Tutoring the nobility

Coat of arms of The College of Arms

The Photo: The coat of arms of the organization in the UK that grants heraldic arms to an individual or organization if they meet certain strict criteria.  The College of Arms also creates the heraldic shields for the newly entitled and traces possible heirs to titles and arms belonging to families thought to have become extinct. 

Her Grace makes a request:  Alice, Duchess of M**** asked if I would tutor her friend’s eldest son who is 17 and will be going to Oxford this fall. Given that I’ve had a minimum of formal education I wondered what subject I could possibly help him with. She said his parents; his father is the current holder of one of England’s oldest and most efficiently run Earldoms and his mother a retired Royal Ballet Principal, are anxious that Terrence (Terry) have an intimate and positive experience with a sexually knowledgeable women before he goes to oxford since he has been in all-male schools since early childhood only meeting girls in private off-campus ballet classes he has taken since he was five. I was amazed that an all-male school could stop an inquisitive young male whose hormones are peaking from discovering the delights of women especially as he has grown up with female ballet students, but it seems his parents think that it has. I was supposedly getting a virgin to tutor on the pleasures of heterosexual sex, assuming of course that he is straight, which I think is a concern of his father as he needs a grandson as an heir.

Alice thinks there are other reasons – in addition to deepening his experience and perhaps understanding of women - his parents want Terry vacationing at lost cove this summer. They know Willow is with me here and Terry met her briefly when she taught a master class at his school. Alice thinks they want Terry at 17 and willow at 19 to become to develop a romantic relationship since terry is handsome and rich and will inherit the title and estates on his father’s death. With him marrying into Jacks family it would establish stronger interfamily ties a common practice among the aristocracy.

That seems unlikely to me since there is a two year difference in their ages and with girls maturing mentally earlier than boys they may have little in common. Not to mention that Willow is performing in my ballet company in Las Vegas while Terry will be at Oxford for the next several years. Of course that could all change. Since Terry is supposed to be very strong and have significant ballet training including pas de deux classes I’m sure he will be partnering Willow in our ballet classes and I’m anxious to see how they get along.

Tea and Sympathy: Her Grace said she immediately thought of the 1956 film Tea and Sympathy ((Deborah Kerr and John Kerr) with me in the role of Laura Reynolds, played by Deborah Kerr. The circumstances are not as straight forward with Terry as with Tom Lee in the film, but she thinks his parents are trying to avoid a similar situation once he gets to Oxford.

Alice said she thinks I would be an ideal tutor for Terry and he would learn a lot being with me for a few days. And well she might since I’ve been fucking her son’s brains out every chance I get for the past several years and my effort has not gone unnoticed as Jack wants to marry me over his father, the Duke’s, objections.  I was relieved that her request was one that I can handle easily and I’m going to enjoy teaching Terry about women while we enjoy each other’s bodies.  Jack has gone back to the UK to prepare Location Z for the Summer Solstice on the 21^st of this month so Terry rode back on Limnaea II and Alice and I took the Wanton Lass around to St Thomas today to pick him up. And what a stud-muffin he is!

Terry’s arrival: On the sail back from Charlotte Amelie to lost cove Terry and I got acquainted while Alice sunned herself and napped. I said he would be staying with Bea, Willow and me at my villa on the cove and that there would be ballet class each morning, which he knew since he brought his practice clothes and slippers. I also mentioned that none of the women including me were in monogamous relationships so hookups were fine, but that I would be his primary trainer and I have final say on what is safe for him to do. The girls know the dive limits past which an activity requires my approval and none of us want to be responsible for injuring such a gorgeous male body, not to mention a sweet personality, for a man.

Bea, Willow and Anya were on the pier in bikinis to welcome him and I could see Terry was very impressed with their beauty and the drape of his shorts showed it until he got his emotions under control. We all saw the rise in his interest and later we giggled and wondered how his parents could have been thinking he might be gay. Obviously he doesn’t confide in his father, which is quite common when sons are shipped off to boarding school and only see their fathers as authority figures and at Christmas.

Terry and the Summer Solstice: The Summer Solstice is on Saturday June 21^st, exactly one week from today. We will be leaving for Inverness this coming Monday so we can have a few days to recover from jet lag and prepare for our Location Z altar performances as Priestess of Aphrodite welcoming new males into the Old Ways. I’ve decided to save Terry’s virginity until the Solstice and take it from him on the main altar at sunrise.

Terry intends to major in sociology and specialize in ancient religions while at Oxford and when he found I am a Priestess of Aphrodite/Venus and will be celebrating the Solstice on the primary altar of an ancient holy site he was beyond fascinated and asked to participate. When I explained that participation by males required that they be virgin (defined here as not having had penile vaginal intercourse (PVI) with a human female – sheep don’t count) his virginity immediately turned from a liability into an amazing asset and he agreed to avoid having PVI with any women until I relieved him of his virginity at sunrise on the 21^st. Just to make sure he asked to wear a chastity belt when not in ballet classes to show his resolve. He said another few days of cold showers will just increase his anticipation. So Chris fit him into an old Access Denied male chastity belt and gave me the key. Terry is such a marvelously strong and hunky submissive and in ballet class has amazing stamina.

Oxbridge sex, Bea does porn

A Cambridge girl waiting for her lover in the cove

The Photo: Taryn’s friend Elizabeth (Liz.) a grad student and member of the Cambridge student boat crew waiting for her partner, an Oxford grad student, for dive-sex in the cove. Even with a relatively conservative top the thong bottom of her tankini gives lie to any notion she isn’t prepared to be ravished. Friends who saw her inserting her Reflexions latex diaphragm then squatting, pushing down and inserting two fingers to  press the remaining air out of the dome before inserting a prefilled 10 ml applicator of DiveGel+ deep into her vagina knew exactly what she was hoping and preparing to get from her Oxford boyfriend.

Oxbridge sex: It’s impossible to say how public the Cambridge women and Oxford men would have been with their sexual activity had Taryn’s porn company not been shooting a dive-sex video in the cove. They are all grad students between 23 and 27 years old and while not blocking traffic make no attempt to hide having sex in almost any position on the forward deck of their boats, but they are out of the way of those arriving or departing. They seem to be having such fun! I that I hope the girls are still safe from unintended pregnancies.  

Liz is one of the girls who were taking weight loss pills that reduced the effectiveness of Cerazette, her oral contraceptive. So I’m having her test daily for hCG and hope she isn’t pregnant. She is using her Reflexions correctly and for every act, but I’m concerned about the sperm from the few days before she came to me that may have been waiting in her tubes for her to ovulate.

Bea as a porn actress / diver: One of the younger porn actresses had a seizure during underwater shooting. It was during an encounter at 30 feet and she should have had plenty of bottom time left as far as DCS is concerned and she was wearing her Reflexions for flood insurance so she shouldn’t have had an air bubble forced into her uterus to cause an embolism. However, she has a Mirena IUD inserted and that may have caused a problem. No one knows what happened for sure other than she shuddered and then stopped breathing in mid orgasm as her partner filled her with semen.  The director is pleased that she was able to complete the scene just after the dive-girl stopped breathing and her rescue was shot as well in case they want to work that in to the story. Her partner inflated her BC vest and got her to the surface and she was taken aboard the Lusty Lass where we got her breathing again and she seemed fine. However, the Producer radioed for a helicopter to take her to Schneider Regional Medical Center on St Thomas where there is a hyperbaric chamber if she needs it and rode along with her.

With seizure-girl gone the cast was short a young actress and Bea was there and one of the male actors who has been having sex with her suggested she replace seizure-girl in the rest of her scenes. Bea is the right size for her costumes and no one is asking if fucking a 17 y/o’s brains out in a dive-porn video is legal, so we are good to go. Anyway, no one will know who she is as her face will be hidden by her mask and reg. She’s being credited (using her middle name as a nom de théâtre)) as the actresses body-double and even being paid for the sex scenes. She will be just another gloriously well developed female dive body “Getting as much dick as she can on every dive…” As the preview catch lines will say.

I’m keeping an eye on her bottom time as while I’m sure she is as safe as this sort of thing can be she is still my youngest now and my favorite though I try not to show it. She shows such promise for being able to go on to great things when she grows up so being able to step in to a porn actresses’ role in the middle of a shoot is awesome experience for her! I just remind her to always lube up as there is no such thing as too much lube, especially in a dive-sex video.

CD10 and newly fertile: I am fertile today and my libido is at its peak at this time in my cycle. Since my wards and I are in menstrual synchrony we will be fertile for the rest of the week. Since they have copper GyneFix IUDs implanted they have very little likelihood of becoming pregnant no matter how many times they have sex or how potent the men are. With me it’s different since I depend exclusively on cervical barriers, a contraceptive diaphragm or an Oves cervical cap to prevent me from becoming pregnant. Of course at 43 I have only a 30% chance of conceiving rather than the 50% when I was in my early 20s, but those figures are for a single act and with me having multiple unprotected acts with multiple lovers it sometimes seems I’m continuously draining fresh semen regardless of how much I Kegel out.

Still if it’s only 30% that’s far too great a risk when I want to avoid pregnancy entirely while still having the thrill of knowing there is a chance if my barrier leaks a lover’s sperm could put his baby in my belly. I really don’t want my hard sculpted bod stretched out of shape as a member of the baby bump brigade even as I fantasize about it so I’m being very careful to only wear Oves or the Reflexions which is nearly impossible for even a mischievous lover to under-thrust.

Pointe class at the cove: All the women in Taryn’s porn video cast take ballet. That’s not surprising. Actually it’s almost mandatory in order for the girls to stay strong and limber. And I was pleased to see that they all wear Gaynor Minden pointes as they are the most comfortable while lasting far longer than other maker’s shoes of traditional materials.

This is the first time my villa’s studio has been anywhere near half full with twelve women and seven men. The five porn starlet/mermaids (there were six but one as I mentioned is in hospital on St Thomas), Juicy, Tom, the six partners for the mermaids and Anya, Bea, Willow, Odette, Odile and me. We have enclosed heated drying racks on an inside wall for several pairs of each woman’s pointes – because with the humidity and frequent showers otherwise they would never dry and bacterial growth would be a much bigger problem than it is..

Boat bunny dive school, K-valve killer

Latex Reflexions flat spring diaphragm and introducer

The photo: A latex flat spring diaphragm worn for flood insurance to prevent water being forced into the uterus when the vagina floods during dive-sex. In this photo you can easily see the triangle with the size (in mm) in the center of the dome that works as a stimulator for the glans of men who are long enough to reach into the wearer’s anterior fornix.

Boat bunny dive school: Jack and Taryn  (with my permission) jointly arranged for two groups of students; six girls from Cambridge and six boys from Oxford who were planning sailing vacations in the BVIs to meet in Lost Cove where I agreed to give them dive-sex training. The twelve of them also were a convenient excuse to introduce new adventuresome candidates for those of us (my wards and I) who train escort candidates at home and are used to having a supply of new sex partners.

I was aware about when the two groups would arrive so I had Chris, our male Gyn, bring enough extra Reflections diaphragms in a range of sizes and DiveGel+ in prefilled disposable applicators to take care of the Cambridge girl’s needs during dive-sex. I was surprised to find that three of the girls were still on the pill even though it was a good progestin-only-pill, Cerazette. Each tablet of Cerazette contains 75 micrograms of desogestrel which metabolizes into etonogestrel, the same progestin in Nexplanon and NuvaRing. And, because of the long half life of the progestin it has a dosing effectiveness window of +12 hours, one of the longest of the POPs.

We gave the girls urine pregnancy tests just to make sure it was safe for them to dive and they all tested negative for hCG. However, two of them tested low for the effectiveness level of etonogestrel which was because the girls were taking weight loss pills that increase their metabolisms flushing out the progestin faster than intended by the pill maker. I suggested that they stop taking their weight loss pills as they were interfering with the effectiveness of their hormonal birth control which they did, but it may be too late to prevent break through ovulation. That being the case it is very important that both wear their diaphragms and spermicide for every act of intercourse for at least the next week while the progestin effectiveness levels are restored in their bodies if they haven’t already progressed too far to prevent ovulation.

The concern with an unintended pregnancy when taking contraceptive hormones is that the pregnancy may be ectopic, outside the uterus. If that’s the case there is nothing Chris can do to safely terminate the pregnancy while we are here as he would need a sterile operating room and equipment to surgically remove the reproducing tissue. So while the girls are here I’m going to try and watch those two closely so at the first sign of trouble we can either terminate a uterine pregnancy or if ectopic send her home for surgery.

The Oxford men are delightful, marvelously male while being relatively gentle and very well endowed with amazing stamina, a randy girl’s dream come true! Given that I’m CD24 and luteal as this is being written I just need cervical protection for flood insurance as I should get my period this coming Friday. Having dive-sex with the Oxford men has been such a lovely few dive-sex encounters as they are so anxious to learn!

The K-valve killer: In both the U.S and BV islands this spring there have been the usual number of disappearance of young female divers who have gone diving alone which is to be regretted, but it’s not suspicious given the hazards of solo diving, especially for amateurs. More worrisome is the number (three so far as is known) of young women who have died while diving and were found with their K-valves closed. The most recent of these occurred the other night in Lost Cove and I saw it happen.

The moon is waning and moonrise is about 5:30 AM so at 3 AM when I was watching activity in the cove it was very dark. Even so my Celestron electronically stabilized video recording telescope allows me to read a newspaper on the deck of a yacht in the cove during the day and the night vision adaptor allow me to see activity on deck well enough to identity the people involved from the balcony of my bedroom a half mile away.  I had just had one of the Oxford men and he was asleep in my bed, but my adrenaline was still pumping and I couldn’t sleep so I wheeled the telescope cart out onto the balcony locked the cart in place and checked to see if the people on the two yachts other than the Wanton Lass were having sex on deck, which is a very common practice.    

The two visiting boats in the cove were a white 40 ft rental from Spanish Town and a black 60 ft privately owned and on the teak deck of the privately owned boat were a man and woman on a padded cushion off a deck chair locked together in missionary with her legs around his waist and him with his hands under her shoulders holding her in place while he finished in her. I had put in my ear-buds and switched to the audio from the marker buoy that was less than 40 feet from their boat and with the filters working canceling out the wind and wave noise I could easily make out the couples conversation.

Apparently she was newly pregnant and wanted him to marry her. He was married and wanted her to terminate the pregnancy. She refused and threatened to tell his wife and he said she shouldn’t threaten him as he helped her into her SCUBA gear as she complained about him throwing the key to her aux engine into the water and being unable to find it on the cove bottom in the dark.  He said he had a key that might work and went below to get it and came back with a bottle in his hand as she was testing the seal on her FFM with the ambient breathing valve shut. When he came back she opened the ABV and he held up something and as she reached for it he squirted fluid from the bottle into her ABV and she collapsed on deck quivering then lay still. He closet her ABV again, turned off her K-valve made sure there was no air in her BCD, untied her thong and pulled it off her and threw her over the side. She immediately sank.

Body retrieval: I had been frozen to the eyepiece of the telescope and it was less than a minute from the time he squirted what must have been chloroform into her ABV until she disappeared below the surface and there were no bubbles. I rushed to get a flair pistol and fired a white flair over the cove and for a few minutes the scene seemed to be as bright as day. The black boat raised his anchor and under aux power left the cove in a hurry. There wasn’t any point in rushing down to the cove as the unconscious diver was certainly dead in the fist few minutes after she sank. Still I got Jack out of bed with one of the Cambridge girls and we went down to the pier and out to Wanton Lass for our SCUBA and then over to chloroform girl’s boat so we could begin searching for her when the sun was up enough to light the bottom which was about 6:00 AM.

Fortunately the search was brief, but as expected tragic as we found her wedged against one of the concrete tether blocks used by couples during underwater bondage and dive-sex. Had her killer anchored more toward the center of the cove she would have drifted along the bottom with the tide or into the aquifer outflow channel and quickly been washed into the sound. I couldn’t inflate her buoyancy vest as her K-valve was shut off and I didn’t want to touch it in case there might be DNA information on it so I slipped a lift bag under her arms and inflated it and we followed her to the surface and on the trip up I had an opportunity to notice that she was indeed missing the side-tie thong to her bikini and I remembered seeing her attacker remove it before rolling her over the side.

A fresh death rubber: Once we got the body on board her boat and put her in the shade of a sun tarp with a lovely breeze across the deck I gloved up and checked her vagina to see if she was wearing cervical protection and found she had the standard dive-sex cervical protection, a Reflexions latex flat spring diaphragm, inserted and still had semen in her vaginal vault. I pulled it out and it was an 80mm, my size, and I looked more closely at her. I didn’t want to break the seal on her FFM as there might still be fumes from the gas that caused her to pass out. Her eyes were still open and staring at me and I wondered if she had felt anything as she was asphyxiated while sinking 30 feet to the bottom with her air shut off. Most of her face was covered by her masks oral nasal unit, but from what I could see I think her death was fast and painless.

I went into the cabin and looked through her tote and found not only the case for her diaphragm, but the box that it came in and her name, Hollister T*****, (Holly for short) and Rx number on the box. She had gotten it last summer at one of Chris and my fitting clinics at Spanish Town that had been set up by Her Grace for the sexually active divers in the boating community, so I had helped fit her and she was one of the three women from that clinic who took the same size diaphragm I do. I took the Reflexions box and case since I was going to take her Reflexions to add to my death rubber collection. There was another diaphragm, an older but still serviceable Reflexions in her tote so I lubed it up and inserted it making sure the posterior rim was well behind her cervix and deep in her posterior fornix. Then we radioed the authorities in Spanish Town and told them what we found before returning to the house for breakfast and to await the arrival of the police.  

During breakfast I soaked Holly’s Reflexions, in isopropyl alcohol for 30 minutes to sterilize it. As the newest addition to my collection of death rubber diaphragms, ones being worn by a woman when she was killed during a sexual encounter, I was anxious to insert it as quickly as possible so I could benefit from the previous owner’s Chi which adds to my confidence and her knowledge of all the partners she had been with and her techniques for satisfying them. By the time the police boat arrived I had Holly’s Reflexions inserted and developing a very strong seal with two loads of Jack’s semen splattering the dome and draining out of me into a yellow thong bikini with my hips covered by a matching micro-fiber and Elastane pareo.

The chaperone

Which, Odette or Odile? In a plum VS push-up

Late registration at UNLV: It’s been an eventful, but very rushed few days. I had a helicopter pick us up and take us to San Juan where we boarded Limnaea which was returning from Europe carrying small priority packages bound for west coast locations. Our encounter with Roni, Miranda and Ralph over the last few days threw my schedule as well as that of my girls off by several days at an inconvenient time. Not that we all didn’t enjoy meeting Ralph and getting to know him quite well in some ways. The unfortunate part is the delay caused Cyndi and my two new wards (more about them a bit further on) to be late registering for the fall semester at UNLV. Not that that is a mortal sin. Given that the casino is such a big contributor to the university there was no problem once that fact became known.

Have I mentioned that Cyndi has decided to take a gap year and start at Oxford in the fall of 2014? That might have been a problem for some as seats at Oxford (as well as Cambridge) are in such high demand, but being the granddaughter of a Duke has its advantages.  Cyndi isn’t really taking the year off as she will be going to UNLV to take biology courses since right now she wants to be a doctor. And, it will be good to have her home where she can help with Odette and Odile’s extracurricular studies. All three girls will be living with me because of the academic as well as the escort training load they will have. That way my staff can ensure they eat properly at my training table and get enough sleep. Academics can be exhausting on the mind. Escort training takes strength and stamina and is physically exhausting. I intend to make their college years fun, but challenging w/o burning them out. 

The Swan twin’s father: Newly eighteen year old identical twins who I’ll call Odette and Odile when writing about them on this blog have been my vacation neighbors on Virgin Gorda for years. While they vacation on an adjoining estate there is a mile of what I think of as jungle between their father’s villa and mine. They graduated from a private school in NYC and were visiting for the summer. Their father, Paul, is a widower and is a self employed contractor of some sort who travels a great deal. He has a lovely small place, but finding it is nearly impossible even if you know the area well as the access road is overgrown and so deeply rutted you have to have a Land Rover or similar vehicle to get to the place by land. He has asked me over several times when he found I like to shoot pistols and we’ve shot up boxes of 9 mm bullets at a time on his pistol range. He has this amazing strong room hidden in the basement full of various types of guns and ammunition. I think he could be a fun guy if you are really into guns.

I had met Paul at several of the Duchess’s parties initially through his wife who was a Brit and Soloist dancing for The Royal Ballet when he met her. Then after she was killed in a car accident in Europe some years ago the Duchess began trying to get me interested in him as she thought his girls needed a mother. While he is a lovely man and good in bed attending to my needs before he satisfies himself, he somehow seems distant. So there has never been the right chemistry between us for a permanent arrangement, not that I’m looking for one. We are good friends and have been to island parties together and the twins have stayed at my villa with my wards when Paul has been suddenly called away to resolve some business crisis.

So it wasn’t unusual for Paul to ask me as he did several days ago to have the girls stay with me while he is in London for a few days. They are both excellent students and will attend UNLV this fall. I had thought they might go to a school with a higher academic profile, but they have had some disciplinary problems with authority (I can relate and sympathize) so they decided that since UNLV accepted them and it provides a good liberal arts education that’s where they would go. I suspect that my being near by was probably a factor in Paul’s letting them go to Vegas because he had talked about their needing a strong worldly female figure in their lives.

Ballet Girls: The twins enjoy ballet which their mother started them taking when they were four and are quite accomplished in the art of pointework to be amateurs. I call them Odette and Odile because while identical their personalities are polar opposites. Odette is sweet musical and gentle while Odile is a risk taker and mischievous. Paul has been extremely protective of them with boys and I have kept my distance from them in that aspect of their socialization because living in New York the age of consent is eighteen and I didn’t want them to possibly get in trouble if I included them in my wards pelvic training.

Not that they have been untutored in the ways of men as I have given them Ben Wa sets and dildos and taught them how to use them correctly since they needed a knowledgeable woman to take them in hand in that regard. Several years ago I even fitted them with Diva cups and 60 mm Milex Omniflex diaphragms (at that age strictly for use as flow control devices), but it got them used to handling their genitals as so many young women fear to do today. Until now I’ve avoided making available men for sexual encounters other than heavy petting while the twins wore chastity belts (I have a few all custom made by Gepetto for each of my favorite teens) as that sort of denial drives men wild.  However, now that they are 18 and will be attending UNLV they are old enough and close enough to me geographically to come within my sphere of influence for serious pelvic training which will stand them in good stead in the search and competition for the most desirable mates. A day or two ago Chris, our male Gyn, fitted them both with 65 mm Reflexions latex FS diaphragms and verified again that they have lovely deep post-pubic vaults, healthy cervixes and no hymen tissue that needs trimming. So now they can begin their intensive pelvic training safely; even when I take them to the ‘Well’, Adolph’s very deep training facility, for Trimix training.

Chaperone: A “person (as a matron) who for propriety accompanies one or more young unmarried women in public or in mixed company.” After talking around the matter for days Paul asked me to be the twins chaperone a function I performed while he was away while they were on Virgin Gorda. However, he now wants me to watch over them while they attend UNLV. I tried to get him to understand that it is impossible to keep them totally safe (especially Odile) unless they are locked up somewhere. However I agreed to fulfill that duty as I understand it, keeping them relatively safe while exposing them to new and pleasurable experiences that will expand their horizons in so many ways.

Now that they are eighteen and have had all their Gardasil shots I feel free to include them in sexual activities in which Cyndi and Bea routinely participate (especially escort training) as well as take them in hand for individual coaching in the art of seduction, though their natural talent in that regard is already on display. Paul already knows they are on the pill, Beyaz, supposedly to regularize their cycles. So as long as they take their pills correctly and stay with men who have been screened for STIs they should be quite safe. While both have used dildos, Hitachi Magic Wands and Sybian machines I believe neither has been penetrated by a human male making them technically virgins.   

Deer stalking, Crag Abbey and the heir

A red deer stag

Deer Stalking: The Duke, Cyndi’s grandfather, invited us all to one of his hunting lodges in the Scottish highlands for a few days of deer stalking, what we call hunting in the U.S. Deer stalking is primarily a male sport, but I think he offered because he knew from an earlier conversation that I want to see his hunting lodge and he would have me where I couldn’t easily escape his amorous attention. I know that sounds conceited of me to say that, but he told me as much when he said it was extremely isolated and was I sure I wouldn’t mind being with him for that length of time. I asked him straight out what about his mistress, Penelope, and he said she would have to make do with my escort, Colin, for the time we were all at Crag Abbey, the 13th century ruin parts of which he converted to a hunting lodge. Cyndi said Red deer stags come in season on July 1st in Scotland, but a detail like didn’t stop the Duke from stalking on his own land. She said he routinely takes high profile guests hunting regardless of the season if there are quality animals to shoot. So, for the past several weeks Anya, Cyndi and I and our men have been enjoying more of the hospitality of the Duke. He was looking forward to some company in the field, especially of men with military backgrounds who understand that silence is a hunter’s friend and don’t need to carry on conversations while stalking. He also wants companions who are good shots as it’s a terrible bother to send a guide out to track and kill a wounded buck that got away because of a poorly placed shot.

The heir: His Grace’s son, John, Marquis of M …, who at 37 is taking an advanced degree in archeology at Oxford after years as an officer in the Royal Marines, joined us at Crag Abbey for deer stalking. His arrival was a surprise to all but his father and he is gorgeous! He has a beautiful hard body, is quite strong, has a great sense of humor, is an expert shot and is amazing in bed. Not necessarily in that order. After my last three hour session with his Grace (which, as this is written, was more than a week ago) he had to take a nitro tablet under his tongue and finally realized he has to reduce his bedroom athletics a bit, at least with me. And quite rightly I think since I clearly remember the Duchesses caution to me about not killing him during sex. That has left Penelope, his mistress, still with Colin, who is nominally my escort for our stay at the Abbey. So I became the intimate partner of Lord John who hadn’t brought a girlfriend with him. At lunch on the day Himself fell ill, John asked if I would like to have a tour of the Abbey and while the Duke had shown me around briefly I was anxious to be in the company of the handsome budding archeologist who offered to “slake my fascination with the chapel and other subjects of mutual interest”. In a later entry I will write more about my tour of the Abbey with John and especially the early Roman temple(s) over which the chapel was built.

Hunting rifles: Several years ago His Grace bought four hunting rifles from a London gun maker, J. Roberts & Son (Gunmakers) Ltd. He bought J. Rigby mountain rifles with 26 inch barrels bored for a 7x64 Brenneke cartridge that fires a 154 grain bullet at 2,900 FPS. All have Zeiss 3x12 VARI telescopic sights. One of the Rigbys is crafted as a left hand rifle to his Grace’s personal specifications and three have standard right hand actions for guests who didn’t bring their own rifles. His son, John, the Marquis, Fiona’s brother and Cyndi’s Uncle who will eventually inherit the Duchy, bought a similar left hand action Rigby 7x64 Brenneke. The first day we were here His Grace took the men out to a small range to let them fire the Rigbys to check the zeros and see what firing them was like. His gillies had been spotting deer during the previous week knowing that Himself was having guests to hunt and said they had found some lovely bucks. The five men have been out most days stalking and have had great results. The meat that doesn’t go to the Duke’s table is distributed to the villagers who work at the Abbey so none goes to waste. On the coast and in the valleys the temperature has been in the 60s (Fahrenheit) and at the Abbey the temp has been in the 50s and is often shrouded in low clouds in the mornings. So for us girls tights and legwarmers under jeans as well as anoraks are needed if we go out on the terraces and ramparts.

Crag Abbey: Begun by the Benedictines in the early 12th century as a place of refuge and contemplation it was overrun in the mid 13th C by the local Clan whose Laird then added greatly to its fortification. Built over a natural spring of fresh water the Abbey was never again captured by force, but due to its isolation its occupants were either starved into surrendering or it was bypassed. One of the Dukes ancestors came by the Abbey and the thousands of hectares surrounding it as part of the marriage settlement when he married the Laird’s only daughter. Even so an English Duke owning Scottish land has never set well with the local population even though the family has owned the Scottish estate for several hundred years and the surrounding villages are dependent on the estate for their livelihoods. So the estate agent has been instructed to go out of his way to get along with the villagers and surrounding landowners and (according to the Duke) that has significantly reduced any local discontent. Much of the fabric of the Abbey was left to deteriorate over the centuries, but the present Duke and his father before him reclaimed and refurbished a range of apartments and the original chapel which contains the Roman temples. From the upper stories the apartments have splendid views of the surrounding mountains and lochs and when the weather is clear even views of the Atlantic in the distance. In recent years the Abbey has been fitted out with modern conveniences and there is a large generator to power them all. Located in the mountains of Western Scotland the Abbey gets heavy rains from weather systems coming off the Atlantic and even in mid-summer the weather can be cold and damp since at the elevation of 2600 feet the Abbey is often in the clouds for days at a time. So the many fireplaces are kept lit throughout the year since central heating, while available, is insufficient to thoroughly warm the stone of the walls, even though tapestries cover the walls to insulate the rooms from most of the chill.

The Roman Empire and the Abbey: It was while at Ascot hearing the Duke talk about the Roman iconography in the chapel that caused me to ask Himself if I could see the chapel and hunting lodge. I was particularly interested in the mosaic images of Roman Goddesses in the floor of the chapel which is the part of the abbey that was the least damaged by neglect over the centuries. The part that archeologists have found puzzling is that the mosaics appear to be of Roman origin perhaps of the 1st or 2nd centuries CE, long before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. There are representations of four powerful Roman Goddesses; Venus, Diana, Minerva, and Juno, which together are said to be unique. The Abbey wasn’t founded until the 12th C and none of the founding documents of the Abbey exist to tell us why it was built directly over an earlier Pagan holy site, but it probably had to do with the location of the spring and in order to co-opt the beliefs of the local population in order to convert them to Christianity as was done with placing Christmas near the Winter Solstice to appease the Celts etc. That seems to have been what happened, but why the pagan mosaics weren’t destroyed or paved over by the Benedictines is a puzzle. During the Roman occupation of the Britain tribes from Scandinavia were actively raiding coastal communities in the British Isles so perhaps the original site was a mountain sanctuary from Scandinavian raiders of the time. The site hasn’t been the subject of proper scholarly study so this is mostly conjecture by the Duke.

The Abbey is far north of the Antonine Wall, a stone and turf fortification built by the Romans across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland, between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde (just north of Glasgow and Edinburgh). Construction began in AD 142 at the order of Emperor Antoninus Pius and the barrier represented the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire. So perhaps they had outposts in the hills along the coast and pulled back to a more defensable position when the wall was completed.