Highlander's Forbidden Love: Only love can heal the scars of the past...

by Faris, Fiona

  The wee girl grunted and nodded.

  “And I’ll have the same,” Duncan added. “And is it too early for a cup of fresh milk?”

  The lassie shook her head.

  “That’s where the mistress is the now: outby, milking the cow.”

  “Then it will be nice and warm,” Duncan said with another smile. “Ask her to fetch us two cups when she comes to speak to us about a room.”

  Without another word, the girl birled on her heel and went off to fulfill their order. Elizabeth and Duncan sat down, facing each other, at one of the rough wooden tables.

  “It looks a clean enough establishment,” Elizabeth remarked, “notwithstanding yesterday’s straw.”

  “It will serve us fine. It’s quiet, but not too far from the dock. I just hope we can agree on terms with the landlady; we only have the two horses to trade.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t end up in tonight’s stew.” Elizabeth giggled.

  Presently, the girl came back with their pease-brose, closely followed by her mistress bearing two cups of foaming milk. She froze, and her jaw dropped, as she saw who was sitting at her table.

  “Maister Duncan.” She gasped. “Lady Elizabeth.”

  “Mairi!” Duncan cried in utter amazement.

  Mairi Cullen stood before them, as large as life, her eyes as wide as millstones, her mouth gaping like a drowning fish.

  “What…? How…?” Duncan spluttered.

  Mairi slowly dropped onto a stool and looked from one to the other of them, her voice failing her. The serving lass lingered, with the bowls of brose still in her hands.

  “Away and see to the other customers, Annie,” Mairi finally said.

  “How do you come to be here, Mairi?” Elizabeth asked, looking almost as shocked as Mairi herself did.

  “The siller you gave me, maister, after my man was killed… I used it to buy the inn here.”

  Duncan laughed a laugh still hollow with disbelief.

  “And out of all the inns and lodging houses we could have walked into, we walked into yours?” He turned to Elizabeth. “I detect the hand of Providence here.”

  “Perhaps,” Mairi said, a small smile twitching the corners of her mouth. “But maybe it’s no’ that strange. This was the first inn you came to when you came into Aberdon, wasn’t it?”

  Elizabeth and Duncan exchanged a look.

  “Aye, I suppose it was,” Duncan confirmed.

  “Well, it was the first I came upon too. The innkeeper’s wife telt me her man was looking to sell the place, and I had the siller in the bottom o’ my creel, so… that was that! I’m now the mistress of the Seagait Inn.”

  “Well,” Duncan said, “however we came to meet, we’re well-met indeed. We’re on the run, Mairi, and in need of a room to lie low in until the boat that will take us out of the country arrives. Do you have sic a room for us?”

  “I do that,” Mairi returned decisively, bringing her hand down flat on the table, as if to signify that a deal had been struck.

  “We’ve no silver to pay you with, Mairi,” Duncan warned, “but you’re welcome to the horses that are tied up in the street.”

  “You’ve gi’en me siller enough, Maister Duncan, though it wouldn’t do any harm to get rid of the horses. There’s a butcher up the street a way who might take them in payment for what I owe him for this month’s meat. There’s no telling that they might be recognized. I take it you stole them from Slains and that it’s the Slains men who are looking for you.”

  “I’m no horse thief, Mairi,” Duncan said in mock affront. “It was Elizabeth here that stole them, the wee lowland tinker that she is.”

  Mairi and Duncan laughed, while Elizabeth swatted his arm with her hand.

  “You’re ay welcome in my house,” Mairi said warmly as she stood up from the table. “I’ll away and make up a bed for you and see to the horses. You eat your brose and drink your milk. If there is anything else you want, just ask the lassie.”

  The couple exchanged bright smiles. It seemed their luck was changing.

  But would it hold?

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Aberdon

  The sun was well on the road to its zenith by the time Gilbert Hay’s troops rode over the Brig o’ Balgownie and into the town of Aberdon. The troop was twenty strong and led by Matthew Fitt. A similar troop had been dispatched to Peter’s Head, under James Robertson, while Gilbert himself had led the troop into the Grampians as a mark of respect to the Earl of Mar, on whose land his men were trespassing.

  The troop left their horses under guard on the common green on the other side of the bridge from the quayside and dispersed into the warren of vennels and wynds to conduct their inquiries. Matthew himself, with two of his men, worked his way along the quayside, speaking to the boat masters and fishermen who stood idly around waiting for the tide to turn and carry their vessels out to sea. He asked if any had set eyes on the two fugitives, a powerful young man and a redheaded lass, but none could report that he had done so. Leaving instructions that an alarum was to be raised if either of the two approached them for passage, Matthew and his men took to the streets above the quayside to continue with their search.

  Soon, the whole town knew of the runaways and of the Earl’s wishes in respect of them.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Duncan and Elizabeth had been ensconced in a small room high in the back of the three-story inn, while Annie’s wee brother, Taog, was dispatched to the quayside to watch for the arrival of the Frenchman.

  Elizabeth soon grew weary of looking at the wall of the tenement building that backed on to the Seagait Inn. If she stood on tiptoe and peered down, she could also see the byre and midden in the small courtyard-close below. The scraping of the hens and the crowing of the cock as self-proclaimed king of the midden distracted her for a short while, but she soon tired of them too. What she would not give for a walk along the cliffs above Cruden Bay, or up onto the fells along the old drove road.

  “We cannot go out?” She sighed at Duncan, who sat on the bed with his back to the wall.

  “We cannot go out,” Duncan confirmed, looking up from the coin he was rolling across his knuckles.

  “I feel I will die if I have to stay cooped up in this room. How long, did you say, before the French trader puts into port?”

  “No more than a few days,” Duncan replied for the umpteenth time. “And you will surely die if you’re spotted in the town. The Hays will have put a price on your pretty little head, which the Earl will surely have lopped from your shoulders for complicity in treason.”

  “Don’t say that! Lady Margaret would not allow it.”

  “Lady Margaret would not have a say in the matter, not Sir Gilbert for that matter. You would be brought before a panel of Sir Gilbert’s peers. It would be they who decide your guilt or innocence and they who would pronounce sentence. This would be to ensure the impartiality of the king’s justice. Sir Gilbert could not be trusted to be impartial in respect of you, and therefore the judgment would be taken out of his hands.”

  “Oh, I will go mad!”

  Duncan smiled, then shifted to the edge of the bed. He reached out and grasped Elizabeth’s hand and pulled her onto his lap.

  “It is only for a few days, three at the most,” he said, rubbing the flat of her tummy with his hand and nuzzling her hair, which she had left loose to dry after rinsing it in the basin Mairi had brought her to bathe from.

  She reached up and cupped the side of his face with her palm.

  “And are we going to spend those three days making love?”

  “I can think of worse ways to pass the time.” Duncan chuckled.

  “Would you not grow weary of me?”

  “Never!”

  She raised her other hand to cup the other side of his face and pulled it down towards her own. Their lips met, and he enfolded her in his arms. Her tongue slipped between his lips, searching for his own. They met and swirled around each other, as her fingers slipped upw
ard to run themselves through his hair. His hands slid up the curve of her back and clutched her shoulders. He pulled her back from him and moved his hands around to her breasts, and then upward to the laces at the neck of her bodice.

  She began to fumble with the lacing at the front of his shirt. Loosening them, she plunged her hands beneath the cool linen fabric and ran them over the hard muscles of his chest, flicking her thumb over his nipples at the end of each passionate stroke.

  He pulled the neck of her bodice aside and levered her hands out from his shirt so that he could peel it from his shoulders. She closed her eyes and arched her neck towards the ceiling as his hands closed over her exposed breasts and squeezed them firmly. She rose and straddled his knees, leaving enough room to pull down his hose.

  His member sprang out, and she reached deeper to cup his testicles in her hand. She rolled them gently between her fingers. He closed his eyes and groaned, releasing a breast to move his hand to her arm to hold her there. Then he coaxed her hand up onto the shaft of his member.

  She slid from his lap and knelt before him, pushing her hair away from her face. He lay back on the bed, his feet still on the floor, as she began to tug on his manhood in long slow strokes, pulling down firmly and rolling her palm over its engorged head, already slick with pre-cum, at the top of every upstroke. She felt his member swell and throb in her small fist. She could barely close her fingers around its girth. She placed a second hand above the first so that she could massage the head while she stroked the shaft. He whimpered and clutched fistfuls of the blankets that were rucked beneath him.

  Still holding him in both hands, she leaned forward and stretched her lips over the swollen glands. She lapped at the hot salty head while she gently sucked. Her head began to bob, slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, then quicker and quicker as his body began to jerk and his head thrashed from side to side. He clamped his legs around her waist, clamping his heels across the small of her back. A low roar began to gurgle deep in his throat, she felt him swell as if his manhood was about to burst open like a seedpod, and she pulled her head away just in time to see the fountain of his white nectar spurt high into the air and cascade down over his belly and thighs.

  She pumped his member with her hands, as pulse after pulse of hot glit spat into the air, and she kept on pumping until it at last subsided with his strangled roar and his member lay spent in her fists.

  “Jesu!” He gasped, drawing in huge lungfuls of air.

  Duncan’s heart was hammering in his chest, his manhood was burning, and his testicles ached. But he had never felt happier or more relaxed. He felt as if he were sinking into the bed, that it was swallowing him up like an ocean.

  He raised his head and looked along the line of his heaving chest, to where she still knelt between his legs. Her head was bowed, her shoulders stooped, her hair fallen over her face once again like a thick auburn curtain. Her hand was buried beneath the rumpled skirts of her gown, her mouth was open, her eyes half-closed. She was rubbing herself.

  He unrolled from the bed.

  “Here, let me,” he insisted, embarrassed by his selfishness in wallowing in the aftermath of his own orgasm while leaving her unsatisfied.

  He swept her up in his arms and laid her down on the bed where he had lain, her hips balanced on the edge of the thin straw mattress. He drew her gown down over her thighs and let it slip to the floor. He lifted her slim legs and slipped his shoulders beneath them and buried his face in her mound, nuzzling the light downy red hair with his nose.

  He took the outer lips of her vulva between his lips. They were already engorged and wet, and she tasted divine. He stroked the length of her with his tongue, over and over, as she closed her thighs against his head and plunged her fingers into his hair. His hands squeezed and stroked her slender hips, while his tongue probed deeper and deeper into the heart of her flower, like a bee hungry for pollen.

  She began to mewl like a kitten and her back arched, as she thrust her groin harder into his face. He dragged his nails through the hair on her mound, then held her waist as he brought his tongue to her swollen nub. His lips closed over her clitoris, and he flicked at it rapidly with his tongue.

  She sobbed as her body was racked by tidal surges of pleasure. She found it almost unbearable, and she swooned in and out of consciousness, each wave of blackness sparkling with bright pinpoints of light, the blinding whiteness that succeeded each faint crisscrossed by jagged black shards of lighting.

  Slowly, the crescendo abated, and she fell limp and still sobbing into a trembling stillness. Duncan climbed onto the bed beside her, and she rolled over to cling to his chest. For a while, they just lay there and listened to one another breathing.

  Both caught themselves wishing that the boat might never come and that they might stay in that room forever.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Meldrum

  The Hill of Barra

  By noon, Gilbert had concluded that he was on a fool’s errand. None of the settlements through which they had passed had reported any sighting of a man and a woman on horseback, and by the time his troop rode into Meldrum he was convinced that the fugitives were not heading west. He hoped that either James or Matthew would be having more luck in picking up the scent. He resolved to call a halt at Meldrum, and after allowing the men and horses to rest and replenish themselves, return to the coast and disperse his party among those of his lieutenants to continue the search of the ports.

  While his men rested, Gilbert decided to ride out to the nearby Hill of Barra, the site of the battle at which, twelve years earlier, King Robert had finally broken the backs of the Comyns and consolidated his kingship. It was the victory that sparked the subsequent Harrying of Buchan, a violent act of destruction at least equal to, if not greater than, some of the excesses practiced elsewhere by the English, and the bloody excesses of those days still unsettled Gilbert’s conscience and sat ill with his deep-set values of chivalry.

  As Gilbert arrived at the point on the road where it ran between Barra Hill and the marshes of the Lochter Burn, the memory of the battle rose vividly in his mind. He saw again the clansmen clash on the muddy, uneven ground, heard the shrill call of the war cries and the clash of metal against metal and the dull thump of metal against wooden targe.

  He dismounted, and leaving his horse to graze the soft turf between the spretts at the edge of the bog, he climbed the hill to the massive chair-shaped rock that sat just below the summit, the so-called ‘Bruce’s Seat’. It was on that rock that the Bruce had sat to direct the battle, too ill to lead it from his giant charger in the field.

  He climbed onto the rock, and where his beloved liege had sat, rehearsed the history that had brought them to that place, the place that had shaped his destiny, that had made him the man he had become.

  In February of 1306, the Bruce and his supporters had murdered John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, also known as the Red Comyn, before the altar of the Greyfriars Church in Dumfries. Comyn had been a nephew of the former king, John Balliol, and the Bruce’s rival for the throne. His murder, and the Bruce’s subsequent seizure of the crown, meant that his extensive network of family and associates had come to regard the Bruce as an enemy. Chief among those enemies had been Comyn's cousin and namesake, John Comyn, Earl of Buchan.

  One by one, King Robert had confronted his rivals, beginning with the Balliol party in Galloway. From there, he had moved through the English-held central lowlands, making his way by the western route in a year-long campaign through Argyllshire and the Great Glen towards Inverness and Formartine in the northeast, into the territory held by the Comyn. Gathering strength and support as he went, the Bruce had under his command some 3,000 men when he arrived in Formartine. The Comyns were saved only when the Bruce had been overtaken by illness, which kept him out of action for a considerable time, during which much of his army had melted away, leaving him with no more than about 700 men by the time spring came around.

  Comyn had tried to take advan
tage of the situation by attacking the king's camp at Slioch, but these attacks had been repulsed. The king’s lieutenants, including Gilbert, had decided to shift camp to Strathbogie, transporting the king there on a litter.

  In May of 1308, the Bruce’s lieutenants made camp at Inverurie. The Comyn had gathered his forces, ready to attack the Bruce the following day, making their camp at Meldrum, to the northeast of Bruce. At dawn, David, Lord of Brechin, made a surprise dawn attack on the Bruce's camp. His men had galloped over the bridge on the River Urie at Balhalgardy, right into the streets of Inverurie. Taken completely unprepared, the Bruce's sentries had been quickly cut down; those who survived took refuge in the nearby castle.

  It was then that occurred the example of courage that had inspired Gilbert for the rest of his life and which had given to his devotion to the Bruce a dimension of near-religious awe. The Bruce, desperately ill, and many feared, near death, had risen from his bed and prepared a counterattack.