The Spitfire (2 page)

“He likes my hair loose, Rob, and so if I would appeal to his softer side, ‘tis best I leave it,” she said. Then she hurried from the room.

The laird as quickly exited his sister’s chamber, and hurrying to his own, shut the door firmly, bolting it behind him. Moving to the fireplace wall, he felt along the molding. A small door, well hidden in the paneling, sprang open. Stepping through, the laird closed the door behind him, and slipped down the interior staircase within the wall. He knew the way well and had no need of a torch. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he stood quietly, peering through a small opening cleverly concealed in the wall from anyone on the other side of it. He saw the door to the library open and Eufemia enter the room.

Sir Jasper Keane strode masterfully across the room and, sweeping her into his arms, kissed her fiercely.

Eufemia pushed him away impatiently. “Dinna touch me,” she said coldly. “Ye disgust me, Jasper.”

“And you fascinate me, you border bitch!” he answered her.

“Why are ye here? My brother is most angry wi’ me, and ye’ve frightened the bairns wi’ all yer men,” she told him.

“You know why I’m here, Eufemia. I’ve come to take you back to England. You have not yet formally celebrated your betrothal to this earl of yours. ‘Twill be no shame to him if you cry off now. You know I love you. At least as much as I can love any woman,” he amended.

“Are ye asking me to be yer wife, then, Jasper?” Eufemia Hamilton somehow managed to keep the eagerness out of her voice, although it trembled just slightly.

Sir Jasper Keane took the girl into his arms. His mouth traveled over her face as he left a trail of hot kisses upon her cool skin. A hand slid into Eufemia’s bodice to fondle a plump breast, tweaking at the nipple until it was rigid and puckered with her unspoken desire for him. For a minute Eufemia Hamilton sagged against her lover, enjoying the moment, but she stiffened sharply when he said softly, his tongue licking at the shell of her ear as he spoke, “You know my position, my pretty pet. I shall have an English heiress to wife, and I shall have a Scots border bitch for my mistress.”

“Nae this border bitch,” she told him furiously. “Ye know
my
position in this matter, Jasper. I shall be yer wife, or I shall be the wife of the Earl of Dunmor, and quit of ye! Can some milk and water English virgin love ye like this?” she demanded, pulling his head down and kissing him passionately.

He returned her kisses with equal fervor, and then raising his head, he looked down into her eyes and told her, “I’m taking you back to England with me tonight, Eufemia, and if your puppy of a brother attempts to stop me, I shall kill him. You were never meant to be any man’s wife, my pet, for there is too much fire and wickedness in you. You will be my mistress, my leman, for all of England to see, for I shall be proud to flaunt your beauty before the world itself. Why would you want to be my wife? My wife must be a brood mare. I will not love her. Her sole function will be to birth healthy children for me. No one will care about her, Eufemia, but you they will gaze after with envy, some even daring to imagine what it would be like to ride between your milky thighs. Nay, my pet, what I offer you is far better than to be a mere wife.” Eufemia’s dark eyes smoldered dangerously at his words.

“
And for how long will I be yer leman, my lord? Will our union last forever?”

He grinned back at her. “You are a practical woman, Eufemia,” he said. “You will be my mistress as long as it pleases me you be.”

“
And afterward, Jasper?”

“If you still retain your beauty,” he said bluntly, “I expect you can find another protector.”

She pulled from his embrace, and raising clenched fists, began to beat him about the head and chest, all the while shrieking her outrage. “Yer a bastard, Jasper Keane! An English bastard! Am I some peasant wench that ye would dare to offer me such a life? I am a woman of a reputable family, a member of the lower nobility! I am meant to be wedded, not just bedded! I will nae go wi’ ye! Ye canna make me!” She slapped him as hard as she could.

Laughing, he caught her hand and placed a burning kiss upon the palm. “I do not doubt your family’s repute, my pet, nor even your nobility, but you are a whore nonetheless, Eufemia. Some women are born to it, and you are one of them.”

They continued to argue back and forth, and suspecting that they would be at it for a while longer, Robert Hamilton hurried back to his bedchamber. Undoing the bolt, he slipped into the upper hall and, moving swiftly, checked all the rooms to be certain that they were empty of their inhabitants. He was relieved to find that he, Eufemia, and Sir Jasper were undoubtedly the only ones left in the house. The servants and his younger siblings were safely away. Returning to his hiding place in the wall, he discovered that his sister’s anger had not abated even in the slightest.

“For God’s sake, Eufemia,” he heard Sir Jasper say, “you are the only woman for whom I’ve ever felt such passion! Is that not enough for you?”

“Passion?”
Eufemia Hamilton laughed almost hysterically. “Ye know nothing of passion, Jasper. Yer naught but a rutting boar compared to the Earl of Dunmor!” She laughed again at the look of surprise upon Sir Jasper Keane’s face. “Aye,” she said, confirming his suspicions. “He’s already bedded me, and his stallion’s rod makes yer own tool look like the puny worm it is!” she lied boldly, attempting to rouse his jealousy.

The Englishman’s visage darkened and, his mouth drawing back into a snarl of rage that overflowed with his rising anger, he slapped Eufemia so hard that her teeth rattled. “You claim you are meant to be a wife, you border bitch, but I tell you that you have the cold, black heart of a born whore!” he shouted.

“Yer a jealous fool, Jasper Keane,” Eufemia mocked him. “Ye hae nae ever really pleased me. Ye hae the manhood of a feeble bairn, and so I’ll tell the whole world if ye steal me away and dinna make me yer wife!”

“If I displease you so, my pet, why would you want to wed me instead of your fine earl?” he demanded cleverly.

“Because I love ye, God help me!” Eufemia admitted.

“Then you will come away with me this night!” he said, his anger softened by her declaration, and the belief that he had the upper hand over her. If she continued to resist him, she would regret it.

“Nay, I will not,” she replied stubbornly.

“Aye, you will, my pet,” he replied firmly, and if Eufemia Hamilton did not see the determination in her lover’s eyes, her brother in his hiding place did. “You are mine, Eufemia, and I will allow no one, even King Jamie’s bastard brother of Dunmor to have what is mine until I am finished with it.” His eyes narrowed dangerously, and with a sudden viciousness, he knocked her to the floor, and falling upon her, pushed her skirts up to her waist with one hand while loosing his cock from his breeches with the other. “’Tis past time, my pet, that you re-acquainted yourself with my puny worm!”

Eufemia screeched like a scalded cat with the unexpectedness of his attack. She pummeled him with her knotted fists even as he thrust into her, but then her protests began to fade, her passions blossoming as the Englishman rode her. She began to moan with her own pleasure in the union, her fingers tearing open his shirt, her sharp nails raking down his back. He pleasured her thrice as he indulged his own lusts, which did not seem to be easily sated.

Robert Hamilton saw fear begin to enter his sister’s countenance, and silently he opened the hidden door to step into the library. She saw him, and her frantic eyes warned him away. The young laird hesitated. This was his sister for all her wickedness. The Englishman’s buttocks tightened and contracted with his efforts, and he began to roar loudly as he approached his own peak. Eufemia thrust her own hips up firmly to meet his violent downward motions.

“
Save the bairns!”
she cried out but a single time, and waved him away, praying her lover lost in his lusts would not comprehend her words.

Robert Hamilton hesitated, once again torn with his love for his elder sister despite everything.

“Quickly! Quickly!”
she urged him.

“Not yet, my border bitch,” Sir Jasper Keane growled, thinking that she spoke to him. “‘Tis the last time I intend fucking you, and by God, I’ll have my fill of you!” Redoubling his efforts, he began to shout once again, pumping her hard as he approached his crisis.

Hearing the Englishman’s words, Robert Hamilton withdrew as silently as he had entered. It would appear that SirJasper had finally accepted Eufemia’s decision, and when he had finished taking his pleasure of her, would withdraw with his men, leaving them in peace. Still, it would be better to remain hidden until the English had gone. He knew instinctively where his younger siblings would be concealed. The land about the house offered little cover to an escaping party of people, but there was a large, thick bramble 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 myself, my lord! I might have saved her earlier, but I did not. I crouched helplessly in a ditch while my elder sister was murdered before me. I could not help her. It was all I could do to soothe Meg and Mary, and to keep little Geordie from crying out, for he was terribly frightened.

“I was one. The English were many. The girls and old Una clung to me, begging me not to leave them. What was I to do? I could not sacrifice my younger sisters and brother to the brutality of those devils!
I
could not!
And when they had finished with Eufemia, they threw her naked body into the flames of our home. She was long dead by then, I am certain, for she had made no sound for several minutes before.

“Then the English took my horses and my cattle, and drove them off across the border. Despite my love for Eufemia—and I did love her for all her wild ways, my lord—none of this would have happened had my sister not been the whore that she was. Now ye know the truth of this matter.
The whole truth!”
the young laird concluded defiantly, looking up at the earl.

A deep silence prevailed for a long minute between the older and the younger man. Then Tavis Stewart put a comforting hand upon the laird’s shoulder. “‘Tis done then,” he said quietly. “Yer family and servants will come back wi’ me to Dunmor Castle, and there ye will stay until yer home can be rebuilt.” His voice was devoid of emotion. “Whatever else she was, Eufemia Hamilton was to have been my wife. I’ll nae let her family suffer. The English, in murdering yer sister, have besmirched the honor of the Stewarts of Dunmor, as well as the Hamiltons of Culcairn. As the Earl of Dunmor it is my right to wreak my vengeance upon this little English lordling. We’ll hae our revenge, laddie, that I promise ye!”