Nigel Tranter - Past Master

Ignoring the part-opened door of the young woman's room, he went into his own chamber – to find Jean Campbell sitting up in his great four-poster bed, a robe around her shoulders. The light from the small window at that hour was not good, and she had a single candle burning nearby. She smiled at him, but said nothing.

He halted uncertainly, perplexed. 'I… I do not congratulate you!' he got out, at length.

'No? Is it part of a husband's duty at such a time? I shall survive the lack, I think! You have been long in coming, Ludovick.'

He did not answer that, but moved over to the bed, to stand nearby looking down at her. The robe she had only loosely thrown about her, and it was clear that she wore nothing beneath.

'Why do you do this?' he asked. 'You say that you are not hot for me. Would you have me believe that?'

She shrugged, and one white shoulder slipped out from the robe. 'Believe it or not, as you like. It is both true and untrue, I think. I am not hot for you, Ludovick Stewart, in especial. But I am a woman not unappreciative of men – and I have been widowed over long! Moreover, this is my wedding-night. Does that answer serve you, my lord?'

'Aye,' he said, on an exhalation of breath. 'You are frank now, by the Powers! I vow I prefer it to all the talk before. Of what is best for me, the duties of marriage and the like.'

'I thought that you might,' she allowed, low-voiced but smiling again. She beckoned him closer. 'Come!' she said.

He ignored her invitation. 'That does not change matters,' he asserted heavily.

'No? Why do you look at me so, then? Your eyes betray you, my lord Duke! I think that you are a man, after all!'

'A man can have more attributes than the one,' he got out, from hps that were somehow awkward, mumbling, reluctant. 'A man is will, as well as body. Loyal. Able to keep himself…'

'Yet you vowed, a few hours ago, before all men, to keep me, Must I trade words with you? Bicker and argue? Here and now, at this pass? What ails you, Ludovick? Am I so ill-favoured? Others have not esteemed me so, I tell you! But, Lord – enough of words!'

With a toss of her head she threw off the robe and kicked back the bed-clothes, to sit there naked before him, in invitation and challenge both.

She was very desirable. A big woman in every way, generously made, she was none the less rousing on that account, although she lacked, for instance, Mary Gray's perfection of proportion and subtler loveliness. There was indeed nothing of subtlety about Jean Campbell's great thrusting breasts, strong arms, rounded belly and massive thighs. But she was all woman nevertheless, urgent, essential, demanding.

Ludovick all but choked at what he saw and sensed, and despite himself took that final pace forward which brought him to the side of the great bed. As he did so, the girl reached out to grasp his arm, to pull him bodily down on top of her.

Once his hands were on her robust and vehement flesh, there was of course no further holding back. In a mounting, ungovernable surge of fierce, dominant desire, he took possession of her with a masterful passion which no other woman had ever roused in him.

Sobbing, Jean abandoned herself.

When the storm was past and they lay spent, relaxed, she was the first to speak.

'I shall not call you mouse again! Or gelding!' she murmured, idly combing a slack hand through his hair. 'Not that I ever truly thought you such. Or even King James could not have forced me into this marriage.'

He grunted. 'It was all lies, then? All your talk.'

'No. Not lies. I meant what I said. That it is best this way. Best for us both. Since it must come to this, better sooner than later.'

'It came to this – because you made it so!' he said, shaking his head free of her hand.

'Ha! Who is now the liar?' she demanded. 'Your eyes, your hands, your body, all your manhood belies your words, Ludovick. You wanted me, whatever you said. Do you think a woman does not know? Aye – and now you keep your eyes shut lest they, and all the rest, do so again! As will be so. You know, and I know. You fight the wrong enemies, husband! Open your eyes, Ludovick Stewart. And unclench your fists. Why waste your fine strength? I can use it…!'

Mary Gray, in the act of setting and pressing the oat-sheaf firmly against its neighbours to complete the stook, raised her head to glance ruefully over to where young Johnnie Stewart, on plump but unsteady legs, was doing his tottering best to pull apart the last stook that she had built. The smile died on her lips, however, as her eyes lifted, to narrow against the golden blaze of the declining September sun, westwards towards the frowning red stone castle which towered half a mile away on its rock above the wide levels of the Carse of Gowrie.

'Company, Father, I think,' she called. 'Armour glinting. My lord does not ride at such speed these days…'

Davy Gray straightened up from the back-breaking task of gathering the cut swathes of oats into great armfuls, and binding these together with a twisted rope of their own long stalks. He followed her gaze.

'Gilbert, it may be, from Mylnhill? Or William from Bandirran? To demand that my lord's steward does this or that for them! To borrow men or beasts. But neither of them, you may be sure, to set dainty hand to my lord's corn!'

The girl smiled, but said nothing. David Gray's scorn for his younger legitimate half-brothers was best treated as a joke.

She made a delightful, vital and lightsome picture, standing there in the harvest-field, all glowing health and essential femininity, flushed with her exertions, browned by the sun, her bare arms powdered by the oat-dust, flecks of chaff and straw caught in her dark hair. Dressed with utter simplicity in a brief white bodice which clung lovingly to her young rounded excellence of figure, skirt kilted up to the knees, with legs and indeed feet bare, she had never looked more enticing – and never less like a lady of the Court,

David Gray considered her fondly – as he had been doing off and on as he worked, for he found it hard indeed to keep his eyes off her. She loved the satisfying and fundamental work of the harvest-field, as he did, and they were seldom happier than when they were so employed together. The past summer months had been happy ones for the man – and, he thought, after the first weeks, to some extent for the girl also; peaceful, uncomplicated, undemanding. She had slipped back into the old life of Castle Huntly, after the years of absence, as though she had never been away – save that now she had her little Johnnie with her. And Castle Huntly had been the sweeter for her return, the old lord more bearable to live with – for Mary had always been the apple of that irascible tyrant's eye – and her mother Mariota rejoicing to have her back and almost like a girl again, for there were only the fifteen years between their ages.

'Two riders only,' she reported. 'And in a hurry. I hope they do not bring ill-tidings…' She stopped, stiffening in her posture. 'Dear God,' she whispered, 'I think… I think I know…' She bit her red lip.

Quickly he looked at her, and back to the advancing horsemen. 'Aye,' he nodded, frowning. 'He it is, I think.' Heavily he said it. 'Och, lassie…!'

One rider came spurring ahead, his magnificent horse lathered with hard riding – Ludovick Stewart

He was off his mount and running to her before ever the brute had halted. Stumbling amongst the swathes of cut corn in his tall heavy riding-boots, he flung his arms around her and swept her up bodily off her feet.

'Oh, my dear! My little love! My heart's darling!' he panted, the words tumbling incoherently from lips that sought hers. 'Mary, my own, my precious…!'

She clung to him, returning kisses almost as fierce and vehement as his own, trembling in his arms.