The Highlander Read Free

panicked, entreating stare to Dr. Rosenblatt, who quietly shuffled the papers in her file without even glancing down at them. “Don’t put me in there!”
    â€œYou’re being hysterical,” he said softly. “Which only proves to me the extent of your madness.”
    The nurses, one on either side of her now, dragged her by the arms. Once she was close enough, Mena kicked out at the tub with both feet, hoping to upset it. The sturdy tub didn’t move, but as Mena was not a small woman, her struggles were enough to free her from the grasp of the nurses.
    â€œWot’s this ’ere?” The cheerful voice of Mr. Leopold Burns could have brightened any room that he entered. But to the patients of Belle Glen Asylum, his arrival always brought darkness. The ogre-sized orderly was closer to his twenties than his forties, but an unfortunate potato-shaped nose and thinning blond hair belied his youth. “You’re no’ makin’ any trouble, are you, Lady Benchley?” A fist of dread squeezed Mena’s lungs as Nurse Schopf’s grip was traded for Mr. Burns’s. “Now let’s take those clothes off.”
    Mena fought them this time. She’d tried being prim and obedient. All her life, she’d been timid, pliant, and gentle, and it only served to produce the same result. At least this once, she was not a willing participant in her own humiliating tragedy.
    She struggled and jerked as the nurse’s deft fingers undid the buttons of her coarse frock, yanking it down her waist and over her hips and legs. She cried and pleaded, kicked and stomped when they ripped her chemise away—no one in an asylum bothered with a corset—exposing her breasts to Mr. Burns’s and Dr. Rosenblatt’s greedy eyes.
    Those eyes drank their fill, and Mena dimly wondered how the nurses, as women, could be a part of this obvious deviancy.
    The tears streaming down her cheeks were not only caused by humiliation and fear, but by the acrid, unbearable stench of Mr. Burns’s breath. He pulled her back against his body, and secured her in a bearlike grip under the guise of immobilizing her so the nurses could relieve her of her drawers. His hands groped and grasped painfully at her breasts, and he lowered his offensive mouth to press against her ear. “The more ya struggle, Countess Fire Quim, the harder it is to keep me ’ands proper.”
    â€œYour hands have never been proper,” she accused. The frigid air against her flesh told her she was fully naked now. She became less worried about that than the press of Mr. Burns’s growing arousal against her back.
    He squeezed her with his meaty arms, cutting off her breath. Sharp pain stabbed at her breasts, and a more worrisome twinge lanced her as she felt something like a rib shift in her side, stealing her ability to draw the breath to cry out.
    â€œWot senseless things these loonies say,” Mr. Burns tsked as he lifted her momentarily paralyzed form over the rim of the tub while each of her legs were secured by a nurse.
    Mena watched in horror as the ice water came at her slowly. At this juncture, she could do nothing but brace for the impact.
    The shards of ice hit her with the puncturing and sudden affliction of a cat’s sharp claw, evoking the reflex to snatch back the offended limb. Except her entire body suffered the sensation and when she breached from the original submersion, she was shocked to see that none of her skin had been perforated.
    Out of desperation, she flailed for the edge of the tub, her lungs emitting little spasms of shock that escaped her with desperate mewls. Dragging her naked body up, she managed to gain her feet and nearly hop back out of the tub before three sets of strong hands forced her back down.
    Her head went under along with the rest of her.
    And stayed.
    She thrashed and flailed at her captors, but their hands were everywhere, subduing her limbs. After a time, the