Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

by Ann Jacobs

  “Are they?” Anne asked, distracted.

  “Speak to me of the trouble that sits on your mind.”

  Anne pressed her lips together and blinked back the tears.

  Rob crossed over to her and took her in his arms. Her head rested on his shoulder.

  She couldn’t contain the tears any longer. Long moments later, once her tears were spent, she said, “He’s ruining his life, Rob. He had so much ahead of him. He will be the first Hepburn since the time of Edward III not to get an Oxford education. His father would have been gravely disappointed in him over this. John has thrown away the University education he needs to prepare himself to serve his nation when Lords is restored.”

  “Assuming Lords is restored.”

  “It will be,” Anne replied.

  “I wish I could be that confident,” he said as he stroked her hair.

  Anne pulled away from him. “England can stand little more of the tender care of Cromwell,” she said in a hushed voice.

  Rob nodded in agreement. “This much is true. Charles is the only logical choice to rule. Heaven knows that Richard Cromwell is not equal to the task of governing England. He is neither feared enough by the army nor respected enough by Parliament. So, who else is there to take the reins? Yet, I fear Charles would be a better monarch than he would be a king. England would embrace him enthusiastically, tired of the strictures of so-called Puritan morality, eager to forget this era ever existed, longing for some sense of normalcy. I see it clearly.”

  “The monarchy, even when restored as it must be, shall never be the same. Parliament has had entirely too much of a sense of itself, of its own power for that to be surrendered willingly. When Charles returns to England, he will be very much constrained by Parliament, without the royal prerogatives that marked his father’s and grandfather’s reigns,” Anne remarked quietly. “We may well see the first truly constitutional monarchy in the history of the world.”

  “I am not certain that would be a bad thing,” Rob said, his voice low.

  “Perhaps not,” she added with a sigh.

  “You know, you do not need to return to London with me,” Rob told her. “You can well stay here and help train your new daughter-in-law in her duties.”

  “No. My place is with you, now. John has declared himself an adult. Yet he remains a minor. I shall still have to sign many of the legal papers. But he is a married man now. It’s time to give him that chance. I shall appoint an estate agent before we leave, someone trustworthy, to help guide John in my absence.”

  “Ever wise.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “You appear quite weary.”

  “It was a night without much sleep preceding a long day,” she told him, with a yawn. “You will recall neither of us got much in the way of sleep last night.”

  “I recall,” he said with a smile.

  “You are so handsome when you sleep.”

  “As opposed to how I appear during the day?” he teased her.

  Anne chuckled. “I said nothing of that nature!” she protested.

  “Nay,” he agreed as he took her back into his arms. “I cannot resist teasing you, my dearest.”

  “And I cannot resist doing this,” she said just before she kissed him.

  Rob broke off the kiss and looked at her, seriously. “Nan, you still have not told me that you love me. In fact, you’ve studiously avoided giving me those words. Makes a man uneasy.”

  “Do you really think I would have married you, if I didn’t love you?” she demanded.

  He looked at her for the longest moment. “I don’t know why you married me.”

  Anne closed her eyes and sighed. She stepped back out of his arms and turned away from him, to face the fire. She didn’t want to tell him the whole story. He didn’t need to know.

  Rob placed his hand gently on her shoulder. “Nan, look at me.”

  She turned to face him.

  He spoke to her in a soft voice, “You’ve loved me with your body so sweetly. I’ve seen passion and tenderness in your eyes. Why should the words be difficult?”

  “Robbie,” she began, affection in her voice. “When I first received your proposal, I knew that you were a man I could come to love and that we could be happy together. Nothing in that assessment has changed with your presence here. Nothing, except that I did not realize the speed at which my learning could occur.”

  He smiled. “Have you learned to love me?”

  “Yes, dearest husband, I have. But words are cheap. Come to bed.”

  “Do we need a bed?” Rob asked her.

  Anne laughed. “No, good sir, we do not. We need only one another and a bit of privacy.”

  Rob smiled. “Not even necessarily guaranteed privacy. Anyone could have walked in on us yesterday in your sitting room.”

  “My staff is too well trained. And no one else would have dared,” Anne told him with a chuckle.

  “You are formidable, my dearest.”

  “Do I intimidate you, Robbie?”

  “You have me shaking in my boots,” he told her, brutally honest.

  Anne closed the distance between them. “At times, perhaps. Yet that has more to do with desire than fear,” she observed. “We both have on entirely too many clothes. Allow me to serve as your valet,” she said as she pushed his cape from his shoulders and undid the buckle holding on his sword. Placing those on a chair, she returned to her work undressing him. Anne sank to her knees before him and removed the metal butterfly ornament from the front of his boots. That ornament hid the attachment strap of his spurs. Off came the spurs. “Sit down, Robbie.”

  He chuckled. “Boots?”

  “Boots.”

  He stepped back and sat in the chair behind him.

  Anne pulled off one boot, then the other, and set them aside. Then slowly, allowing her fingers to linger upon and tease his calves, she removed the lace boot socks that had covered his more serviceable stockings. Then she removed his black woolen stocking from his left foot. Her hands massaged his foot.

  He moaned lowly. “Woman!”

  “Such a strong foot,” she told him before she planted a light kiss on the inside of his ankle.

  Rob shuddered.

  “I told you, my love, that there is no part of you I would not kiss,” Anne stated as she put down his left foot and proceeded to give the right the same treatment.

  Rob’s voice was harsh with desire, “Madam, is it your intention to continue this?”

  “Indeed it is. Stand up, now, I prithee.”

  “I don’t believe that I can tolerate this, wife,” Rob told her.

  Anne smiled up at him. “I am certain that you can. We both have a much higher capacity for enduring pleasure than we’ve either heretofore experienced.”

  Rob moaned as her hands stroked his legs.

  “Come on, Robbie, stand up.”

  “I will reciprocate, Woman.”

  Anne laughed lowly. “Husband, I hope so.”

  “You’re going to be the death of me,” Rob said as he stood.

  “I’d rather be your life,” she told him as she rose to her feet.

  Rob pulled her to him and held her closely. “You are all of that, and more. I love you with every fiber of my being.”

  Her fingers worked the buttons of his waistcoat. “Words are cheap,” she teased him.

  “Action, perhaps, is what you desire?” he asked her as he began to unfasten the ropes of pearls pinned across her bodice by gold and jeweled ornaments.

  As her fingers worked feverishly on his clothes, he began working on hers. Hooks undone. Pins unfastened. Ties untied. Open came the bodice. Off came the stomacher. Skirt unhooked from the corset fell in a soft swoosh of velvet to the well-polished wooden floor.

  One tug began to release the laces on her corset.

  By then his shirt was open and released from the waist of his Spanish trousers. She pushed it from his shoulders and down his arms until it too joined her skirt on the floor.


  “Hundreds of years ago, on a wedding night, the whole wedding party would have undressed the bride and groom, and stood there watching them look at one another, just to make sure that there was no cause for annulment in either of them finding the other repulsive,” Anne told him.

  “And may have stayed to witness them fuck for the first time.”

  “I far prefer modern customs,” Anne told him.

  “This is all to the good. I don’t want to share you with anyone, even vicariously.”

  “That feeling is mutual. If you ever took a mistress, I’d be shattered.”

  “I can’t imagine that you would ever leave me either the desire or the energy for another woman.”

  Anne chuckled as her fingers worked the hooks on his trousers. “That’s the plan, husband.”

  The wool of his trousers rushed down his legs, to pool at his feet. Through the linen of his drawers, she cupped his balls.

  Rob sucked in a deep breath. “Woman!”

  Anne laughed. “I certainly hope I am a woman.”

  He reached for the ties at her waist to remove the bum roll that supported the form of her skirt. “Why women wear these is beyond me.”

  “Fashion, my love, is a hard taskmistress,” she said.

  “Keep that up, woman, and you’ll learn about hard.”

  “Good! That’s precisely my intention.”

  “How many petticoats do you wear anyway?” he groused as he untied her top petticoat, only to find another beneath it.

  “This time of year, usually seven. In summer, one or two. The extra layers help with warmth,” she said as she released her hold on him. “Here, let me take care of this.”

  Rob stepped out of his trousers as she untied and dropped each of her remaining petticoats.

  “Okay, we’re down to the smallclothes,” Anne teased. “Now, what do you have in mind?”

  “Bed.”

  Anne chuckled. “How unimaginative,” she teased him.

  “You want imaginative?” Rob asked quietly, his voice challenging.

  “I’m simply too tired for anything too strenuous,” Anne replied, with a shake of her head and a yawn.

  Rob walked over to her. With a quick movement, he swept her off her feet and into his arms. Then he carried her, cradled in his arms, into the bedroom.

  The large curtained bed had been turned back. The light in the room came from the fire behind the fireplace screen. Unlike the room they had slept in last night, this cozy room was warm.

  “Fireplaces in bedrooms, what a good idea,” he said quietly as he put her on her feet. “This is something we have to do when Garrick Hall is rebuilt. It’s a luxury. “

  Then he untied the drawstring at the neck of her chemise and pushed that garment from her shoulders.

  Anne untied the drawstring holding up his drawers and pushed those down. Then she climbed into bed and scooted over to the side nearest the fireplace. Rob came in after her.

  He pulled the covers over both of them, then pulled her into his arms with her head nestled firmly on his shoulder. “You must tell me what you like so that I may give it to you. Pleasing you is my primary concern.”

  “Then we share the same concern,” Anne told him.

  “You are also concerned about my pleasing you?” he teased her.

  Anne reached up and tickled his armpit.

  He laughed. “Stop that!” he demanded through his laughter.

  “Silly, my concern is pleasing you,” she said as she stopped tickling him.

  “You have no concerns there. Everything you do pleases me,” Rob told her.

  “I do love you,” she told him.

  About the author:

  Cassie Walder welcomes mail from readers. You can write to her c/o Ellora’s Cave Publishing at P.O. Box 787, Hudson, Ohio 44236-0787.

  Also by Cassie Walder:

  · Dream Job

  · Dream Lover

  A Gift of Myrrh

  Jodi Lynn Copeland

  Chapter One

  Scottish Highlands, 1746

  Tavish MacBain was going home, claiming the land and title he’d been deprived of these two and thirty years. And all because he’d had the misfortune of being born five minutes too late. Precious seconds that shaped his life for decades. Seconds that sent him away from his ancestral home and into the arms and bosom of the English.

  A brisk gust of wind whipped off the turbulent North Sea directly to his right. The frigidity that had overtaken the land, coating the rugged countryside with snow and ice, settled into his lungs and darted a shiver along his spine. He shook off the bitter chill and breathed in the salt air, thinking back to the few times he’d traversed this same narrow, winding path as a young lad.

  The memories were sketchy at best, and still he could sense how near he was to Castle Wynderon. Once he crested the top of this hill, the fortress’ twin turrets would stand tall and proud several hundred yards before him—they would if the soldiers had kept their word and harmed neither his land nor his people. If those villagers who’d remained in Scotland instead of seeking solace in the colonies had been slain, Tavish would be hard pressed not to go against his vow to the Crown and seek revenge.

  Not that he wanted to participate in treason. He wished only for the fighting to cease.

  There had been too much death these last years, hundreds upon thousands of good men brought down for little more than loyalty to their ruler. Too many of his friends—both Scottish and English—had fallen for their patriotism. While he couldn’t influence the will of King George II, he could do everything in his power to see the villagers of Landon were treated as humans and not the savage brutes so many deemed them.

  Tavish wasn’t foolish. He knew well his battle for respect, if not equality, from those who were now made to call him laird, would be a long, arduous one. It was the reason he’d turned off the village road and taken this rocky path to the Castle’s rear entrance. Had he gone through the village it was possible a foolish few would have mistaken him for his brother Tomas, or perhaps his brother’s ghost. The majority of the villagers however—those whose knew about Tavish’s existence and the allegiance he’d long ago sworn to the Throne—would likely murder him with their bare hands.

  And for that he couldn’t blame them. Not after all they’d lost. All they continued to lose, as the way of life they’d known for over a century was slowly broken down.

  For now, he chose avoidance, veering away from the battle ahead. Later there would be no choice but to stand before his people and play the role of beast. The Englishman who dared to claim their land, to become their new laird. It wouldn’t matter a damn that he’d been birthed on this very soil and from the loins of the same woman from whom their late laird had sprung. All that mattered was he’d been taken away from the Highlands, and turned into a bloody Englishman.

  The wind picked up, howling in its severity when Tavish reached the top of the snow-crested mountain. All but oblivious to its biting sting, he gazed upon Castle Wynderon. The fortress jutted up in the distance to pierce through the dark clouds of early evening. Awe and reverence rifled through his blood, but no sense of victory was to be had.

  He’d coveted this land, this title nearly since the moment he’d been born and, yet, he couldn’t feel joy. For all that stood before him, all that was now his had come at the death of his brother, his twin. A man with identical looks, with whom he had nothing in common and had little love for. Still, he wished there had been some other way.

  The image of Tomas’ lifeless eyes—wide, staring, yet eerily vacant—as he expired on the moor of Culloden flashed through Tavish’s mind. He shook the scene away, refusing to succumb to the sorrow that always accompanied the horrific memory. Instead, he focused on the castle walls. More precisely, on the woman holed up inside them—Tomas’ widow.

  As the two brothers fought on opposite sides of the battlefield, Tavish had heard little of the woman. The scant information that had filtered down to him said the chit was the dau
ghter of the village rector, garish, willful, and detestable in countenance. Word had it Tomas had taken her virginity by mistake and, being the dutiful gentleman, married her for his blunder.

  How a man could mistakenly take a virgin any more than he could fuck a woman portrayed so hideously was a mystery Tomas had taken to his grave.

  Too bad he had not taken his wife as well. For then, Tavish would not be forced to deliberate her future. She was a lady by marriage, but a Scottish lady wasn’t worth much these days. At least, not to most. To Tavish the designation was every bit as notable as his own. He would leave the lady to her own fate. If she wished to return to her humble beginnings then so be it. And if she chose to stay a ward of Castle Wynderon, he would see to her comfort. Her happiness would have to be in her hands. He had more than enough to deal with searching for his own.

  * * * * *

  Lady Kristiana MacBain stepped back on the flagstone steps of Castle Wynderon to appraise the festive adornments that trimmed the castle’s outer walls. As if in protest to the bright yellows and greens that lined the otherwise naked stone, a bitter gust assailed the courtyard. She wrapped her thick, wool cloak tighter, not impervious to the biting nip of the wind, but not wishing to acknowledge it either.

  It was the eighteenth of December, and the full effect of the long, brutal winter ahead had settled over the Highlands, bringing with it a heightened sense of desolation. Many times during the past year and a half she’d ached to give into the doom felt by so many on the MacBain land, but she refused to become a victim of the battle that claimed all of her family and many of her friends.

  The village of Landon, cradled in the glen below, had been stripped of the thriving population of men and women it once boasted. Still, there were many there, a handful of whom continued to pray for the impossible to happen and their quickly deteriorating parish to be restored to its once prosperous culture.

  Kristiana prayed too, for continued triumph.