He tilted his head, a touch of amusement lighting his eyes. So he realized she was a little drunk. It would make no difference. He would please her or he would leave this room impotently cast aside.
‘You’re also a captain,’ she reminded him.
‘Are you about to pull rank on me?’ His eyes grew more amused.
‘I’m simply pointing out that you are duty bound to me, in several ways.’
‘That’s true.’
‘And if I make a request, you must comply.’ Did he realize how attractive he was when he looked so seriously at her, how sensuously his hair fell against his face, how weak her legs had become?
‘You only have to ask,’ he said, his voice darkening a tone.
‘Then I insist that you pleasure me.’ There, she’d said it. ‘Now,’ she added, for good measure.
Perhaps there was the tiniest flicker in his eyes, but his gaze did not waver. Instead, he moved towards her, stopped in front of her, took the goblet of wine from her hand and set it down on the dressing table. A tremor of fright ran through her, parting her lips, the intake of breath faster. How vulnerable she suddenly was, to mockery. He put his hands up to her shoulders, tugged loose the ribbons that tied her shift. With the slightest of sighs, it slid over her body to the floor around her feet. Now he broke the contact with her eyes, glancing down at her naked breasts, her belly, her thighs. It seemed a long time before he returned her gaze again. When he did, and his eyes met hers, he unbuckled his belt and let his plaid fall away with its own weight so he stood before her equally naked but for his long linen shirt.
‘The pleasure, Colonel,’ he said, ‘will be mine.’
He swung her up into his arms then and lifted her, as easily and gently as if she were a butterfly, round on to the bed. Almost before she was aware of the cold silk cover warming under her own skin heat, he had pulled off his shirt and straddled her, the sudden weight of him on the bed, his arms either side of her shoulders. She was pinned between those arms, the blood heat of him against her. His chest pressed on to her breasts, his mouth covered her own, his tongue sought hers.
The risk of rejection fled. This was her marriage bed, and all
the intimacy it had held returned, familiar, erotic, secure. How desperately she wanted him now, arching up against his strength and hardness, returning his kisses, the murmured words of love and longing. Her hands sought the taut muscles in his arms, his back, his buttocks, just to know him again. She kissed his mouth, his eyes, his ears, the round curve of his shoulder, breathed in the musky scent of him, buried her face in the warmth of his neck.
His deep, dark voice in her ear spoke of love and desire and the ache of wanting, breath hot against her skin, his mouth and hands touching and caressing her face, arms, breasts. When she reached for, touched and stroked his erection, he moved away to pleasure her first, so she gave herself up to sensation. If there was one part of her he didn’t touch or stroke or kiss or nip lightly with his teeth, she couldn’t have said which it was. It was a learning re-learned, an agony of love and strange to be this passive in it, to allow adoration, the worship of a man for his woman. She moved when he moved her, turned when he turned her, parted her thighs when he put the slightest pressure between.
He slid his fingers into her, stroking till she was so wet with desire she thought she might come just from wanting, but then he moved his head closer between her thighs, tasting her with his tongue, teasing her so gently. Effortlessly, he held her tormented, breaking off to kiss her belly, to lick and stroke her thighs, then coming back, time and again, with his tongue caressing her so tenderly till she was half-crazed, more than half-crazed, become mindless, and the tide of sensate tension burst down through her, shuddering and flooding her trembling flesh, as she cried out for him, over and over and over, falling off the edge of the world to that place where nothing was but feeling. He had moved to hold her, his face pressed into her belly, his arms holding her tight, tightly.
‘Anne,
a ghràidh
,’ she heard him murmur, as her chest heaved and her breath came back into deep slowing gasps, the awareness of skin and flesh and limbs returning and with it, the ache of desire in her cunt, to be full of him, now, more than ever, to be joined with him, a wife ready to be husbanded. He moved back up the bed to lie on his side next her, running the warm palm of his hand
lightly over her tingling skin as if to smooth out the fading tremors from her flesh.
‘Now that you are pleasured,’ he said, his voice soft, heavy, his eyes deep, dark and serious in the candlelight, ‘I have something to ask.’
How could he think asking was required when she ached to have him inside her, his hard maleness thrusting into her, to own him as husband as he gave himself wholly up to her just as she had lost herself to him. Reaching up, she put her hand behind his neck, to pull him down to her.
‘Oh, my love,’ she said, pressing closer, her mouth at his shoulder, ‘whatever you want of me.’ She slid her hand across his chest, down against the shudder that ran up through his abdomen, letting her fingers find his hard, swollen cock. If he wanted surrender to her touch, fucking could wait. Exciting him first would be a deeper pleasure. ‘However you want loved.’ Her lips brushed his heated skin. ‘I would do anything to please you.’
He swung himself off the bed, stood and pulled his shirt on over his head.
‘Then, if you will,’ he said, brisk and emotionless, ‘I left some letters in my study that I’d like to get back to.’
She was sure her mouth fell open. For sure she stared at him in disbelief, then she leapt off the bed, dragged the quilted silk round her body to cover her nakedness and barged past him to the door, which she flung wide open.
‘Will! Will!’ she screamed down the stairs, then she spun round, glaring at her husband, who stood watching her with that infuriating half-smile on his face. ‘How dare you!’
‘You’re as good as your word then?’ he said, raising an eyebrow.
Will barged in through the door. ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, seeing only the two of them.
‘No, everything is not all right!’ Anne spat out. ‘Take the captain back to the cellar. Now!’
Will stared, bemused. Anne couldn’t contain herself. She barged past Aeneas again, going for the pistols in her bedside drawer.
‘No, don’t bother,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll shoot him here.’ She grabbed one pistol and spun round.
‘I think we’d better go now, Chief,’ Will said, hauling Aeneas by the shirt. Aeneas ducked and scooped up his plaid as they left.
Anne had the pistol aimed as they vanished out the door, her hand shaking, knowing if she fired, she might hit the wrong man. She ran back to the door.
‘And bring Donald,’ she shouted after them. ‘Get him out of bed, and bring him here to me at once!’ She slammed the door shut, threw the pistol on the bed and herself after it, and wept.
Elizabeth arrived before Donald, wakened by the shouting. She wrapped her arms round her sister, trying to comfort.
‘He humiliates me,’ Anne sobbed through her tears and frustration. ‘He just humiliates me.’
Alone in the cellar, Aeneas wrapped his plaid around him and sat down heavily on the bunk he’d been sleeping in. He put his head in his hands and groaned. His testicles ached but his heart ached worse. What the hell had he done? He wrapped his arms round himself to keep out the cold and rocked to ease the pain in his groin. What a bloody fool he was, to let pride carry that through, when it was the last thing his body or his feelings wanted to do. Twice now, twice, he’d been driven to create pain where love should have been restored.
He got up and paced about. If he wasn’t so wildly crazy with love for her, if he didn’t want her half so much, it would have been so easy just to fuck and forget all the rest. So he wanted her to know what it was to be rejected, what it meant to be torn apart in the heart of marriage, what it felt like to have your union turned into the common currency of lust. What an arsehole, he was. He kicked the wine rack, yelling as the bottles rattled, his toe stubbed. Now he hobbled back and forth, wincing more. What an absolute fool.
The door opened above him. Light and feet descended the stair. He hoped it was Anne. He hoped he’d have time to say sorry before she shot him. She shouldn’t have to live not knowing he’d take it
back if he could, that if he could live those minutes again, he’d do things quite differently. He hoped she’d shoot him in the head, blow his brains out. It was Donald who came down, carrying a lantern and laden with tools.
‘I’m to chain you,’ he said. ‘Long enough so you can reach the chamber pot. Short enough so you can’t get the wine.’ He put the tools and lantern down. ‘Sorry, Chief,’ he said. ‘Not my idea. I’m sure she’ll come round, given time.’
‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it!’
Cumberland put down his knife, wiped his chin with a napkin and turned to glare at the interruption. It was General Hawley who barged in through the tent flap.
‘If it’s the clap from camp followers,’ the Duke snarled, ‘you should think better than interrupt my breakfast with it.’ They had moved out of Aberdeen, advancing towards Inverness.
‘No, no.’ Hawley was too excited to take the hint. ‘What you’ve been looking for.’ He unrolled the map he carried on the table, pushing Cumberland’s plate aside in his eagerness. ‘There,’ he said, jabbing a finger.
Cumberland frowned and peered down at the cartography.
‘It’s moorland, quite high.’
‘Yes!’ Hawley agreed, stabbing his finger again. ‘Boxed in with these walls, here and here. And wet. Boggy, in fact, across this part.’
‘So,’ Cumberland said, seeing the intent, ‘if we set up here –’ he pointed ‘– is it firm enough for the guns? We need the artillery.’
‘Dry across there.’ Hawley swept his hand over the area. A one-handed beggar from Aberdeen’s cruel streets provided the information. The man, Dùghall, had dribbled hatred for the clan whose lands bordered the site. ‘And the best part, right on the witch’s doorstep. Their Colonel Anne,’ he spat out, ‘will have a ringside view.’
‘You got this from the turn of a screw?’ Cumberland stared at him, certain he heard the rattle of bones from the general’s skinny
frame. The man was more obnoxious gleeful than he was spiteful.
‘Oiled with gold,’ Hawley leered, ‘the currency of deceit.’ The beggar had cost little. But his new informer commanded a high price. He stabbed the indicated wetland. ‘They won’t charge through that. My life on it.’
Cumberland pulled the napkin from his collar, threw it on the table.
‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘They certainly won’t.’ His voice rose angrily. ‘Nor will George Murray be fool enough to set his forces up like sitting ducks with their wings plucked just so we can shoot them down!’
‘Ah,’ said Hawley, rocking back on his heels, his mouth spreading in a smile that was like a slash wounding his bony face, ‘that’s where it gets better, and better.’
‘Have you lost your mind, sir?’ George Murray glared at the Prince. ‘This ground is useless for Highland warriors.’ They had moved out of Inverness the day before, knowing Cumberland was not far off, and taken residence in Culloden House. The old judge, Forbes, who owned it, had fled Inverness with Lord Louden.
‘It’s flat, open, and we are protected on both flanks by these walls, here and here,’ the Prince said, indicating the dry-stone enclosures on the map.
‘But wet in winter.’ MacGillivray frowned. ‘There will be no purchase underfoot.’
‘Not at this height above the sea,’ O’sullivan disagreed.
‘We could throw down those dry-stone walls first,’ Lovat offered.
‘Open it up.’ Balmerino nodded.
‘And expose our flanks?’ O’sullivan questioned.
‘Better exposed than boxed in,’ Lord George snapped at him. ‘Sir –’ he turned to the Prince ‘– I advise that you forgo this field. Our forces in the north need more time to get here. Cross the Nairn. The ground will suit us better and another day’s delay will let Cluny’s force rejoin us from the south.’
‘Always you counsel for delay, Lord George,’ the Prince smiled. ‘Your last cost us London. We will not trust you in this. I will command our next engagement. O’sullivan chose the ground, and I agree.’
A ripple of shock ran round the war council.
‘Lord George gave us Prestonpans and Falkirk,’ Margaret Johnstone said.
‘Mais oui – ’
the Prince gazed at her ‘– the counsel of women. Well, Lady Ogilvie, this should appeal to your female sensibilities. My cousin celebrates his birthday today. Let him party while he may. Tomorrow, he will have our belated gift.’ He stabbed the map with his forefinger. ‘Here is where we fight.’ He scanned the group. ‘If I am to be alone and unsupported by my troops, so be it. But, tomorrow, we make our stand.’
‘And an end to a bad affair!’ George Murray declared.
Elizabeth sat alone in the dining room, eating dinner. The food, leftovers from the party, seemed tasteless. Whatever Aeneas intended, he had ruined everything for her. She had tried to prise the key from Jessie, to go down to the cellar and berate him, but Jessie would not give it up this time. Before finally falling asleep, Anne had ordered no visitors and short rations for her husband. She was still asleep, exhausted from the long day and its disturbing, emotional ending.
There were raised voices from the kitchen now, Will and Jessie, then another man’s. The door from the kitchens opened. Jessie ushered in the stranger. It was the boy with one arm who’d danced for most of yesterday.
‘Sure Robbie can’t see Anne?’ Jessie asked.
‘I have to,’ the boy said. ‘MacGillivray said I had to.’ He drew a note from inside his plaid. ‘I’m to give her this.’
‘I’ll deal with it, Jessie,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Go make a pot of tea. I’ll take it up shortly.’ When Jessie was out of the room and the door shut, she looked at the lad. ‘Let me see the note.’
‘I’m to give it personal to Colonel Anne,’ he resisted.
‘She’s not well,’ Elizabeth assured him. ‘I’m her sister, and very close to Chief MacGillivray. If you give it to me, I’ll take it up.’
Robbie handed it over, though he hovered.