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

“They must have accounted you as something of a heroine,” Duncan murmured. “Few and far between are the MacLean women who managed to survive their spouses.”

“I was a great disappointment, actually,” Kate said. “They believed that I had returned to rebuild, to fulfill some kind of prophecy and make Eilean Kirk prosper once more, but they soon realized that I was as poor in the pocket as they themselves were. Still, I have done the best that I can to help. I owed them that much, considering how I have deceived them.”

“Charlie’s bloody curse again, but then you would know nothing of that,” Duncan added sarcastically, heaving a sack onto his shoulder. “Were you playing at noblesse oblige since you were, after all, The Lady MacLean?”

“‘Tis no game that I play here, milord,” Kate said in frustration. “They are good people who deserve far better than what they have had. I do what I can as a human being. The blind toleration of suffering diminishes us all. No matter what name or title we may hold, we are all obliged to help where we can.”

“No wonder you did not take well in London,” Duncan remarked, setting the sack down beside him. “Such dangerously republican sentiments would likely stew you in scandal broth were you foolish enough to voice them publicly.” His annoyance changed to surprise at the sight of her face, suffused pink with consternation. “By Hades! You were outspoken, weren’t you?” He chortled. “Did you defend the Luddites, too?”

“Do you justify the penalty then? To hang a man for breaking a weaving machine so that his family will not starve?” Kate barely choked the words out. How did he manage to find all the scabs of her wounds and pry at them? “We have only to look to France to see what can happen when people are driven to desperation.

‘The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom

And desperate mans him ‘gainst the coming doom,’” she quoted.

“Though I hate to admit it, I find myself agreeing with the words of that reprobate Byron, it was no less than the truth.”

“Ah, but he has the advantage of being a charming scoundrel,” Duncan said. “George can get women to agree to almost anything from what I recall.”

“A characteristic which you share,” Kate retorted.

“I did, once.” Duncan stared at her, daring her to look him full in the face. He had to know; it was important to him to see the disgust that she was masking so successfully, to accept that he was loathsome to her. Surely that would stop these absurd flights of fancy. He had spent half the night imagining her in his arms. Such dreams were a distraction that he could ill-afford. “I find now that I cannot get women to agree to much of anything, especially you, Kate.”

She knew neither the stakes, nor the rules, but a hand had just been dealt to her, and somehow she was aware that the next play was the critical one. Kate searched the rough shadowed lines of that bearded jaw, followed the straight unsmiling shape of his mouth, the wounding scar that reached far beyond the surface of his skin, that single gray eye that was bleak as a storm-beset crag of stone. His expression yielded no clue.

That frank search was agony, looking at him, through him, the shallow man that he had been, and the hollow man that he had become. The examination of those jade eyes seared at the remnants of his soul and asked questions that he dared not answer, not even in silence. But she did not look away. She did not look aside, even when she spoke at long last.

“I have always been a most disagreeable woman, milord,” she said, her lips curving gently. “Or so I have been told, so you need not fear that all is lost.”

That soft smile was like a healing balm and Duncan wondered what manner of man her husband had been, what fool could have such a woman and seemingly value her so lightly. If only he had found her before . . . no, there was no lying to himself beneath that crystal gaze. He would have used her if he could and discarded her eventually, just as he had so many others. The Mad MacLean would never have thought to search beneath that pretty surface, to see the courage and decency at the core of her. Then again, a woman like Kate would have stayed well clear of him. She might not abhor the sight of him, but she had precious little respect for the manner of man that he had been.

“Well, leastwise we don’t ‘ave to go chasin’ you up to the ‘ellsgate now,” Fred said as he picked up the sack at Duncan’s side.

Kate’s look of bewilderment prompted Duncan to explain. “We feared that you might attempt the mountain pass. Fred and I were going to go after you.”

“We was,” Fred punctuated his agreement with a sneeze. “Sewercide, it would be, with the rain like to be comin’ by the bucket.”

“So it is called ‘the Hellgate,’ an apt name for it,” Kate said, watching as Duncan took a blanket from the saddle and draped it around the shoulders of the shivering man. The simple gesture told her far more about Duncan MacLean than he could ever have imagined. It was something that her father might have done, one of those many small acts of kindness to subordinates that his brother officers had often derided. Yet, Papa’s men would have followed him through the true gates of hell.

Indeed, in the end, they had. For if ever the devil had gained dominion on earth, it was at the battle of Rolica. It was hard to believe that the stupidity of one man had led the 29th to disaster. But Papa and his men had obeyed a fool’s orders and followed Lake up that narrow gully to their doom. According to Marcus, not a one of Papa’s men had faltered or