Page 85 of What a Scot Wants
“I dunnae need a Runner or a policeman today. This is between the two of us.”
Calder looked amused, inviting him inside the Spartan front room as he poured a drink, then offered one to Ronan.
“Is there laudanum in it?” Ronan asked, his throat constricting as the fury leaked back into him. “I hear that’s how ye subdue the women ye…wish to violate.” He couldn’t bring himself to say rape, though that was what the man had done.
Calder retracted the glass of whisky and, after a moment’s pause, laughed. “I see youarehere to accuse me of something.”
“I ken everything. Imogen told me. She told her parents, too.”
He had to block the images that entered his mind of a young Imogen’s distress as a man she’d trusted betrayed her. The helplessness and fear she had to have felt.
“She is merely desperate to make excuses for her actions the other evening in St Giles. I feel quite sorry for her, actually.” Calder sipped from the glass. “You know, they say people hurt those they love the most. I do believe Imogen’s attempt to discredit me is a display of her unswerving affection.”
Ronan had known the man was a liar, but now he could see the true sickness that filled him. Calder had used Imogen, harmed her, taken away her innocence by trickery and force, and he reveled in it.
“Ye’re a spineless degenerate who deserves to be put out of his misery.”
“And you have plans to do me in right here? Right now?” Calder laughed again, though there was a small glint of bloodlust in his eyes, as if he wanted Ronan to attempt it. “I didn’t touch her, you know.”
“You fed her laudanum, and she was unclothed.”
“She was crazed,” he said. “It was a mere drop to relax her. And a man’s entitled to see what he’s shackled the rest of his life to, isn’t he?”
Ronan felt his body tighten with fury. “Choose yer second, Calder. I’m calling ye out.”
Dueling might have been illegal, but it was still an unquestionable method of reparation. The challenge could not go unmet, not without inflicting a decisive blow to a man’s honor. And though Ronan knew Calder had none, the man was so desperate to be someone of consequence, wealth, and power that he couldn’t not agree.
Calder smiled thinly. “Agreed. Pistols. Tomorrow at Regent’s Park at dawn.”
Ronan knew the challenged party was allowed the choice of weapon and place, but Calder’s ready acceptance didn’t quite sit right. “Ye seem eager to die.”
The man’s smug grin vaporized. “I am simply impatient to be rid of you, Dunrannoch. With you gone, Imogen will soon realize the only man willing to have her now is me.”
The man was delusional.
“Ye’re going to be severely disappointed tomorrow, Calder. I’d see to yer affairs if I were ye.”
Before he could give in to the crushing urge to beat the bounder to a bloody pulp right there in the parlor, Ronan left. He told his driver to return to Dunrannoch House; he needed air, and the three-mile walk to his next destination would give him the opportunity to expunge some of the savage energy that had turned his muscles into what felt like stone.
By the time he’d reached Niall and Aisla’s home, he felt a little looser, though no less murderous. His youngest brother received him in the study.
“Who are ye planning to kill?” Niall asked the moment Ronan was shown in.
“How did ye ken?”
“The last time ye looked like that, our sister had been taken by Duncan Campbell,” Niall answered, pouring two whiskies. Ronan accepted this glass and tossed it back.
“Aye, I remember.”
Makenna had been abducted by an enemy to Maclaren. She’d been found unharmed, but Ronan had not known rage or fear like that could exist inside of him before then. Now, with Imogen, the same rage was nearly choking him, but the element of fear had been replaced with something else. The need for vengeance. Calder had to pay for what he’d done.
“I’m killing Silas Calder tomorrow in a duel. Ye’re to be my second, if ye agree.”
Niall sat behind his desk and gestured to the seat across from him. “I think ye should tell me what’s happened.”
Ronan sat and confided in his brother the reason behind his challenge to a duel. Aisla was not to know. No one was. If Imogen chose to tell her, that would be her decision. By the time he finished, powerless rage had replaced Niall’s composed expression. As Maclarens, they’d all been raised to respect and protect women, and the thought that any man could take such brutal advantage of a defenseless innocent was unconscionable. As a family, they’d dealt with their share of misfortune and horrors, but this…this kind of act was truly vile.
“I’ll no’ breathe a word,” Niall promised with a tight nod. Ronan could see the vehemence in his brother’s stare. He clearly wanted Calder maimed or dead as well.
