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

envied. If you are cataloguing your sins, let us not omit those from the list.”

“Aye,” Duncan said with a snort, his hands slipping round to hold her at the waist. “All those and more, Kate. Och, you dinna ken what manner of man I am.”

“I have come to know something about who you are now, Duncan MacLean,” Kate retorted. “Sometimes, I almost believe that I know you better than you do yourself. For all the load of baggage that you have chosen to bear from your past, you are a relatively straightforward individual. That is why I fear for you if you go after Vesey. There is the fortune which is Anne’s inheritance that is at stake. Vesey is a viper, a powerful, cruel and deadly monster wholly unburdened by conscience.”

He could feel the shudder pass through her body and now that he knew the assailant’s identity, he truly understood the depth of Kate’s fear. Vesey had ripped apart the fabric of her life and nearly destroyed Anne. She spoke no less than the truth. He had already proven himself capable of murder for a far lesser gain. “I would not entangle you. There is no need for John to know anything of your whereabouts,” he assured her.

“I realize that you would do what you could to protect us,” she said miserably. “But if he finds us. . .”

“Marry me,” Duncan said, the idea bursting upon him like a rocket. “Then you and Anne would be legally under my protection.”

Yes hovered on her tongue, but she held the word behind her teeth and shook her head with bittersweet sadness. “Why Marcus must be turning revolutions in his grave,” she said, trying to make light of the moment although she was weeping inside. “He would tell me that you were far too clever to ever get yourself shackled in the parson’s mousetrap. Surely you could not think to forgo your riotous way of living for anything as mundane as marriage.”

“I no longer have the face for the riotous life, Kate,” he said, his fingers going automatically to touch the scar.

“Are we back to that again?” Kate asked, taking his wrist and firmly pulling the hand away. “Do you think that you consist entirely of a face, Duncan MacLean? You are a decent human being, kind and entirely too honorable for your good. And as for your countenance . . .”

His heart began to hammer at her hesitation.

“I noticed many a woman looking hungrily your way tonight, milord, for all that they thought you were mine,” she said softly, marveling at her own daring as her fingers slipped up to lightly trace the scar beneath his whiskers. “The beard suits you, Duncan. I suspect that some women find that unshorn appearance attractive.”

And you Kate? He asked silently. Do you hunger as I do? “Shall I tell Fred, then, to forget about purchasing a new razor?” he joked. “If you prefer me to look like a wooly ram then I would gladly oblige, so long as you marry me.”

“And you dare to call yourself a rogue, Duncan MacLean? For shame! I vow I do not know what the world is coming to when rakes pledge to go about righting wrongs and selflessly offering marriage to damsels in distress.”

Duncan wanted to tell her that there was nothing selfless about the gesture, that he wanted her with every selfish breath in his body, to hold and to cherish according to every maudlin sentiment and romantic sensibility in his Celtic soul. But Kate’s next words caused him to halt at the brink.

“I married once without love, Duncan,” she said, her fingers straightening the displaced folds of his tartan. “Never again will I make that error, least of all with a man whom I count as my friend. Hopefully, if I have learned anything from my errors, it is the difference between love and passion.”

“And that is?” Duncan asked, hoping that his tones were as airy as hers.

“You will laugh,” she said.

Her pixie half-smile set his heart to aching. “If I am lucky. I could use the healing.”

“Love burns like good peat in the hearth and passion is a bonfire,” Kate said. “A pile of wood may burn hot and bright, but passion is quickly consumed. A peat fire, however, may not be nearly as spectacular, at times it even appears to have died, but stir it and you always find live embers at the heart. How is that for homespun philosophy?”

“Charming.”

“Trite.”

“A bit of both perhaps?” Duncan allowed

“Thus quoth the rake.” She twitched the last fold into place, fastened the brooch and stepped back to view the results. “Elegant.”

“Absurd, a grown man in a skirt.”

“A bit of both perhaps?” Kate replied.

Duncan’s laughter echoed across the loch, carrying all the weight of his bitterness, all the strain of his frustration in a long bellowing peal. Kate did not love him. For now, he would have to make do with the fact that she trusted him. It did not seem like much, but perhaps it was a beginning

“My retort was not that funny,” Kate said, perplexed.

“No,” Duncan gasped. “Ironic is what it is, most definitely ironic.”

And though she badgered him all the way back to the castle, he would explain no further.

Chapter 12

The day dawned in a mizzle, the sun shrouded in a grey haze as Duncan strapped Selkie’s saddle bags shut.

“Now we’ve got a need for every single one of these things,” Daisy warned, handing Fred a piece of paper.

“Gonna be needin’ a dray and oxen, Sir, to get this lot ‘ome,” Fred commented, his mouth rising into a pixie grin. “The woman’s writ down a list long as my arm. What you got ‘ere, Daisy?”

“Wheat flour, for one thing,” Daisy said saucily, “but I might be forgettin’ what to do with it, if a certain little man don’t stop his yappin’.”

“No mercy,” Fred wagged his head. “And to think I gave ‘er me ‘eart for a biscuit.”

“I’m thinking it’s me who got the worst of