need.

  “I do not know how many times it had happened,” she whispered. “How many times my daughter saw him taking her away, leaving Anne alone and frightened in the dark. That was why when I heard her yell today-”

  “There is no need to explain,” he told her, cupping her chin in his hands. “I understand.”

  “How can you?” Kate asked sadly. “How can you bear the sight of me, knowing that I did nothing to help that poor girl? Left my child to bear the consequences of my neglect? I know that he must have threatened Anne into silence!”

  “It is not your fault, Kate,” Duncan said, smoothing away a tear that was drifting down her cheek. “It is only reprobates like me who suspect evil in all they see.”

  “But I stood by and allowed him to go free,” she protested.

  “And what could you have done?” he asked. “Confronted him that night? Think upon the results of that? He had obviously planned his campaign thoroughly. He was certain that you would be out of the way, that no one would discover his dirty secret.”

  “I should have stayed and fought him. I could have laid evidence against him,” Kate said.

  “And what proof would you have had?” Duncan asked. “Your word? The silence of an intimidated little girl? The nursery maid was a servant, Kate. He would have claimed that the girl had attempted to seduce him and that was what you had seen. Or he might have branded you a liar and the event a fiction. It would appear that your brother-in-law was doing his damndest to undermine your reputation and your claim to sanity in his campaign to force himself upon you. If you had tried to accuse him, where would that have left the lassie, I ask you?”

  Kate was silent for a moment as she considered the consequences of an outright accusation. John would have used all of the power at his disposal to crush her without a qualm. “Like as not, he would have turned it upon me. Accused me of jealousy and attempting to seduce him. He implied as much to me once, when I threatened to tell my sister-in-law of what was occurring. Anne and her birthright would have been left at his mercy,” she said, at last.

  “Aye,” Duncan agreed, “with none to protect her. You did the best thing you could have, the only thing. As for her birthright, Kate, I swear that I will help you regain what is rightfully hers. I shall seek justice for you both, Kate, if you will but give me his name.”

  She looked at him, this man who had just vowed to become her champion, and knew that this was no idle assertion. There was determination in the chiseled set of his jaw; his defiant stance was as hard and uncompromising as the mountains that stood at his back. All that was needed was a broadsword and shield to cover the broad, bronzed expanse of his chest and he would easily be one of those Highland warriors of old, ready to right wrongs and slay dragons. Duncan was an avenging demon, a soldier who had placed the full measure of his power at her command. It was a gift beyond comparison, beyond price, but even as she pictured John kneeling at sword’s point, begging for mercy, Kate knew that she could not make Duncan her weapon.

  “Duncan, were it pistols or swords or even bare fists, I would want for no better ally,” she said with a fragile smile. “But he would never meet you to duel on Primrose Hill before breakfast, my friend. The inns of court are more to his style than the fields of honor. He would use writs as his choice of weapon and have a bevy of barristers to second him. The man would strangle you with suits, bury you with briefs and failing that, I would not put a knife in the back in a dark alley past him. No, Duncan, but I thank you.” She brought her hands up to rest on his shoulders. “He is a very powerful man, with a great deal of wealth and influence. I appreciate your offer, but I could not let you put yourself at risk.”

  She was attempting to protect him. However, it was difficult for Duncan to decide whether he felt flattered or insulted. Nonetheless, as present matters stood, Kate was correct, he did not have the ability to confront a man such as the one she was describing. There had been no word from Dewey, and more oddly, not so much as a line from Marcus. With neither evidence nor funds, he could not fight his own battles, much less hers. Silently, he resolved to send Fred to Edinburgh to determine if any progress had been made on reclaiming his legacy.

  In the meantime, there was Kate and the gentle touch of her hands on his shoulder. “My friend,” she had called him. Females had given the “Mad MacLean” numerous titles: lover, protector, a hundred meaningless endearments moaned in passion’s heat, and often as not, lying bastard, but no woman had ever before named him a “friend.” A simple word it was, but it echoed in the hollows of his soul, summoning a part of him that he had thought long dead. That candid assertion of friendship bound him inexorably to her, pledged him to a level of honor that had hitherto applied only to other men. At that moment, he accepted the burden of her pain and swore to ease it. Both justice and vengeance were a part of the silent vow; the enemy of his friend was now his eternal foe.

  “Please, Duncan,” she implored, somehow reading the intent in his glare as the grey shifted from a warm shade of dove to a glinting steel. “Do not try to go after him; promise me.”

  There was a decided trembling to those fingers that sat so lightly on his bare shoulders and those eloquent eyes were still shadowed with fear. And part of that worry was for him, for Duncan MacLean. “There’s no need to fash yourself for me, Kate.” He touched her cheek with a soothing hand. “I canna very well seek him out, not when you do not deign to trust me with his name.”

  “It is not a matter of trust, Duncan,” she explained. “We have already lost so much because of one man’s evil. I would not put you at risk. I do not want to lose you.”

  Once again, Duncan found himself bereft of words, not quite daring to believe that Kate actually cared for him. As a friend, he reminded himself, as his other hand rose to touch the pulse at the base of her throat. Nothing more.

  Her breathing was shallow, touching him with warmth as his fingers traced their way to her lips. Beast that you are. It was like drowning, going down in a pool of green as her eyes widened. To take advantage of her when she is vulnerable. Strands of her hair glinted with sunlight in his palm. Mad you are MacLean, mad as they have named you. He felt her grip on his shoulders grow tighter, sending waves of heat down his spine to the core of him, kindling a conflagration within. If you would toss friendship away for a touch. The need, that aching desire consumed him.

  “Duncan?”

  Through the roar of the inferno, he heard her anxiety, saw the uncertainty in her expression.

  “I do trust you, Duncan,” Kate said, softly, trying to shroud the intensity of her feelings by looking away. When had the comfort of his closeness been transformed into this agonizing yearning for more? Was she truly a wanton, to thrust herself upon him as she had, using her overset state as an excuse to cling like the worst kind of tease? His body was as taut as a drawn bowstring and Kate was mortified, knowing that she was the cause. Marcus had told her often enough that all cats were much the same in the dark and that his tension signified nothing more than a reaction to female proximity. Reluctantly, she pulled away from the safe haven of Duncan’s touch, feeling bereft, vulnerable once more. “Never doubt that I trust you, Duncan MacLean.” Unfortunately, she could not say the same for herself.

  That simple assertion shamed him, coupled as it was with withdrawal. Obviously, she had not failed to feel the raw hunger in his touch, discern the depths of his naked need. Yet, absurdly, she still believed in his honor. He longed to run, to hide himself from that undeserved faith. Another moment and there would have been no holding back before the searing blaze. But more hellish yet, was the fear that Kate felt nothing more than the simple friendship that she had professed, that the flare of emotion had left her wholly untouched. Oath or no oath, he longed to pull her into his arms, to find those embers and nurse them into flame, but it was a risk that he refused to take. Kate’s friendship, confidence, and her innocent belief
in him were more than he had ever dared to hope for. Yet, how much stock would she place in that questionable integrity once she found out that her daughter could speak, and that Duncan had concealed it from her?

  “Shall we go back to the castle?” he asked, breaking the awkward silence.

  Kate shook her head, staring mutely into the loch as a nebulous realization began to solidify, like a vision in the mist. The swirling storm of emotion within her took shape and significance, until the meaning was beyond any denial. She could not look at him for fear that she would be unable to conceal the truth, that he would see the feelings that Kate herself had only begun to acknowledge.

  It was unconscionably foolish to fancy that she was in love with Duncan MacLean, she told herself. There were as many reasons to avoid the entanglement as the smooth spheres on Daisy’s rosary. First and foremost, he did not love her. She enumerated those other rationales, one by one, letting those beads of bitter truth tell through her mind, reminding herself of the cruel hoax of Marcus’s wager, the pain of wondering if love had ever existed, the futility of believing in happiness, the lunacy of handing her heart to a man known to be a rake. To offer Duncan the full measure of her feelings knowing that he did not love her in return? To risk the forfeiture of his respect for an illusion? All of those foolish actions should have been outside the bounds of consideration. But though Kate knew it was beyond sense, beyond sanity, she was aware that her heart was a lost battlefield. She could only pray that Duncan would remain ignorant of his victory. “I shall be along later,” Kate murmured.

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Kate,” Duncan said, his voice deep with dismay. The posture of her body, the defeated slump of her shoulders spoke volumes. “Are you going to let the past destroy you? Will you allow the fear and guilt to gnaw away at you until you have lost all hope for the future?”

  She stared silently into the rippling water. How could she dare to put faith in tomorrow when yesterday would pursue her always? “Hope?” she asked, putting her bitterness into words. “What license have I to reach for expectations beyond today? I am responsible for what happened to Anne. Due to my carelessness, she may be injured beyond repair. So spare me the platitudes, if you please, milord. Surely you know that there is always a penance to be paid?” And you are part of that retribution, she added silently. To be near you, to want you, to be bound to you forever though I must leave this place. You shall be my perpetual purgatory, Duncan MacLean and the hell of what might have been, my living damnation. “I have no future,” she declared.

  “Aye, you fancy yourself a martyr, do you?” Duncan said, his tone crisp as a slap on the cheek. He understood only too well that feeling of helplessness, the almost unbearable burden of responsibility. “What do you accomplish, Kate, with your eternal guilt. Do you think that it helps Anne to know that you have mounted the cross for her? Does it bring your brother-in-law any closer to justice?”

  How dared he? What right had he to judge? To tell her what she ought to do, to feel? “You are a great one to talk, Laird of the MacLeans,” Kate retorted. “You with all your ranting about destiny and doom. You hold Charlie’s curse to your bosom and bemoan your fate. But it seems no more than a bloody excuse to me, a pretext for neglecting your obligations, your people. And were that not sufficient to absolve you from harsh reality, you nurse your wounds in the darkness, as if a marred face somehow makes you less of a man. How is it that you have the audacity to chide me, as if I do not thirst for justice?”

  Drawing a choked breath, she turned to look at him, her nails digging deep into her palms as she fought to control her rage. “But can any man know what it is to be powerless, to know that your life turns upon another’s whim? I burn for justice, sir, want it so much that sometimes I feel as if that desire will consume me, but vengeance is a luxury whose cost I cannot presently afford. And I will allow no one to pay that price for me, Duncan. It is my obligation, my burden, but I doubt that you can understand that.”

  “Aye,” Duncan said with quiet vehemence. “I can, Kate. I know that thirst, for I, too, have a blood debt to settle. My men, all but Fred, were murdered; deliberately manipulated by a greedy villain in the hopes of destroying the only man who had evidence against him. Myself.” He paced in agitation, his fingers nervously rifling through the mane of his hair.

  “Those who were lucky were slaughtered on the field, but those of us who survived received the worst of the bargain. It was in prison I lost my eye, but I have since found that to be the least of my injuries.” He paused, struggling to articulate something that he was only barely beginning to comprehend.

  “Those are the visible wounds, but I begin to think that there may be worse injuries that are beyond sight. I would hear my men’s voices, Kate. Their hants rose even in the light of day to point fingers and accuse me. And they would scream in the night demanding retribution. Sometimes, I thought that I was going mad.” He forced himself to continue although he could not read her reaction. “Though you condemn yourself for what happened to Anne, the fault was not yours. Unlike you, I was the architect of my own downfall.”

  Kate shook her head. “I do not understand.”

  “My men and I were deliberately sent into the arms of the enemy in the expectation that I would die. The reinforcements and artillery support that I was told to expect never came.” He shook his head at her confused expression. “Inadvertently, I had stumbled upon a scheme, you see. At first, it seemed a simple whiff of fraud, the kind that happens all the time in the army. But as I investigated further, the stench of corruption was undeniable. A swindle of massive proportions was occurring, thousands of pounds worth of materiel and supplies were being diverted.” Duncan looked toward the loch, shamed at his own stupidity. “My nose led me to one man and it was with him that I made my error. I thought him to be a mere dupe, a basically decent man who had become innocently befouled in a vast scheme. He was the kin of a dear friend. Since I feared that the scandal would taint by association, I gave him the chance to redeem himself, to give himself up and avoid besmirching the family name, arrogant ass that I was. I now believe that he was the mastermind behind this treason. Naysay though you will, it was the MacLean conceit implicit in Charlie’s bane which caused good men to die.” His lip twisted in a mocking smile, but there was no humor in his gaze. “There are times when men too, can be as powerless as babes in swaddling.”

  Guiltily, Kate recalled that Duncan had been more of a prisoner than she had ever been. More than anyone else, he truly could understand what it was to be without hope, without choice. But the accusations that he had made set her mind awhirl. A chill fear invaded, creeping with questions, suspicions, as she frantically tried to recall the little that she knew about the circumstances of MacLean’s “death.” But Marcus had always discouraged her queries about his command, deriding them as evidence of her unorthodox upbringing. Although there were above a dozen questions hovering on her tongue’s tip, she could not inquire for fear of accidentally revealing too much. Yet there was one that she could ask.

  “Who?”

  Duncan shook his head. “You would never have heard of him. He was the merest of ciphers, a sharpener of quills and a pusher of paper. I discounted him as a threat. And his worst crime is, in a sense, the result of my stupidity and arrogance. It is as you said, he is my obligation, my burden.”

  He stood beside her at the water’s edge, staring into his distorted image, his shoulders tensed, waiting. What that admission had cost him, Kate could only guess. But there was but one reason that she could discern for Duncan to swallow his pride, to admit failure. He had spoken for her sake, giving her the only comfort that he could. Now he seemed very much in need of solace himself. Slowly, her fingers reached out to twine with his. In the wavering loch, two reflections embraced, sharing a silent understanding that was beyond passion, beyond tears.

  “The world is filled with wickedness, Duncan,” she said at last. “Sometimes it cannot be fought.”

  “Aye, there�
�s evil aplenty to be found,” he agreed softly, cupping her chin in his palm. “And it is true that you have to choose your weapons wisely, giving yourself safety and distance to understand the enemy before you attack. That was my mistake. I underestimated. I believed that my foe had some shred of honor, some spark of decency left within him. I’ll not make that error when next we meet.”

  “You intend to go after this man then?” But there was no need to ask the question. Once more his aspect had changed, and the gentle concern had been replaced by a fierce determination.

  “I shall.” With that simple resolution, Duncan felt a sudden lightness, as if a tremendous weight had suddenly shifted. He would go to Edinburgh. If the volume of Blake were to be found, then Duncan would have the satisfaction of seeing Vesey face the King’s justice. If not, there were other ways to exact retribution. Duncan himself would be witness, judge, jury and . . . if need be, executioner. It was difficult to decide which possibility was more pleasing. “I swore it on the day when I realized that my men and I had been deliberately led to slaughter. But ‘tis waiting, I have been, to make my charge of treason. Unfortunately, while I rotted in prison, my adversary has become more formidable than before. I begin to wonder if it is wise to bide any longer.”

  “Yet you think it hopeless?” Kate questioned, hearing the skepticism in his voice.

  “I doubt anyone will believe me,” Duncan said. “Then again, they dinna call me the “Mad MacLean” for naught,”

  A brief smile lit his face, transforming it, and Kate knew why women had nearly swooned at the mere mention of his name. But the grin was quickly gone, replaced by a thoughtful expression. His palm caressed her cheek, smoothing her hair back with a languorous touch.

  “It used to be that I would hear those voices calling me . . . my men asking ‘why?’” He inhaled the scent of her, feeling the warmth of that silken skin beneath his fingers, as if that reality could banish the chimeras that plagued him. “Sleeping . . . waking . . . till sometimes the din was so loud that all I wanted was silence. The shame, the guilt, was the center of my existence. I wondered why they had died, all of them men with much to live for, wives, children, sweethearts . . .” His lip turned up slightly in a lopsided self-deprecating smile. “Yet, now I realize that I have hardly heard them of late, those voices in my head. They have become faint . . . distant . . . and I have been waiting for the right time. Or so I told myself.”