The Love Slave by Bertrice Small Read Free Book Online

he continued, Regan considered. Still, she had not enjoyed the coupling between them at all. The MacFhearghuis stared down at her and nodded, satisfied. She felt no embarrassment—only a deep coldness suffusing her entire body. If this was lovemaking, her twin was more than welcome to it. Nothing about it appealed to her.
    “Gie Donald a beating for me,” Ian told his father. “The bastard lied to us.”
    “So the little nun suggested when I questioned her earlier,” Alasdair Ferguson replied. “Well, then, I’m satisfied the lassie was pure. I’ll leave ye to yer pleasures, lad. Hae a good night.”
    Regan thought that Ian would never sleep. Twice more he probed her sore body. Then at last he fell to snoring deeply, to her everlasting relief. When she was certain he would not awaken, she slipped from the bed and crept to the door, taking a moment to gather up her chemise. Putting it on, she carefully slipped the bolt and fled the room. Hurrying down the stairs, she entered the room below, where her twin sat watching over their mother.
    Gruoch rose quickly to her feet as her sister slipped into the chamber. “Are ye all right?” she whispered.
    “Barely,” Regan answered. “He hurt me dreadfully,” she told Gruoch, swiftly recounting the past two hours in the nuptial bed with Ian Ferguson. “Ye’d best hurry back upstairs before he awakens. I hae nae doubt he’ll want to rut wi’ his
wee wifie
yet again. He seems to be as lusty as a stallion, sister mine.”
    The twins quickly exchanged clothing once more, Gruoch smearing chicken’s blood upon the insides of her thighs before pulling her chemise down over them. “Thank ye,” she said simply, and then was gone.
    Regan quietly washed away the evidence of her lost virtue and pulled her own clothing back on. She sat down, wincing as her small bottom made contact with the wooden bench. She yet ached.
    “
Regan
.” Her mother’s voice cut into her thoughts.
    Regan leaned over, looking into Sorcha’s face. “Aye?”
    Her mother reached out and took the girl’s hand in hers. “Yer a good lassie,” she said. Then Sorcha MacDuff died.
    Regan was astounded, but by what, she was not certain. Her mother’s death had been so simple. Her last words had not been. She had longed her whole life for a kind word from Sorcha MacDuff, but all of her mother’s thoughts and dreams and kind words had always been for Gruoch. Yet the last words she had spoken had been for her.
    “Ahh, Mam,” was all she could say, “God speed yer poor soul home.”
    Then freeing herself from her mother’s death grip, Regan MacDuff went downstairs into the hall to tell the MacFhearghuis that her mother was dead. He nodded, and she thought she saw the glitter of a tear in his blue eyes.
    “I’ll get old Bridie to help me prepare her, my lord,” Regan said. “Let Gruoch and her bridegroom sleep in peace tonight.”
    “Aye,” he agreed. Nothing more.
    They buried Sorcha MacDuff the following day next to her husband on the hillside overlooking the loch. The day was gray and rainy. The pipes wailed MacDuff’s Lament as the shrouded body was lowered into its grave. After Torcull MacDuff’s death, Sorcha had become the heart of the clan. Now that heart had ceased to beat. The heiress of Ben MacDui was wed to a Ferguson, and within a month’s time her sister would be sent south and across the breadth of Scotland into a convent, never more to be seen. The mourning cries of the MacDuffs were prolonged, and genuine.
    Jamie MacDuff sought out Regan. “And how did Ian Ferguson find his bride?” he demanded slyly.
    “
A virgin
,” she responded softly, “and should any say otherwise, they would invite a dirk to the heart,
cousin
,” she warned him.
    “Marry me,” he said, surprising her.
    “Why? So ye can pretend I’m Gruoch, Jamie? Nay, I think ye insult me. Dinna be a fool, laddie. Let it be now,” she advised.
    “Yer Torcull MacDuff’s daughter,” he said. “There are many