The Winter Sea

‘There’s no need,’ said Colonel Graeme, kindly. ‘And ye needn’t worry about Ogilvie—he’s not like Simon Fraser, and he’s served the Stewart kings too long to turn a traitor now.’

She raised her head and saw from looking at his face that he’d dismissed her warning, but the small unquiet voice within her would not rest. ‘But even so, you will be careful?’

‘Aye, lass. For your sake, since it troubles ye so much, I will be careful.’ But he said it in the same way that a naughty child might promise to be good, and there were crinkles at the corners of his eyes that let her know he did not think the matter serious. ‘Now, was that the only thing ye had to tell me?’

From his tone she half-believed he had expected something more, but when she gave a nod he seemed to find that satisfactory.

‘Well then, let’s start back, for I’ve seen all I want of snow the day, and I can hear a dram of whisky calling from the fireside back at Slains.’

Though she was disappointed she had not convinced him about Ogilvie, she could not help but smile. ‘You go,’ she told him. ‘I would stay a while, and walk along the beach.’

He looked along the sand without enthusiasm. ‘If ye have a mind to stay, I’d best stay, too.’

‘There is no need.’ She tossed his own phrase back at him. ‘I will be safe. There was a time when I did walk here nearly every day.’

‘Oh, aye?’ He seemed to smile, though she could not be sure. ‘But ye did tell me that ye did not like the sea in winter.’

‘And you told me, if I tried, that I might come to see its virtues.’

‘So I did.’ This time the smile was unmistakable. ‘I’ll leave ye to it, then, but see ye do not stay too long out in the cold.’

She gave her promise she would not, and watched him walk away along the sand, his shoulders set so much like Moray’s that the likeness caught a little at her heart and made her pull her gaze away, then look again with misting eyes. She was half-glad when she was left alone.

She climbed the dunes and found the place where she and Moray had so often sat and talked, and though the ground was snowy now she sat with legs drawn up beneath her cloak and turned her gaze toward the sea.

It had been weeks since she had been here. In the summer she’d come often, for it was upon these sands that she most strongly felt the bond that yet connected her to Moray. She’d found comfort in the thought that every wave that rolled to shore had lately traveled from the coast of France to spread its foam upon the beach before her, and would then return with the inevitable rhythm of the tides to touch the land where Moray walked. That image, small but vivid, had sustained her through the length of days while she had looked toward the wide horizon for the first glimpse of a swift approaching sail.

But none had come, and when she’d sickened from the bairn within her belly she had not felt well enough to walk so far. Besides, the bairn itself had given her a new kind of connection to the husband who was absent from her arms, if not her heart, and she had not felt such a pressing need to walk among the memories on the shore.

But now she found them here, and waiting for her, and her eyes from habit turned to search the distant line where sea met sky, with apprehension this time more than hope, because she feared what might befall the herald ship from France if it arrived at Slains while Ogilvie was there.

For all that Colonel Graeme had not been convinced, and Ogilvie himself was such a harmless-seeming man, she could not cast aside her feelings of suspicion any more than she could keep from hearing in her mind again the words that Moray had once spoken to her here, among the dunes: The devil kens the way to charm, when it does suit his purpose…

It was more than what she’d seen that morning between Ogilvie and Billy Wick. Now that she’d turned her mind toward the possibility, it also struck her that although he’d been at Slains some days the countess had not warmed to him, but kept politely distant. And the instincts of the countess, thought Sophia, rated far above all others in the house.

She looked with doubt towards the cold horizon, and again she heard a voice—not Moray’s but the colonel’s, telling them: The time is measured now in days. And as the sun dropped lower into cloud she knew what she must do.

She did not wish to disappoint the colonel, or bring trouble on his shoulders, but if he would not believe her and take action, someone must. She would approach the countess, tell her what she’d seen, and let the older woman handle things as she saw fit.

Resolved, Sophia stood, and made her way down from the dunes and back along the beach, her steps imprinted in the drifted snow. She saw the footprints left by Colonel Graeme, and the fainter tracks of some small animal—a dog, she thought—reminding her that Moray had once told her not to venture out so far from Slains unless she brought the mastiff.

She could only smile as she remembered his concern, because the beach was so deserted, and the hill that she began to climb beyond the beach so barren, she saw nothing that could possibly endanger her. She’d walked this path a score of times since Moray had departed. She could walk it with her eyes closed, and she’d never had a mishap.

So it struck her strangely that when she was halfway up the hill, she felt a sudden crawling sense along her spine that made her hesitate, and turn to look behind.

Along the curve of beach the waves rolled in with perfect innocence. The dunes were soft with shadow, and deserted. Nothing moved besides the water and the wind along the shore that stirred the grasses. She relaxed. It had been only her imagination, hearing ghosts when none were there.