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

keep himself from gathering her into his arms, from urging her to spill her heart on his shoulder. He wanted to calm that trembling body, to soothe that wounded spirit, but he could not. Duncan lifted the remnants of the whiskey in silent offering. Unfortunately, liquid comfort was all that he could give.

Kate took the bottle, raising it to him in gesture of salute before draining it to the dregs in a single swallow. “That was unconscionably selfish of me,” she said, her voice hoarse with tears and liquor, “to polish off a man’s last lick of whiskey is an unpardonable crime, milord.”

Her gallantry touched him, her ability to make light where any other woman in his experience would have dissolved into the morass of weeping and emotion. He could do no less. “A terrible trespass,” Duncan agreed, “as your father no doubt taught you, to exhaust your host’s spirits. Far worse than daring Almack’s without proper breeches, more lacking in manners than asking Lady Hertford after dear Mrs. Fitzherbert’s health. As a penalty for your misdeed, I demand that you will address me as Duncan.”

Kate gave a reluctant smile and Duncan’s heart soared. “Luckily, there are over a dozen more bottles of this down in the cellar, pipes of excellent claret and veritable oceans of sherry and French brandy that was laid when Louis was still King of France. We could drink ourselves into oblivion and still have plenty to spare. No one thought to try the dungeon when they were stripping this place of valuables. There is a drunkard’s dearest dream down there in the bowels of the castle.”

“You could sell it, Duncan,” Kate said, in growing excitement, scarcely noticing how easily his given name tripped off her tongue. “Surely such a collection of fine spirits could easily find a buyer. You could start with a flock of sheep, perhaps, and make some repairs to the crofts. Within a few seasons-”

“Hold, Kate,” Duncan held up his hand. “You would have me part with the only solace that I have? Nepenthe of this quality is not easily found.”

“And what of your obligations to your people, milord?” Kate asked, slipping back into cool formality. “Or is it your intent to share that bottled surcease with the men and women who depend on you for their livelihoods? Do you intend to let them drink themselves into indifference as well?”

Duncan stiffened. There was no need to sell the dungeon’s contents, not with the Treasury soon to be in mourning due to his untimely resurrection. Even though she did not know about his fortune, it was not her right to interfere. “That is none of your affair.”

“I see,” Kate said. “How hypocritical, milord and so typical of a man. They tell you that they value your thoughts, yet when you are so foolish as to give your opinions expression, they demand that you mind your business. But then that should not surprise me. You have ever been an expert at cozening women with what they want to hear.”

“And who are you to judge me, milady?” Duncan asked, anger broaching the last barriers of control. “You occupy my home under false pretenses, then have the audacity to tell me what I owe people who hate me sight unseen! You claim to know me, profess to understand my motivations. Yet, to my knowledge we have never before met. What do you know of who I am?”

“You are Duncan MacLean,” she said, the whiskey freeing words that were perhaps better left unspoken. “You are a player at cards, a warrior and a slayer of hearts.”

“No longer, especially the latter,” Duncan said, stepping out of the shadows. “You mock me. Light your candle and look at this face. I am my own haunt, a macabre joke of fate. Look at me and honestly tell me that I am still that man.”

“No, not quite the same,” Kate said, gazing past the traces of his scars, looking beyond all the scandalous stories. “He was a paltry sort of fellow, Mad MacLean, a soldier’s soldier, ’tis true, but proud, arrogant and vain.”

“And now, I have precious little reason for vanity,” Duncan said, “and I fight no more.”

“Untrue, Duncan, untrue,” Kate said, all caution vanishing at the sight of his stricken face. He honestly believed that all his worth lay at the surface. “You fight still, a battle with the past, a war within.”

Her words struck him sober. “You heard, didn’t you?” Duncan said, his gut tightening in mortification. How could he have hoped that she had slept through his banshee cries? Somehow he had convinced himself that her walk in the night was a mere coincidence and now, he was grateful for the darkness, thankful that he could not see the pity that was surely in her eyes. “Did you come to comfort me, Kate?” he asked, keeping his tone steady. “Is that why you are here?”

“Is that so shameful?” she asked. “To want to give comfort?”

“I do not need your sympathy!” Duncan exploded. “If you wish to play Lady Bountiful, then go down to the village and do your good works. Go down to the dungeon and give them all a bottle, then leave me here with mine.” He pulled the cork with his teeth and drank till he was breathless, letting oblivion pour down his throat. But the roar of his own voice was still echoing in his ears when her reply came, so quiet that Duncan barely heard.

“We all need sympathy and understanding, upon occasion. You gave me yours; I was only hoping to return the favor. May your bottles bring you sweet dreams, Duncan MacLean.” She slipped silently into the night.

Chapter 7

Kate paused in the kitchen doorway, looking back toward the lone shadow. Glass glinted briefly against the night sky, like a comet sailing in a moonlit arc to shatter loudly somewhere in the darkness. Empty or full? She wondered; then questioned why it mattered so much to her. If Duncan MacLean chose to drink