Chapter 2

About four weeks before I was due to go back to university one of our tenant farmers was a victim of rural crime. Thieves came onto his farm in the dead of night and stole two quad bikes he and his son used for shepherding sheep and cattle and a year old tractor. This was a big loss and an increasing worry for farmers who do not lock vehicles like that away in closed sheds. Fortunately he was insured, but as with any expensive vehicle it would cost him more to replace his tractor than the money he would receive from his insurers.

As a result of this, Dave MacKay, my dad's former sergeant who was now our head gamekeeper suggested we step up security around the estate for a while. With a small contribution from the other tenant farmers I got him to hire to former SAS soldiers who were retired and were now partners in a six man security service. This was made up of another four soldiers who were, like them, ex members of the SAS. They agreed terms to patrol the farms on our estate from dusk till dawn.

Shortly after their patrols started we had a party of shooters who came for deer shooting and it was almost dusk when we led them off the hill. Our tally for the day had been higher than usual since Dave and I joined the stalker who led them so that we could take the opportunity to cull some of the deer since their numbers could easily get out of control as they had virtually no natural predators. They visitors went off in the long wheel based Land Rovers and the dead deer were loaded into an Animal double cab four wheel drive pickup.

This done, Dave and I had kept back the last deer which was still tied to the gray highland pony we used for getting them to the pickup point. This we removed from the pony's back and loaded it into our Land Rover with the open back. We were taking it back to provide meat for our use of the castle and set about tidying up the area while we waited for Mary, one of our stable girls. She was meeting us here on her moped which I would ride back to the castle while she rode the horse. On the way back I intended to keep behind her on the pony so that nothing would run into her in the failing light.

Meantime our two ex soldiers had just begun their patrol when a dark vehicle with tinted windows drove past them going slowly in the opposite direction. Something about it made them suspicious so once it was out of sight, they turned and followed it. Keeping as far back as they dared they tracked it until suddenly it picked up speed and headed for the place they knew we would be parked. They decided to keep after them and when they were certain it was headed for our car park they phoned to let us know we were likely to have company and that they were suspicious of the vehicle's intentions.

Dave immediately loaded his shotgun with light pellets that would damage but not kill and advised me to do the same. I was in the middle of doing this when the car screamed into the parking area and the doors opened and two men with guns sprang from the passenger seat in the front and from the same side rear door. They were joined by a third who had been hiding in the nearby bushes. The two from the car made straight for me and the one from the bushes headed for Dave.

As the man was armed Dave swung round and fired both barrels at his legs before he could get off a shot and the man tumbled to the ground. I just had time to snap my shotgun barrel shut when the men were upon me. I swung round and holding the barrel I used the shotgun as a club and hit the first man on the head with the butt and he went down pole axed. On his way down he fell into the second man who stumbled. By the time he had regained his balance I drove the butt of the shotgun into his midriff and Dave clattered him from behind and he was out cold.

The other two men, also armed, were now out of the car and were raising their guns to fire at us when our SAS men arrived silently behind them and before they even knew they were there, they had also been rendered harmless. Dave immediately phoned the local police and informed them of the situation we had encountered. He assured them that the men were safely in our custody. Not long after this Mary arrived for the horse, and two police cars with policemen in each of them arrived at the car park. The two policemen who had not been driving handcuffed our prisoners and led them into the back seat of their cars. The other two officers who had been driving took our statements and collected the weaponry our assailants had been carrying.

When they left, our two SAS Security men resumed their patrol. We had assured the police officers that we would come to the station in the morning and make fuller statements which they could have typed up and we would then sign them. We learned later the next day, that the villains who attacked us had been intent on kidnapping me and holding me to ransom. It was just their bad luck that the thieves had struck a few days earlier and alerted us into taking security measures to prevent further occurrences.

By the end of the day they had been charged with attempted kidnap and armed assault. One of them was a local man who had been a reluctant participant because they were blackmailing him about a previous crime so he decided to give evidence against the others thus sealing their fate. The day after the incident it made headlines in all of the daily papers and was on all the news channels.

I had made up my mind that when I returned to University I was going to take my courage in both hands and talk to Charles Edward Stewart MacBain and make him a proposition which I hoped he would not be able to refuse. I had deduced from his behaviour in our first year that if I offered myself to him as his submissive, he was not likely to be the kind of man who would go on to seriously abuse me or push me beyond my limits. In return I wanted him to agree to marry me and take on the responsibility for restoring our mansion and the family's fortunes. You may well feel this was a bit unrealistic but I was determined to try.

A few days after I had made this decision my quarry was featured on all the news bulletins and making headlines in all the daily papers. They were full of the news about how he and his head gamekeeper had seen off four armed bandits attempting to kidnap him. It was true that two former soldiers who were now part of a security team patrolling the estate because thieves had stolen valuable machinery a week before, had arrived in time to take care of the last one who was also armed. Nevertheless, my seemingly retiring young man was not as timid as I thought, but when danger threatened, he had turned out to be a man of decisive action. He was in fact being hailed as a hero.

Later that day I went over the plan I had concocted and re-evaluated my situation in the light of what I now knew about him now. I weighed up my conclusions after considering this new evidence about my proposed partner. In the end I decided nothing had changed except that he had probably proved himself more capable of being my dominant other than I had previously suspected. I determined I would go ahead as I planned. Watching the news on television that evening I told my father that I knew the young man making all the headlines as he was a student who was in three of my classes in the past year. I did not tell him about the plans I had been making regarding him.

I was glad the hullabaloo about my so called heroic action against the villains who had tried to kidnap me had died down before the term started. In my second year I was taking advanced Psychology, advanced French and advance Italian. If I passed all three this would give me the credits for an ordinary Scottish Master of Arts Degree before I went on to study in my third and fourth year for an Honours Master of Arts in Psychology To my surprise it seemed possible that the Honourable Lucy had the same intention, for once again we were sharing all the same classes.

During the second week, I was spending two hours in the university Library working on an essay we had been set in Psychology. As I had sat down, I noticed that Lucy was in the row in front of me probably doing the same thing. After about an hour and a half she stood up closed her books, put them into her haversack and turned to face me. She came over to where I was sitting and whispered to me that she was going for coffee and asked me to accompany her because she wished to discuss something with me.

This took me completely by surprise, but I was not going to turn down an opportunity to have coffee with a beautiful and highly intelligent young woman like her. I immediately stood up and packed my books into my bag and we made for the exit together. When we arrived at my car, a two seater BMW zs4 with a soft top, she turned to me.

"I was going to ask, your car or mine?" She giggled, "But seeing yours though, I think the choice has been made for us, I have always wanted a ride in something like this."

I smiled and held the passenger door open for her and she elegantly squeezed herself into the wrap around bucket seat. I got in the other side and drove her to the nearest Starbucks. While I queued for a skinny latte for her and a black coffee for myself she found a table which was tucked away in a corner and claimed it for us

Once I had seated myself and laid our coffees on the table I asked her what she wanted to discuss with me.

"First of all I want to share a bit of my family history with you. So I want you to listen patiently and not interrupt until I am finished. One of my ancestors helped Charles the Second to escape to France and went with him into exile. When the King was restored to his throne, that particular ancestor was made Lord Smythe of Sherbourne and given a small estate in the Cotswold. A later ancestor married a rich you lady whose father had made a fortune in the slave trade and also in the sugar and cotton trade.

She smiled, that proved to be the high point of our nobility and a grand mansion was built and stately gardens were commissioned and laid out. Unfortunately another later ancestral Lord was a habitual and unlucky gambler who before he died had depleted the family fortune. Death duties over the last hundred years or so have depleted it still further. Now most of our so called fortune is in the land we own and at one time the house. This meant that paying these death duties left my family further impoverished. So much so that they were unable to maintain the house as it should have been maintained and now, grand though it may seem from the outside, inside there are rooms which cannot be entered because such is their state of disrepair it would be dangerous to do so.