There is one other thing that Gretna Green is known for, and those of you who travel or have means of communication may already have heard of it on this account. Gretna Green, dear readers, is known for being the Place of Secret Elopements. Alas, perhaps I have not put it as prettily as I might have done. I have been receiving a strict education for the past three months, since my marriage to the Duke, but I still do not have the most elegant way with words, and for that I apologise. But hark at me, getting ahead of myself again!
Gretna Green, being on the border between Scotland and England, is the first village that folk come to, when travelling up to Scotland from England. And let me tell you now, one thing about my brave, beautiful Scotland that I will always love, is how much more liberal its laws are compared to England. England may be many things, but liberal it most certainly is not.
One advantage of this, my most advised listener, is that when young lovers wishing to marry in England ask their parents to consent to the marriage, and they do not receive a blessing, they simply need to travel up to Scotland, just north of the border, and they can get married in Gretna Green, parents’ blessing or none! In fact, in Gretna Green, it is not even priests or chaplains that carry out a wedding. It is the blacksmith! And that is another of my father’s talents. He has married some five hundred young lovers now, during these past few years, and the very last marriage he carried out was my own!
But how and why the wedding came about… that is something I really must tell you now, for it will do me good to get it off my chest.
Chapter 8
The Duke tells me that I must learn to write better. He stands over me as I write this, tapping at the oak desk beside me, slapping me on the wrist when I make a mistake, or if he catches me looking off into the distance for longer than a few short moments. He insists that I must write my story out like this, not just to get it off my chest, but he tells me he would like to read it to me in full when I am done. He tells me our story is something special, and that he wants to be remembered of it often. I never argue with my Duke, so write it I must.
It was a Tuesday evening when my life in Gretna Green suddenly became unrecognisable. The Duke tells me I need to learn how to set the scene, to describe the sights and smells and sounds, so here we go… I was working in the King’s Arms. A warm, noisy, dirty little place, with freely flowing drinks and hearty dinners. The sort of place I am assured is exactly what gentlemen like.
Being only a humble blacksmith’s girl, I did not have a high and mighty role to play. In fact, my role at that country inn was this: I cleaned the outhouses, I served the gentlemen their drinks, and I cleaned the beds in the hotel room upstairs. That last part may sound simple to you, my friend, but believe me: cleaning out young lovers’ marital beds, after their first few nights as a marital couple, is quite an affair. My Duke wants me to describe the smells, so here we go… The smell of a room in which a young couple have done naught but copulate in for three nights on the trot is quite simply… rancid. It is a foul, fetid smell, a smell like old sheep’s cheese and my father’s skin, mixed in with sweat, salt, stewed meat…
My Duke made me stop writing a while just there. He took me to our chamber, where he made me recount the details of that smell to him in full while I… Well, you need not know what he made me do, or what he did to me, just yet. For you know not how our relationship works, and I do not want you to judge me ere I explain myself, dear reader.
The smell in those marital rooms, as fetid as it was, I must tell you, my listening friend, was quite, quite wonderful. I would lie back in the sheets, rub my face in the pillows, and, if I thought the landlady would not catch me, I would even allow myself to take a corner of the sheets and lift them up, under my heavy skirt… But I could not do this for long, as it was quite a job, as I say, to get the stench to disappear, before my landlady’s inspection, and I had no choice but to scrub out the stench with an old brush and soapy water, until the next young couple would come to stay and create a new smell, subtly different but equally as rancid, all over again.
I hope you did not mind me dwelling that, generous reader. The Duke told me to recount that part in laborious details. There are some things he likes to hear about, over and over again.
The Tuesday evening in question, though, I did not have rooms to clean. I was working behind the bar, pouring out grog for the gentlemen of the village, including my father, who had been up since dawn working on a new set of horseshoes for an esteemed visitor, who was due to visit the inn that very evening, in order to collect his commission, before heading up north to the Highlands, on a hunting spree with his companions. My father had told me at breakfast time that morning that although his customer was English, he was the richest gentleman he’d ever had the pleasure to work for, so if when came to the King’s Arms that evening, while I was at work, I was to be nothing but sweetness and light to him.
And I can assure you, I ended up being far more than that.
Chapter 9
It must have been about a quarter past seven when my father’s customer entered the King’s Arms. I could tell it was he immediately, for he was the most exquisitely dressed gentleman I had ever seen . He had braces, and a jacket, and shining buckles upon his shoes! He even wore rings upon his fingers, like the king! I almost felt that I should bow to him when he walked up to the bar to order his drink, but my limbs were trembling so atrociously that I could not even move, let alone attempt something so complex as a bow.
‘Sir,’ I managed to stutter eventually. ‘Can ah get you somethin’ tae drink?’ I cursed myself for my strong, thick Scots accent, wishing I’d spent more time listening to the voices of the soft-spoken young English men and women who had come here to elope. They always sounded so much more elegant, so much more refined than I.
The stranger looked down at me – he was a very tall man and I am less than five foot, just a tiny wee creature – and the expression in his eyes was cold, almost disgusted. ‘Get me a brandy, wench,’ he said, with such authority, and such a deep resonance in his voice that at first, I must admit that I could barely understand him!
After a moment’s puzzlement, I nodded, realizing what he was after, and I fetched him the brandy, pouring him an extra large glass, not out of generosity, but because my fingers were shaking so wildly. Then I passed his drink to him and he paused a moment before he took it from me. I could see his eyes trailing over my ripped, brown dress, the very same dress which I had been wearing since I was fifteen, and, truth be told, was really far too small for me now. My breasts had shot out in the last couple of years, and almost hung out of my bodice. The people of the village had known me since I was a wee girl, and I think they barely noticed me, but seeing him seeing me made me suddenly aware of myself all over again. My hands shot to my cleavage, trying to cover up some of my buxom breast in vain.
The stranger smiled. ‘One is a dirty little wench, isn’t one?’ he said, and then he took the drink and drained it in one.
As the heat from the brandy poured down the stranger’s throat, I felt as though it were I who had drunk the brandy, as I too felt a heat spread up my neck, across my throat and my cheeks, causing a fierce red blush to glow ablaze across my pale, freckled skin.
‘I’ll wager one is a lot of fun between the sheets,’ said the stranger, firmly but quietly, so no-one else in the inn could hear.
I thought about the smell of the sheets I’d changed in the inn just yesterday, and felt a softening in the spot between my legs. What effect was this stranger having upon me? I was terrified of him. Maybe that’s all it was! He was scaring me, making my heart race with fear, not lust! At that moment, I felt I had to change the subject.
‘Sir,’ I stammered. ‘My father is here…’ Why couldn’t I finish my sentence? What was I trying to say to him? That my father was here, so his flirtatious remark was inappropriate? No, I wasn’t saying that! I became embarrassed that he’d interpret it that way, and hurriedly blurted out: ‘My father is th
e blacksmith.’
The stranger kept his eyes on me, raised his eyebrows, and then turned, slowly.
My father was already scrambling out of his chair by the far wall, wiping his hands on his soot-black apron, leaping forwards to try to shake hands with the esteemed gentleman. The Duke stood back and kept his arms at his sides, unwilling to take part in any bodily contact with my old man.
‘Sir,’ my father stammered, in much the same way I had just done. ‘Yer horseshoes are ready for inspection an’ collection.’ I cringed at my father’s accent, even thicker than my own.
The stranger watched my father pick up a cloth package from a nearby table, and then unwrap them before him. I felt a gleam of pride as I saw my father’s handiwork being opened out for display. He was a gifted man, my father, and to see him with a customer as grand as this standing before him, inspecting his work, felt truly marvellous!
The stranger picked up each of the four horseshoes, one by one, examining the detail on every shoe, with no expression and no clue as to whether or not he was pleased or displeased, and then, eventually, he said to my father: ‘I’ll take them. And I’ll take your daughter too.’
Chapter 10
‘Ye’ll flippin’ well do what?’ my father asked, his eyes widened and mouth agape. He cast me a sideways glance, and I shook my head fiercely, horrified at the words which had just escaped from the gentleman’s mouth.
‘I am the Duke of Leamington,’ said the stranger, rising a few inches taller all of a sudden, his spine straightening out, so that he towered over my father. ‘And I am not in the habit of being turned down when I make requests.’ He turned around, to look back at me, his eyes sliding down to my breasts, which seemed to swell under his gaze, and then he looked at my long, sturdy legs, poking out of the bottom of my short skirt, and back up to my pale cheeks, which had by now turned white as a ghost. ‘Yes,’ said the Duke, turning back to my father. ‘I’ll take her.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said my father, taking off his cap and rubbing his head, perplexed. The motion of his fingers on his head caused plumes of soot to fall down to the floor, and he quickly replaced his cap. For my father, it was a gesture of respect to keep his cap firmly atop his head, and the soot under the cap. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated, ‘but I jus’ don’t understand what it is you want.’
The Duke cleared his throat, and took a step toward my father. ‘I wish to purchase her,’ he said. ‘Your girl there. I wish to pay for these shoes, and to pay for her. How much?’
By this time, it seemed that everyone in the entire inn had stopped their conversation, and all eyes were now fixed on me. And then on my father. And then back to me.
‘Ah’m not sure that ah can…’ my father began.
But at that moment, the Duke removed a small, cloth purse from within the depths of his jacket, and began to take out not coins, but notes! Notes! Can you believe? And not just a couple of pound notes – oh no! They were proper, printed, bank-issued five pound notes. And he counted them out on the table for my father to see. He had twenty of them!
‘This is all the money that I have with me at present,’ said the Duke, collecting the money he had counted out and putting it back into his purse. ‘One hundred pounds.’
My father’s eyes were near popping out of his skull.
‘But if you will consent to my marrying her, then I shall gladly send you another hundred once I am safely back in Leamington with my new bride.’
Upon hearing the word ‘marriage’, I could see something change in my father.
‘So you want to marry ‘er?’ he asked, smiling. ‘Well, well. That’s a different story. Ah didnae realise yer intentions were honourable, sir! Now if ye’ll jus’ let me ‘ave another look at that money…’
I could see that my father had been excited at the prospect of receiving all those pound notes. And who could blame him? Two hundred pounds! It was more money than most of the people in this inn would see in their entire lives. My father would never have to work another day again!
But sell me? To a perfect stranger! My father would never do that! Surely…
The Duke handed my father his purse. ‘You can count it out yourself, you miserable wretch. But you must give me what I want.’
My father – satisfied that the money was real, and that there was as much of it there as he had already once seen counted out before him – licked his lips, looked at me, then back at the Duke. ‘You have got yersel’ a deal. And I’ll tell you what?’ he beamed. ‘I’ll marry the two of you together myself. I’ll do it first thing in the morning if you like, sir!’
‘Excellent,’ said the Duke, finally deigning to shake hands with my father. ‘There’ll be one condition, though, before I consent to marry her. I require that you fashion me another article, old chap,’ he said, pointing to the horseshoes in his hands. ‘A pair of manacles, to fit the lady’s wrists.’
My father, completely under the spell of the money between his fingertips, simply nodded. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll make ‘em tight and secure.’
Chapter 11
That night, I struggled to complete my evening’s work at the inn, for my hands were trembling so fiercely. I was a terrible mixture of horrified with my father, and terrified about this obnoxious, arrogant stranger, who had deemed me a suitable match for his hand in marriage! Why me? What did he want with me, a poor country girl? I dared not think about it.
When the clock struck half past eleven, and I was meant to be clearing the tankards from the table, the landlady, Georgina, grabbed me by the arm, so firmly that it hurt, and I was sure it would leave a red mark in time for my wedding. ‘You had better leave early tonight, Cathy,’ she said to me, ‘for you ‘ave a lot to do to prepare yourself for tomorrow, don’t you, bonny lass?’ She laughed, a sort of shrill, cackling, that I had never heard escape her miserable lips before, and then she thrust her elbow hard into my side and bade me leave my place of work, most probably, I assumed, for the last time ever.
I nodded, and bowed, and took my leave, and rushed home, desperately fatigued with worry, and hoping to lie straight down in my bed, and escape to the oblivion of my dreams.
When I reached the front gate of our cottage, I noticed that there was a candle lit in my father’s shed, and then I heard the bash of his anvil. That word the Duke had used… the commission he had given my father… manacles. I knew not what they were, or what such things were used for, but my father had been making them for the past three hours, and showed no signs of relenting. I crept past his she,d hoping not to be seen, but my father must have seen my shadow, and called out: ‘Cathy MacBride! Yer’d better not go to bed! Yer’d better get yerser’ in yon bath in the kitchen. I’ve laid it out an’ put hot water in it, like yer ma used to do, so get in it and I’ll be in in a minute to see yer doin’ as I say!’
I was so dismayed by this I could have wept. Take a bath at almost midnight? I wanted to sleep! Normally, my father insisted that baths were nothing but ‘a new way of lying in your own filth’, but tonight he was insisting on it!
I entered the kitchen and saw the old tin bath on the tiles, lit up by two small candles, both of them almost run down to the wicks, and I envisioned the terrible prospect that the lights might go out while I was in the bath, leaving me sitting in a tub on the kitchen slabs, stark naked!
I removed my dress, heaving a sigh of relief as my huge bosoms fell out of their tight constraints, and then I removed my underskirts, too. Then I took my aching feet out of my shoes and dipped a toe into the bath. It was warm, at least, as my father had said, and he had even left the soap bar beside the bath, so that I might clean myself properly.
I lowered my body all the way in, my eyes widening a little with shock as the hot water engulfed my precious little sex, which, I feared, was going to have to deal with more than just hot water tomorrow. Having never known my mother, I knew nothing about sex, except what I smelt on the sheets at the inn, and what I heard in the night
, when my father brought home women from the fields sometimes, and I could hear them rutting for around ten minutes, with shrieks and gasps and moans, and then I’d hear my father snoring and the sound of a disgruntled woman, pacing the creaky floorboards above my head.
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