A Kiss for a Highlander (16 page)

“You are right, as always. I fear as well that the prince is being deliberately provided with misleading intelligence, and our friend Edwin’s words seem to confirm that. I cannot believe that Cumberland’s force is as small as has been reported by the men who call themselves our spies. Cumberland is a wily general, he is not a fool. He will not have come here so ill-prepared. I am afraid there are double agents at work, but our leaders will not acknowledge it.” Jack, although sharing his friend’s annoyance, was content to remain in his seat.

Fraser paused, frowning down into the fire. When he raised his head, there was a new determination in his expression. It was not in his nature to remain idle and allow others to decide his fate. “Then I will provide the prince with new intelligence. ’Tis tired I am of sitting around a table, listening to speculation. I will see Cumberland’s force for myself, my Lord Jack. And I’ll do it this very night.”

“What do you propose?”

“I’ll take a small party of my best men out to scout around Cumberland’s camp, count his men and bring back any information we can about the true nature of his force. Aye, and if we can do him any damage in the process, then so we will. Are ye with me?” Fraser asked.

“Can you doubt it? Let us prepare at once,” Jack said, rising to his feet.

The castle had bustled into life as the men prepared for the night mission. Martha did her best to blend back into the shadows, trying to cope with these new emotions.
The discovery that I love him is so new
, she thought sadly.
I am still learning to manage the intensity of that feeling, while keeping it hidden. Must I also now add into the mix the fear of losing him?

She was making her way along the corridor to her bedchamber when, to her surprise, Fraser strode toward her. Heedless of who else might be around, he pushed her hard up against the wall, no gentleness in his actions.

“I need ye woeful bad right now, lass.” He groaned the words into her lips.

“Then take me.” Something in their relationship had changed after the night of the clan gathering. He might have been the one administering the chastisement, but they both knew he had admitted—without resorting to words—how much he needed her too.

He laughed, shaking his head regretfully. “We must be away within the half hour. I’ve no time to even get my boots off.”

“Leave them on.” Her eyes challenged him. She knew he liked this side of her. The fact that she could look so prim and proper, yet say something so brazen, drove him instantly into a frenzy. If she was honest, she liked this side of her too. Although she had only just discovered it.

Fraser moved slightly away from her, and her breath caught in disappointment until he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, driving the air from her lungs. When they reached her bedchamber, he kicked the door closed behind him before dropping her onto the bed. Fraser gripped the backs of her calves and pulled her forcefully toward him so that the back of her head slammed into the pillows. She was flat on her back, struggling to regain the ability breathe normally, as he hauled her skirts up to her waist. Parting her legs, he held her thighs open. Martha squeezed her eyes shut in delicious anticipation. He lowered his head and, without hesitation, began to feast on her, his tongue dipping, sliding, sucking and then piercing her until she was thrashing and calling out in ecstasy.

Roughly, Fraser flipped her over. She felt his hands and fingers roam across her buttocks and dip lower into the moisture of her opening. His fingers rubbed her repeatedly, causing hot waves of passion to crash and break over her. All the while, his lips nipped her shoulder and then up the slender length of her neck. She felt him fumble with his kilt to free himself of its folds. He gripped her hips hard and rubbed the head of his cock between her buttocks. Martha jerked insistently against him, and his hard shaft slid into her slippery wetness. Immediately, he began to thrust wildly. It was like having raw steel pumped into her body, fast and furiously, and Martha pushed back in time with his unrelenting rhythm. She clawed at the sheets, crying out. For more, not for mercy.

“More, is it?” Fraser’s voice was hoarse. “Aye, I can gi’ ye that.”

He pinned her in place beneath him, moving, gliding, slowing down so that she wanted to scream at him to stop tormenting her. In an effort to regain control, she squeezed her buttocks together, making it tighter for him as he shoved inch after rock-hard inch in and out of her. At the same time, she concentrated on keeping her thigh muscles clenched to hold herself in position. Their hips moved in time. Her whole world became heat and moisture, and then she felt everything give way as her body broke apart under the sweet torture.

“Don’t stop, Fraser. I don’t want you to ever stop,” she begged, before crying out and arching beneath him one final time, riding the waves of her orgasm as his cock pumped his own hot release deep inside her.

Together they lay silent, panting and spent. Gradually, Fraser eased himself out of her. “Took my pleasure of my lady with my boots on,” he murmured, turning his head so that he could kiss her lips long and sweetly. “You certainly know how to send your man into a stramash with a smile on his face, my crabbit one.”

He was gone before she had fully regained her breath, and it was only much later that she allowed herself a brief, poignant second to reflect. He had come to find her, seeking comfort in her arms, before he left. The words he used sent a little thrill through her.
He thought of me
. Then, after they were both spent, he had called her “his lady” and himself “her man”. Oh, they were only throwaway phrases he had used in the aftermath of passion, but how sweet it had been to hear them from his lips.

Martha spent that whole night curled up on the window seat in the library, watching the approach to the castle with eyes that ached from straining far into the darkness. Dawn was streaking the sky with silvery fingers when a small cavalcade of horses clattered up to the drawbridge, and her heart clenched in relief as she recognised the tall figure at their head. It was very well to tell herself she was content to remain in the background, to share his bed when he needed her. That didn’t help when all she wanted to do now was dash down the stairs and hurl herself into Fraser’s arms as he dismounted from his horse.

Chapter Sixteen

The news Fraser and his party of men brought back with them was not good. The royal army was camped at Nairn, some fourteen miles away from Culloden House. As Fraser had predicted, the prince’s intelligence was flawed. The Duke of Cumberland’s army greatly outnumbered the Jacobite forces. What Fraser didn’t know, and couldn’t begin to predict, was how the prince would use this new information.

Alone on the battlements high above the day-to-day noise of the castle, Fraser swung his claymore back and forth in a high arc. A brisk wind lifted the russet strands of his hair and plastered his loose linen shirt against his sweat-soaked flesh. He focused his mind on nothing except his footing, timing and balance. Each movement was powerful and practised. The blade hissed as it cut through the air around him. Finally, when the ache in his shoulder muscles and forearms became too much to bear, he lowered the mighty sword and leaned on the ramparts, gazing out across the loch. His gaze took in the treetops, the vast mountains that bordered the Great Glen and the silent, enigmatic water. His Scotland was a beautiful land, full of mystery and promise.

For so long his heart had refused to function. Now, at last, it was working perfectly once more. But was it too late? As much as Fraser wished the Hanoverian princes would return to their mountain schloss and leave Scotland in peace, so too did he now wish Bonnie Prince Charlie would go back to his wandering exile. Lachlan needed a master…and a mistress. Politics and warfare had no part to play in the future of his beloved, fragile highland home.

Angus, the young clansman who had derided and enraged Fraser during the highland games, had been right. All Fraser could think of was his Englishwoman. Even on the ride to Cumberland’s camp, Martha’s face had been before his eyes. He saw, with absolute clarity now, the reason why he had been so angry when she slipped away from the clan gathering. It wasn’t because she had defied him. It was because he wanted her at his side all the time. At the laird’s right hand at his table. There would be no giggling pack of wenches chasing him if his lady was on his arm. And he wanted no more of sneaking up the stairs to her chamber when the castle was suitably quiet. He wanted her in the laird’s bed. Where she belonged. His heart began to beat a little faster, and he swung restlessly on his heel, intent on seeking her out.

Jack’s voice intruded on his thoughts. “The prince has sent for us.”

Fraser was tempted to condemn the prince to the pit of hell. Grudgingly, he followed Jack down to the stables, and the two men rode away from Lachlan once more toward Culloden House. On their arrival, they imparted the information they had gleaned the night before to the prince and his generals. There followed a lengthy, and often acrimonious, discussion. Eventually an agreement was reached. There would be an attack that very night upon the king’s troops. When they returned to Lachlan, Fraser and Jack imparted the details of this plan to their men.

“Today is the Duke of Cumberland’s twenty-fifth birthday, and each of his men will be provided with a generous ration of spirits in celebration. Given that the prince can now be in no doubt of the superiority of the Hanoverian army, the Jacobite generals have come up with this plan to surprise the royal troops as they sleep off their excesses. Their camp lies some twelve miles distant on the western edge of the ridge above Nairn. The terrain is not good, and we undertake this campaign in darkness. Since we had no sleep last night, the plan now is for all of us to get some rest this afternoon before the long march.”

The castle had been silent all afternoon. Clad in her nightgown, with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, Martha sat by the window of her bedchamber. She had not slept. Staring out into the enveloping darkness of early evening, she reflected on how much her life had changed since a marauding highlander had forced his way into the old dower house a few short months ago. Restless and horribly afraid of what the coming hours would bring, she knew she must see Fraser once more before he left. Pausing in the corridor, she darted back into the shadows as Rosie stepped out of her own room. Glancing quickly around her, Rosie knocked on the door of Jack’s bedchamber. The door clicked open, and without a word, Jack gathered Rosie into his arms.

“You should not be here. You know you should not,” he said.

There was despair in his voice that echoed that in Martha’s heart. Martha watched as he drew Rosie inside. She was failing in her duty as Rosie’s chaperone, but this was no ordinary night.
How can I stand in their way this night, when their world, as well as mine, may come to an end on the morrow?

She continued on her way to the laird’s room, knocking then entering when he called out. He was standing by the window, looking out over the darkening loch just as she had been. When he saw who it was, he held his arms wide and Martha walked into them.

“I was thinking of you. Wishing for you.” He breathed the words into her mouth.

Because he was so much taller than she was, she had to stretch up on her toes to kiss him. With one arm, he swept her up higher so that her feet left the floor. As his lips rained a trail of soft kisses along the column of her neck, her head dropped back so that she would have fallen if he hadn’t kept hold of her. She clung tightly to his shoulders as his lips moved lower, pausing just a whisper above her nipples. Still holding her in the same position, he walked her to the bed and lowered her onto it.

Martha gazed up at him. Even at moments like this, she found it hard to believe this magnificent man was her lover. He snatched his shirt over his head and stood before her, naked from the waist up. She wanted to rake her fingers over every inch of his perfectly carved torso. Within seconds, he had done away with his kilt and joined her on the bed. Reaching for the hem of her nightgown, he helped her remove it so that she was naked as well. He moved up the bed toward her, stopping to swirl his tongue into her navel and to press a flurry of kisses onto her lower abdomen. His face was taut with need. His warm, hungry lips covered one nipple, and his hand dipped between her legs as his fingers slid inside her.

Martha gave a soft gasp, dropping back helplessly onto the pillows. She rode the twin sensations of his circling tongue and plunging fingers. Impatiently, Fraser worked his hips between her thighs, forcing her to part her legs ever wider to accommodate him. Loving the familiar feeling of his body on top of hers, she was reduced to soft whimpers and breathless purrs as she felt his hot, thick cock slowly entering her. Her body welcomed him, adapting to his size, stretching then contracting to pull him deeper with each stroke. Time stood still as he moved unhurriedly, assuredly, inside of her. Then he picked up the tempo. Lifting her hips, he held her open against him as he started to thrust harder.

“Let this night be about you. Tell me what you want.”

“This. You,” she moaned. “I ache for you, Fraser. Always.”

“Ah, dear God, Martha. What man could resist that?”

She felt him growing even harder. Withdrawing almost completely from her, he paused before delivering one spectacular thrust, thick and fast. His cock began to jerk inside her. She felt her own release gather, sending currents of pleasure shimmering through her bloodstream. Martha convulsed like a shooting star, exploding into tiny pinpoints of orgasmic shock that left her sobbing and shuddering with helpless, mindless pleasure. They lay cradled in each other’s arms, as they had done so many times before. But this night was different. All too soon, Fraser spoke the words neither of them wanted to hear.

“It is time.”

The other men were waiting below. They must leave now to march on the English encampment. Not caring who saw, Martha reached up a trembling hand to touch Fraser’s beloved face once more, imprinting his features on her memory. He kissed her as if it really was for the last time. Then he followed Jack into the night, marching away so swiftly that the hounds of hell might have been at his heels.

“My lady! My lady!” Cora burst into the bedchamber as Martha opened the door. It was barely light. “The men are returning already.”

“So soon? How can that be?” Martha quickly finished lacing her dress and followed Cora down to the great hall. Rosie, alerted by the noise, followed close behind them. Sure enough, the highlanders—muddied, tired and dispirited—were pouring from the courtyard into the warmth of the vast room. Cora bustled her team of kitchen maids into activity preparing bannocks, porridge and ale for them.

“What happened?” Martha went to Fraser, laying her hand on his arm. He looked exhausted. His golden skin was pale, the lines about his eyes deeply etched. He gripped her hand briefly.

“’Twas simple enough, lass. The night was too dark, the way too treacherous and the rain too heavy. All of those things meant the men straggled so that the rear did not keep pace with the front. The leading column, of which we were part, was given a constant stream of contradictory instructions to either halt, slacken the pace or speed up, so that we did not know what we should be doing from one minute to the next. At two in the morning, the appointed hour of the attack, we were still several miles distant from Nairn. Then the English drums could be heard striking up in the distance. That signalled the enemy’s awareness of our presence, and Lord George Murray ordered us then to retrace our steps. By all accounts, he did so without consulting the prince.”

“Murray was right to order the retreat,” Jack said. “If we had continued with the attack, we’d have marched straight into a bloodbath. Our own blood.”

“Aye, but the prince is saying now that we have betrayed him. We walked twelve miles in darkness and driving rain across rough moorland only to be told the plan was aborted. So we walked the same way back again.” Fraser grimaced as he took a seat by the fire and stretched his aching legs. “Now the prince’s plan is for us to meet the king’s forces later today at Drumossie Muir, near Culloden.”

“But this is madness. You’ve not slept and you have just marched twenty-four miles through the night in the cold and the pouring rain. You are outnumbered and much of your artillery is not here yet. It will be a massacre.” Martha turned to Jack. “The prince must be made to listen to reason. Surely if you speak to him he must do so? You are his friend.”

Jack’s expression was inscrutable. “I have already told him what I think many times, Martha. I agree with you, but the prince’s view is unchanged. In this stubborn mood, if he is not listening to his other advisors, he will not listen to me either. He will cling to his belief that the highlanders are unstoppable in battle.”

“Not if they are exhausted,” she exclaimed.

“It is worse even than that,” Fraser said. “At least we have food here in the castle and can feed our men. But the Jacobite leaders were so convinced that the battle would take place yesterday that no-one thought to lay on provisions for the troops. Most of them have had only one oatcake and a sip of water in the last two days. They are nigh dropping with hunger.” He looked up with a frown as Martha leaped to her feet. “Where are you going?”

“To rally the women. If this battle is indeed about to happen, we’ll take food out to as many of the men as we can reach before they set off for Drumossie.”

She whirled away in the direction of the kitchen and was soon issuing orders for Cora to bake more bannocks and for the maids to set about making more porridge. Some time later, Martha looked up to see Fraser in the kitchen doorway, watching her. A soft smile played about his lips.

“Why do you look at me so?”

“I’m thinking again what a remarkable woman ye are.”

She blushed and pushed her spectacles up her nose. “Not crabbit?”

“Always crabbit,” he said, laughter in his voice. He gripped her chin and tilted her face up to his. The laughter was gone and his face was serious when he spoke again. “Ye hide your beauty deep so a man has to search hard to find it. Your thorns are sharp and your grip is thrawn. In spite of all, ye’ve an incredible ability to flourish in the face of adversity. Ye may not be a Scot, Martha Wantage, but there is that of the thistle about you.”

Heedless of the fact that they had an interested audience, he dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose and walked away. When Martha eventually risked a look in Cora’s direction, the little housekeeper gave her an appreciative wink.

Because she had been so busy organising food for the troops, Martha didn’t get to see Fraser again before he left for Drumossie Muir. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. Would she have been able to stop herself from blurting out everything that was in her heart? Would it have mattered any more? Her pride seemed foolish now in the face of what was taking place today. Suddenly, she wished she
could
run to him and tell him she loved him. Fiercely, she clenched her hands at her sides.
No! I will not wish that. I can tell him when I see him. Because he will come back,
she thought.
He must.

Returning to the window seat in her bedchamber, she rested her forehead against the glass, closing her eyes to block out the dark clouds and driving rain. Willing herself to conjure up an image of Fraser in her mind’s eye, she was horrified to find that her memory could not summon his face. Determinedly, she forced herself to concentrate and see him standing tall and proud on the castle ramparts. In the picture she created, he wore his kilt and tartan shawl. The highland breeze ruffled his red-gold hair, and his tawny eyes were narrowed against the low sunlight. Then he turned and saw her. His lips curved into the smile she loved so much, and he moved toward her, his stride lithe and easy, disguising the hard, solid strength of his body. No matter how hard she tried to will him to touch her, to take her into his arms, her imagination would not stretch that far, and his beloved face began to fade again.

Reality hit her like a blow from a cudgel, and she doubled over with the force of it, covering her face with her hands. There must be something she could do to make sure he came back to her. To make sure she had more than memories. The realisation that there was nothing brought a fresh wave of pain rolling through her.