Love Wild and Fair by Bertrice Small Read Free Book Online

bitch?”
    “Aye, brother. She’s a naughty puss, but I think she’ll behave now.”
    “Good! Tell the guests that the bride caught the measles and gave them to the groom. That should stop a scandal.”
    “Patrick, my son! Be gentle wi Catriona,” begged Meg. “She’s young and innocent, and Fiona has hurt her terribly wi her wicked lies.”
    “Madame,” said Patrick coldly, “Catriona has been sharing my bed for almost two weeks now. I have treated her wi gentleness, and never forced her. She wouldna even face me wi her accusations, but assumed me guilty, and fled. I will nae forgie her lack of trust. I shall find her and bring her back, and wed wi her as planned. But before I do that I shall take a leaf from Adam’s book, and beat her bottom so she may not sit for a week!”
    Several minutes later he galloped across the drawbridge with More-Leslie. It was a cold night, but the moon lit their way. They rode first to Greyhaven, for Patrick suspected that Cat had fled home. She was not there. They turned their horses to Sithean, but there, too, they met with disappointment They stayed the night and the following morning began to comb the district.
    But Cat had apparently vanished from the earth. No one had seen her.
    St. Valentine’s Day came, and Adam Leslie wed his widowed cousin, Lady Stewart The guests chuckled when they heard the earl and his bride-to-be were suffering from the measles. Wasn’t it lucky, they laughed, that the Leslies had another betrothed couple ready and waiting so the festivities would not go to waste.
    It was a wonderful party, but the new Lady Leslie looked tired and subdued. Fiona, looking out at her guests from the head table, wondered what they would think if she told them the reason for her pallor. For the last three nights she had been tied to a chair and forced to watch Adam making love to a very pretty and obviously insatiable peasant wench. She had tried closing her eyes, but the sounds from the bed were too tantalizing. She watched fascinated, as Adam’s enormous cock plunged in and out of the writhing girl. As her own desire grew, she suffered severe pain of both a mental and physical nature, and by last night she thought she would go mad.
    This morning, however, he had told her that her punishment was over. Fiona swore never to cause her cousin hurt again, and promised that when Cat was found she would apologize and tell her the truth. Adam smiled, satisfied. He knew how to handle his wench.
    But Cat couldn’t be found. February gave way to March and March to April before word came. Ellen, home in Crannog to see her parents, discovered her mistress living with them! Cat, fleeing Glenkirk, had gone directly to Ruth and Hugh More-Leslie. Ruth, now in her sixties, had immediately agreed to hide the girl. Hugh, retired and in his seventies, hadn’t been sure. But Ruth convinced him that her long dead mistress would have approved. Ellen was amazed.
    “Surely the neighbors are suspicious,” she said.
    “Why should they be?” said Ruth. “They never see her. She rides her Bana an hour each night for exercise, but other than that she never leaves the house.”
    “She canna stay here forever, mother. Did she tell ye why she ran away?”
    “Aye! That wicked Fiona! I knew when she was a child she would grow up bad.”
    “She did, mother. Very bad. So bad that she sent Mistress Cat off in this rage. What Fiona said, however, was a lie, and Mistress Cat was wrong to run off before asking my lord of Glenkirk to defend himself. He is hurt that she thought so little of him. Yet he loves her, and still wants to make her his wife.”
    “Well,” said Ruth, with the wisdom of her late mistress, “then we must arrange for him to find her. But not here.”
    “There’s A-Cuil, mother. Her grandmother, Jean Gordon, had it as part of her dowry, and now it belongs to Mistress Cat. It is small and secluded, set in the hills above Loch Sithean.”
    “How big, and in what