The Winter Sea

Aware of her appraisal, Moray’s grey eyes shifted quietly to hers, and once again she found she had no will to break the contact.

‘Come, Sophia,’ said the countess, ‘we shall give our visitors some peace.’ And with a smile the countess took her gracious leave of both the gentlemen, and in her wake, Sophia did the same, not daring this time to look back.

She found a refuge in the little corner sewing room, where for a mindless hour or so she struggled with her needlework and tried to think of nothing else. Her fingertips were painful from the needle-pricks when she at last gave up and went to look for Kirsty, hoping that companionship might have success where solitude had failed.

At this hour of day, and with guests in the house, Kirsty should have been setting the dining room table for supper, but she was not there. Sophia was still standing in that room, in faint confusion, when the rustling of a woman’s gown, in concert with more manly, measured steps, approaching down the corridor, intruded on her thinking.

The voice of the Countess of Erroll was serious. ‘So, Colonel, I should advise you to not be in haste. You will find his affairs greatly altered, within these past months. All the world has abandoned him, and all the well-affected have come to an open rupture with him. He is suspected of holding a correspondence with the court of London, therefore it would serve you well to be upon your guard before you trusted much to him.’

They were near the open doorway of the dining room. Sophia smoothed her gown and linked her fingers and prepared an explanation of her presence there, for it seemed sure to her they would come in. But they did not. The footsteps and the rustling passed her by, and when Hooke spoke next he had moved too far away for her to know his words.

She felt relieved. She had not meant to listen to a private conversation, and it would have pained her had the countess known she’d done it, even if it were by accident. Eyes briefly closed, she waited one more minute before stepping out herself into the corridor to carry on her search for Kirsty.

She could not have said from which direction Mr Moray had been coming, nor how boots like his upon the floorboards could have made no sound. She only knew that when she stepped out through the doorway he was there, and had it not been for his swift reflexive grabbing of her shoulders, their collision would have surely damaged more than her composure.

He had clearly not expected her to be there either, for his first reaction was to swear, then to retract the oath and ask for her forgiveness. ‘Did I hurt ye?’

‘Not at all.’ She drew back quickly—just a little bit too quickly—from his grasp. ‘The fault is mine. I did not look where I was going.’

He seemed taller here, at such close quarters. If she kept her eyes fixed front, they looked directly on a level with his throat, above the knotted neckcloth. He had taken off the buffcoat and replaced it with a jacket of a woven dark green fabric set with silver buttons. She did not look higher.

He seemed interested by her voice. ‘Your accent,’ he said, ‘does not come from Edinburgh.’

She could not think why that would matter, until she remembered that the countess, just that afternoon, had told the men that Mr Hall had journeyed with Sophia up from Edinburgh. Surprised that Mr Moray would have taken note of such a trifle, she said, ‘No. I did but break my journey there.’

‘Where do ye come from, then?’

‘The Western Shires. You would not know the town.’

‘I might surprise ye with my knowledge.’

So she told him, and he nodded. ‘Aye, ’tis near Kirkcudbright, is it not?’ She felt him looking down at her. ‘Are ye then Presbyterian?’

She couldn’t tell him that she was not anything; that living in her uncle’s house, she’d long since lost her faith. Instead she said, ‘My parents were, and I was so baptized, but I was brought up by my aunt and uncle as Episcopalian.’

‘That does explain it.’

Curiosity compelled her to look up at last, and see that he was smiling. ‘What does it explain?’

‘Ye do not have the long and disapproving face,’ he told her, ‘of a Presbyterian. Nor would a lass who goes God-fearing to the Kirk be like to run so free and wanton on the hills above the shore, for God and all the world to see. Unless it was not you I saw this afternoon, when we were being rowed to land?’

She stared at him and made no answer, for it was quite clear he did not need one.

‘Faith, lass,’ he said, ‘there’s no need to look like that. Ye’d not be beaten for it, even if I had a mind to tell. But in the future, if ye wish to keep your pleasures secret, ye’d do well to wash the mud stains from your gown before ye come to greet your company.’

And with that small bit of advice, he took his solemn leave of her and left her in the corridor, and she—

The phone rang loudly, for the second time. Like scissors rending fabric, it effectively destroyed the flow of words, the mood, and with a sigh I stood and went to answer it.

‘Bad timing?’ guessed my father, at the other end.

I lied. ‘Of course not. No, I was just finishing a scene.’ I was out of my writer’s trance, now, and more fully aware of who I was, and where I was, and who was on the phone. And then I started worrying, because my father almost never called me, so I asked, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, we’re fine. But you’ve got me back onto the trail of the McClellands. I haven’t done much on them lately, but I thought I’d take minute on the internet, and see if there was anything new on the IGI.’