The Winter Sea

‘I thought it was your favorite.’

‘Who better then to have it but my dearest friend? Mayhap when I am gone it will help keep me in your thoughts.’

Kirsty bit her lip, and in a voice that wavered promised her, ‘You will be there without it. Every time I look at—’ Then she stopped, as though she did not want to probe a wound that might be painful, and with downcast eyes she laid the gown aside and finished simply, ‘Thank you. I will treasure it.’

Sophia blinked her own eyes fiercely, fighting for composure. ‘One more thing,’ she said, and reaching over, drew from deep within the heap of clothes the lace-edged holland nightgown with its fine embroidered vines and sprays of flowers intertwined.

‘I’ll not take that,’ said Kirsty, firm. ‘It was a gift.’

‘I know.’ Sophia passed her hand across the bodice, felt its softness and remembered that same feeling on her skin; remembered Moray’s eyes upon her when she’d worn it on their wedding night. ‘’Tis not for you that I would leave it,’ said Sophia slowly. ‘’Tis for Anna.’

Then, because she could not face the look in Kirsty’s eyes directly, she looked down and smoothed the lovely nightgown and began to fold it carefully, with hands that shook but slightly. ‘I have nothing else to leave her that is mine. It is my hope that she will never learn the truth, that she will always think your sister is her mother, but we cannot always know…’ She lost her voice a moment; struggled to recover it, and carried on more quietly, ‘We cannot always know what lies ahead. And if she ever does discover who she truly is, then for the world I would not have her thinking that she was not born of love, or that I did not hold her dear.’

‘Sophia…’

‘And if nothing else, when she has reached an age where she can marry, you may give it to her then, just as you gave it once to me, and she can value it for that alone.’ The nightgown, neatly folded, seemed like nothing in Sophia’s hands. She held it out to Kirsty. ‘Please.’

A moment passed. Then Kirsty slowly reached to take the offering. ‘For Anna, then.’ And as her fingers closed around the nightgown something seemed to break in Kirsty, as though she’d kept silent for too long. ‘How can you bear to leave,’ she asked, ‘and her not knowing who you are?’

‘Because I love her.’ It was simple. ‘And I would not spoil her happiness. She has been raised within your sister’s house, and to her mind the other children are her sisters and her brothers, and your sister’s husband is the only father she has known.’ That had hurt more than all the rest of it, because she felt that Moray had been robbed of more than just his life, but of his rights, to know his child and be remembered. But in the end she knew that scarcely mattered, as her own pain did not matter when she weighed it in the balance of their daughter’s future. Trying to make Kirsty understand, she said, ‘She has a family here, and is content. What could I give her that would equal that?’

‘I do not doubt that Mr Moray’s family, if they knew of her, would give her much.’

Sophia had considered that. She’d thought of Moray’s ring, still on its chain around her neck, and of his saying she had but to ask his family for assistance, and they’d help her. And she’d thought of Colonel Graeme and his promise there was none of Moray’s kin who would not walk through fire to see her safe. No doubt that promise would extend to Moray’s child, as well—especially a child who looked so like him that it called his memory close.

But in the end Sophia had not chosen to reveal herself, nor ask for any help from Abercairney. It was true that in the lap of Moray’s family Anna might have had the benefit of higher social standing, but, ‘I will not take her from the only family she has known,’ she said to Kirsty now, ‘and have her live with strangers.’

‘They would be her kin.’

Sophia answered quietly, ‘That does not mean that she will be well treated. Do not forget that I was also raised by kin.’

And that reminder brought another silence settling down upon them both.

‘Besides,’ Sophia said, attempting brightness, ‘I shall worry less about her knowing she is here. Should something happen to your sister there will be the countess and yourself who both would love and care for Anna as if she were your own child.’

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty, blinking fiercely, ‘so we would.’

‘It would be selfish of me, taking her from that to face a future that at best would be uncertain, with a mother and no father.’

‘But you are young, like me,’ said Kirsty. ‘You may meet another man, and marry, and then Anna—’

‘No.’ Sophia’s voice was soft, but very sure. She felt the solid and unyielding warmth of Moray’s ring against her skin, above her heart, as she replied, ‘No, I will never find another man I wish to marry.’

Kirsty clearly did not want to see her friend lose hope. ‘Ye told me once that there was no such thing as never.’

She remembered. But the moment when she’d said that seemed so long ago, and now she knew it had not been the truth; that there were some things that could never be put right once they’d been ruined. Moray’s ship would never come, and she would never wake again to feel his touch or hear him speak her name, and nothing could restore to her the life his love had promised her.

It was all gone. All gone, she thought. But still, she summoned up a smile to show to Kirsty, for she would not have this parting with her friend be any sadder than it had to be.