The Spitfire Read Free Page B

of a hedge that encircled the building. They would be secluded in the ditch that paralleled that hedge, and sure enough, there he found them.
    Old Una was clutching little Geordie to her shriveled bosom in an effort to keep him from crying and betraying their presence. Meg and Mary clung to each other for solace, their eyes wide with their fright.
    “It will be all right, bairns,” he told them as he joined them, crouching low in the hidey-hole. “The English will soon be gone, but ye must remain as quiet as wee mousies hiding from the cat.”
    “Will they kill us if they find us, Robbie?” little Mary quavered.
    “Aye,” he said honestly. It was best to be direct in a situation like this. Their very lives depended upon it.
    At the sound of Eufemia’s voice, he turned his gaze back to the front of the house, which he could see quite clearly from his vantage point just at one of its corners. Sir Jasper Keane was half dragging her from the house while she struggled and cursed him with all the pent-up violence in her soul. As they passed over the threshold, the laird saw flames leaping behind the two figures. He groaned softly with despair. The damned bastard had fired Culcairn House!
    “ Jasper! Jasper! Don’t do this to me!” Eufemia was desperately endeavoring to escape her lover’s grasp.
    The Englishman laughed, and his hand wrapped itself even more tightly in her dark red hair, forcing her face to his. He kissed her hard, and then said loudly, “I told you, Eufemia, that you would be mine only as long as you pleased me. You no longer please me, my border bitch.”
    “Then let me go,” she pleaded, and Robert Hamilton could see the terror in his sister’s face. Her dark blue eyes were almost rolling in her head like some panicked animal.
    “ Let you go? To the Earl of Dunmor? Nay! If you will not be mine, then by God, you will not be his either! I don’t want you as my whore any longer, Eufemia, but it is my right to decide your fate.” He yanked her about so that she faced his troop of men, and using his other hand, he tore her clothes from her, rendering her naked.
    “Dinna look,” Robert Hamilton commanded his younger sisters, knowing what was about to transpire, and feeling a deep dread in the pit of his stomach.
    “ Tis poor pickings we’ll have this night, my lads,” Sir Jasper Keane told his followers, “but you may want this pretty piece of goods for your amusement. She’s hot and juicy, and I’ve already primed her well, so that she’s ready for the taking. Have her!” And he brutally shoved Eufemia forward.
    She stumbled, but somehow managed to keep her balance. The ring of English borderers about her closed even as she looked wildly about for a chance to elude them. Belatedly her hands moved to cover her bosom and the triangle between her thighs. The flames from the burning house threw dappled shadows over her fair, white body, and but for the crackle of the fire, the night was suddenly, for a brief moment, deathly silent. Then a large borderer moved forward from the circle of men, loosening his engorged male organ free of his breeches as he came toward her. Eufemia shrieked and whirled wildly about, seeking an avenue of escape, but there was none.
    “Come on, lassie,” the man crooned, moving stealthily onward. “Johnny will fuck you nicely.” He reached out his hand to her. Eufemia screamed again and made to bolt, but two other men jumped forward, wrestling her to the ground even as the one who called himself Johnny stepped to stand over Eufemia and then smilingly fell to his knees to straddle her.

    Robert Hamilton shuddered with the violence of the memory. Now haunted and hollow-eyed he looked up at the Earl of Dunmor. “In a moment’s time all discipline was gone, and they violently savaged her. Before my very eyes, and those of my sisters, they ravished her again, and again, and again. Like Meg, I shall hear Eufemia’s screams until my dying day! I shall never forgive