Page 57 of Devil Black

Dougal stared into the man’s eyes. “And you wonder why she fled you?”

“Do not speak to me that way, you snake,” Maitland began.

Isobel pushed her way between them, breaking Dougal’s hold upon her father. “I know not what lies your friend MacNab has told you, but I am clearly not in need of rescue. Father, it is Randal MacNab who would use me, who uses you now in an effort to further the quarrel between him and my husband.”

“Now, just a moment!” Randal MacNab started up. “I have acted, in this, only for the good. This man—” he gestured at Dougal, “has a reputation in the district as a rogue and a lawbreaker. Abduction is surely not beneath him. Your daughter, Gerald, was contracted to my house. I had a right to step in—more, a duty to do so.”

“Aye, well, your duty ends here,” Dougal grated. “You have brought the man, and he sees his daughter is content. And when it comes to it, MacNab, your spawn was never contracted to this woman but to her sister.”

MacNab glanced at Maitland. “He took your daughter in marriage only to get back at me, and to stake an interest in her inheritance.”

“Aye?” Dougal heard himself say. “And why should I wish to get back at you? Why do you not tell the man how your fine son used his first wife, and then he will see what a narrow escape his daughter has had.”

Now it was Bertram MacNab who pushed forward. “If you, bastard cur, believe that old score remains unsettled, perhaps you will fight me on it—single combat, one on one?”

Rage rose to Dougal’s head, so intense that for a moment Bertram’s sneering visage flickered before his eyes and the room dimmed.

“You will pay,” he promised, low and agonized, “for every indignity you forced her to suffer, for every bruise on her body, each tear she shed.”

“Aye?” Bertram MacNab’s face became a leering, taunting mask. “It is an old matter, that. I acted with a husband’s right to discipline a wife who needed it.”

“She? The sweetest soul ever born to this world?”

“If you wish me to pay,” Bertram goaded, “then draw your sword and face me here and now—coward!”

Dougal felt the rage explode in his head and leapt at his tormentor, welcoming a rush of relief when his hands closed on Bertram’s throat. He had lived nearly eight years for this, and every fiber of him wanted to mangle and harm. He heard Isobel’s cry of alarm, and any number of hands seized him and pulled him away.

His vision cleared slowly. The first thing he saw was Bertram MacNab’s face, blood on his jaw and triumph in his eyes, letting Dougal know he had played right into his enemy’s hands.

“You see?” Randal MacNab bellowed. “The man is dangerous—violent! Gerald, you cannot leave your daughter in his keeping.”

Before Gerald Maitland could speak, Isobel pushed forward once more to face her father.

“If you cannot see, Father, what has just happened here—”

“Oh, I see, Isobel. Pack your things. You are coming with me.”

“I have no ‘things.’ All was lost with the coach. And I am going nowhere.”

“Obey me, daughter—for once in your life!”

“I obey now only my husband. Father, the marriage is valid. It has been consummated—”

Maitland flushed with anger. “No matter. I am willing to take you back anyway.”

“Is that not decent of you?” Dougal stepped up to his wife’s side. “She stays with me.” He looked Bertram in the eye. “And, I will fight—and best—any man who says differently.”

Bertram sneered, “I have heard that claim before.”

“Aye, and this time ’twill be fairly done.”

Randal MacNab bridled. “Do you accuse us of falsity? You, who summoned that malodorous excuse for a priest to perform your scurrilous joining?” To Maitland he said, “The priest is morally fallen and well known in the district as a drunken fool. We shall prove the marriage invalid and take your daughter back, under weight of law.”

Maitland nodded and looked at Isobel. “I shall yet rescue you, Daughter, and that is a promise.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“My father does not make promises lightly,” Isobel said unhappily, dread forming a corrosive ball in the pit of her stomach. She lay curled in a tight crescent on the bed in her chamber and spoke over her shoulder to Meg who, rather surprisingly, had brought a tray in an effort to persuade her to eat.