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

a word or two with his loyal clansmen. Go back to the castle, Fred and get yourself cleaned up. I will go to the village.”

Fred cleared his throat. “Beggin’ your pardon, Sir, but you cannot be thinkin’ of goin’ now.”

“A little rain will do me no harm,” Duncan said.

“What he means milord,” Kate said, reading the servant’s discomfort, “if it is your intent to lambaste the crofters into submission, then you might wish to change your clothing. I have seen mud larks better attired.”

Duncan looked down at himself, noticing for the first time, his lack of shirt and the shabby state of his trousers. He reddened beneath his beard and without a word, bolted for the castle.

Kate sighed. “Let me examine those cuts,” she said.

“Ain’t nothin’ but a scratch ‘ere and there,” Fred told Kate as she inspected his hurts. “Daisy kin patch it up, she will. Wouldn’t of even made mention of it, milady. Just my bad luck, it was, meeting up with you both like this.”

Bad luck indeed, Kate thought, recalling what nearly occurred between her and Duncan. “I’ll ask you again. Please do not call me ‘milady,’ Fred. I feel bad enough about the deception that I perpetrated. Indeed, it seems to have caused even more problems than I could have imagined. Why did Maeve not call me when the baby was on the way?”

Fred shrugged. “Don’t know, but ‘er grandfather were right grieved about it.”

“I have to go the village and find out what happened. Perhaps I can get matters in hand before your master arrives in all his avenging fury and Maeve might need me still. If I could borrow your horse?”

Once more there was a vigorous bobbing of the Cockney’s Adam’s apple in a loud attempt to discreetly gain Kate’s attention.

“What is it you wish to tell me, Fred?” she asked. “Or did someone knock some teeth back that you wish to clear from your gullet?”

“Ain’t my place to tell you, but Daisy’s,” he began hesitantly.

“I give you leave to speak for her then,” Kate said with growing impatience.

“Don’t know right how to say,” Fred began.

“Say it just as she would, Fred, since you do so credible an imitation. And do it now,” Kate told him. “I will have to ride like the very devil to get to the village and back before the rain starts to fall.”

Fred grinned and put one hand on his hip in womanly mimicry. “Milady,‘ow can you be thinkin’ of showin’ yourself dressed like an ‘oyden! I vow, ‘tis two of a kind you are, yourself and ‘is lordship, goin’ about like paupers.”

“Thank you, Daisy,” Kate murmured with a rueful look at her soiled ill-fitting breeches. “If I attempted to visit Maeve looking like this, they would think that the hobgoblins had come calling. I had best go change.” She flew down the path.

Fred chuckled, then winced and composed his face into a mask of woe, determined to let Daisy tend to his wounds. However, his dreams of feminine comfort were short-lived.

“Where in blazes are my shirts?” Duncan demanded, pointing down to his pants. “And what happened to the good pair of trousers I purchased? These ragged things are all that I can find.”

“Those what you teared up the other day was the best,” Fred explained mournfully, dismounting and making his way toward a small patch of white midst the sodden ground near the pump. “As for your shirts, ain’t got to mendin’ the other yet, and it looks to me like this is the one you wore yesterday.” He held the length of linen up distastefully between the thumb and forefinger. “Got washed in the mud. Seems to me that you ought to be stayin’ close to ‘ome till I can get you lookin’ decent, Sir.”

“What do you mean, I cannot wear the blue?” Kate’s voice rang in the courtyard as she strode out the kitchen door.

“Thought you meant to wear those nasty breeches all the day,” Daisy said defensively, following her mistress. “It seemed a good idea to give your dresses a cleaning, though a decent burial might serve those rags better! Ooh when I think of what you left behind, milady, I could just-” The older woman caught her tongue as she caught sight of the two men in the courtyard. Her eyes went wide. “Fred! You poor lamb! Whatever happened to you?”

“Ain’t nothin’,” Fred said, in a somber tone that put him somewhere between last prayers and death.

“Come into the kitchen,” she said, hurrying to brace him up beneath her beefy shoulder. “Let me take care of that handsome face.”

Kate and Duncan watched in astonishment as the two servants disappeared indoors without as much as a backward glance at their masters.

“And thus we are firmly put in our place,” Kate ventured.

“Well now I know how I should have done it. Lesson learned. ‘take care of that handsome face,’” Duncan mimicked. “Is your woman blind or merely cozening him?”

“Daisy hasn’t a deceptive bone in her body,” Kate said. “If she calls his face fair, then it must be so in her eyes. The eye of the beholder is what makes the difference.”

Duncan turned away from that frank gaze bewildered by what he saw in those troubled green eyes. Was she wary of him now, because of what had occurred on the path or was there something else in those jade depths? And what do you see, Kate, when you look at my face? He longed to ask. Strange, how a woman who had perpetrated a massive fraud seemed possessed of an inherent integrity. He knew that she would not lie to him if she could help it. Therefore, he would not ask the question for fear of outright evasion or the answer that she might give.

“It is sopping wet!”

Kate’s exclamation caught Duncan’s attention. She had gone to the wash line and was fingering the flapping blue fabric with obvious dismay.

“And it is the only thing I have fit to wear to the village,” she said.

“You