The Devil’s Due by Boucher, Rita (free reads txt) 📗

“Leave Kate be, you dirty scum!” Daisy shouted, lunging at Duncan, but her captor held her back.

“Kate? Like Shakespeare’s shrew? How appropriate. Canna a man even steal a simple kiss, Kate?” Duncan asked, feeling a touch of grudging admiration. She regarded him as if she contemplated spitting in his eye. Pluck to the backbone this one. It seemed that stronger measures might be required to force the truth from her. Gathering up a moonlit handful of her hair, Duncan rubbed it against his cheek. “A damned poor homecoming it seems to me, for a man given up for dead when he cannot even get a mere kiss; but then why settle for a kiss?” He scooped her up in his arms like a rag doll, setting the chickens to squawking as he started for the door.

“Let me go.” He found it surprising that, despite her obvious fear and rage, Kate did not raise her voice. “They will hang you, I swear they will and if not, I shall kill you with my own hands, but not before I cut off your-” She stopped her struggles abruptly, her eyes growing wide as his words began to penetrate. “Given up for dead?” she repeated. “Homecoming?”

“Tsk, tsk!” Duncan said, shaking with suppressed laughter. “I must admit that it is no wonder that I have forgotten marrying you, my lady wife, for you seem something of a shrew. Is that why I went off to war, do you think, Fred? Many a man has found the battlefield a more peaceable place than his hearth and the marriage bed.”

“Aye, ‘tis true enough, Major,” Fred said, trying in vain to stifle a guffaw. “A real spitfire is that wife of yours. Don’t look to be a female that a man would forget real easy though.”

“True enough,” Duncan said softly. The moonlight cast its alabaster glow on her flawless skin and traced the swollen line of her lips.

“It cannot be,” she whispered. He could see that the meaning of his words had finally penetrated. She ceased her struggles and regarded him in utter dismay.

“Ah but it is! Your devoted husband has returned from the valley of the shadow of death!” Duncan proclaimed derisively. His smile was sardonic, his look scathing, as he regarded her searchingly. “Duncan MacLean, at your service, Milady. Now who in bloody hell are you?”

Chapter 3

Kate went limp, her eyes rolling, and her lids fluttering closed. A breathy sigh escaped her lips as she fell into a feigned faint. She needed a moment to think, to concoct some kind of story that might satisfy her husband’s former comrade-in arms.

Their unwilling host would, in all probability, pack the lot of them back to London- or would he? Duncan MacLean had certainly not been typical of Marcus’s acquaintances. There had been more than a hint of envy in her husband’s letters as he had described the “Mad MacLean.” Fast horses, faster women, fortunes won on the turn of a card, were everything that Marcus claimed to loathe. Yet, he had admired Duncan MacLean and obviously, that friendship had been reciprocated.

Marcus had been dead for little more than a month when MacLean’s legacy was finally distributed. The well-thumbed copy of Blake’s poems and the MacLean family signet were evidence that the regard was mutual. Indeed, it was the accompanying letter from MacLean’s solicitor mentioning the deserted ruin of the Castle upon Eilean Kirk that had come to mind when she had desperately needed a place to seek shelter.

His heartbeat thudded beneath her ear with a disturbing rhythm. Kate had always been good at thinking on her feet, but unfortunately, the connection between herself and terra firma had been temporarily severed. Trying to formulate a plan nestled against a man’s chest was deucedly difficult. Her lips could still feel the memory of that insistent pressure. The mingled scents of horse and man trifled with her senses, helping to banish all coherent thought.

“You brute!” Daisy shrieked. “Frightened the poor dear to death, you have.”

“A fine performance, Wife,” Duncan whispered softly in Kate’s ear. “But less than credible when the audience literally holds you in the palm of his hand. You are far too tense to be truly unconscious.”

Kate gave no response, hanging as a dead weight, although the tickle of his breath on her lobe sent cold fingers up her spine. No, she could not tell Duncan MacLean the truth. Rakehell though MacLean might be, Marcus had often spoken of MacLean’s arrow straight sense of honor. If he was like her late husband, he was one of those men who saw a path from fletching to tip without the slightest allowance for any bends in the shaft. It was unlikely that MacLean would credit her if she spoke with candor. At times she found the truth difficult to believe herself.

“Women have swooned at the sight of me, but you are a trifle late for using the horror of my visage as an excuse,” Duncan murmured, his lips lightly brushing her hair. “Perhaps I am a ghost, come to haunt you, a demon come to claim your lying soul, Lady MacLean.”

She could not help but tense at his touch and knew that the pretense was over. It was not fair, truly. She had not wished him dead or wounded, but the deserted castle had been like a raft when they were drowning at sea. Now, for Anne’s sake, she had to salvage what she could. They would have to leave England. Belgium perhaps? Not a safe choice; too many people there who knew her or Marcus. Where would they be able to lose themselves? She knew that John would not rest until they were found.

“On the count of three, I am going to leave go of you,” Duncan said, “I suggest that you recover yourself swiftly unless you wish to fall end first in a heap of goat offal. One . . . two . . .three.”

At three he released her, keeping hold