by Gwyn Cready
“I can take care of him now,” she said. “The nurse should be here shortly. I thank ye for your help.”
“Ye goddamned besom!” Lachlan jerked the ropes so hard the bedposts shook.
Duncan frowned. “I think I will stay awhile, if ye dinna mind.”
Or even if she did, Abby thought, for the readiness of his stance said he would be planted in place until he deemed it safe to leave her unattended.
“I—I—What I mean to say is it is not necessary for you—”
Molly, the new nurse, bounded up the stairs, breathless. “My deepest apologies, milady. His lordship had been crying half the morning for his mother to make him a bit of spun sugar for his birthday.” She cast her eyes to the floor. “I know I shouldn’t leave him, but I thought how nice it would be if Cook could make him something to ease his mind. Please dinna dismiss me. I willna do it again.”
“Dinna trouble yourself,” Abby said. “’Twas just a matter of getting him back into bed. I’m sure my father appreciates your efforts on his behalf. I know I do.” Abby had had enough trouble finding a girl patient and skilled enough to stay with her father. She was hardly going to dismiss her over a bit of spun sugar.
Undine and Robby, her burliest footman, clattered up the steps. Abby held up her hands to signal the time for panic had passed.
“Thank you, everyone. My father is settling down. Molly, you’re tired. Have a rest. Get the cook to give you a nice bowl of soup. We’ll be fine here.” She found herself looking to MacHarg for confirmation, which he gave with a small nod.
Undine, Molly, and the footman descended the stairs, leaving Abby to negotiate the odd but not entirely unpleasant sense that MacHarg was her partner in this.
Her eyes went to Lachlan’s dinner. MacHarg wouldn’t be a partner in this, she thought. No one should have to be. She found a cloth near the ewer and wet it to wipe down her father’s bloody lip. When he was clean, she sat down and took the plate on her lap. The soup would stay where it was. She couldn’t bear for MacHarg to witness that debacle, and it was likely cold now anyway. Spearing a morsel of chicken, she adjusted the stool so that MacHarg would be directly behind her, blocked from view.
“My da had Alzheimer’s,” he said quietly.
Abby stroked the corner of her father’s mouth, encouraging him to open it. “What is Alzheimer’s?”
“Oh, sorry.” MacHarg coughed, flustered. “Well, ’tis something like what your da has. He lost his memory and then his manners—not that he had many to begin with.”
“How long did it take him to recover?”
MacHarg hesitated, and she felt her heart fall. “I didna expect you to say he had. I just…hoped, I guess. For both our sakes.” She put the morsel in her father’s mouth and gently pressed his lifeless lips together to form a seal as he chewed. “You told me you grew up without your da.”
“I did. But I knew where he was.”
“And you attended him when he fell ill?”
“I wouldna call it attending. I am not as kindhearted as you.”
“I am hardly kindhearted.” She gave her father another piece. “I treated you quite cruelly down there.”
“I failed you.”
“Aye, ye did. But it didna follow that I must add to your burden. No man comes to killing an expert. I was wrong to have expected that of you.”
Lachlan’s vacant eyes turned suddenly dark, and Abby, as always, started at the change.
“Who failed me?” he asked coldly, though the “me” came out as “eel” through his half-functioning lips.
“He failed me, Da. Not you. Quiet yourself.”
Lachlan wrenched himself upright to see the man who’d done the failing. “Is this your husband? Your husband has hair like a raven.”
“I dinna have a husband with raven hair or otherwise. Lay back.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Duncan. He’s a MacHarg.”
MacHarg stepped into the fire’s light and made a hesitant bow.
“A MacHarg, is it? Decent enough farmers, though they drink too much and have a verra dangerous streak of stubbornness in them.”
Abby snorted. “Scotsmen who are stubborn and drink? I canna imagine it.”
“Are you one of Ainsley MacHarg’s men?”
Abby watched MacHarg’s face, curious herself.
“Er, no,” he said.
“Who is your chief then?”
MacHarg licked the corner of his mouth. “My grand-da. Gordon MacHarg.”
There was no chief named Gordon MacHarg in the Lowlands, nor, did she suspect, in the Highlands, the Arrans, the Grampians, or the Western Isles, either.
“I dinna know him.” Lachlan narrowed his eyes. “Who is your father?”
MacHarg stiffened. “He’s dead.”
“Drunkard?” Lachlan asked.
“Da!”
“Aye,” MacHarg said. “And a thief.”
Lachlan settled back on a pillow. “Well, we never mind a wee bit of reiving. Untie me, lass. And get your mother.”
Abby’s heart clenched. “Ma is gone. Visiting Auntie Ialach in Tayside. Will you promise to be still?” She untied the closest rope.
“Did she take the new gelding? Braw beast, that one is. Worth every shilling. But there’s something I don’t like about him.” He squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to remember.
“He bolts,” she said and felt MacHarg, who had ventured to the farside of the bed to untie the ropes there, pause.
“Aye, that’s it! We can fix that, nae bother. Donnie’s a gem with horses. Take him to Donnie, lass.”
“I will, Da. In the morning.”
Lachlan ran a hand through his thick, white hair and gave his visitor a long look. “MacHarg, I know you have come to the Kerr for a reason. What is it? I dinna lend money, but I can put you to work.”
“He’s been put to work,” Abby said. “He is my strong arm.”
“A strong arm who canna kill?” Her father turned his sharp gaze to her. “What other changes have ye made? Who were ye intending to kill?”
“Harry,” she said, steeling herself. “He took his sons to carry out a raid against the soldiers in Cumbria against my orders.”
“Your orders! Ye dinna order men! You’re a lass!”
“I am the Kerr now,” she said carefully, “as you are unfit for it. And Harry defied me.”
“Where is Rosston? What does he say?”
“Rosston is not the chief. I am.”
“Harry is my strong arm. A real strong arm.”
“And ye poisoned him against me.” She was intensely embarrassed that MacHarg had to witness this and struggled to hold on to her temper. “When the deal was struck, he took his oath, but he never accepted me. Ye told me yourself, no man can defy an order and live.”
“Apparently one can when you’re leading the clan. MacHarg, I see you drape yourself in the Kerr plaid. Have you abandoned your own clan, or are your father’s thieving ways in your blood too?”
“Enough.” She put the plate down hard and stood. Her father was one step from lunacy. How did he still possess the power to reduce her to a shrieking child?
MacHarg unfolded himself to full height, and Abby felt rather than saw the tension vibrating in him. “I have taken an oath to the Kerr,” he said. “My Kerr. The Kerr of Clan Kerr. I failed to kill Harry, but I will not fail again. I will kill any man who tries to harm your daughter, and if you are the father I think you are, you will thank me for it.”
Lachlan ran a tongue over the gaps in his lower teeth and laughed. “My daughter can tack a man’s balls to his horse at thirty yards. She dinna need protection, MacHarg. She needs a man men will follow.”
“Both of you are wrong,” Abby said hotly. “I need no man at all.”
Twenty-two
The clack clack of Abby’s boot heels echoed down the stairs. Grendel gave Duncan an accusatory look and followed his mistress.
Duncan knew the brunt of Abby’s anger was directed toward her father, but he felt complicit too. He’d never irritated a woman in quite so many ways before. His experience of women, apparently more limited than he’d imagined, was that they adored him. They loved his hair, his accent, his stories, his height, the way he smiled. Their clothes melted off them; they invested their money in his firm; they waved him onto the bus without exact change. Yet there appeared to be no part of his personality that didn’t drive Abby crazy.
Indeed, he’d bedded her—if you can call that three-megaton explosion by the chapel bedding—but he’d hardly breached the gates of the fortress known as Abby Kerr. He didn’t know what she liked to eat. He didn’t know if she’d ever been to Rome. And while Nab had told him she was to be married, the word “betrothed” had never passed her lips. Nor had “I’m in love,” “There’s someone else,” or even, “I think we should proceed with caution.” No, no caution for that girl.
Duncan sighed. He would eventually find the pitch on which she wanted to play, but until then, he was getting a very hard lesson in the rules of the game.
Lachlan, oblivious to the fury he had excited, was struggling to cut another piece of meat. Duncan thought of Abby emerging from the tower door last night in tears. Daughter, successor, caretaker—the very act of juggling those balls would be challenging enough, but with a man like Lachlan Kerr? Och.
Lachlan let out a frustrated growl as the chicken slid from under his knife.
“Perhaps,” Duncan said with a disgusted shake of his head, “you shouldn’t have driven your wee daughter from the room.”
The man dug in harder, sawing wildly. The plate was creeping toward the edge of the bedside table.
“Oh, for the love of—Stop!” Duncan grabbed the plate just before it fell. “Has anyone ever told you for a man who depends on the kindness of others, you don’t exactly engender goodwill?”
“Fouck ye.”
“Oh, verra nice.” Duncan seated himself on the stool with a sigh. “Despite your evident displeasure with my company, I intend to see that you have your dinner. We can spare your daughter that much, can we not?”
The heat in Lachlan’s short Gaelic response gave Duncan a pretty clear idea of the man’s thoughts even if the words were beyond his understanding.
“Is that an ‘aye’ then?”
Before the man could summon another stream of invective, Duncan nimbly swiped the knife from his hand, grabbed the fork, and cut the meat into a half a dozen pieces. He held out the plate, swept his arm around his back, and said in his best French accent, “The dining room proudly presents…your dinner.”
Lachlan, evidently not a fan of Beauty and the Beast, was unmoved. This did not deter Duncan, who had earned money his last year of secondary school babysitting his six-year-old neighbor and watched Beauty and the Beast so many times he could sing every part, including Belle’s and that of Gaston’s chorus of buxom admirers. He forked a piece of chicken, twirled it in the air as if it were Lumiere’s flaming candle, and brought it before the man’s mouth.
“Be our guest.”
Lachlan narrowed his eyes. But the chicken, moist and dark, was too tempting to pass up. He took it and chewed.
Duncan reached for the man’s lips, to close them as he’d seen Abby do. Lachlan jerked away and brought his better, opposite fist to hold it closed.
“Fair enough,” Duncan said.
“Where’s Molly?” Lachlan demanded, as sullen as a child.
“Molly?” Duncan frowned, trying to place the name. “The wee dimpled nurse? Oh, aye, I can see where you’d prefer her to me. Unfortunately, Molly needs a rest from ye as well.”
“Molly,” Lachlan said firmly.
“Duncan,” he replied. He held out another piece of chicken and quietly sung Lumiere’s song. Duncan was no singer, but the tune was as enticing as the chicken, and Lachlan eventually opened his mouth.
They continued on in this way until the chicken was gone. Duncan returned the plate to the table and leaned forward to straighten the man’s covers.
“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Lachlan grabbed the front of Duncan’s sark and jerked his face close to his.
“Get out of my home,” he said, each word drenched in venom. “I can smell a man after my daughter’s money and quim as far away as Edinburgh. Ye stink of it.”
Duncan peeled the man’s fingers off his sark, stifling an urge to break them as he did it. “I have more than enough money of my own, old man. I have no need of your daughter’s.”
“Then I guess I know what you are here for.”
Lachlan swung his fist and Duncan caught his wrist.
“Listen, you filthy old reprobate. You’re wrong about your daughter and you’re wrong about me. She would have made you proud today. She stood before those men a leader. They respect her—not because she’s stronger than they are, but because she’s smarter.”
Lachlan’s eyes burned blue fire, and Duncan saw where Abby got her spirit.
“And as far as your daughter’s money and quim are concerned,” he said through clenched teeth, “she can do with them what she pleases. Should she choose to give both to every man between here and the gates of York, it’d be no more your business than it is mine. And if you ever, ever make her cry again, I’ll come in here while you’re sleeping and hold that wee pillow over your head until you bother her nae more. Do you understand me?”
Lachlan’s scowl tightened. Then all of a sudden he barked a great, whooping laugh. “Only a fool would say such a thing—or a verra canny man. Let us hope you know which you are. Now get me my Molly. I need to piss.”
Duncan let go of Lachlan’s wrist. He was a force to be reckoned with—even in his dementia. Duncan wondered how poor Molly managed it. But as he had no desire to be handling the man’s cock, he rose from the stool, knowing he would bend to Lachlan’s will, just as he had to Abby’s. Six hundred years of power brought something to the Kerr chiefs the titans of Wall Street could only dream about.
It dawned on Duncan as he gathered the dishes he had no idea where the kitchen was or how to find Molly or the cook, and he was just about to ask Lachlan when he spotted Abby in the archway at the top of the stairs. He wondered how long she’d been standing there.
“Leave them,” she said, indicating the dishes. “Molly will get them.”
“He may have found his niche at the castle,” Lachlan said. “Dinna rob him of it.”
“Da.”
“He wants Molly,” Duncan said, replacing the tray.
“She’s coming. And she’ll have your spun sugar,” Abby added to her father. “But if ye make a bit of trouble before she comes, I’ll tell her to dump it right out that window, do ye hear?”
Duncan met Lachlan’s eyes. He fluffed a pillow meaningfully and placed it behind the man’s head before nodding his good night.
“Come, MacHarg,” Abby said. “I should like to have a word with you before you retire.”
Twenty-three
They emerged from the stairwell into the inky blackness of the hall, and she stopped. He had hoped the conversation would be conducted in her room and couldn’t help stealing a longing look at her door.
“I thank you for your help up there,” she said. “I had nae patience for it tonight. And you were…” She bowed her head, searching for words. Gratitude did not come easy to a clan chief.
“It was nothing, Abby. I’ve spent my life around”—he almost said “arseholes” but thought better of it—“men who are challenging. At least your father has an excuse for it.”
“‘Challenging,’ is it?”
He could hear the smile in her words, though the soft planes of her face were no more than patches of g
ray in the darkness. The window that had lit the hall the night before showed only a vast expanse of twinkling black now. The moon would not rise for another hour, at least.
“I dinna ken how you do it,” he said. “How do you lead with him second-guessing you? How do you keep the men attending to you, not him? And how in God’s name did ye become the chief? I mean I know your brother died and Lachlan fell ill, but even then?”
She sighed. He could feel the urge to share the story with him welling up like a rising stream against a dam. But he could also feel her fighting it.
Break, he thought. Break. Pour yourself into my dry bed. I will hold you safely.
“’Tis such a complicated story,” she said.
“I have all night.”
Her longing was palpable, and his was too. They were like two magnets, held apart by nothing more than the friction of the rug and the fear of letting go. If she made the slightest move, the slightest sound to show him what she wanted…
“Duncan—”
The squeak of a door made them jump. Nab’s slim back, lit by a single candle, appeared in the doorway to Duncan’s room. He held the candle high, as if checking his work in the room, and backed out. He smiled when he spotted Duncan and trotted down the hall.
“I was wondering where ye had gotten yourself off to,” Nab said, giving Grendel a vigorous rub. “I dropped off some supper and hot water. Undine said you might need some. Have ye finished making your report?”
Duncan wondered what the penalty was for infanticide in 1706. “Aye.”
“Then let me lead you back. I was to return the candle to Undine if I didn’t find you, but here ye are.”
“Aye. Here I am.”
“May I take Grendel for a bit?” Nab asked Abby.
“I’m certain he would enjoy it,” she said. “Good night, MacHarg. Good night, Nab. No, Grendel,” she said, making her way toward her room, “you stay with them.”
Duncan swore he felt the brush of her hand when she’d passed.
The door of her bedchamber closed behind her. “Oh God.”
