From
Chapter Two
The Laird
Rory Drummond flicked the edge of his dress jacket where it crossed his midriff, erasing a tiny wrinkle. His stomach was muscular, flat and athletic, and the crinkling looked somehow out of place. Not bothering to hide his thighs under the kilt, he sat open-kneed in the Moroccan leather chair Robert Drummond gestured to.
Foogin leather.
The chair seat rubbed his balls, and not kindly. He adjusted his ass a little, leaning forward to greet his uncle.
Robert poured a drink and waved the crystal decanter his way. “Whisky?”
“Of course.”
His uncle walked across the deep-pile oriental rug to where he sat and extended the glass. Not bothering to sip it, Rory let the amber liquid fire his throat, then his gut in one long swallow before raising his glass with a grin of appreciation.
“Irish?”
“American. Wild Turkey.”
Rory almost did a spit-take. “Wild what?”
Robert swept back the long tail of his afternoon jacket and sat across from him on a slightly more comfortable-looking divan. “I thought...since you’re determined to be a frontiersman…you need to drink their whisky. I could even arrange a saloon girl for the afternoon, if you want to fuck one of their women.” He winked, a subtle gesture only Rory would have seen, and lifted his own glass.
Rory made a face but said nothing. His uncle was trying to piss him off, but he wasn’t taking the bait. He felt too good about his upcoming adventure.
“Laugh if you will, Robbie me lad. I have an itch. And I will scratch it.”
Robert leaned forward a bit, his handsome face betraying nothing of his real thoughts. That’s why the man was a famed politician, Rory knew. Give away nothing to your opponent. Ever. And at this indolent moment, two o’clock of an afternoon in a posh office of the Scottish Parliament Building, he was not a nephew but an adversary. He hadn’t exactly been summoned here, but he’d gotten the clear hint that Robert wanted to bid him bon voyage before his flight out of Edinburgh Airport.
“Scratch away, Rory. Just don’t show the, ah, wart on your ass while you’re doing it.” He hid his face in the gleaming facets of the cut-glass goblet as he drank, leaving Rory to fume inside.
Rory Drummond, laird of Drummond Castle in Arbroath, Scotland, drank again to hide his suddenly sour mood. Why couldn’t Robert stay out of his bloody business?
He tossed down the remaining splash of remarkably good whiskey and stood, this time adjusting the waistcoat of his dress kilt, before striding to the liquor cabinet and pouring his own drink. Twice as many fingers tall as Robert had poured.
“And what wart is that, Uncle Robbie?”
“Just be careful. I have an election coming up in precisely three months. You know that. The family name is centuries old, bathed in glory. I wish to keep it that way.”
Rory grinned and sat back, legs again splayed, knowing he was revealing a huge amount of manhood. On a bloke his size, that hood was a force to reckon with.
Screw Robert. Down deep, the man’s a prude. Let him see how a real Scot sits in a goddamn uncomfortable chair.
He drank again, this time to calm his annoyance. “I am always discreet, Rob. You know that.”
The slightest crease skidded across the space above the Parliamentarian’s eyebrows. “Rory. If you are always discreet, why is it I know about Ian? And—who was it before that—ah, yes, Jack?”
Determined not to rise to the bait, Rory laid his head back and grinned. His nosy uncle obviously was ill-informed. There had been at least three since Ian and Jack. “Because you set your spies on me, I’m supposed to tremble and quail and beg forgiveness? I’m only sorry that neither of those men could satisfy a foogin billy goat.”
Robert set his drink on an ornate parquet side table, then leaned toward him even more. A sign of his earnestness, Rory thought.
“Rory Drummond. You are family. And as such, I feel a certain, ah, affection for you. Always have. But you must respect my own life, my ambitions. I want you to conduct yourself with utmost discretion while you...do whatever safari hunters do. Shoot the moose, bag the turkey, win the trophy. But remember your family. Remember your own reputation must be impeccable. Yes?”
Rory sat up straight and took another generous swallow. “I understand better than you can possibly know, Robbie Drummond. I am a castle laird, a respected man. My private life is just that. Utterly private. Until someone sets a spyglass on my bloody bedroom window. Which will stop immediately, I am sure. Because I would hate to embarrass...anyone at all.”
He shot Robert his danger eye, the glare he knew could set grown men to crying. He might be a gay man, but he was a large and strong and perilous gay man. Let not Robert be deceived just because they were blood relatives.
“Of course, dear Rory. Let the subject be considered dead and buried. What do you think about this sudden lurch to the right of the Labour Party? I think I can use...”
Rory stopped listening and started counting the minutes until he left the airport. Forty-eight hours and he’d be free to do whatever he bloody wanted to do. Without Robert’s microscope. He settled back and drank the whisky he thought could easily become his favorite, thinking about the ramifications of both wild and turkey.
Rory considered himself a wild man, but not in the sense his uncle would ever understand. At almost six and a half feet, he was a veritable giant among normal people, one to draw the eye, especially since he was also endowed with russet-red hair, a trim beard, and piercing green eyes which could pin an opponent from twenty feet. Rory Drummond knew he was different.
He’d studied several branches of the martial arts from the time he was a school boy, with tutors brought into the castle by his father. Often his own sire had taught him the finer points of many a hidden art. Even if he’d never learned to thrust and parry, to grapple with an opponent, to kick-box or any of the other techniques he’d mastered...even if he were a quiet, unassuming man, he’d be frightening to most people. He knew that. He accepted it. Actually, he played it down. Why bother to show off, when he could handle any situation which might present itself?
He was wild also in his choice of bed-mates. All beguiling, and all male. What Robert did not know was that his nephew Rory was not a slut, as Americans on TV called a woman who spread her legs at will. Or a man, for that matter. His choices were, he thought, highly discriminating—even if they had never lasted more than a few weeks. Usually one disappointing night. What Robert disapproved of was not his sex life, but the sex of his partners.
As far as being a turkey—he understood that term all too well. The turkey had been Benjamin Franklin’s choice for the symbol of America. He knew there were small pockets in Scotland where wild turkeys had been introduced, although he’d never hunted them. They were a large beast, an outsized bird just like he was. The juveniles, called jakes, had a short red beard, not unlike his own. He also knew Franklin thought of the birds as courageous, a fitting symbol of a young country rebelling against the yoke of oppression. Yes, the turkey was a fine symbol. And a damned good bourbon whisky. Chalk one up to Robert.
When his uncle stood, so did Rory, glad to leave this close atmosphere of innuendo. He thought Robert wielded the stiletto of deadly politics all too well. And he himself was rather adept with handling the deadlier undercurrent of promise and deceit. He thought he knew much more about his uncle than his uncle knew about him.
Craving the outside air, he gladly followed Robert through the elaborate door. He wanted to be out in his beloved Cairngorm Mountains, or on a distant peak in Nevada, far from those who would train their eye on his every move.
Any other time, Rory would have lingered in the unique building housing the distinguished Scottish Parliament. Not quite ten years old, to him it was a triumph of granite and gneiss, traditional stone of his country, combined with delicate sweeps of curved glass; and subtle patterns of leaves, twigs and grass. Even if the public at large was ready to blow its collective gasket over the architecture and its perceived excesses, to Rory it was a place to contemplate the relation between man and nature, between the mighty and the meek.
He said as much to Robert as they descended the processional staircase leading to the famous Garden Room. “Mighty and meek, eh? Who are the mighty, nephew? Are you suggesting we humble elected officers somehow look down on our electorate?”
“I’m suggesting, Uncle, this building should make all who walk and work here pause and think about what their calling really is.”
“Ever the philosopher, Rory lad. You are too much a son of the soil, I think.” He stopped as they were about to exit the building and gestured to the renowned ceiling, a study in leaf-shaped glass and steel and oak.
“Look up, always. And there find your center. I must leave you. I trust you’ve found your hotel accommodations adequate? And you have everything necessary to flee our proud country?”
Rory shook Robert’s proffered hand and left him, happy to breathe the brisk air of an Edinburgh late afternoon, just bordering on seven degrees Celsius. Forty-five, lad. Forget not, you must shiver in Fahrenheit for two weeks.
Outside, Rory paused to admire the sweeping stands of native grass and wildflowers the architect had made sure to integrate with the Parliament grounds. He thought the man, a Catalán named Miralles, was a genius. Rory had loved everything Hispanic most of his life, and this building seemed to him the tangible expression of everything he admired.
Only a foreigner could have seen our nature and revealed it to us here, in this genius of a building and on these rugged grounds. A mirror set on these cliffs so we can see ourselves better. Man of Hispania, meet the man of Scotia. We are brothers, you and I.
From a distance he saw his steward Alan Cameron sitting at the appointed bench, calmly feeding a cluster of pigeons. Rory slowed a little, wanting to enjoy these last few minutes of total aloneness. He let the wind whip the edges of his heavy walking kilt which he’d worn today in deference to these grounds, hardly feeling the cold, contemplating the slate-blue sky.
Robert was right in one regard. He needed to look up every so often and by doing that, ironically, ground himself.
He asked himself for the millionth time why he was so unsatisfied with his life, one of wealth and possessions. Along with his father Kenneth, he owned a small castle—rustic, warm, beautiful in its simplicity. He had a stable of thoroughbreds, a sailboat, game rooms and work out areas. He had access to any place in Scotland that beckoned.
Then why was he plagued with unrest? Why did he want to sit on a mountain in the unknown state of Nevada, United States of America? Why couldn’t he accept his life, live it to the fullest, right here in his homeland?
He wished he could ask the architect, “Why go to Scotland? Why erect a monument to a foreign land, when you could bring joy to your own people of Spain?” But Miralles was dead. No revelation from that end. So the answer to his question must come from inside himself.
So far, in twenty-eight years, he’d not been able to answer that simple question. Why did he always need to run? What was chasing his ass?
Maybe I’m chasing something, and not the other way around.
That sudden thought made him grin and look down from the graying sky, just as Alan looked across the plaza at him. Both of them raised an arm in greeting, and Rory hunched his shoulders into the wind as he strode to join his castle steward and right-hand man.
In Scotland this time of year, the sun set around four o’clock. Not much opportunity to do more than go back to the hotel, maybe do some last-minute shopping before a late-ish dinner. They were walking in a vaguely western direction, toward the nest of hotels and shops erected during the construction of the Parliament building a decade ago.
“What think you, Alan? Do you feel like indulging my latest fancy?”
The man who walked next to him in a sober brown wool suit raised his blond head to meet his gaze and grinned. “Always a challenge, sir.”
Rory felt like kissing the man on each ruddy cheek. Here was a virtual servant, one who was ready to respond to his every whim, yet impeccably educated and articulate. A steward who was much more. A confidant, a private secretary, one he trusted with every aspect of his business affairs—and personal affairs too. Alan was a family man. He and his wife and one child lived on the castle grounds. And yet he unfailingly turned his head when Rory brought home his latest conquest. And he never shied from handing the unfortunate bloke his coat and hat the next morning.
“I want a...a pair of American Levi’s. Denim trousers. They look damn sexy on a man. And a western shirt. Cowboy boots too, I think.”
He’d done his homework. He knew the temperatures they’d encounter meant heavy wool clothing, layers of underwear, wool stockings, sensible hiking boots. Hell, he already owned that kind of clothing, already packed and waiting in his luggage. What he wanted was something to wake up the sleeping side of him. The wild turkey. He couldn’t help grinning and clapping Alan on the back.
“I will be a Nevada highlander, Alan me lad. A celtic cowboy. When I leave, they’ll tell stories about me for years to come.”
“Um, we can always hope not, sir.”
Both of them laughed, then ducked their heads again as they walked into the blustery wind.
Links:
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Smashwords: http://bit.ly/2cCtB15
Chapter Two
The Laird
Rory Drummond flicked the edge of his dress jacket where it crossed his midriff, erasing a tiny wrinkle. His stomach was muscular, flat and athletic, and the crinkling looked somehow out of place. Not bothering to hide his thighs under the kilt, he sat open-kneed in the Moroccan leather chair Robert Drummond gestured to.
Foogin leather.
The chair seat rubbed his balls, and not kindly. He adjusted his ass a little, leaning forward to greet his uncle.
Robert poured a drink and waved the crystal decanter his way. “Whisky?”
“Of course.”
His uncle walked across the deep-pile oriental rug to where he sat and extended the glass. Not bothering to sip it, Rory let the amber liquid fire his throat, then his gut in one long swallow before raising his glass with a grin of appreciation.
“Irish?”
“American. Wild Turkey.”
Rory almost did a spit-take. “Wild what?”
Robert swept back the long tail of his afternoon jacket and sat across from him on a slightly more comfortable-looking divan. “I thought...since you’re determined to be a frontiersman…you need to drink their whisky. I could even arrange a saloon girl for the afternoon, if you want to fuck one of their women.” He winked, a subtle gesture only Rory would have seen, and lifted his own glass.
Rory made a face but said nothing. His uncle was trying to piss him off, but he wasn’t taking the bait. He felt too good about his upcoming adventure.
“Laugh if you will, Robbie me lad. I have an itch. And I will scratch it.”
Robert leaned forward a bit, his handsome face betraying nothing of his real thoughts. That’s why the man was a famed politician, Rory knew. Give away nothing to your opponent. Ever. And at this indolent moment, two o’clock of an afternoon in a posh office of the Scottish Parliament Building, he was not a nephew but an adversary. He hadn’t exactly been summoned here, but he’d gotten the clear hint that Robert wanted to bid him bon voyage before his flight out of Edinburgh Airport.
“Scratch away, Rory. Just don’t show the, ah, wart on your ass while you’re doing it.” He hid his face in the gleaming facets of the cut-glass goblet as he drank, leaving Rory to fume inside.
Rory Drummond, laird of Drummond Castle in Arbroath, Scotland, drank again to hide his suddenly sour mood. Why couldn’t Robert stay out of his bloody business?
He tossed down the remaining splash of remarkably good whiskey and stood, this time adjusting the waistcoat of his dress kilt, before striding to the liquor cabinet and pouring his own drink. Twice as many fingers tall as Robert had poured.
“And what wart is that, Uncle Robbie?”
“Just be careful. I have an election coming up in precisely three months. You know that. The family name is centuries old, bathed in glory. I wish to keep it that way.”
Rory grinned and sat back, legs again splayed, knowing he was revealing a huge amount of manhood. On a bloke his size, that hood was a force to reckon with.
Screw Robert. Down deep, the man’s a prude. Let him see how a real Scot sits in a goddamn uncomfortable chair.
He drank again, this time to calm his annoyance. “I am always discreet, Rob. You know that.”
The slightest crease skidded across the space above the Parliamentarian’s eyebrows. “Rory. If you are always discreet, why is it I know about Ian? And—who was it before that—ah, yes, Jack?”
Determined not to rise to the bait, Rory laid his head back and grinned. His nosy uncle obviously was ill-informed. There had been at least three since Ian and Jack. “Because you set your spies on me, I’m supposed to tremble and quail and beg forgiveness? I’m only sorry that neither of those men could satisfy a foogin billy goat.”
Robert set his drink on an ornate parquet side table, then leaned toward him even more. A sign of his earnestness, Rory thought.
“Rory Drummond. You are family. And as such, I feel a certain, ah, affection for you. Always have. But you must respect my own life, my ambitions. I want you to conduct yourself with utmost discretion while you...do whatever safari hunters do. Shoot the moose, bag the turkey, win the trophy. But remember your family. Remember your own reputation must be impeccable. Yes?”
Rory sat up straight and took another generous swallow. “I understand better than you can possibly know, Robbie Drummond. I am a castle laird, a respected man. My private life is just that. Utterly private. Until someone sets a spyglass on my bloody bedroom window. Which will stop immediately, I am sure. Because I would hate to embarrass...anyone at all.”
He shot Robert his danger eye, the glare he knew could set grown men to crying. He might be a gay man, but he was a large and strong and perilous gay man. Let not Robert be deceived just because they were blood relatives.
“Of course, dear Rory. Let the subject be considered dead and buried. What do you think about this sudden lurch to the right of the Labour Party? I think I can use...”
Rory stopped listening and started counting the minutes until he left the airport. Forty-eight hours and he’d be free to do whatever he bloody wanted to do. Without Robert’s microscope. He settled back and drank the whisky he thought could easily become his favorite, thinking about the ramifications of both wild and turkey.
Rory considered himself a wild man, but not in the sense his uncle would ever understand. At almost six and a half feet, he was a veritable giant among normal people, one to draw the eye, especially since he was also endowed with russet-red hair, a trim beard, and piercing green eyes which could pin an opponent from twenty feet. Rory Drummond knew he was different.
He’d studied several branches of the martial arts from the time he was a school boy, with tutors brought into the castle by his father. Often his own sire had taught him the finer points of many a hidden art. Even if he’d never learned to thrust and parry, to grapple with an opponent, to kick-box or any of the other techniques he’d mastered...even if he were a quiet, unassuming man, he’d be frightening to most people. He knew that. He accepted it. Actually, he played it down. Why bother to show off, when he could handle any situation which might present itself?
He was wild also in his choice of bed-mates. All beguiling, and all male. What Robert did not know was that his nephew Rory was not a slut, as Americans on TV called a woman who spread her legs at will. Or a man, for that matter. His choices were, he thought, highly discriminating—even if they had never lasted more than a few weeks. Usually one disappointing night. What Robert disapproved of was not his sex life, but the sex of his partners.
As far as being a turkey—he understood that term all too well. The turkey had been Benjamin Franklin’s choice for the symbol of America. He knew there were small pockets in Scotland where wild turkeys had been introduced, although he’d never hunted them. They were a large beast, an outsized bird just like he was. The juveniles, called jakes, had a short red beard, not unlike his own. He also knew Franklin thought of the birds as courageous, a fitting symbol of a young country rebelling against the yoke of oppression. Yes, the turkey was a fine symbol. And a damned good bourbon whisky. Chalk one up to Robert.
When his uncle stood, so did Rory, glad to leave this close atmosphere of innuendo. He thought Robert wielded the stiletto of deadly politics all too well. And he himself was rather adept with handling the deadlier undercurrent of promise and deceit. He thought he knew much more about his uncle than his uncle knew about him.
Craving the outside air, he gladly followed Robert through the elaborate door. He wanted to be out in his beloved Cairngorm Mountains, or on a distant peak in Nevada, far from those who would train their eye on his every move.
Any other time, Rory would have lingered in the unique building housing the distinguished Scottish Parliament. Not quite ten years old, to him it was a triumph of granite and gneiss, traditional stone of his country, combined with delicate sweeps of curved glass; and subtle patterns of leaves, twigs and grass. Even if the public at large was ready to blow its collective gasket over the architecture and its perceived excesses, to Rory it was a place to contemplate the relation between man and nature, between the mighty and the meek.
He said as much to Robert as they descended the processional staircase leading to the famous Garden Room. “Mighty and meek, eh? Who are the mighty, nephew? Are you suggesting we humble elected officers somehow look down on our electorate?”
“I’m suggesting, Uncle, this building should make all who walk and work here pause and think about what their calling really is.”
“Ever the philosopher, Rory lad. You are too much a son of the soil, I think.” He stopped as they were about to exit the building and gestured to the renowned ceiling, a study in leaf-shaped glass and steel and oak.
“Look up, always. And there find your center. I must leave you. I trust you’ve found your hotel accommodations adequate? And you have everything necessary to flee our proud country?”
Rory shook Robert’s proffered hand and left him, happy to breathe the brisk air of an Edinburgh late afternoon, just bordering on seven degrees Celsius. Forty-five, lad. Forget not, you must shiver in Fahrenheit for two weeks.
Outside, Rory paused to admire the sweeping stands of native grass and wildflowers the architect had made sure to integrate with the Parliament grounds. He thought the man, a Catalán named Miralles, was a genius. Rory had loved everything Hispanic most of his life, and this building seemed to him the tangible expression of everything he admired.
Only a foreigner could have seen our nature and revealed it to us here, in this genius of a building and on these rugged grounds. A mirror set on these cliffs so we can see ourselves better. Man of Hispania, meet the man of Scotia. We are brothers, you and I.
From a distance he saw his steward Alan Cameron sitting at the appointed bench, calmly feeding a cluster of pigeons. Rory slowed a little, wanting to enjoy these last few minutes of total aloneness. He let the wind whip the edges of his heavy walking kilt which he’d worn today in deference to these grounds, hardly feeling the cold, contemplating the slate-blue sky.
Robert was right in one regard. He needed to look up every so often and by doing that, ironically, ground himself.
He asked himself for the millionth time why he was so unsatisfied with his life, one of wealth and possessions. Along with his father Kenneth, he owned a small castle—rustic, warm, beautiful in its simplicity. He had a stable of thoroughbreds, a sailboat, game rooms and work out areas. He had access to any place in Scotland that beckoned.
Then why was he plagued with unrest? Why did he want to sit on a mountain in the unknown state of Nevada, United States of America? Why couldn’t he accept his life, live it to the fullest, right here in his homeland?
He wished he could ask the architect, “Why go to Scotland? Why erect a monument to a foreign land, when you could bring joy to your own people of Spain?” But Miralles was dead. No revelation from that end. So the answer to his question must come from inside himself.
So far, in twenty-eight years, he’d not been able to answer that simple question. Why did he always need to run? What was chasing his ass?
Maybe I’m chasing something, and not the other way around.
That sudden thought made him grin and look down from the graying sky, just as Alan looked across the plaza at him. Both of them raised an arm in greeting, and Rory hunched his shoulders into the wind as he strode to join his castle steward and right-hand man.
In Scotland this time of year, the sun set around four o’clock. Not much opportunity to do more than go back to the hotel, maybe do some last-minute shopping before a late-ish dinner. They were walking in a vaguely western direction, toward the nest of hotels and shops erected during the construction of the Parliament building a decade ago.
“What think you, Alan? Do you feel like indulging my latest fancy?”
The man who walked next to him in a sober brown wool suit raised his blond head to meet his gaze and grinned. “Always a challenge, sir.”
Rory felt like kissing the man on each ruddy cheek. Here was a virtual servant, one who was ready to respond to his every whim, yet impeccably educated and articulate. A steward who was much more. A confidant, a private secretary, one he trusted with every aspect of his business affairs—and personal affairs too. Alan was a family man. He and his wife and one child lived on the castle grounds. And yet he unfailingly turned his head when Rory brought home his latest conquest. And he never shied from handing the unfortunate bloke his coat and hat the next morning.
“I want a...a pair of American Levi’s. Denim trousers. They look damn sexy on a man. And a western shirt. Cowboy boots too, I think.”
He’d done his homework. He knew the temperatures they’d encounter meant heavy wool clothing, layers of underwear, wool stockings, sensible hiking boots. Hell, he already owned that kind of clothing, already packed and waiting in his luggage. What he wanted was something to wake up the sleeping side of him. The wild turkey. He couldn’t help grinning and clapping Alan on the back.
“I will be a Nevada highlander, Alan me lad. A celtic cowboy. When I leave, they’ll tell stories about me for years to come.”
“Um, we can always hope not, sir.”
Both of them laughed, then ducked their heads again as they walked into the blustery wind.
Links:
Kindle US: http://amzn.to/2cCtKSh
Kindle UK: http://amzn.to/1xt6iGR
ARe/OmniLit: http://bit.ly/1uxLxy4
Smashwords: http://bit.ly/2cCtB15
