Bruar's Rest

haven’t got one of those, then the hind end of a wee cross-backed donkey will have to do. Failing that, I’ll carry you on my back. There now, are you happy? Will you put an end to this serious talk so you can get on with gathering firewood?’
    ‘That’s all I will ever ask of you, Megan,’
    Hands clasped together, in the fullness of youth they skipped and jaunted back down the braeside where their families were stirring from a long night’s sleep. Feeling a wispy breeze lift her skirt and with the previous conversation dead and buried, she pulled him to her, closer then she’d ever dared do before. Now he’d shared his secrets, her promises were given, it was only right from then on, she knew their fates were sealed. ‘Kiss me before we reach the campsite—go on, kiss my body!’
    He tried to laugh at her show of lusty affection, as her lungs filled with fresh air, and the buttons missing from the neckline of her dress exposed the swell of youthful breasts. He wanted to touch, to kiss her, but men don’t do that kind of thing until marriage. Aunt Helen had told him once that when he found her, the right woman for him, he had to mind and be a gentleman. With this in mind, he jumped onto a rock, stretched out his strong arms and proclaimed, ‘You will have a tent fit for a tinker queen!’ then added, ‘I’ll build the strongest cart in all Scotia, and have it pulled along with a wild Palomino stallion. That’s when we’re married.’
    He’d rejected her advances, and it stung her. ‘Now, what makes you think I will spend the rest of my good days with the likes of you, Bruar Stewart? I’ve changed my mind. I think all that talk of seers, caves and Vikings has made me think twice.’ She tossed back a head of jet-black, curly hair, stared upward at a wood pigeon high above and shouted, ‘This laddie thinks I am in his pocket, and he hasn’t even kissed me full on the lips yet.’
    She was inviting him, teasing even as she ran off.
    If only she knew how difficult it was for him, the mere smell of those freckled breasts, the pulsations of lust tearing at his loins as the odour from her warm underarms filled his nostrils. It was all he could do not to rip off her dress, run his tongue over all her body’s beauty and be like a wolf, taking his chosen bitch, lost in bestial wildness. But as a man he had something else to prove, not just to her but her sister and mother. The distance between them afforded him one final look as she skipped through the heather, the roundness of her thighs, so smooth, now silhouetted by the fully risen sun. Its rays played like music around her bouncing curves. Suddenly a voice in his head penetrated through his passion. ‘Respect her,’ it whispered over and over again, until the lust subsided and his eyes saw the girl, not the woman.
    ‘What has our love life got to do with a bird anyway, wee feisty woman?’
    ‘Well, he’s up in the sky yonder, and until you do the proper thing, then that is where you might as well be.’
    They both knew they would join together: it was fate, nothing could change that. Yet she also knew she yearned for him now, so tried again with teasing and playful caresses.
    This time he was having none of it. He pushed away her small wandering hands and calmly mused, ‘Come now, my little virgin, where is the shame in you?’
    ‘Since when was kissing a sin?’ She gave him a long lingering stare, her sea-green eyes flashed; a wink followed, she kicked up her heels and ran off through the heather. He called after her that he was away into the forest for wood, and was certain he’d heard the sound from the campsite earlier of her Mammy whistling. ‘And you’ve not even gathered a single pheasant’s egg neither,’ he added, tousling his blonde hair, grateful all the more to the quiet voice that had broken through his lustful thoughts and calmed a brewing sexual storm deep down.
    ‘Good God, Bruar’s right, I clean forgot to gather the breakfast! What a fool I can be sometimes.’
    Annie’s shrill whistle sent her scurrying back empty-handed, little knowing how much self control she had cost him.
    He mopped his sweating brow after the trial of his willpower and clumsily began to build piles of firewood gathered from the forest floor. Soon two large bundles sat comfortably on his broad shoulders. Heading homeward, he heard Megan’s older sister Rachel laying into her.
    ‘You hussy, have you been working the pants of yourself with