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

of her arms as she landed upright. “Now, Milady, what have you to say to your hideous shade of a husband?”

The bitterness beneath his banter touched her. But despite the pangs of sympathy and conscience, Kate decided to take an offensive tack. With the truth barred, there was no reasonable defense that she could offer. “You are supposed to be dead,” Kate said, regarding him in consternation. “And even if you are not, it is a poor excuse for rousing us from our beds and scaring us half out of our wits.”

“My beds, my house,” Duncan pointed out coldly. “As for your wits, milady, I shudder to think what a dance you might have led me if you were fully in possession of your faculties. As it is, you damned near killed me with that blunderbuss,” Duncan said, watching the play of emotion in those emerald eyes. “Then as a MacLean, it would be my ghostly duty to come haunting your nights. I vow, the thought almost makes me long to cast off my corporeal form.”

“How do I know that you are Duncan MacLean?” Kate asked suspiciously.

“I take it that you have not been in the portrait gallery in Charlie’s wing?” Duncan asked, silently awarding her a point in the game of verbal fencing. It was a weak attack, but at this point he had not expected any attempt at argumentative riposte.

She shook her head. “Most of it is too dangerous to traverse.”

“I thought not,” Duncan said, “else you would not ask that question. I am, unfortunately, cast in the wicked MacLean image. Moreover, I have already given you a sample of the savage charm that has made my clan justifiably famous with the fair sex. If that does not satisfy you, I have papers in my saddlebag which will more than prove my identity. Rejoice, oh widow MacLean, for thy bonny husband has returned to your rather delightful bosom.”

Kate closed her eyes for a moment feeling the world whirling around her. They would have to leave, to run once more. All of Daisy’s meagre savings had been invested in livestock and they could not very well pack up the cow. There was precious little money, yet there was no choice.

“Dinna play this game again, Kate,” she heard MacLean saying, “for I am losing my patience.”

Kate’s eyes began to sting, she blinked, heartily ashamed of her weakness. She had never in her life been one to weep, despising women who turned into watering pots at the least excuse.

Duncan’s expression hardened at the sight of her tears slipping from beneath closed lids. Eve had likely wept after the apple. But when the woman opened her eyes, he was almost shocked by the pain and despair swimming in those green depths and more startled still by her words.

“We will be gone in the morning, milord,” Kate said, feeling utter defeat. There was no choice but to drive the best bargain that she could under the circumstances. “We would appreciate if you would let us stay the night. The livestock is ours, purchased with our own resources, however if you will give us a fair price, we will leave the animals for your use.”

Daisy gasped. “But, where shall we go, milady?” she began. “How-”

Kate cut her off with a warning glance. “The pretense is over, Daisy. I am ‘Lady MacLean’ no longer, so please give me no titles. We shall pack our things at once.”

“And you think that I will simply allow you to go?” Duncan asked.

“We have done you no harm,” Kate said, lifting her chin defiantly. “When we came here this place was unfit for a dog’s kennel. Bit by bit, we have made it a home of sorts. We will leave this place far better than we found it.”

“Criminal trespass is a crime, I believe,” Duncan said, his voice harsh. His eyes lit on the bow in the corner. “So is poaching. I could bring you up before the magistrate.”

Kate blanched, her eyes widening. “No, milord,” she whispered. “There is no need. We have stolen nothing. Let us go and you may keep the animals if you wish. Just allow us to leave.”

His curiosity seemingly whetted, Duncan pushed his point. “Are you on the run from the law then, Madame?”

“We have committed no crime,” Kate said, trying in vain to recoup her tactical error. It had been unconscionably foolish to allow him to know that she feared the authorities. “Other than criminal trespass and perhaps a bit of poaching.”

Once more, Duncan raised her score in their verbal fencing match. She had recovered quickly, but not soon enough. It was time to press her. “Who are you?” he asked once more, taking her by the shoulders and looking her squarely in the face. “The truth now.”

“I am Kate, milord,” she said. “Katherine Smith.”

“I would have thought that you would use more imagination,” Duncan said, his lip curling wryly. “Surely you can do better than ‘Smith.’”

“It was my husband’s misfortune, milord, to have a name as commonplace as grass,” Kate said. “We had been following the drum with him and when he was killed at Ciudad Rodrigo, we returned to England.”

“What was his regiment?” Duncan barked.

“The fifty-second, milord,” Kate answered immediately; naming another regiment that she knew had been present on that January day. So many men’s lives had been lost.

“Rank?”

“Sergeant-major, milord. Do you wish to hear just how he died as well? His legs were shot out from under him. I found him there, on the battlefield, barely alive and I held him until he died in my arms,” Kate said, her voice trembling. Despite the disaster of their marriage, she wished that she could actually have been with Marcus, comforted him in his final moments. Perhaps he might even have come to value her unusual upbringing had he allowed her to follow the drum, but Marcus had insisted that he would not be the butt of jokes about a warrior wife who could out-shoot and out-ride most of the officers