The Love Slave Read Free Page A

Gruoch.”
    He shook his head at her words. “Yer a hard woman, Sorcha MacDuff,” he told her. “Very well, I’ll take Donald, Aed, and Giric as well. They’re all old enough to be separated from ye. Ye’ll keep Indulf, Culen, and the new bairn for the time being.” He quaffed down the wine in his cup, and the servant by his side hurriedly refilled it. “ ’Tis about Gruoch I’ve come, Sorcha. Surely her flow has come upon her by now. She celebrated her thirteenth birthday last December, and ’tis now April. We hae a marriage to consummate. Ian is twenty-three, and more than ready for a mate. He’s populating the whole damned district wi’ his bastards, woman. He needs his wife!”
    “Ye’d take my lass away so soon?” Sorcha began to weep in a genuine show of emotion. “Dinna take her, my lord.
Not yet
.”
    “In the name of all the saints, woman,” he said angrily, for he hated a crying woman, “she’s nae going away from ye! She and Ian will live here at Ben MacDui for the time being. That way ye’ll be wi’ her when she spawns her first bairn nine months after the wedding. I may nae hae experience wi’ daughters, butI know a lass needs her mam at a time like that. Hush yer howling, Sorcha, and answer me. Is Gruoch’s flow upon her now, or nae?”
    “Only just this month,” she said slowly, although both Gruoch and her sister had begun their woman’s flow the previous autumn. They had kept it a secret in order to have more time, but now it mattered no longer, Sorcha thought to herself. She was to finally have her revenge after all these years.
    “Then let us hae the wedding!” the MacFhearghuis replied with enthusiasm. “ ’Tis what I’ve waited for all these years, woman!”
    “Ye canna hae a wedding just because ye want a wedding,” Sorcha told him coyly. “We hae preparations to make, my lord.”
    “Ye’ve had thirteen years for those preparations, Sorcha MacDuff,” he answered. “Today be the twentieth day of the month of April. Our children will wed in seven days’ time.” He turned to his son. “Ian! What think ye? Ye’ll be a married man in another few days at long last. She’s grown into a pretty wench. Yer a lucky young fellow!”
    “Aye, Da,” Ian Ferguson answered his father dutifully. He was an attractive man with russet hair and blue eyes.
    “Where is Gruoch?” Alasdair Ferguson demanded. He peered about the hall, but only his children were in evidence.
    Sorcha shrugged. “ ’Tis spring,” she said by way of explanation.
    “Donald Ferguson!” the MacFhearghuis called to the eldest of his and Sorcha MacDuff’s sons. “To me, laddie!”
    The boy, who had been wrestling with his younger brothers, Aed and Giric, scrambled to his feet and ran to stand before his sire. Like all of Alasdair MacDuff’s sons, he was russet-haired. “Aye, Da?”
    “Ye and Sine and the other two will come home wi’ me today,” the older man said. “Does that please ye, laddie?”
    The boy’s face broke into a broad smile. “Aye, Da!”
    “Do ye know where yer sister Gruoch is?” the MacFhearghuis continued. “I would speak wi’ her.”
    “Aye, Da, I know where Gruoch is,” Donald replied with asly glance at his mother, but Sorcha’s threatening look was enough to guarantee his silence. “Shall I run and fetch her for ye, Da?”
    “Aye, laddie, go and do that,” his father told him. As Donald ran off, he turned to Sorcha MacDuff. “He’s a good laddie, woman. Ye hae done well wi’ him and the others, even if ye hae no mother love for any of my offspring. Yer a foolish woman, I’m thinking.”
    “Think what ye will, my lord,” she answered him calmly. “From the first moment I saw her, Gruoch became my sole reason for being. I need none other. I want no other.”
    He shook his head at her. He knew he was a hard man, but he dearly loved all of his children. How could he not? They were his flesh. Well, from now on all the bairns Sorcha bore him would come to