Wings of Morning Read Online Free Page A

desertion? It was a wounding the likes of which she hoped never to experience again.
    But experience it she had, but three months later, when word came that both of her parents had died of typhus. All good intentions aside, they had never returned for her. They had never even set out on the road back home, having died in some miserable, louse-infested lodging in Edinburgh.
    This time, Regan was inconsolable. Though but a child, she knew the truth of what had happened. Her beloved father and mother were gone, headed for a distant place she could never reach in this life. They had left her behind. They had rejected her. They didn’t love her.
    But neither had Regan found much comfort or love from her two caretakers. Roderick senior had been too busy trying to provide for his family to spare the grieving five-year-old much time. And his wife, for some reason still unknown to Regan, found a strangely sadistic pleasure in taunting her at every turn, accusing her of driving her parents away and, in the process, inadvertently causing their deaths. The cruel words, however, didn’t long suffice. And then the beatings began.
    Not that Clan Drummond, her father’s people, appeared to bear her any true sort of love either. Though at the time of her parents’ untimely demise Regan had been too young even to think about returning to her ancestral home, much less even care to do so, factions had soon risen within the peevish Drummond clan over who should or shouldn’t assume the now-vacant clan chieftainship. And, with several uncles to contend with—all of whom, for one reason or another, felt their claim was the most legitimate—no one had given much thought to a wee girl child’s own, even more valid, claim. No one had lifted any hue and cry, for that matter, that she should even be returned from the temporary—and presumably far safer—care of the MacLarens.
    In her heart of hearts, despite the brutality of Roddy and Walter’s stepmother, Regan knew she had always been far safer at Strathyre than in her own lands. It was why, over the years, she hadn’t ever seriously broached the matter of returning home. And it was why she gave it only passing consideration now, as she stood at Roddy’s grave, contemplating what path her life should next take.
    She was now a MacLaren and would live her life as one, until the day came when some other man would take her as his wife. She wasn’t a fool. Her only value lay in whatever future suitors saw in her. After all, having squandered the one opportunity to become impregnated with Roddy’s heir, Regan knew Walter would now inherit Strathyre and its lands.
    He could never wed her himself, though, if he even desired to do so. Highlanders were an independent lot and frequently ignored the laws and social strictures of their cousins to the far south. The taking of one’s widowed sister-in-law in marriage, however, wasn’t one custom easily discarded. Especially not when the Kirk itself also frowned on such a practice.
    For that reason alone, Regan had little worry Walter would ever consider her as a possible wife. Unfortunately, he also lacked the funds to put together sufficient dowry to entice any other potential husbands. Only her claim to the Drummond fortune would offer any hope for future suitors. If they were of a mind to go to war with her uncles over it.
    In the distance, thunder rumbled. Regan lifted her gaze to the pewter gray skies. Rain was in the offing, as it frequently was this time of year. Best they hie themselves home while they still could, or soon be trudging through a torrential downpour and the resulting mud.
    Not that Strathyre offered any promise of respite, Regan thought as the gathering finally began to disperse. Even on the sunniest of days, it was still a damp, dreary, rundown place. Once the seat of a mighty clan, Strathyre, perched on the shores of Loch Voil, was a superbly defensible tower house that had, in the last century, been additionally fortified