The Winter Sea

She looked again at Anna’s pawn and blinked to keep the tears back, but her smile held. ‘Yes, that one is my favorite, too.’

And careless of propriety, she bent to wrap her arms round Anna one last time and hold her close, and make a final memory of the scent of her, the feel of her, the softness of the brush of curls against her cheek, so she’d have that at least to keep her company through all the hollow years to come. Then quickly—for the little girl, confused, had started drawing back—Sophia kissed the top of Anna’s head and loosed her hold. ‘It is all right, my darling, you can go.’

Anna stood her ground a moment longer staring upwards as though somehow she suspected more was going on than she could understand. Her solemn face and watchful eyes were so like Moray’s at that instant that Sophia felt a painful twist of memory, like a hand that tugged against her heart and stopped it in mid-beat. She drew a shaking breath, determined, and her heart resumed its rhythm once again.

As all things must.

Still Anna stood and watched in silence, and Sophia tried to smile again but could not manage it, nor raise her voice much higher than a whisper. ‘Go,’ she gently urged the child. ‘Go to your mother.’

And she did not cry. Not then. Not even when the little girl was led away, with one last backward look that would forever haunt Sophia’s dreams. She did not cry. She only rose and went to stand before the window, where the cold wind off the sea was blasting hard against the glass and wailing still that it could not come in, while last night’s rain yet clung hard to the panes like frozen tears.

The countess did not speak, nor leave her place beside the mantelpiece.

‘So, you see,’ Sophia said, ‘my heart is held forever by this place. I cannot leave but that the greatest part of me remains where Anna is.’

‘It would be so no matter how you left her,’ said the countess. ‘I have said goodbye to my own daughters, one by one.’ Her voice was softly wise. ‘And now to you.’

Sophia turned at that, and saw the sadness in the older woman’s smile.

The countess said, ‘I can assure you it is never such an easy thing to wish a child farewell.’

Beneath that quiet gaze Sophia felt her chin begin to tremble once again, and as the room became a blur she stumbled forward to the countess’s embrace.

‘My dear.’ The countess held her close and stroked her hair as if she were as small as Anna, and in greater need of comfort. ‘I do promise that you will survive this. Faith, my own heart is so scattered round the country now, I marvel that it has the strength each day to keep me standing. But it does,’ she said, and drawing in a steady breath she pulled back just enough to raise a hand to wipe Sophia’s tears. ‘It does. And so will yours.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because it is a heart, and knows no better.’ With her own eyes moist, the countess smoothed the hair back from Sophia’s cheek. ‘But leave whatever part of it you will with us at Slains, and I will care for it,’ she said. ‘And by God’s grace I may yet live to see the day it draws you home.’

CHAPTER 17

NO, NO,’ SAID JANE. ‘You simply cannot end the book like that. It’s much too sad.’

To emphasize her point, she thumped the final pages of the manuscript down on the dark wood table of our booth in the Kilmarnock Arms, and made our lunch plates rattle.

‘But that’s how it really happened.’

‘I don’t care.’ There was no stopping Jane once she got going, and I was glad there was no one but us in the Lounge Bar this afternoon. The lunch hour itself had been busy, seeing it was Saturday, but now the other tables had been cleared and there was only us. The girl who’d served us had retreated round the corner to the Public Bar, but even that seemed quiet, and to judge by all the footsteps passing by us on the sidewalk most of Cruden Bay today was out of doors. The breeze was chilly, but the sun was shining cheerfully for all that it was worth, so that from where I sat beside the window facing on the street, it looked like spring.

‘It’s bad enough,’ said Jane, ‘you had to go and kill the poor girl’s husband—and I won’t forgive you soon for that one either—but to make her leave her child.’ She shook her head in disbelief.

‘But Jane—’

‘It isn’t right,’ she said. ‘A mother wouldn’t do a thing like that.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I thought I understood Sophia’s reasons, even if I wasn’t a mother myself, but my explanations fell on deaf ears. Jane was in no mood to hear them.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s far too sad. You’ll have to change it.’

‘But I can’t.’

‘Of course you can. Bring Moray back from France, or Flanders, or wherever.’

‘But he died.’ I held the sheets I’d got from Graham out to show her. ‘See? Right there, page three. John Moray, died of wounds.’

She took the papers from my hand and looked them over, unconvinced.

‘They’re all there,’ I assured her. ‘Look, there’s Moray, and his sisters, and his mother’s brother Patrick Graeme. I can’t change what happens to real people, Jane. I can’t change history.’

‘Well, Sophia isn’t history,’ argued Jane. ‘She isn’t real, she’s just a character, your own creation. Surely you can find some way to let her have a happy ending.’ Standing firm, she pushed the pages back towards me on the table. ‘You can try, at least. Your deadline’s not for weeks yet. Speaking of which,’ she went on, switching gears as she picked up her coffee cup, ‘what shall I tell them you’re working on next, when they ask me? I know you were thinking of Italy somewhere, but I don’t remember the details.’