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

made the stuff of his shirtsleeves billow, puffing them to the proportions of great white wings. Who would care?

A second of flight.

An end to pain.

Duncan stared sightlessly into the fog-shrouded distance.

“Major? Maaajor!” Fred’s voice echoed forlornly from below. “Where are you?”

Retreating thunder rumbled and the haze lifted suddenly to reveal Eilean Kirk, suspended like an ornament amidst the storm-grey waters of the loch. The arches of the stone causeway seemed like the fine filigree of a pendant. Duncan suddenly realized that he had been anticipating this moment. Through those endless days of confinement, this was the vision that had kept him sane, the knowledge that beyond those prison walls, Eilean Kirk Castle had stood defiantly against the sky, awaiting his return.

Duncan’s hatred of that place and the miserly man who had inhabited it had kept him alive as much as his desire for vengeance. But the final reckoning with his parent that he had rehearsed so many times in his mind would never take place. Now, ironically, that moldering wreck was his. If his father had sought to plan retribution, the late earl’s twisted brain could not have conceived a better one. The notorious heritage of the MacLeans was upon Duncan’s shoulders now. You can cheat the old man yet, came the soft, insinuating inner voice.

“Maaajor! Can you hear me?”

Reluctantly, Duncan stepped back from the brink. Shaking his head like a sleeper waking, he began to turn away when a stray wisp over the castle caught the corner of his eye. The unbroken wavering band certainly did not have the appearance of mist. Pulling out a small spyglass from his pocket, he peered through the lens intently, sweeping the magnified landscape several times before returning to the rim of the plateau.

Fred’s anxious face stared up at him from below and Duncan waved reassuringly, a sinking feeling in the depths of his stomach. There could be no peace, not yet. Despite his father’s death, there were still scores to be settled. Once the MacLean fortune was in his hands, he would bring Vesey to justice. Then the ghosts of his men would leave him in peace and he would be free to seek his own repose.

“As I said, ‘tis an easy climb. Care to come up and see the view?” Although his tones were teasing, Duncan found himself breathing deeply, trying to ease the pounding of his heart. Was this part of Charlie’s curse then, these moments of darkness that brought him to the verge? Even in the depths of La Purgatoire he had never come so close to stepping over the edge. Would melancholy accomplish what French bullets had not?

“Think I’m a bloody mountain goat, do you?” Fred grumbled, his expression of relief all too easy to read as Duncan halted his descent. “I’m waitin’ on you, down on solid ground, I am. Don’t be lookin’ to me to scrape your guts from the gravel if you decide to come down the ‘ard and fast way!”

“I shall not,” Duncan retorted, carefully seeking his handholds, “since I fully expect that you will cushion my fall.”

Fred cursed under his breath, muttering an entire litany of blasphemy until his master reached the ground. “You’re a daft one, Major, if you be thinkin’ these old bones of mine fit to spend another soakin’ night in the open. You’re the one who says we got to move quick before the blow and now you’re the one wastin’ nigh on an ‘our up on that rock.”

Duncan was startled. An hour? It had scarcely seemed more than a few minutes. “You chose to throw your lot in with me, Sergeant. You are more than welcome to turn back if you wish,” he said, more harshly than he had intended.

Fred’s answer was an indignant harrumph.

“The rain was headed away from us. We should be at Eilean Kirk just past nightfall.” Duncan said as he set his boot in the stirrup. “And you of all people ought to know that time spent in reconnaissance is rarely wasted.”

Fred’s bushy eyebrows rose in question.

“There is smoke coming from one of the chimneys,” Duncan said, urging his mount back down the path from the lookout. “It appears that we have company.”

. . .

“The coop is utterly destroyed, Daisy,” Kate said, surveying the splintered wood in despair.

Daisy held up the mangled body of a bird. “Might as well have this one for dinner,” she said philosophically.

“And she was one of our best laying hens,” Kate moaned.

“Ain’t lost none of the geese, at least,” Daisy said. “A sight more sense than the hens, they had. Found three of the biddies drowned in a puddle. I’ll dress them and hang them up to season.”

“And four more out in the woods somewhere,” Kate said, shooing a goose with her skirts.

“Supper for the foxes most likely,” Daisy said, putting a hand on the broken gate of the goat pen. “We won’t find them now, not with night coming on.”

There was a series of sharp barks followed by protesting cackles. The two women looked up to see Cur herding a quartet of chickens, expertly evading their pecking beaks as he drove them forward.

“Why, I have never seen the like,” Kate exclaimed in astonishment, putting her hands on her hips.

“Me either!” Daisy agreed, rushing forward to shoo the chickens into the corner of the courtyard where Anne quietly scattered handfuls of corn. “Well, now, that’s mostly the lot of them. It weren’t near as bad as we feared.”

“We cannot leave the animals out here tonight,” Kate said with a frown. “The cow byre did not sustain much damage, but there is not enough room for the goats there as well. There is no repairing the coop, I suspect.”

“But where’ll we doss the creatures down for the night?” the older woman asked.

Kate gazed thoughtfully at the kitchen door.

“Oh, no,” Daisy said, following the direction of her mistress’s stare. “You’ll not be putting that lot in my kitchen, you won’t.”

“I was thinking of the servant’s hall, Daisy,” Kate said.

“Tis the