A
full year passed and Kier’s wish was almost granted. It wasn’t until the following summer that James Stewart planned his trip north into the Highlands. He had been king of Scotland for over four years. He had instilled just the proper amount of fear in his lords and earls with his swift and impartial justice. They knew now that this king would not be ruled by them, but rather would rule them. And while the Highlands remained relatively peaceful, the lord of the isles and his allies had had more than enough time to come to terms with James Stewart. The rest of Scotland was at peace, and beginning to show signs of true prosperity.
So the king sent his emissaries out to Alexander MacDonald, the lord of the isles, and to all the clan chieftains in the north, many of whom had not yet sworn loyalty to the Stewart king, inviting them to meet with him at Inverness in mid-July. To his irritation James Stewart learned that the MacDonald, upon receiving the king’s messenger, had sent out his own messengers ordering the clans to obey and join him at Inverness.
“This lord is overproud,” he complained to the Earl of Atholl.
“He is dangerous, which is worse,” the earl replied.
There were certain lords among the borderers that James Stewart wished to accompany him. He sent to Sir William, and Sir William sent to his son at Glengorm to meet him with his borderers at a designated
spot. Kier had been expecting to be called eventually, but Cicely was not pleased.
“The Highlands have nothing to do with us,” she said to her husband.
“The king is my liege lord, and he has requested a show of my fealty,” Kier told his wife. “You are no cotter’s daughter, unfamiliar with this duty. I have been called. I must and I will answer unhesitatingly.”
“Oh, I know,” Cicely grumbled, “but I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“A gathering of the clans at Inverness is not likely to be particularly dangerous, sweetheart,” Kier assured his wife. “The king will come with a great show of force. The MacDonald will come with a great show of force. Then they will make peace. Alexander MacDonald is no fool, I am told. Having kept James Stewart waiting for four and a half years, he will finally bend his knee, and then the rest of the northern clan chieftains will fall into line and follow suit. Everyone’s feelings will be soothed. We will eat and get drunk, and then go our separate ways when it is over. I’ll be home quickly enough, but you shall have to see to the haying and probably begin with the harvest before I am back.”
“I will,” Cicely promised him with a kiss. She found her current situation very different from what she had been taught to expect of life. She was the daughter of an earl, and had been raised by a dowager queen. Yet here she was, the wife of a simple border lord, concerned with her own children, haying, harvesting, and the well-being of a village full of good folk. She didn’t envy the mighty among whom she had once walked. She didn’t envy the queen who had yet to give her husband a son. And she was happier than she had ever been in all of her life.
“Will you miss me?” he teased her lovingly. Cicely had been right, he realized, when she had told him that loving each other would make them stronger. It had.
“Mayhap,” she teased back as she brushed her long auburn hair in
preparation for bed. He would be leaving on the morrow, and she was so used to his presence in her life now that she knew she would miss him dreadfully.
He took the brush from her hand and began to slick it down her tresses. “I am leaving Frang behind with a dozen men. The border has been quiet. England is at peace with us and busy with its own affairs. You should be safe.” Setting the brush aside, he wrapped an arm about her waist while his other hand moved to fondle her breast.
Cicely leaned back against him with a small sigh. The passion between them had not died, nor even mellowed after their son’s birth. It had grown deeper. “I’m safer with you by my side,” she murmured. Then, pulling away from him, she slipped her chemise off and lay back upon their bed, holding out her arms to him with a smile.
Perfect,
he thought. Her body was simply perfect, even after the birth of two children. He straddled her and, leaning forward, licked a nipple. Then he kissed it before gathering her into his arms and kissing her as their bodies melted into each other. He ran his tongue along her lips, and she met the touch with her own tongue, which teased at his, playing a game of hide-and-seek within the warmth of his mouth. And all the while his big hand worked its way all over her body, caressing the length of her back, her rounded buttocks.
Cicely loved the hard body against hers. She clung to him, fingers digging into his shoulders as he touched her. But then, as she had come into the habit of doing, she pushed him back and, leaning over him, began to lick his body. Her tongue encircled his nipples. She grazed them lightly with her teeth. Kier lay back, content to be pleasured by his wife. Cicely worked her way across his chest, his torso, his belly with her tongue and lips, kissing, stroking, blowing lightly on the moistened skin. “You are delicious,” she told him, and then, reaching his manhood, she took him into her mouth and sucked upon him.
Kier groaned with delight. He had taught her to love him as he loved her several months after their marriage, when she had become
more comfortable sharing her bed with him. To his surprise Cicely had taken easily to sucking his cock. She had shown no reluctance to licking the length of him, or playing with the ruby head of his manhood when she had pushed his foreskin back. Her teeth would graze over the sensitive flesh very lightly until he was actually shivering with his own excitement. Then she would open her lips and take him into her mouth, suckling strongly until he would beg her to stop. He far preferred releasing his juices into her tight sheath. “Enough, sweetheart!” he ground out in a rough voice.
Cicely released him, lying back so that he might pleasure her as she had just done for him. He had explained that it was better for them to both attain the same pinnacle of excitement before coupling, and if the truth were known, she loved having his wicked tongue stroking her love bud until it burst, and then licking it again until she was trembling with her excitement. Tonight he pushed his tongue into her and she sighed. He then pressed two fingers into the wet warmth, moving them back and forth until her juices flowed for him. Finally he mounted her, driving hard and deep while she met his every thrust, arching her body up to meet his. And then she could no longer control herself, for she wanted him so greatly. Her juices flowed copiously again, drenching his cock, while her sheath contracted and spasmed about him.
He was not satisfied. He would be without her for weeks, and he was not such a weakling or a fool that he would use one of the whores who would travel with the king’s army. “I want your ass,” he growled into her ear as he lay atop her. “Did Ian have it?”
“Nay,” Cicely answered him nervously. Jo had said he might want her that way one day. But why now?
“Good! ’Tis one virginity I shall have of you, sweetheart. I want you to do as I tell you, and do it when I tell you,” Kier said. “Roll over onto your belly.” And when she had he pushed several pillows beneath her so that her bottom was elevated for him, and her knees were beneath her. Kier ran his hands over the smooth, plump flesh. Just looking at it tightened his cock more, and it hurt.
“Please,” Cicely said softly, “be gentle, my lord.”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, wetting his first two fingers, he pushed them between the half-moons of her buttocks, inserting them carefully into her forbidden passage.
Cicely wasn’t sure she was breathing.
“Don’t stiffen your body,” he said quietly. “Be easy. I won’t hurt you.” His fingers remained still. “I’m just trying to prepare you, sweetheart.”
Cicely tried to relax.
“That’s it,” he murmured softly in her ear. He withdrew his fingers and, reaching beneath with them, he began to play with her love bud once more. It did not take long for her to react, squirming on his hand, her juices flowing again. He wet his cock with those slick juices, and then, spreading her open, he pressed against her rose hole, applying more and more gentle pressure until it gave way, allowing him entry into her forbidden passage. Slowly, carefully, he inserted himself until he was sheathed.
Beneath him Cicely whimpered. It felt as if she were being impaled, yet he was so gentle that, other than the momentary pinch of his entry, she felt no pain. But she felt the touch of his male pouch against her bottom.
God’s balls!
He couldn’t ever remember being enclosed so tightly. He was near to exploding, but he restrained himself, because the sensation was so incredible he wanted to retain it for just a moment or two more. He allowed himself to fuck her three slow and careful strokes, and she squealed a trio of little
Ohs!
Then, with no instruction being given, her passage seemed to clasp him even more tightly.
“Jesu!”
Kier gasped, involuntarily releasing his juices, which exploded in tight bursts until he was finally able to pull himself from her. “Madam,” he was finally able to say, “you well and truly unmanned me.” Then, turning her over, he kissed her with slow, hot kisses.
Cicely wasn’t certain that what he had just done was something she wanted to share with him again. But Jo had said husbands sometimes wanted to use their wives in that manner. And he had been
gentle, giving her no real pain. And he was going away to war on the morrow, so she had wanted him happy.
“I love you, wife,” he told her, “and so I sense you were not comfortable with what we just did, were you?”
“Nay,” Cicely answered, “but if it made you happy then I am content.”
Kier kissed her on her forehead. “Go to sleep now, and before I leave you I will show you what really makes me happy, sweetheart.” And several hours later he woke her and made tender, passionate love to her that left Cicely breathless, and they were both happy then.
She was up, dressed, and ready to see him off, however. They had gone to Mass together, and then broken their fast with Father Ambrose. And afterwards, with all the men a-horse before the house, almost the entire village gathered, the priest had blessed them, praying aloud for their well-being and a safe return home.
Cicely stood with Johanna by her side, holding Ian in her arms. “Conduct yourself with honor, my lord, and return home to us in one piece, if you please,” she told him.
Orva lifted Johanna up so her stepfather might kiss the child. Then Cicely held Ian out to his father for a kiss and a blessing. They had only just celebrated the child’s first year the week before. She gave her son to his wet nurse, Ella, and, standing on her tiptoes, raised her face up to him, smiling.
Kier bent, lifted her up, and kissed her mouth most thoroughly. “Be a good lass,” he told her with a wicked grin. Then he set her back upon her feet.
“I will try, my lord husband,” she promised him.
The laird of Glengorm raised his hand and, turning his stallion about, signaled his men forward. The lady and her Glengorm folk stood waving and watching until the men disappeared down the road that ran through the glen.
They met Sir William a day and a half later, and the Douglases then rode for Scone to meet up with the king. They were joined
along the way by many of the other border lords with their troops, Lord Grey of Ben Duff among them, who came with a small party of his clansmen.
Arriving at Scone, they met up with the king and over a thousand clansmen from the west and the east who had answered the royal summons. Then they headed north to the Highland town of Inverness. Created a royal burgh by King William the Lion in the year 1214, the town sat on the banks of the River Ness just where it flowed into Beauly Firth, and from there into Moray Firth. Inverness, considered the capital of the Highlands, had been in existence as long as anyone could remember. It was said that those who came before the Scots, people known as Picts, had lived there. It was a busy market town with many shops, several churches, and even a Dominican friary that had been founded two hundred years prior by King Alexander III.
The townspeople were loyal to the king, and delighted that he had finally come north to visit them. They had worked from the moment he had returned to Scotland to repair for his habitation the one part of Inverness Castle that had not been destroyed by Malcolm III, Duncan’s son, after the usurper, Macbeth, had resided there. They knew that eventually James Stewart would come to them, and they wanted a place worthy of him.
The king reached Inverness before the day appointed for the lord of the isles and his clan allies to arrive. He settled himself within the rebuilt Inverness Tower. The majority of those accompanying him set up a tent encampment around the tower house. He invited into the tower’s great hall for a meal those earls and clan chiefs who had accompanied him north, and he made it a point to greet each man there, be he high or low, by name, shaking their hands and thanking them for their support.
“He’s clever,” Sir William said, low, to the laird of Glengorm. “But he is still making enemies. He’s taken several more earldoms, and sent Strathearn down into England, along with others to stand as collateral for his ransom.”
“The land has been lawless,” Kier replied as softly. “He must be hard in order to gain their attention and obedience.”
“One day someone will kill him,” Sir William answered sanguinely. “I hope his English queen has managed to spawn a healthy son by then.”
The next day the MacDonald arrived, setting up a huge encampment with the several thousand clansmen who had accompanied him. His great pavilion was set directly in the center of the camp. The MacDonald had brought with him his three sons, who were accompanied by their retainers. The elder, and his heir, was Ian MacDonald. His brothers were Celestine of Lochalsh and Hugh of Sleate. The four men possessed over four thousand men among them. And they had brought all of their forces with them.