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

in the regiment. Steele’s lady would return to England and stay in their Essex estate where she belonged.

Where did fiction end and truth begin? Duncan wondered. He was certain that she was lying, but the honest emotion in her words was almost convincing. Whether or not the fifty-second had been there, he could not say, but it was likely. Still . . .“A touching story, Madame,” he said, grabbing her by the wrist. “Perhaps you can convince the magistrate of its veracity.”

“No!” Kate begged. “Please let us go. I will do anything, milord.”

“Anything?” Duncan asked with deceptive softness, his eyebrow rising in speculation. Just how far would she go?

“Anything,” Kate confirmed, snatching her hand from his to stand like a slave on the block beneath his scrutiny.

“I will no doubt regret this,” Duncan said, slowly. “But being a MacLean, I cannot resist a bargain. You claimed to be my wife and I find that the idea appeals. This hovel needs a woman’s hand.”

“No,” Daisy said. “Don’t make a pact with the devil, milady.”

“Shut your trap, woman,” Fred said, clamping his hand over the maid’s mouth. “Let ‘er make up ‘er own mind.”

“What duties do you wish me to perform?” Kate asked, a cold dread clenching her insides as she grasped the implications of his proposal.

“All those which a wife would rightly provide,” Duncan said, his dark hair waving over his patched eye. “Housekeeping, cooking . . .” he continued, allowing his words to trail off and suggest much more. From her expression it was clear that she understood what he left unspoken.

“In return, I will have shelter and protection for me and mine for as long as I will stay?” Kate chose her words carefully.

“Aye,” Duncan said, “but you did not allow me to mention the other wifely duty that I expect of you. Come here.”

Kate took a deep breath and stepped into the circle of his arms. She had often wondered about Marcus’s friend, a man as unlike to her stolid, conventional spouse as pudding to porridge. When Marcus had written of MacLean’s death, she had mourned the rakehell that she had never met, but she knew now that she had been lamenting a phantom, an image created from a fabric of gossip glued together by bits of imagination. This unsmiling face, hard and unforgiving as granite was not the stuff of idle dreams. This was harsh reality. She could not claim friendship and therefore could not expect mercy or respect. Not from this man. Tears would gain her nothing, and she blinked furiously, trying to stem the flow for the sake of her own pride. “As you wish, milord,” she said.

Duncan watched those expressive glistening eyes in fascination as she struggled against tears. That failed battle for dignity touched him far more than any plea or protestation that she might make. Although he had set the terms of surrender, her quiet capitulation was unexpected. “You must be desperate indeed,” Duncan murmured, brushing the warm, wet trail on her cheek. “But why? Tell me the truth and I may set you free.”

The kitchen door burst open, banging like a rifle shot as it caromed against the wall. The indoor barnyard burst into cacophonous chorus as a small fury careened toward Duncan. The child launched herself at his knees, nearly knocking him to the ground. Like a tiny wild beast she clawed and tore at the stranger who was holding her mother and making her cry. Duncan scooped her up from the floor ignoring the small fists that flailed ineffectively at his chest.

“Yours, I presume?” he asked, turning his nose aside and blocking her hand to avoid a hit when she changed tactics. “I believe I may detect a certain resemblance in your pugilistic style.”

Kate snatched the child from his arms, holding the shaking body close. “‘Tis all right, Anne, darling. He has not hurt me, and I will let no one hurt you,” she crooned in comfort. “No one will hurt you ever again.”

Duncan watched his imposter wife brush back the girl’s golden curls, bits of the puzzle falling into place. The wild green eyes that stared at him in terror were the cut from the same jade as those of her mother. The lioness had been protecting her cub, it seemed. But why did she fear the law so much that she was willing to go to a stranger’s bed? The woman looked up at him at that moment, furious, daring him to contradict that pledge of safety and he knew that she would be capable of daring anything to protect her own. He felt a twinge of envy, wondering what it would feel like to be the recipient of such fierce devotion. “I will leave you to calm the child, Kate, and then we will talk,” he said. He nodded to Fred, signing for him to release the other woman from her bonds.

No one will ever hurt you again, the words echoed uncomfortably in his brain. He was out into the kitchen before he realized that there had been a critical sound missing in the Pandemonium of the servant’s hall. The girl had been utterly silent, no shouts of “Mamma!” . . . no cries, only tears. No one will ever hurt you again. A new and utterly foreign emotion filled him- shame.

. . .

“She’s asleep at last,” Kate whispered, rising stealthily from her place beside Anne. The candle flickered by the bedside, the flame dancing in the drafts as Kate paced back and forth across the room, finally giving vent to her nervous energy. There were choices to be made now, and from what she could see, neither of the options had much to commend it. “Stay or go, Daisy. What is it to be?” she asked.

“He was Lord Steele’s friend, you were tellin’ me when you showed me the letter that brought us here,” Daisy suggested, her voice hushed as she rhythmically smoothing back Anne’s guinea-bright curls. “Might be if he knew you