The Winter Sea

Graham grinned. ‘My dad’s not such a Puritan.’

‘Even so.’ I glanced at the clock on the platform. ‘The bus is late.’

‘Nae bother.’

‘You don’t have to wait, you know. I mean, it’s very noble of you, standing out here with me in the snow, but—’

‘And whose fault is that? You should have let me drive you back.’

‘You should have let me take a cab,’ I said. ‘I can afford it.’

‘Aye, I know you can. But no true Scot would let his woman waste her thirty pounds to take a taxi when the bus can get her there for five.’

He was only teasing, of course, and taking the bus had been as much my idea as his—there was a comforting anonymity about riding a bus, and I liked to watch the people sitting round me. But I found his choice of words amusing. ‘So I’m your woman, am I?’

‘Aye.’ I felt the circle of his arms grow firmer and the look he angled down at me was warm. ‘You were mine from the moment I met you.’

It was hard not to feel the effect of those words even though they were ones I had written myself, in the scene where Sophia and Moray had said their farewells. ‘You’ve been reading my book.’

‘I have not.’ He looked quizzical. ‘Why?’

‘Well, because what you just said—my hero says almost exactly the same thing.’

‘Your hero…oh, hell,’ Graham said. ‘I forgot. No, it’s still here.’ He felt in his coat’s inside pocket and took out a long business envelope. ‘That’s what I’ve found on the Morays, so far. It’s not much, just the pedigree chart for the family with births, deaths and marriages, if that’s of use to you.’

Taking it, I told him, ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m not sure I want to be John Moray anymore.’ It was a half-hearted complaint. ‘He—’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me.’

With reluctance I bent down to put the envelope inside my briefcase, clicking shut the flap. I didn’t want to hear what had become of Moray, even though I knew that I would learn the truth in time, and no doubt sooner than I wanted to.

XX

THE SUMMER CAME AND briefly shone its splendor before fading like the twisting leaves upon the trees that dropped and died and left the world to face the bitter frozen winds of winter, till the spring crept out reluctantly and warmed again to summer days that withered in their turn. And in that time there came no word of new resolve from Saint-Germain to bring the king again across the water.

Still there came each month with regularity a letter from the Duke of Perth to reassure his sister that their plans were not reduced to talk and argument. The messengers yet came and went between the Scottish nobles and the French king at Versailles, and as for young King James, he seemed more determined than ever to keep himself ready for war, having lately declared his intention to lead a charge himself upon the battlefields of Flanders. ‘Although,’ the Duke of Perth had written in his latest letter at the end of August, ‘some do think it possible that peace may come before he gets the chance.’

Sophia would have welcomed peace. The young king’s disappointment mattered less to her than did the fact that Moray was now back in Flanders fighting with his regiment, and every day the war stretched on she worried for his safety.

All the comfort that she had now came in dreams, when she could hear again his voice and feel his touch, and not two weeks ago she’d woken in the dead of night convinced he’d been beside her in the bed. She’d felt the warmth of him.

She’d felt it even when the moon had pushed its way clear of the grasping clouds to shine its light upon the sheets and show her there was nothing there.

Next morning Kirsty, upon seeing that Sophia had not slept well, had announced, ‘Ye want an hour with your wee Anna.’ And that very afternoon Sophia had gone down to find the drawing room alive with Kirsty’s sister and the children, and with Anna’s brown curls blending with the other dancing heads so well that nobody observing them would have had cause to think that she was not of that same family.

In fact Anna herself knew no differently, having been placed in their cottage just days after she and Sophia had come back to Slains more than a year ago. That had been the countess’s solution, and it had so far kept Anna safe, for no one had discovered yet that she was Moray’s child, and no one would, with Kirsty’s sister standing guardian. ‘’Tis the benefit of living such an isolated life,’ she’d told Sophia, with a smile. ‘My neighbors are so used to seeing me produce a new bairn every year that none would even question she was mine.’

‘Yes, but your husband…’

‘Would do anything the countess asked, and gladly.’ With a hand upon Sophia’s arm, she’d said, ‘You must not worry. We will keep her safe with us, I promise, till your husband does return.’

And Kirsty’s sister had been sure to hold that promise, so that little Anna grew each month in laughter and in happiness and saw Sophia often, though from caution she had not been taught to call Sophia ‘mama’.

There would be time enough for that, Sophia knew. And though she would have given much to have her daughter with her every day, she weighed her own needs lightly against Anna’s, and was grateful beyond measure that her child was so well cared for.

She saw little of herself in Anna’s features or her character—the eyes, the hair, the energy, were Moray’s, and it gave Sophia joy to see his nature reproduced with such perfection every time she looked at her daughter.