Beth let out a cry of alarm, and dropping the flask, made to run after them. Alex deftly caught the flask with one hand and Beth's arm with the other, pulling her back down onto the stone.
"Leave him," he said. "He'll be all right. He'll no' appreciate a nursemaid." He lay back on the stone, keeping a hold of his wife's arm. Duncan followed suit.
She looked from one brother to the other, both of them wearing unconcerned expressions.
"It's a long way to the bottom of the hill," she pointed out. The way they'd fallen, there was also a sheer drop half way down onto jagged rocks fifty feet below. Why weren't they worried? Hadn't they remembered? Angus and Dougal would be killed, or at least badly injured. She tried to get to her feet again, but Duncan caught her other arm and she was trapped between them.
"They'll no' get as far as the cliff edge," he said, showing that he had remembered. "They'll stop in a minute, ye'll hear them."
"How can you possibly know … ?" she began.
Her sentence was cut off by an agonised shriek from the side of the hill, followed by a torrent of cursing in Gaelic that proved Duncan right. Whatever had happened, Angus and Dougal were definitely not dead, nor, by the strength of their voices, about to be.
"Gorse," explained Alex, closing his eyes. "A wee bit prickly," he added with spectacular understatement.
"Aye, they'll think twice before they launch themselves off the hill again," Duncan observed.
Unable to do anything else, Beth lay back between the two men.
"Aren't you being a bit heartless?" she said, smiling now. The torrent of swearing had now diminished into irritated bickering as the two men presumably tried to extricate themselves from the spikes. A peal of youthful laughter drifted upwards on the warm air, by which Beth surmised that Angus had been successful in freeing himself, at least, and that Dougal had not.
"We're being practical," Alex said drowsily. "It's essential to know the terrain of any battlefield. Choosing the place that makes the most of your army's particular skills is one of the most important jobs of any general. If he gets that wrong, you're fuc … ah … lost. And when he's chosen the site any soldier worth his salt will go out and familiarise himself with it before the battle, if he's the time to. Many a battle's won or lost by the terrain rather than the army. Next time they two'll think about the ground as well as the enemy."
"Mmm," murmured Duncan blissfully. "What a rare day. Let's hope it keeps like this for the wedding party."
Silence reigned for a while. Alex's arm slid under Beth's neck, pulling her head into his shoulder. She closed her eyes. Time passed. Alex's hand roamed warmly up her leg under her skirt and she started, looking round. Duncan had gone. They were alone. Alex was propped up on one elbow, looking down at her, his eyes dark and smiling. He cupped one firm buttock and put his other arm round her shoulders, moving her smoothly off the stone onto the soft grass, bunching her skirts up round her thighs as he did so. As was normal, he wore nothing under his kilted plaid; there was no clumsy fumbling at breeches to interrupt the smoothness of his action as he sheathed himself in her in one fluid movement. She gasped softly.
"What if … ?" she began.
"Wheesht," he murmured. "There's no one here. And even if there was, it's natural."
He began to move, subtly, tantalisingly, driving all worries about being disturbed from her mind. So successful was he that she did not notice when Angus and Dougal finally reappeared at the top of the hill, saw what was happening, retrieved their weapons silently and wandered off, smiling.
It was natural. That was something else she had to get used to. In such a close-knit community, privacy was virtually unheard of. People wandered in and out of each other's houses without knocking or being introduced by footmen. Whole families slept in one room, and no one turned a hair if two of the occupants of the room decided to become intimate under their blanket. Or slid off into the shadows of the communal fire at night. Providing they were married to each other, of course.
In a similar fashion, ideas of decency in dress could not be further removed from that of London society. Beth smiled as she remembered Isabella's shock at seeing the servant Abernathy bare-legged and minus his waistcoat.
What they would make of the sight of women wading in the river, skirts kilted up past their knees, or the not infrequent glimpse of a pair of male buttocks or genitals as the wind gusted or his plaid became disarranged, Beth could not imagine. Nobody thought anything of it. Regardless of their semi-nudity, everyone behaved with absolute decorum. Her mother had been right. All Highlanders considered themselves to be gentlemen or ladies, and their state of dress or undress did not detract from the natural dignity with which they carried themselves and which was the birthright of every clansman or woman.
Fine clothes do not a gentleman make. Who had said that? Ah, yes, Lord Winter, Beth remembered, at Versailles, referring to Louis XIV. It was true, although Sir Anthony would dispute it vehemently. Alex, standing now in front of the fire clad only in a thin shirt which left little to the imagination, would not.
She had almost forgotten Sir Anthony and the life she had to return to in a few weeks. Gloom suffused her, and she instead forced herself to concentrate on the task she was supposed to be giving her full attention to. She leaned forward and carefully extricated a vicious-looking thorn from her brother-in-law's backside.
He craned his head back over his shoulder to see how she was doing.
"Christ, have ye no' finished yet? I thought we'd got them all out on the hill," he said, his face flushed scarlet with embarrassment, made all the more acute by the unsympathetic grins of his siblings and the cool one-eyed scrutiny of MacGregor, sitting by the fireside, tail waving slowly from side to side.
"Nearly," she said. "You'll be sorry if I miss one and it goes nasty. I'm sure Dougal's going through the same ordeal even as we speak."
"Aye, but it'll be Dougal's wife doing it for him, which is a different thing entirely. Now, if it was Morag doing the honours … "
"You keep your lecherous paws off her," Alex warned. "I'm no' judging in a dispute between you and her father, Ye touch her, ye marry her. Or preferably the other way round."
Angus cast a look of outraged innocence at his brother.
"I havena so much as kissed the lassie," he said. "I'm no' ready for marrying yet. I ken the rules. Anyway, I'm waiting to see what the MacDonald lassies are like. They'll be here in a day or so."
"Tomorrow," said Alex. "And you'll keep your lecherous hands off them, as well. The MacDonalds are our friends, and we've few enough of them. I'd keep them so. Ye can dance wi' them, ye can talk wi' them, and that's all, d'ye understand?"
"There," said Beth, delivering a smart slap to Angus's bottom before pulling down his plaid, causing him to screech in surprise. "Finished. You'll have no trouble sitting down tomorrow, anyway. Now if you're thinking of doing anything else, I'd better inspect the other parts as well." She smiled evilly, brandishing the tweezers and eyeing the parts she had in mind, now decently covered by tartan wool.
"No," he said hurriedly, backing away. "I've checked them myself already. And it seems I'll no' get a chance to use them anyway until we go back to London, wi' you lot watching me like hawks."
"Abstinence is good for ye," said Alex in his best strict parental tone. "When I was your age, I was … "
"Whoring your way around Paris," interrupted Angus. "I was only twelve at the time, but I understood enough to get the general idea when ye came home and were whispering wi' Duncan about what ye'd been up to. I learnt a lot frae those conversations. In fact, it was because of you that I ken how to … " He broke off as Alex made a threatening gesture, and skipped lightly off into the kitchen, chuckling.
Beth and Duncan laughed in unison at Alex's blood-red face. It was rare for Angus to turn the tables so neatly on his older brother.
"Aye," said Duncan, looking after him. "He's becoming a man all right."
"No, it doesn't bother me," Beth said later that night, in bed. "You didn't get the pox, did you?"
"No," he said. In spite of the darkness, she could feel the heat of his blushes, and smiled to herself.
"What you did before you married me is no concern of mine," she said. "I'd have been surprised if you hadn't been with the odd prostitute. You're a red-blooded male, after all." Now it was her turn to blush as she thought of just how she knew that. "I'd rather you did that than get some girl pregnant, then abandon her."
"I'd never have done that!" he retorted.
"I know. And I don't think Angus will, either. He knows where to draw the line. He might be reckless at times, but he's not an idiot. Neither are you, I hope. Because now we are married, and if I ever find out you've been … "