The Winter Sea

He shifted underneath her. ‘What is that?’

‘What?’

‘That.’ His hand moved to her throat, and lower, till it felt the small, hard object pressing at the fabric of her gown. His fingers found the cord strung round her neck, and slipped beneath it to draw forth the makeshift necklace. She had lifted up her head to watch him, and she saw the change of his expression as he studied the small pebble, gleaming black, warmed by its closeness to her skin. She’d found a leather lace to string it with, and wore it tucked well underneath her bodice, where no one would chance to see it.

He seemed about to say something, then thought the better of it, and asked lightly, ‘Does it work, I wonder?’

‘It well might,’ Sophia told him, holding up her hand as evidence. ‘This afternoon has been the first time I can yet recall that I’ve not pricked myself to pieces at my needlework.’

He caught her fingers lightly, turned them as if to examine them, then flattened his own hand to hers, as if to test the difference in their sizes. She could feel the pressing coolness of the ring he always wore on the last finger of his right hand—a heavy square of silver with a red stone at its centre, on a plain, broad silver band. It had been, he had told her once, his father’s ring, a small piece of his family he could carry with him in a foreign land.

She wished she had some way to know what he was thinking, with his grey eyes fixed so seriously on their hands together, but he made no comment, and at length he simply twined his fingers through her own and brought her hand to rest above his heart.

The light was changing all around them to the light of early evening, and she knew they did not have much time before they’d be expected back for supper. She asked, ‘Shall we walk again to Ardendraught?’

‘No. Not today.’ He did not loose his hold on her, but closed his eyes again in such a way that she knew, from these past days of observing him, that he was deep in thought.

She waited, and at last he said, ‘When I am gone, what will ye do?’

She tried to keep her answer light. ‘I’ll throw myself at Rory.’

Moray’s chest moved with his laughter, but he turned her face to his. His eyes were open now. ‘I would be serious. The countess will want to be seeing ye married, for your sake. Will you take a husband?’

‘John…’

‘Will you?’

Pushing at him suddenly, she made him let her up and sat so that her back was to him and he could not see her face. ‘How can you ask me that?’

‘I think I have a right.’ His voice was quiet, and it gave her hope that he, too, might be looking on the prospect of his leaving with regret.

Head down, she answered, ‘No. When you have gone, I will not marry someone else.’

‘Why not?’ His question gave no quarter, and Sophia knew he would not let the subject rest until he’d had a truthful answer.

Sifting sand again, she watched it spilling freely from her palm, unwilling to be held. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘my sister made me promise her I’d never give my hand unless I also gave my heart. And you have that.’ She spread her fingers, setting loose the final fall of sand, and Moray, raising himself up on to one elbow, caught her hand in his again.

‘Ye give me more than I deserve,’ he said.

‘You have a poor opinion of yourself.’

‘No, lass. An honest one.’ With eyes still darkly serious, he contemplated their linked hands a second time, and then in one swift rolling motion stood, and helped her up to stand beside him. ‘Come.’

She saw their shadows stretching long across the sand, towards the sea, and knew the sun was moving ever lower in the west, above the line of distant hills. It touched the sky and clouds with gold, and caught her vision in a burst of shifting rays when Moray turned her to its light, and set her hand upon his arm, and led her back along the beach.

He did not take her by the main path that went up and through the crow’s wood, but along the shore itself and up the hill that stood between themselves and Slains. From here she saw the castle stretched before them in the distance, and the gardens running down to meet the dovecote that clung bravely to the gully’s edge, among the gorse and grasses. Then the path was leading down again. It brought them to the bottom of the gully with its quiet grove of chestnut, ash and sycamore trees blotting out all sound except their footsteps and the cooing of the wood doves and the gurgle of the burn whose water ran to meet the sea.

As they approached the footbridge set across the water, Moray asked her, without warning, ‘Do ye love me?’

She stopped walking. ‘John.’

‘’Tis but a simple thing to answer. Do ye love me?’

He was mad, she thought, completely mad, to ask her such a question in the open, here, but looking in his eyes she lost the will to tell him so. ‘You know I do.’

‘Then, since I have your heart already, let me have your hand.’

She stared, and told herself that she could not have heard him properly. He surely only meant to hold her hand, she thought, and not—

‘Sophia.’ With a careful touch he smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear, as though he wished to better see her face. ‘I’m asking if ye’ll marry me.’

A woman who was sane, she knew, would have the wit to tell him that they could not hope to marry, that the countess and the earl would not permit it, that it was a lovely dream, and nothing more…but standing now as she was standing, with her face reflected in the grey eyes fixed with steady purpose on her own, she could not bring herself to think the thing impossible. She swallowed back the sudden swell of feeling that was rising in her chest, and gave her answer with a wordless nod.