The Devil’s Due

by Boucher, Rita

  All at once, Duncan knew that what he had said at the outset of the dance was true. He would accept whatever she was willing to give, content himself with any bone that she would deign to throw him, if she would only stay. The thought of losing her made him wild with fear. Yet, Duncan understood that if he tried to confine her, she would fly from his grasp.

  Kate savored every sensation, painting each detail of this moment indelibly upon her memory. The scents of torch fumes, wool and sweat, became a part of that mental image. The tang of uisgebeatha on his tongue and the flavor of his lips were linked forever with Duncan MacLean. The bristled roughness of his beard, the calloused touch of his hands as they travelled down her back to pull her against the taut surface of his body were fixed in her mind as was the sound of his heartbeat and all the shades of grey in the depths of his eye.

  Then, abruptly, the kiss was ended with a laughing wheeze of the bagpipes and the good-natured cheers of the crowd. Before she could say a word, Kate found herself whisked away in the arms of one of Tam’s gawky grandsons while courtesy demanded that Duncan dance with an ancient crone. But though the melody had slowed, her thoughts continued at a feverish pace, blaming the music, blaming the whiskey, blaming the night, blaming everything but herself.

  . . .

  The lanterns bobbed along the causeway like will-o-the-wisps as the last of the villagers started back home. Duncan felt more alive at this moment than he had in a lifetime, even though his back was fair to aching from bending over a rooftop and the good natured thumpings of fellowship from his clan. His hand was sore from shaking and his legs weak from dancing. But his exhilaration faded when he chanced to look at Kate. She stood beside him, her hand raised in a final farewell. However as she turned to face him her piquant smile disappeared.

  “You are still determined to do this thing?” she asked.

  Though the question came without any prelude, Duncan knew what Kate meant.

  “Aye, I mean to go to Edinburgh,” he said, stiffly. “‘Tis far too long that I’ve waited. Do you still fear that I will betray my word and try to puzzle out who you are? Is that what troubles you?”

  Kate shook her head. Even in the moonlight he could not fail to see the misery on her face. He knew that it was unfair to expect too much of her, to hope for more than she could in justice give. But although he tried to convince himself otherwise, he suddenly realized that he could not continue with half-measures. He wanted everything, her name, her history, to spend a lifetime discovering the details of her life. However, unless the key to her past was freely offered, it was worthless. “Do you think to run forever, Kate?” he asked softly. “Is that fair to Anne . . . or yourself?”

  “As if I had a choice,” Kate said bitterly. “Choice is an illusion, Duncan.”

  “Is that what you truly believe?” He could not help asking the question even though he knew it to be a foolish one. “Or is that what you tell yourself? It is an excellent excuse, to fancy one’s self the captive of a malevolent Fate. In fact, I have used that rationale to justify my behavior for most of my life.”

  “And your view has changed?” Kate asked, avoiding an answer. His evaluation came too dangerously close to the mark.

  “Aye, I’ve been doing some thinking of late,” Duncan said, “about destiny and curses, the making of decisions, responsibility. . . about you.”

  Once again that pewter gaze held her hostage.

  “I am not Pygmalion, Kate,” he said, “I would not have you be anything other than who you are. You have a right to make your own choices, for both your child and yourself. But I wouldna be the friend you named me if I left my fears unspoken. Unless you make the decisions, my dear, you may find that destiny will choose for you, will you, nil you. But if you do go, I ask only that you let me help you, for Anne, if not for you. Whatever you need, I swear to protect you, let me be your man.”

  A breeze from the loch caught her hair, lifting the tendrils to momentarily obscure her face. He lifted a hand with the intent to brush it away, then let his fingers fall back to his sides. If he touched her right now, he was bound to forget all his resolutions.

  Let me be your man.

  Duncan made no stipulations, added no reservations. For as long as Kate could remember, those she had loved had tried to mold her to their expectations. Her father had tried to make her into a son. Her mother had attempted to turn her from a hellion to a lady and both had failed. But at least they had acted from sincere affection.

  It was clear to her now, however, that Marcus had viewed her from the start as so much raw clay. Painful thought it was to acknowledge, she had been an active accomplice to her own mutilation. She had willingly given her husband the stuff of her soul to twist and sculpt to his own conception of who she ought to be. Bit by bit Marcus had chiseled away at her until she had been reduced to a spineless lump. But the supreme irony was that Kate had succumbed because she had believed that Marcus had loved her. She had considered herself unworthy of his regard.

  Let me be your man, without terms or conditions. Duncan accepted her, even knowing that she had lied to him, that she was unwilling to trust him. It was far more than she deserved. She pushed the curtain of hair aside, wiping away tears with an impatient sweep of her hand. The time had come to seize control of her destiny. If that meant forfeiting Duncan’s respect, then so be it. He had to be advised of the danger that he faced, and, if possible, convinced that in any confrontation he would be playing the role of David without so much as a slingshot to stand against Goliath.

  “You said earlier that this man, John Vesey, was a mere paper shuffler?” she began tentatively.

  “Supplies,” Duncan said, puzzled at the sudden change of subject, but willing to follow where she went. “There were huge amounts of supplies being ordered, paid for, but diverted or never sent at all.”

  “Are you certain that his relative had no part in it?”

  Duncan laughed. “No, I would swear that it was entirely Vesey’s game. Marcus was the soul of honor, besides being possessed of a fortune that would make Croesus himself look like a pauper. I confess myself surprised that he retained his commission once he inherited the title. The pickings in London were always far better than the assortment of camp followers that he consorted with. There were a few of his friends who thought that he was trying to get away from his wife. By the time I made Adam’s acquaintance he had her tucked away in the country somewhere. ‘The worst mistake of his life’ he used to call her. But I suppose London’s loss is Wellington’s gain. Marcus is a damned good soldier, a brilliant tactician.”

  “Was,” Kate said, turning away as she fought against the waves of pain and humiliation.

  The quiet emphasis in her voice startled him. “What did you say?”

  “Marcus was a damned good soldier,” she repeated, her tones flat as she forced herself to face him once again. “Marcus, Lord Steele, is dead and if his marriage was his worst error, milord, then it was his own fault. The girl made no effort to deceive him, to be anything other than what she was, Colonel Braxton’s brat.” The fury boiled up within her. “That ‘soul of honor’ as you call him, wed an innocent on a whim simply for the sake of a foolish wager, then proceeded to destroy every shred of her confidence, every iota of her self-worth. How dare he fix the blame anywhere but himself? That bastard! That selfish, bloody bastard!”

  The feeling of disbelief was impossible to conceal. This was Marcus’s wife. He had not mentioned her often, never in Duncan’s memory had he even referred to her by her given name. “The Steele Trap,” was what Marcus had called her. Duncan silently blessed whatever benevolent being had kept that sobriquet from his tongue on this night.

  How many times had Duncan listened to the story of her first sortie into Almack’s and laughed? Although he had long respected Lord Steele as a soldier and a friend, his regard for the man waned. How could Marcus have looked at another female with this woman waiting for him, loving him? For Duncan had no doubt that a woman like Kate wo
uld only marry for love. Pangs of pity intermingled with jabs of jealousy.

  She could see from his open-mouthed astonishment that he had pieced it all together. “Galatea, milord, at your service,” she swept a sardonic curtsey.

  “And John Vesey-”

  She cut him off before he could complete the question. “Is the man who was left to control my fate and that of my daughter. I never quite fit Marcus’s mold of the perfect society wife and he doubted my competence. John Vesey is now on the verge of becoming a baron by virtue of judicious loans to Prinny. All the Steele fortune, all the Steele power, are John’s to command. It is no impotent pusher of papers that you will face, but a man of considerable influence.”

  “Vesey!” He uttered the name like an epithet of unsurpassed obscenity. “I will kill him, I swear, I will kill him with my own bare hands if I can. But before I do, I will make him suffer for every indignity, every outrage that he perpetrated on you, your daughter and your servants. He will cry for mercy and there will be none. He had none for you or for the men who died for his greed.”

  “And what will that profit me, that vengeance?” Kate questioned. “To see you hang for the sake of justice? I could not bear it, Duncan.” Tentatively, she stepped forward, reaching up to brush her hand against the roughness of his beard. “I could not bear it.”

  He caught her hand and held it there until he felt the warmth returning to her fingers. Moonlight accentuated the pallor of her face, turning her into a tormented ghost. “I am sorry,” he whispered, as the implications of what she had told him became clear. There was agony at the core of those jade eyes. “I was fond of Marcus, I will not deny. He was a good man to have at your back in a fight, a man who played his cards straight and fair, who held his liquor like a gentleman. I do not say that those qualities make for an ideal husband, but he was a fair friend.”

  “He was self-centered and vain.”

  “Aye, he was,” Duncan admitted. “And I was much the same manner of selfish coxcomb as he.”

  “No, Duncan, do not malign yourself,” Kate said. “You are the most unselfish man that I have ever chanced to meet. You have sheltered me and mine, knowing nothing but that I deceived you. You did not shame me before your people but allowed me to act the part of your lady, even though I do not deserve the title. You care deeply, about the men who died, about the people of Strathkirk.”

  “Dinna try to make me into a hero, Kate,” Duncan said uncomfortably. “I am nothing of the sort. The hants of Eilean Kirk are probably laughing at such foolish talk.”

  “Then let them laugh. A powerful healing thing, laughter is. I think it would even do the ghosts some good to have a chuckle or two,” Kate said. “You made Anne smile, Duncan, you helped her to laugh again and heal. No truly selfish man would have bothered with a small, sad girl.”

  “I’m a scoundrel, a philanderer and a wastrel.”

  “You forget reprobate, gambler and reputed madman,” Kate chided him mockingly. “My husband was quite liberal with his descriptions of the attributes he so envied. If you are cataloguing your sins, let us not omit those from the list.”

  “Aye,” Duncan said with a snort, his hands slipping round to hold her at the waist. “All those and more, Kate. Och, you dinna ken what manner of man I am.”

  “I have come to know something about who you are now, Duncan MacLean,” Kate retorted. “Sometimes, I almost believe that I know you better than you do yourself. For all the load of baggage that you have chosen to bear from your past, you are a relatively straightforward individual. That is why I fear for you if you go after Vesey. There is the fortune which is Anne’s inheritance that is at stake. Vesey is a viper, a powerful, cruel and deadly monster wholly unburdened by conscience.”

  He could feel the shudder pass through her body and now that he knew the assailant’s identity, he truly understood the depth of Kate’s fear. Vesey had ripped apart the fabric of her life and nearly destroyed Anne. She spoke no less than the truth. He had already proven himself capable of murder for a far lesser gain. “I would not entangle you. There is no need for John to know anything of your whereabouts,” he assured her.

  “I realize that you would do what you could to protect us,” she said miserably. “But if he finds us. . .”

  “Marry me,” Duncan said, the idea bursting upon him like a rocket. “Then you and Anne would be legally under my protection.”

  Yes hovered on her tongue, but she held the word behind her teeth and shook her head with bittersweet sadness. “Why Marcus must be turning revolutions in his grave,” she said, trying to make light of the moment although she was weeping inside. “He would tell me that you were far too clever to ever get yourself shackled in the parson’s mousetrap. Surely you could not think to forgo your riotous way of living for anything as mundane as marriage.”

  “I no longer have the face for the riotous life, Kate,” he said, his fingers going automatically to touch the scar.

  “Are we back to that again?” Kate asked, taking his wrist and firmly pulling the hand away. “Do you think that you consist entirely of a face, Duncan MacLean? You are a decent human being, kind and entirely too honorable for your good. And as for your countenance . . .”

  His heart began to hammer at her hesitation.

  “I noticed many a woman looking hungrily your way tonight, milord, for all that they thought you were mine,” she said softly, marveling at her own daring as her fingers slipped up to lightly trace the scar beneath his whiskers. “The beard suits you, Duncan. I suspect that some women find that unshorn appearance attractive.”

  And you Kate? He asked silently. Do you hunger as I do? “Shall I tell Fred, then, to forget about purchasing a new razor?” he joked. “If you prefer me to look like a wooly ram then I would gladly oblige, so long as you marry me.”

  “And you dare to call yourself a rogue, Duncan MacLean? For shame! I vow I do not know what the world is coming to when rakes pledge to go about righting wrongs and selflessly offering marriage to damsels in distress.”

  Duncan wanted to tell her that there was nothing selfless about the gesture, that he wanted her with every selfish breath in his body, to hold and to cherish according to every maudlin sentiment and romantic sensibility in his Celtic soul. But Kate’s next words caused him to halt at the brink.

  “I married once without love, Duncan,” she said, her fingers straightening the displaced folds of his tartan. “Never again will I make that error, least of all with a man whom I count as my friend. Hopefully, if I have learned anything from my errors, it is the difference between love and passion.”

  “And that is?” Duncan asked, hoping that his tones were as airy as hers.

  “You will laugh,” she said.

  Her pixie half-smile set his heart to aching. “If I am lucky. I could use the healing.”

  “Love burns like good peat in the hearth and passion is a bonfire,” Kate said. “A pile of wood may burn hot and bright, but passion is quickly consumed. A peat fire, however, may not be nearly as spectacular, at times it even appears to have died, but stir it and you always find live embers at the heart. How is that for homespun philosophy?”

  “Charming.”

  “Trite.”

  “A bit of both perhaps?” Duncan allowed

  “Thus quoth the rake.” She twitched the last fold into place, fastened the brooch and stepped back to view the results. “Elegant.”

  “Absurd, a grown man in a skirt.”

  “A bit of both perhaps?” Kate replied.

  Duncan’s laughter echoed across the loch, carrying all the weight of his bitterness, all the strain of his frustration in a long bellowing peal. Kate did not love him. For now, he would have to make do with the fact that she trusted him. It did not seem like much, but perhaps it was a beginning

  “My retort was not that funny,” Kate said, perplexed.

  “No,” Duncan gasped. “Ironic is what it is, most definitely ironic.”

  And though she badgered him all
the way back to the castle, he would explain no further.

  Chapter 12

  The day dawned in a mizzle, the sun shrouded in a grey haze as Duncan strapped Selkie’s saddle bags shut.

  “Now we’ve got a need for every single one of these things,” Daisy warned, handing Fred a piece of paper.

  “Gonna be needin’ a dray and oxen, Sir, to get this lot ‘ome,” Fred commented, his mouth rising into a pixie grin. “The woman’s writ down a list long as my arm. What you got ‘ere, Daisy?”

  “Wheat flour, for one thing,” Daisy said saucily, “but I might be forgettin’ what to do with it, if a certain little man don’t stop his yappin’.”

  “No mercy,” Fred wagged his head. “And to think I gave ‘er me ‘eart for a biscuit.”

  “I’m thinking it’s me who got the worst of the bargain,” Daisy sniffed, “considerin’ the quality of my biscuits. Now inside with you little man, I’ve got some food packed for your journey.”

  Duncan watched with a touch of envy as they went into the kitchen. Their faces mirrored their feelings and beneath the bickering was an undertone of undeniable affection. Poor Fred, if Kate chose to leave, Duncan had no doubt that the steadfast woman would go with her mistress. They would never allow another to share their danger and it would break Fred’s heart. And yours, Duncan MacLean, he silently acknowledged. How can you leave not knowing if she will be here when you return?

  The nagging thought came that Kate might be right, that he would risk losing her because of a fool’s errand. He had slept little the previous night contemplating what she had said to him. Without the evidence contained in that book of Blake’s poems, there was no court in the world that would convict Vesey. After so much time, the chances of recovering the book were not worth a Cockney’s curse. Like as not, it was mingled among the thousands of volumes in the famous Steele library or perhaps Marcus had simply given the colorfully illustrated volume away to one of his trollops. Duncan had come to discover that there had been precious little poetry in Lord Steele’s soul. Now, with the news of Marcus’s demise, one of the last pillars of support that Duncan had counted upon had disappeared like dew in the morning.