‘Co-dhiù,’
he said. ‘At least I don’t have to cross mountains to see you now.’
The anxiety vanished from Anne’s expression. A broad smile brightened her face. She laughed, put her arms round his neck, reaching up to kiss him.
‘There’s how fine you are to me,’ she declared.
Behind them, among the folk crushing to congratulate him, Aeneas watched his right-hand chief lift his bride off her feet and swing her joyfully around, his expression contained, unreadable.
Bagpipes droned, started up. Drinks were poured, the feasting began. Aeneas led Anne up to begin the dancing, his touch causing a shock of arousal, exciting her. He was strong and confident in his movements but light on his feet, and he wanted to be rocking their marriage bed not skipping the reel. She could see that in his eyes, as nakedly as he could read it in hers.
‘So,’ he said, half smiling. ‘You mean to stay, and were not just passing after all.’ He was teasing over her comment at the lakeside that day when Elizabeth fell in.
‘A gentleman wouldn’t remind a lady of her indiscretions,’ she said.
His hand pressed into the small of her back pulling her against him as he bent forwards and put his mouth close to her ear, his breath warm against her neck.
‘Except I am no gentleman, Lady M
c
Intosh,’ he said quietly, ‘as you will surely find out before long.’
A tremor ran through her. How she longed to know his body, to touch his skin and feel his hands on her, and how afraid she felt at the same time. He leant back, looked into her eyes.
‘Besides,’ he said, ‘it was your thrawnness that day made me realize I could marry no one else. A wife should have some fire in her.’
The dance changed at that point, into a progression. Aeneas spun her round and, when he should have let go, held on a second too long so she was late getting to her next partner, aroused, excited and laughing. Forbes took hold of her and, despite his years, skipped them back into step with the dance. The old judge was her stepmother’s uncle but an infrequent visitor to Invercauld.
‘It’s a wise man you have married, Lady M
c
Intosh,’ he said, as they swung round, ‘and a fine idea that you bring your own funds
with you. You’ll be putting them to good use, no doubt, keeping your new husband out of jail.’
Anne stopped dancing, the anticipation of bedding her husband draining from her.
‘Jail?’
Aeneas and MacGillivray were immediately beside her. Aeneas grabbed Forbes by his shirtfront as, around them, the dancing halted and the music faltered into silence.
‘Prison, is it?’ Aeneas thundered into the older man’s face. ‘Whoever you send to fetch me would come back to you in a box!’
Dirks were being drawn. Bristling clansmen surrounded them; the short swords classed as working knives were as lethal in their practised hands as any broadsword. Sweat stood out on Forbes’s face. He had misjudged the moment.
‘Prison won’t be necessary,’ he squeaked.
Aeneas released his grip on the judge. Forbes smoothed the creases from his shirt before continuing.
‘Your wife’s money will do instead.’
The intake of breath all around was audible. Murmurs ran through the crowd, passing on the word. Farquharsons pushed through to the front. They hadn’t impoverished themselves to benefit the M
c
Intoshes. MacGillivray glared at Aeneas.
‘So that was it.’
Anne stared at her husband. The tocher was her clan’s gift to ensure she was well provided for in her married life. He had no claim on it.
‘Aeneas, what is going on here?’
‘Nothing I can’t resolve,’ he assured her.
Around them, the Farquharsons grew more voluble. Threats were issued, more dirks drawn.
‘Of course, there is an alternative,’ Forbes said, drawing out a piece of paper from inside his coat. ‘Sign that land over to the bank.’ He presented the paper to Aeneas.
‘Our best farmland?’ Aeneas was stunned. ‘Without it, my clan will starve.’
‘We can always rent it back to you.’ Forbes shrugged.
‘Then it will work for you,’ Anne said, ‘and the clan will still starve.’
‘The court would grant it anyway,’ Forbes said. ‘Or there’s always cash.’
‘Nous verrons,’
Aeneas said. ‘We shall see.’ He jumped back up on to the platform. ‘We have a debt to pay,’ he called to his clan. ‘The bank wants our best land.’ A roar of refusal rose from the crowd. ‘Then would you pay with Farquharson money?’
‘No!’ his clan bellowed again. All around them, relieved Farquharsons slid their weapons back into belts.
‘But we can pay,’ Aeneas announced, ‘with service in the Black Watch!’
Voices rose in disbelief. The Black Watch was a new regiment raised to prevent a second Jacobite rising in the Highlands. Forbes had lobbied parliament to get it. Now it was used against France. Only clans loyal to King George would think of joining it. People looked at each other in horror. A stocky M
c
Intosh cottar stepped forward.
‘You ask us to fight for this government?’
His wife joined him. ‘We’ll not help the English rob and starve us,’ she shouted.
‘Or kill our allies!’ another shouted.
From the rear, a fourth called out. ‘What kind of chief would ask this?’
The atmosphere became volatile again.
‘It’s true,’ Aeneas agreed with his clan. ‘The Black Watch fights for the English against France. But while they’re gone, companies are needed to police the Highlands. And who better to do that than our Jacobite clans?’
A scrawny old woman with a pitchfork pushed to the front of the crowd.
‘We police ourselves,’ she spat out.
‘Then raise a company,’ Aeneas said, ‘and be paid for doing so.’
The clan was not convinced. It wasn’t forty years since Scotland’s
parliament had been bribed into union with England. Resented from the beginning, it had proved an unequal marriage. The clans suffered most, their tribal way of life eroded by new laws and taxes, their customs threatened by the encroaching English culture. Thirty years earlier, they had raised arms, determined to put their own King James back on the throne and set Scotland free. That rising failed, but hope was not destroyed. Now, despite the rumours, it seemed their new chief did not share that hope. Anger and dissent grew among them.
‘You might be a widow here before you’re a wife,’ Forbes whispered to Anne.
She gathered up her skirts and ran up the step to stand beside Aeneas.
‘This government beats us down at every turn,’ she called to the crowd. ‘They tax our crops, our beasts and any money we make in trade. They tax us for making our own ale and stop us shearing our sheep so that English wool-traders can grow fat. Now they would take your land. But if you join the Watch, why, you can take from them for a change! And by doing no more than you already do, keeping the Highland peace!’
The mutters turned to murmurs as people began to appreciate the irony of this.
‘Three meals a day, paid for by the English!’ Aeneas shouted.
The crowd laughed.
‘And a shilling each from the German Lairdie’s brat they call king!’ Anne added.
There was more laughter. The old woman waved her pitchfork.
‘I’ll go,’ she cried.
‘Only young men, Meg,’ Aeneas explained. ‘Fools that they are, they don’t want women.’
‘Sasannaich!’
Old Meg spat in the dirt.
The wife of the clansman who’d first objected pushed her oldest son forward.
‘Our Calum will go,’ she said.
‘And me.’ Another lad stepped up.
‘I will.’
‘Me too.’ Shouts came from everywhere.
Forbes was bemused. A M
c
Intosh contribution to the Black Watch was unexpected but acceptable, very acceptable given the prospect of rebellion. He could only declare himself satisfied. Aeneas grinned at Anne, swung her up into his arms, stepped down from the platform and, to enthusiastic roars of encouragement from their clans, carried her through the open doors into her new home.
It was the first time Anne had been inside Moy Hall, though she barely registered the long dining room or the wide square hall. What impressed her senses was the physical closeness of the man cradling her. In the swing of each step, his hard chest against her ribs, the back of his neck in the crook of her arm, the silkiness of that black hair brushing her fingers, the pressure of his arms on her back and thighs, how lightly he carried the weight of her.
‘I should show you round,’ he said, as he headed for the broad staircase, with no obvious intention of setting her down. From outside, the pipes picked up the interrupted reel, the dance resumed.
‘It will wait.’ She nuzzled into the curve of his neck to breathe the musky scent of him, brushing her lips against the smoothness of that skin, tasting the slight saltiness of it with her tongue.
‘Woman,’ he groaned, leaning his head into her a little, ‘we’ll never get beyond the stair.’
So he kissed her face, cheek, eyes, forehead, her hair, little kisses which she echoed, yet he never stumbled. At the top was a door, which he pushed open with his back, into a corridor with many doors. He carried her through the first to a wood-panelled bedroom bright with sunlight, threw his bonnet off, set her down. She had her mouth on his before her feet touched the ground, searching the warmth of his lips, for his tongue, arms round his neck, fingers tangled in his long hair, acutely conscious of his hands, one under her shoulder blades, the other in the small of her back, drawing her into him. It was a hungry kiss, fierce, their breath hot, exchanging, bodies clenched together, hands gripping and moving
against clothes till the need for skin became irresistible. She tugged his belt loose and it thudded to the floor, dirk with it. Unlike the pleated great plaid which would have fallen away from his body without a belt to hold it, the kilt did not.
‘Wait,’ he said, chest rising in deep breaths, stepping back to remove his sword and unpin the brooch from his plaid.
She stood, dazed with desire, watching his fingers undo buckles, kilt and plaid drop in a heap, tartan hose pushed off his feet, till he stood in his long shirt, paused, about to reach for her again.
‘I would see you without the shirt,’ she said.
In one sweep, it was over his head and he was naked before her, taut, muscular, his body perfectly beautifully male, the smoothness of relaxed muscle, his cock jutting out, firm, ready. She put the palm of her hand against his chest. Her eyes wanted to close, her limbs to give way, limp with desire while he’d be stronger with than without it, nature ensuring its intention. But she wanted to know this body that would be joined with hers in marriage, before sensation removed perception, so she walked around him, close, tracing fingers and mouth across his skin, smelling the scent of him as she pressed a kiss between his strong shoulders, lightly, and felt the muscles in his back quiver, the same quiver in his buttocks.
As she came round in front of him again, her fingertips touched a scar on the shoulder of his left arm, an old scar, white with age, that had been deep.
‘Before I learned not to drop my guard,’ he said, looking into her eyes.
Brown, his eyes were, the colour of peat, and the look in them made her want his mouth again, want to take him into her. But he saw the urge rise in her and shook his head.
‘Not yet,’ he said, put his hands on her shoulders, turned her round so her back was to him and began to undo the hooks that fastened her dress.
White petals from the rosebuds stitched into it scattered to the floor and fluttered across the room as her dress slid down. When she stepped out of it, he swept it up, threw it on to a chair. The
stays over her shift fastened at the front, so he turned her to face him. Unlacing them, his knuckles brushed her breasts. Her breath, through parted lips, came in small gasps.
When the stays were gone, she expected him to push the thin straps from her shoulders, to let the shift fall from between them. But he put a hand round her back, slid his right hand down to raise the hem of it, reached under to stroke her thigh, the curve of her hip, over her belly, pushing his fingers down into that springy hair and on, into the wet heat of her sex.
‘You’re ready to fuck,’ he murmured, thrusting in so that her knees buckled.
She pressed into him, gripping his shoulder to steady herself, reached for the weight of his erection with her other hand, but he stopped the touch, stepped back, his eyes blacker now, the light of the window behind him, the muted pipes changing smoothly from reel to strathspey, dancers whooping.
‘I would see you without the shift,’ he said, echoing her, his voice thick, and heavy without a smile in it.
A tremor ran through her belly. She slid the straps off her shoulders, shrugged off the silk, slithering, to the floor. Naked before his nakedness, her arms raised of their own accord, open for him. If he would not come to her now, the feeling banked in her would break into rage.
‘Let your hair loose.’
‘It will get in the way.’
‘Not in mine.’
Now she was angry. She swept the long plait round, tugged the white ribbon from it, the last rosebuds falling, ran her fingers through the coils to loosen them, threw it over her shoulder and shook her head. The weight of hair swung, tumbling down her back, over her breast, falling to her hips. She glared at him but, paused in that stilled, watchful energy, he didn’t seem to care. Then the heat of his skin was on hers, the strength of his arms holding, lifting as he put her and himself into their marriage bed, his body covering hers.
Even there, he seemed in no hurry to give himself to her, so
there was nothing to deny and then nothing she would deny. He knew, as she had not, that the skin between her fingers, and in the palm of her hands, was more sensitive to touch than her breasts; that words murmured against hot skin aroused as much as stroking. So she let go, and went with him. All he prevented was when her hands, or mouth, or his own urgency might husband him too soon.
It was a long, slow coupling until, finally, he held her when she cried out for him to, as she shuddered in the dissolution of pleasure. It was only then, in the washing away, that he moved into her again, slow strokes changing quickly to deep, hard thrusting. Clenched to him, she was consumed, not by her own pleasure now but by his.