The Master Of Strathburn (43 page)

He leaned back on one elbow, his long legs and naked feet extending out across the dark blue wool rug, the wine glass he held in his fingers all but forgotten. When she dropped her eyes to the telling swell within his breeches, she felt the force of her own arousal begin to pulse deep within her; her breathing quickened and her nipples hardened to tight, aching points.

Her breasts now free of the constraining fabric of her bodice and chemise, she set about the task of slowly unpinning her hair from the carefully arranged coiffure on top of her head, letting the long curls tumble about her shoulders. She knew Robert loved it when she wore her hair unbound. Robert’s eyes didn’t leave her once. She was pleased to notice the pace of his breathing had increased as well.

‘I think it’s a wee bit warm today, milord, an’ you are wearing decidedly too many clothes, dinna you agree?’ she asked, her voice husky with wanting. She leaned forward and set aside his wine glass before loosening the cuffs on his sleeves and pulling the shirt from the waistband of his breeches. She was about to lift the garment over his head when he sat forward and pulled the shirt off himself, throwing it onto the grass unheeded. Her eyes dropped briefly to take in the sheer beauty of his lean, well-muscled torso. His mouth was now a mere breath away from hers. She licked her lips and his mouth curved in a smile.

‘Still hungry?’ he asked, his lips brushing against hers as he spoke. He sought to tease her too, but she was not finished with him, not by any means.

She kissed him lightly on the mouth before drawing back slightly. ‘Very. But I think I’m in the mood for something a wee more full-bodied than a kiss.’ After eighteen months of wedded bliss to a passionate, loving man, she was shy no more when it came to giving and receiving physical pleasure. Not that she ever really had been when it came to Robert …

Robert let her push him back onto the rug and she ran her fingers over the hard planes of his chest and ridged abdomen until she reached his breeches. He was holding his breath, waiting. She flicked the buttons of his fall front open with tantalising slowness, deliberately building his anticipation until at last his engorged cock sprang free. An intensely hot thrill skittered through her. He was all hers to do with as she liked.

Smiling, she caught his heavy lidded gaze and brushed one of her peaked nipples across the head of his cock, noting with satisfaction his sharp intake of breath. She lazily ran her fingers down the long, rock hard shaft until she held him firmly around the base, the better to hold him steady as she feasted.

Then, no longer able to resist the temptation he offered, she bent her head and swirled her tongue around the ruddy head, glorying in the silky texture and musky taste of his sex.
Delicious
. He groaned and she felt his hands twist into her hair. Then she took as much as she could of his sizeable length into her mouth, sucking rhythmically up and down with hot sliding suction.

She revelled in the power she had over him, thrilled to hear him pant and groan her name as he began to lose control and swell even more in her mouth—until he exploded into her and she drank willingly of his warm, salty seed. Raising her head, she licked her lips and smiled down at her husband as he lay sprawled before her, spent and gasping. There was no sight in the world that she could ever possibly enjoy more.

When Robert opened his eyes at last, they were dark, almost black with desire. He reached up and pulled her head down to claim her mouth, his tongue stroking and teasing her thoroughly whilst he gently tugged and rolled one of her nipples with the fingers of his other hand. She moaned and he released her mouth.

‘My turn now,’ he growled before rolling her underneath him. ‘You’re not the only one who’s starving,
mo chridhe
.’

* * *

Robert looked down at the beautiful woman beneath him, and tipped his mouth into a slow, crooked smile. The divine creature that was his wife had taken her fill—now it was definitely his turn to taste and tease until she shuddered and cried out his name.

He’d already suspected that she had more than a picnic in mind when she’d asked Mrs MacMillan to pack a basket for their lunch. Will, their handsome, healthy son, had been all smiles in the nursery earlier so he knew that Jessie would be happy to leave the babe in the care of his nurse for most of the afternoon.

Which meant he’d been looking forward to this time alone with Jessie all morning—no, that wasn’t quite true. If he was brutally honest with himself, he knew he’d longed to make love to Jessie by the loch from the moment he’d first seen her here, all that time ago. And for the life of him, he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of this sooner. But his wife had, and he was about to thank her.

He claimed her sweet siren’s mouth again and caressed the sensitive undersides of her full breasts with feather-light touches that provoked her rose-pink nipples into tight succulent buds. She shifted so that his fingers grazed over the furled dusky points and he smiled against her lips. ‘Do you want me to taste you there,
mo ghaoil
?’

‘Aye,’ she murmured, burying her hands in his hair and pushing his head down as she arched up. ‘You torture me with wanting.’

‘Hmm. Well let me see if I can ease the pain.’ He dipped his head and began to suckle and lave each breast in turn until she was panting and squirming, her legs and hips pushing against his, making his cock throb all over again.

He rose up onto his knees and lifted her skirts, running his hands up her long, slender thighs, until his thumbs reached the tight ginger curls that hid her sex. She parted her legs willingly, and he smiled with lazy satisfaction when he saw how she glistened with moisture. He was going to enjoy this.

He slid this thumbs along her folds, parting them gently until he had exposed the hard nub of her clitoris. Hot lust pounded through him at the sight, making him dizzy. Bending forward, he delicately flicked her quivering centre with his tongue. She gasped and her hands twisted into the blanket beneath her.

‘More?’ he murmured glancing up along her body to meet her gaze—he was pleased to see desire had darkened her eyes to the colour of molten honey.

‘Much more,’ she panted and spread herself wider. This time when he lowered his mouth again it was to sup with reckless abandon until his tongue and lips had sampled every part of her sex. Her musk-scented dew was like manna from heaven on his lips and tongue. Her hips bowed up and he relished hearing her increasingly frenzied gasps and moans until finally she cried out as he brought her to a quaking climax.

He looked up from between her thighs. She looked thoroughly sated but he wasn’t done yet. His cock was definitely ready again. ‘I’m afraid I’m still ravenous, my lady.’

Her eyes flew open and she laughed, a sensual throaty sound. ‘You are a greedy man, Lord Lochrose.’

‘Always when it comes to you,
mo ghaoil
.’

He gently drew her upright so that she was kneeling before him. Her fiery hair was tangled all about her bare shoulders but the sleeves of her gown still managed to cling to her upper arms; the scar where his bullet had grazed her left arm had long since faded. He placed a soft kiss on the faint mark then eased her sleeves and chemise away until her upper body was completely bare except for her wildly tumbling locks. He swallowed, drinking her in. She was indeed a goddess. And she was his.

He knelt back onto his haunches and then lifted her upwards and forwards so that she was straddling him, her warm slick folds teasing the head of his cock. She smiled, gold heat flaring in her eyes as she reached forward to grasp his naked shoulders and then she eased herself slowly down onto his erection, taking him fully inside her. The moist heat and clenching muscles of her inner sheath were almost his undoing as she settled onto him.

He gritted his teeth, willing himself not to give into the urge to spurt his seed straight into her like a green youth. As if sensing the tenuous grip he had on his control she instantly stilled her movements and instead kissed his mouth gently, easing his tension a fraction.

When he’d regained sufficient mastery over his urges, he locked his gaze with hers and raised her up, encouraging her to set the rhythm of their coupling. She took his cue and began to ride him slowly at first; the sliding friction of her tight wet passage against his engorged flesh was the most exquisite of tortures.

But it wasn’t long before they both began to increase the pace. Jessie’s breath started to come in short ragged gasps as he thrust his hips upwards harder and faster, perfectly matching the tempo of her wild plunging. He cupped her breasts and covered her mouth with his, pushing his tongue deep inside. He couldn’t get enough of her.

And then at last he felt her inner muscles spasm convulsively around him. She threw her head back and cried out with pleasure, her fingernails grazing his back. The force of her orgasm was so strong he couldn’t hold back his own release any longer. With a long guttural groan, he lost himself in her, his seed erupting into her clenching womb. Replete, sated at last, he buried his face in her neck and breathed in the sweet, intoxicating scent that was so essentially her, glorying in the knowledge of their shared ecstasy.

And love.

Jessie lifted his chin and stroked the tangled damp hair from his brow. Her eyes glowed with deep emotion. ‘I love you, Robert Grant,’ she whispered. ‘You are the master of my heart an’ body an’ soul. Do no’ ever doubt it.’

He framed her face with his hands, holding her warm gaze with his. This woman, his Jessie, she had captured his heart and soul from the first moment he’d seen her, his lady of the loch. She had made him feel whole again, healed.

‘And I am yours, Jessie Grant, completely. Now and always,’ he stated with absolute sincerity.

Her answering smile, soft and languid, was all the invitation Robert needed to kiss her again. He pushed his fingers gently into her hair and kissed her deeply yet with tender reverence, wanting her to know not just through words, but his touch, that his world began and ended with her.

And that he would never stop loving her. Ever.

The sons of Scottish earls do, in actual fact, have two titles according to Debrett’s Peerage. This is why Robert Grant is both the Master of Strathburn and Viscount Lochrose. He is commonly called Lord Lochrose.

I will admit I used a little poetic licence with regard to the Inverness to Edinburgh public coach Jessie Munroe attempts to catch. At the time The Master of Strathburn is set, 1756, there appears to have been a public coach that ran from Glasgow to Edinburgh once a week from around 1678 and twice per week from 1749. However, a regular public coach service did not operate between Inverness and the township of Perth (en route to Edinburgh) until 1806. As I needed a coach for my heroine I have deliberately tweaked this historical detail to suit my story.

Robert’s release from the Tolbooth by the Lord Advocate into his father’s custody appears swift, but releases of this nature were not without precedent. There are numerous accounts of how Aeneas Mackintosh—Chief of Clan Mackintosh and a supporter of King George—was captured at the Battle of Prestonpans during the ’45, but was then released into the custody of his Jacobite sympathiser wife, Anne Farquharson-Mackintosh or ‘Colonel Anne’ by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the ‘Bonnie Prince’. Following the Battle of Culloden, ‘Colonel Anne’ was arrested by government troops, but after six weeks, she was released into the custody of her husband. For the purposes of my story, I chose to have Robert paroled in a similar fashion.

There are several historical figures that appear in The Master of Strathburn. Robert Dundas of Arniston, the younger (1713–1787) served as Lord Advocate—the chief legal adviser to the Crown and British government for both civil and criminal matters—from 1754 to 1760. At the time The Master of Strathburn is set, Lord Arniston was indeed a newly wedded man; in September 1756, he married his second wife, Jean Grant, daughter of William Grant, Lord Prestongrange. It is purely poetic licence on my part that Robert Dundas is depicted as being particularly lenient when dealing with my entirely fictional character, Robert Grant.

Governor George Haldane who makes a brief appearance at the beginning of the story was a general who fought in the second Jacobite Rebellion. In 1756, at the age of 34, he was appointed to the office of Governor of Jamaica.

The Tolbooth Robert is imprisoned in is not the same building one can visit today along the Canongate in Edinburgh. The Old Tolbooth, which no longer stands, was located in the middle of Edinburgh’s High Street, at the northwest corner of St Giles’ Cathedral. Constructed in the 14th century, over the years it functioned as a toll collection booth, a council chamber, and court house. The Tolbooth was used as gaol from the late fifteenth century. It was demolished in 1817.

Although the name of the popular English pudding ‘Spotted Dick’ is attested from 1849 when it first appeared in the cookbook The Modern Housewife or Ménagère by Alexis Soyer, it appears to have been a popular dessert in Britain for some time prior to this. The origins of the pudding’s unique name are unclear.

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The Master of Strathburn
. I hope you enjoyed it.

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