Page 74 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
“Ye’ll never be alone in the world,” Muriel said, her voice suddenly sober. “Duncan’ll see to that.”
Cat couldn’t help the frown that lowered her brows. “No, I will not burden him.”
“He is the Carlyle, our chief. ’Tis his duty.”
“I will not be some man’s duty,” Cat insisted angrily.
Robby, on his hands and knees in the dirt, turned and looked at her wide-eyed. She must have spoken too loudly.
With a contrite glance at Muriel, she murmured, “I’m sorry. I know Duncan is a good chief, and that he means well.” For others, not her. “I am just . . . frustrated.”
When Muriel put a comforting hand on Cat’s arm, Cat felt her deception like bile at the back of her throat. Duncan had started this farce, but she was continuing it.
At last she was distracted from her self-absorbed thoughts by a glimpse beyond the cottages of a manor on the far side of the village.
She stood up to get a better look, but the cottages blocked it. “Is that another manor?”
Muriel didn’t even bother looking. “Oh, aye. That’s the home we grew up in.”
“So that’s Duncan’s manor?”
“The one he won’t live in?” Muriel asked wryly. “Aye, that one. Right now he prefers the cave, for all the reasons ye already know. But someday . . . someday I hope he’ll be able to live a normal life again.”
Knowing she should reassure the woman, Cat said, “He will, I’m sure. When this is all over.”
Muriel nodded, her eyes a little sad, until she looked down into the face of little Alice, who smiled up at her. Cat suddenly realized that the crowd had thinned, and most of the men were gone. Duncan’s clan assembly. She wanted to be there.
She told Muriel she needed a few minutes of privacy, but instead, moved quickly from cottage to cottage until she found the largest one, where people of the clan were entering by twos and threes. It was easy enough to wait until the entrants thinned, then slip in and stand behind them at the back, peering between broad shoulders to see. Melville frowned at her, but he didn’t make any move to send her away.
Duncan sat at a table in front, papers and accounting ledgers spread before him. Ivor stood to one side, intimidating with his sheathed sword at one hip, his pistols tucked in his belt. Other young men of the clan either stood behind him or in the first rows. The rest of the benches were filled with villagers, both men and women.
For a long while, Duncan took care of clan business, dealing with tacksmen who oversaw the land leased from the clan, and negotiating the exchange of lands so that everyone had a turn at the best tacks. Then to her surprise, she watched the men begin to line up, and Duncan began to hand out coins to each, while Ivor meticulously recorded everything in a book.
She suddenly realized what was happening—Duncan was partitioning out to each villager a share of the whisky smuggling money—her clan’s money. She sat still and shocked, knowing that represented money that her clan had sweated and toiled for—but whose labor had been paid for by her father. This wasn’t money out of her clansmen’s pockets, but her brother’s. Did Owen even know about the illegal whisky, or was it someone below him who managed it?
But here, in Clan Carlyle, the people were able to see up close that their laird provided for them, even though he was a wanted man. It was hard to blame him for helping his people. There was much to be admired about a man who sacrificed his own well-being and comfort to see to the poor and weak.
She wouldn’t admire him, but thought grudgingly that he was more than the man who held her captive.
Next there were the disagreements to be mediated, and Duncan showed himself to be a stern but fair man. She remembered someone telling her that Duncan had once been young and impulsive; that man had grown up. He listened to both sides of a disagreement, consulted his gentlemen, and rendered as fair a verdict as he could. Not everyone left happy, she realized, but the respect he was granted was obvious.
She wondered what would happen if she brought her own complaint to the assembly. Who would punish the chief for kidnapping an innocent woman? But she was a Duff, after all, an enemy.
Would he be treated as his father had, as if his verdict was divine, granted from generations of chiefs before him? Didn’t Duncan see he was doing the same thing as his father had done? He was taking the punishment of her father into his own hands, and didn’t care who was hurt as he pursued his vengeance. His blindness both frustrated and exasperated her.
At that point, their gazes chanced to meet. She stiffened. Did he see the irony of what he did here?
She went back outside, leaving him to his lofty position and its responsibilities—including the ones he betrayed.
Out in the dirt lane, she was so preoccupied, she ran right into Finn when the girl went running by.
Cat caught her by the shoulders. “Finn? What—”
“Get back here, ye devil!” someone called.
Wearing a grin, Finn shrugged off Cat and kept running. Cat realized that she was following Logan, and that Muriel and Maeve were bearing down on them behind an elderly woman who was red-faced with anger.
“Catherine,” Muriel called with relief. “Take Alice, will ye?”
