The Winter Sea

She smiled a little at her foolishness, and turned again to carry on along the uphill path…and walked straight into Billy Wick.

It seemed to her, as startled as she was, that he’d come out of nowhere, flung by blackest magic on that hill to block her way. He let her back away a step and did not move to hold her, but his smile was worse than any touch. ‘And far would ye be going til, my quine, in such a hurry?’

He would feed on fear, she knew, and so she tried to hide her own, the only sign of it the clenching of her hands upon her gown. Chin raised, she told him calmly, ‘Let me pass.’

‘All in good time.’

No one could see them, where they stood. Not from the cottages, nor even from the high windows of Slains, because the hill’s slope cut them off from view. And crying out would be a waste of breath. No one would hear the sound.

She fought her rising panic and tried hard to think. Going back towards the beach would gain her nothing—she could only try to force her way around him, and attempt to run. He might not be expecting that. Nor would he expect her to break round him on the seaward side of the steep path. He’d think that she would try the other way, the inland way, where drifted snow and tufts of coarse grass stretched off softly underfoot, instead of that one narrow strip of ground that broke so treacherously downward to the blackened rocks and icy sea below.

She took a breath, and took a chance.

She had been right. Her lunge toward the seaward side surprised him, and she gained a precious lead of seconds, and she might have even got the whole way round him had he not recovered, snapping round with snake-like speed to grasp her arm as she sped by. Her own momentum, stopped short by the sudden action, threw them both off balance, and Sophia landed hard upon the frozen ground, so hard she felt the impact in her teeth and saw lights bursting in her vision.

Billy Wick fell harder still on top of her and held her pinned, his face no longer smiling. They were lying full across the path now, and Sophia knew that though the gardener was a small man, he was strong, and she might not be able to find strength enough herself to fight him. ‘Now, fit wye would ye dee that, quine? I only want the same thing as ye gave tae Mr Moray.’

Staring coldly up at him she said, ‘You’re mad.’ But fear had taken full hold of her now, and Billy Wick could see it.

‘Aye, ye’ll give it tae me gladly, quine, or else I’ll have tae tell old Captain Ogilvie aboot the things ye said tae Mr Moray in ma garden on the nicht that he was leavin. Touching scene, it was.’ His eyes held the hard satisfaction of a beast that knows its prey is caught, and means to toy with it. ‘I fairly wept myself tae hear it. I’ve nae doot Captain Ogilvie would find it touching, too. He pays me siller fae such tales, and those he works fae have lang wantit tae have Moray in their hands.’

The wind blew sharply cold around Sophia’s face, and in her ringing head she could hear Moray’s voice repeating: He must never learn that you are mine…

He had been speaking of the duke, and not of Ogilvie, but she knew that the danger was the same, for Billy Wick had all but told her now that Ogilvie was in the pay of Queen Anne’s court, and if they learned that she was Moray’s wife they would make use of her in any way they could to draw him out. She did not care for her own life—if they would threaten her alone she’d suffer it, for his sake. But it would not be her alone. There was the child. His child.

She felt Wick’s searching hands upon her body and she shrank from them, and turned her face against the snowy ground with eyes tight shut.

‘Ye see,’ he said, his rank breath hot against her face, ‘ye have nae choice.’

He shifted closer, pressing heavily upon her. And then suddenly he wasn’t there at all. Some violent force had hauled him up and off her body in one movement.

‘Oh, I think she does,’ said Colonel Graeme’s voice, as cold and dangerous as thinly frozen ice.

Sophia, scarcely able to believe it, let her eyes come open just enough to brave a look. She saw the colonel standing close behind the gardener, looking as he must have looked in battle, with his face no longer kind but deadly calm. He’d twisted Billy Wick’s one arm back in a painful hold, and had his own arm wrapped around the gardener’s neck. She saw in Wick’s own eyes the fear that he had often fed upon from others as the colonel jerked Wick back again and brought his hard mouth close beside Wick’s ear and said, ‘I think she has a choice.’

And then Sophia saw the colonel’s hand and arm, in one swift motion, sweep around and catch Wick’s jaw, and from the sound that followed and the way the gardener slumped she knew his neck was broken. Colonel Graeme cast Wick’s body to the side disdainfully. ‘Now get ye to the devil,’ he advised the corpse, and kicked it with his booted foot to send it tumbling over down the steep slope of the hillside to the rocks and sea below.

Stunned, Sophia watched him. She had never seen a man do murder. Not like this. This was, she thought, how Moray must himself be on the battlefield—he too must wear that calm face that had set aside its conscience, and his eyes would, like his uncle’s, hold a fire she did not recognize. It shook her to observe the transformation.

She was staring at him, wordless, when the colonel’s features altered once again. The soldier’s face became the face she knew, and all the fury melted from his eyes as he bent down to her. Concerned, he asked her, ‘Are ye hurt?’

She could not frame the words to answer, shaken still by Wick’s attack, by what she had just witnessed. But she slowly shook her head. The pain of that small action made her wince.