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

Anne looked at her toes with shamefaced fixation.

“Anne and I have already resolved that between us, have we not, Anne?” Duncan asked, wondering how much longer Kate could continue to hold up. As it was, she had been driving herself mercilessly toward the edge of exhaustion. Now, she seemed about to step over that verge. “We are in accord, your daughter and I,” he assured her.

Anne nodded, squeezing her mother’s hand in anxious confirmation.

Kate gave an unsteady laugh, maintaining the fiction that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, that she had not come rushing out like a madwoman, ready to strike. “Without bloodshed, I take it? Go home with you then, Anne, if you have made your apologies. I have little doubt that Daisy has a word or two for you, as well. You know that you are not allowed up in the tower.”

Once more, Anne’s eyes sought Duncan.

“I shall care for your mother, lassie, I promise.” Duncan gave her a smile of encouragement. “And that’s one thing you may be sure of, Anne, I do keep my promises. Now go and tender your regrets to Daisy, for Fred told me that she was near to tears with blaming herself for your mischief.” The girl’s eyes darkened with guilt, but he could see that she was still hesitant to leave.

“Best to pay the piper earlier than later,” Duncan told her gently. “Go on with you.”

Anne gave her mother’s hand a final press before starting back towards the castle, the hound trailing behind her. As soon as the child was out of sight, Duncan was beside Kate in a few strides. “Lean on me now, Kate, for I’d as soon not violate a sworn oath, but unless I miss my guess you are perilously near to fainting away.”

Without a word, Kate stepped into his arms and he drew her close, supporting her trembling body. He whispered to her softly, murmuring the words of an ancient Gaelic lullaby that his mother had been used to sing, treating her much as he had the child. Yet, he was well aware that this was no child that he held, but a woman. It should have been easy to soothe her, but all of the old stratagems that he had used in the past seemed utterly useless. That fluid charm that had once been so simple to tap had seemingly run dry.

Never before had Duncan been so bereft of words. The diffident endearments, the casually cajoling enticements that he had tendered so many times to so many women, would not come to his lips. With an awkwardness that he could not quite understand, he clasped her to him, wishing that he knew what to say, what to do to help her.

“It has been so long,” Kate murmured, leaning her cheek against the warm support of his chest, listening to the strong steady beat of his heart. “I could not discern the difference between a shout of glee and a scream of fright, Duncan.” She looked up at him, her eyes murky with sorrow and apprehension, wondering how she could begin to make him understand. “I was afraid . . .”

“That Anne would be hurt again,” Duncan completed. “It does not take a man of great intellect to discern that something has happened to your daughter, Kate,” he explained, forestalling the question in her startled look. “From what both you and Daisy have let slip, ‘tis clear that the lassie was not always silent. Is that what you are running from, Kate?”

She was too tired to devise a credible lie and even if she had been capable of one, he did not deserve it. Kate closed her eyes, recalling the scene that she had witnessed before her insane fear had destroyed the moment. Anne on Duncan’s shoulders, laughing and screeching with all the joy and verve of a normal child. It was what Kate had hoped for, all that she had prayed for in these past few months and somehow, this man had made her daughter trust again, made her laugh again. When Kate opened her eyes and saw Duncan’s sympathy, she knew that he would require no less than the truth. With a sigh, she stepped from the shelter of his arms, wondering if she would see that look of concern change into contempt once he learned of her cowardice.

“Yes, that is why we are hiding,” Kate said wearily, slumping to sit on the nearby trunk of a fallen oak. “Most of what you know is true. My husband did die in the battle of Ciudad Rodrigo, only I was not on the Peninsula with him. I wish that I had been, but Anne and I were in England. Thinking me a rather flighty sort of female, I found that, when he died, he left our affairs in the charge of a relation by marriage. Perhaps I am a poor sort of creature, because I never deemed money to be very important. I was quite content to allow him to manage things, even to the point where I did not object when he and his wife moved into my home. There had been some problems. In retrospect, I begin to believe he engineered them. Because of mourning, I was isolated. Later, I found that he had been characterizing me as flighty and incompetent, even somewhat mad with grief. By then he had completely seized the reins of my household, ordering it to suit him, but so long as he left Anne in my charge, I did not make any complaints. But then, Anne began to change. . .”

Duncan seated himself beside her, but he might as well have been leagues away. Her eyes filled with pain as she cast her thoughts back to those disturbing memories.

“When I recollect how I how ignored those small signs. . . but Daisy knew that something was amiss. She noticed, far sooner than I did, that Anne had become