Duty of the Chieftain - a Highland 'Lord's Right of the First Night' novella (Clan MacKrannan's Secret Traditions #3) (18 page)

"And his bride Ginny – ye
made
her yer own accomplice in the trickery,
and her trying to protect yer honor and covering up the evidence with the bedsheets.  Can ye imagine how she felt hearing the truth?"

His fingers had nearly reached their destination and her vision was of him doing exactly this to Ginny only a short while ago on this very bed.

"Ginny, I very much regret involving you…"

He shifted himself a bit and she could feel his manhood pulse
under her nether cheeks.

"I want ye to look at Beatrix the Wisewoman.  Beatrix has spent days readying this bower and the Husband's Waiting Room and getting silk gownies and the supplies to make it nice for folks.  It was all just items on a list to yerself, for ye've never done any real work."

He brought his knees up between Elinor's.  And then he suddenly jerked his knees wide, taking her legs with them, and his hand shot down to the wetness he knew he would find there.  He'd seen her sitting prim all through the Bride's Right.  He'd also seen her nibbling at her lip and her face all flushed.

Elinor buckled and gasped as his wetted finger came onto her bud and he began the circling.
  She could scarce believe that thirteen people were at that moment viewing between her wide open legs.

"Do ye see her, Elinor?  Now look at Ishbel. 
Look at her! 
See her fingers, stained with ink and swollen with doing more writing since the king's decision than our Scribe need do in a normal year's quarter?"

Ranald dipped deep into her and brought the wetness to her bud.  She tried to close her legs
and make apology to the Wisewomen, and he jerked them harshly open again with his own, baring her parts further to the witnesses.

He had two fingers moving on her now and his other hand at her breast, tweaking her tit hard.
  Her mouth came open as the bliss grew in her.  He took both his hands away before she could peak.

"
They have put more work into this Bride's Right than ye'll ever know.  Hardly have they known sleep since the research and recordings began.  Tell them ye're grateful!"

The
two Wisewomen smiled at her in encouragement as Ranald grasped her round the waist.  "I tha… I thank ye…" said Elinor as he brought her slowly down on his length, in total control of the joining until she was speared to the limit.  The witnesses saw her eyes watering and fight to stay open.  "…So much Ishbel Beatrix…"

"Look to the Lady Agatha!  She brought ye here just because ye were upset at having to wed the Earl of Maxton.  She would have helped ye solve yer problem, had ye but asked her.  But what did ye do?  Tricked her son.  Insulted her hospitality.  And still she tries to help ye in every way."

He bounced her on his shaft and she moaned, "I am truly… truly sorry… Lady Agatha…"

"And the Bard. 
Look at him!
  Tricking one of us is tricking us all, yet he assembled the clan and spoke up for ye, got them all on yer side and made ye welcome in our midst.  Have ye thanked him yet?"

"I
am so… so grateful to you… Bard…"

Ra
nald bounced her all the harder until he felt the bliss begin.  And then he pulled out of her completely, leaving her wanting.

"See the Chief?  Aye, my father there
who went along with all yer ideas and plannings, and taking orders from ye, and still did his best for ye in the Bride's Right. 
Get on yer hands and knees!  Nay, nay… face the witnesses! 
And then ye purse yer lips at him spending by his own wife's hand in the verra chamber he has provided in the verra castle that shelters ye from harm.  Ye
dare
to judge him and my mother!"

He took hold of her thighs and spread them wide, entering her from behind and driving into her over and over.

"Ye'd better be looking at the Chief… are ye?  And what have ye to say?"

He pounded into her so hard that Elinor could scarce
keep her balance.

"I am sorry…
Sir Thommas… no right to judge…"

"And Hessa the Grandam Wisewomen who changed the Lord's Rig
ht so I could stay chieftain."

He drew a leg up alongside her to deepen his reach, and rammed into her all the harder.

"She's been nothing but good to ye since ever ye arrived, yet ye sullied… her cottage… with yer… nasty TONGUE!"

Elinor was
stuttering her sorry to Hessa when the bliss hit and Ranald didn't stop.

"ALL these folk tried their damnedest to make ye welcome
as my wife."

She was clenching tight as a fist and he kept
hammering his cock into her.  Control.  Take yer mind elsewhere.  Dinna even think of spending yet or all is lost.

"And my brother
Connor and me, willing to give up our lives for the clan, and His Majesty the King himself having to protect our two brothers from Maxton…
all because of Elinor Keirston…"

She near fell forward and he pulled her back up, ramming through her clenches with gritted teeth.

"…and here ye are, messing us all about with yer bloody NONSENSE! 
What do ye have to say for yerself?"

He grabbed
Elinor's wrists, pulled them outwards and launched himself on her, flattening her underneath him onto the bed with her head over the side.

"I am sorry… sorry…
I am so, so sorry…"
she said in the last of her bliss, the Scold's Bridle mere inches from her face and Ranald still pistoning into her.

"
GOOD!  A bit of conditioning works wonders, as my parents have taught me.  And every bliss ye have in our wedded life, ye will remember this lesson, and the trouble a scolding tongue gets ye into, and ye'll be sorry ever after for all ye did to folks that were kind to ye… And if ever ye forget, there are thirteen witnesses will remind ye!"

He flipped her onto her back, still leaving her head dangling over the edge where her hair now swept the floor, and entered her again.  When he was in full deep he
twisted his hips to rouse her more, and held her hands either side of her shoulders.  And he set up a rhythm of slamming full in and grinding at her bud with every stroke.

"See?  It could no' be that bad, since I feel yer loins readying themselves again
and the Duty of the Chieftain done and by.  I will be taking my ease inside ye now, Elinor, and all present will still watch us, even though the Tradition part is over.  Take comfort that ye are acquaint with all the folks watching the bed shake.  Ye'll no' see any of them pursing their lips and judging either of us ill."

Elin
or was in raptures, whispering
'sorry… sorry…'
with every one of his thrusts and feeling as if her bliss had never stopped.  She loosened her hands to cling onto his massive shoulders lest she fall off the bed as her entire body tightened again in a bliss so much higher, and she dared not close her eyes to the kindly people she was still apologizing to unreservedly from her upside down view.

Ranald's ballocks exploded
in the last of her clenchings, shooting his seed and roaring as he spent for the first in his wife since their wedding.

H
e pulled her up and over him against the pillows then, and kissed her properly for the first since the Lord's Right in his bedchamber when he'd thought her to be Meredith.

The Wisewomen
rushed to cover them with a silk sheet, making their intertwined legs look like the bottom half of an erotic statue.

When the applause
died down, he took her face in his hands.

"I
too am sorry, Elinor…" he said, loud enough for all to hear now that silence reigned.  It seemed as if the audience were holding their breaths as they waited for him to make things right between himself and his wife.

Ranald knew how much of their future
now rested on what he would say to her in front of these witnesses, and he chose his words carefully.

"
…I did no' take yer maidenhead well in the Lord's Right.  I hope ye will forgive me, and that we may start our life together with some peace atween us."

His gaze softened as he looked into the green eyes he'd first
known when he thought her another woman entirely, the swordmaker's bride that could never be his.  He'd marvelled then that the color of the ocean had followed him home.  And they'd belonged to Elinor all along, now his wife, and here at his side.

"
Yer first husband Sir Alain Douglas was never a man any could rely upon to do the honorable thing, as my clan will testify.  He kept ye so shut away that ye've little idea what life is about, nor how to treat the folks ye walk with along its path.  It's made ye think that ye must fight for attention, and that ye need to be in control of all around ye, and that staying safe must mean believing yerself better than any…"

He watched those green eyes mist over
, and look away.  A knuckle under her lovely wee chin brought them back to his own.

"
Let go of it, my bonnie Elinor.  All ye need do is come amongst us as an equal, and ye'll be treated as such, and the happier for it.  It is my duty both as chieftain and husband to look after ye and love ye.  Will ye let me do that, lass?  Will ye take the hard lesson ye've learned and make good of it?  Will ye have trust in me, as my family and clan do, so that we may all trust ye back?"

Elinor swallowed, fighting not to cry in front of all these people. 
So little time had passed since the night she'd tricked this man, yet her life was wholly changed.  He was offering her everything, even knowing she had neither earned it nor deserved it.

"I will, Ranald.  I give you my fealty… and offer you my love."

He pulled her tight to his chest and smoothed his mouth over her delicious hair.

Life would be
the more enjoyable from this moment on, though he suspected having Elinor Kierston to wife would ever be a challenge.

The Chief and the Bard conferred with Ranald's brother
Connor, and the Chief then stood to make announcement.

"Let it be recorded that Ranald and Elinor have fulfilled the terms of the bargain
made at the Assembly of the Clan, and that Elinor has submitted to her husband's will and wisdom.   Ranald will stay chieftain."

The witnesses stood to cheer, and eac
h came to the couple in the bed before taking their leave from the bower.

Ginny looked wide-eyed still, trying to match up the gentle Ranald she'd just had in the Bride's Right with a Ranald who could rut his wife like that.  Ach well, a
chieftain had to be versatile and she
knew
how special she'd been to him.  The secret was there atween them in the look he gave her now.  Still, maybe she'd let an opportunity pass her by there… the Lady Elinor looked plenty content with his methods.

"Chieftain
!" said Dougall with a grin, inclining his head.  Ginny was in for a loving this night that would take them through to the sunrise and he couldna wait to get her home.

M
eredith said, "Luck for all the clan that ye took my place in the Lord's Right, Lady Elinor."  Archie the Swordmaker said, "The forge has a power all its own, chieftain.  I forgave ye the lie the minute the truth was known, and I trust ye now as ever we trusted each other."

Martha
said, "We bid ye most welcome to our cottage at any time, Lady Elinor."  And the Scribe said, "We wish ye many of Ranald's fine sons like Roddy."

T
he Wisewomen fetched the table of wine and fruits to the bedside.  Hessa the Grandam said, "We look forward to yer visiting the Vault, Lady Elinor.  We have much to teach ye of clan Traditions and lore."

Connor said, "Long life and good fortune to ye both.  I'm bloody glad ye managed it, brother!"

The Chief said, "Well done, lad!  May yer sons be as fine as mine own, and yer wife's arse always covered in lovebites.  Will that do ye for a life, Elinor?"

"Oh indeed, Sir Thommas…"  And the secret passed between them, and the trust renewed.

Lady Agatha took each of their hands.  "There now, ye both did splendid – such control!  Such conditioning!  I swear even after all these years I canna bliss without thinking how grateful I am to the clansfolk and how sorry for my silly ways when first I wed Thommas."

Ranald sat
abruptly forward.  "Ye did no' tell me this bit, mother… yerself and father did the Duty of the Chieftain?  Like this?"

"No' quite.  Thommas indulged my sharp tongue too long afore he sought remedy in the Red Book, so I'd offended more witnesses by then."

"How many?" Elinor asked, thinking thirteen excessive.

"Five-and-forty."  And at Elinor's reaction, she said, "Still, better than Thommas's mother with her two-and-seventy.  Ye're a lucky lass to have a husband willing to give ye instruction early.  Each generation learns from the one afore it, aye?  Be happy, my dears!"

The Bard quietly put the Scold's Bridle back in its sack for dispatch to the Prison Island
to rust.  No point keeping it here, for the wives of the bloodline always had brand new.  Suitable alternative remedies such as the Duty of the Chieftain were ever to be found in the Books of MacKrannan Secret Traditions, and the Bridle a sign of how lucky women were in these enlightened times.