The Winter Sea

And she did close her eyes, although she had not meant to, and stood trembling while he came to her, his hardened hands not hard at all as they brushed warm upon her hair, her upturned face, her shoulders. There they stopped, and slipped beneath the lace-edged neckline of the nightgown. Moray’s head bent so the angle of his jawline pressed her cheek, his mouth against her ear. She felt his warm breath stir her hair. He asked, ‘Why are ye shaking? Are ye frightened?’

Not quite trusting to her voice, she shook her head.

He said, ‘I would not have ye fear me.’

‘I do not.’ She found the words, but in a voice that trembled, too. ‘I do not fear you, John. I love you.’

His mouth traveled in a smile across her cheek, and once again the hands upon her shoulders moved beneath the nightgown, and the silken fabric whispered to the floor. And as he lifted her, his mouth came down on hers with so much strength of feeling that the world behind her tight-shut eyes began to spin, and seemed no longer dark, but filled with bursting lights of wonderment.

Against her lips he breathed, ‘I love ye more.’

And then the time for words was over.

She woke, to hear the roaring of the sea beneath her windows and the raging of the wind against the walls that made the air within the room bite cold against her skin. The fire was failing on the hearth, small licks of dying flame that cast half-hearted shadows on the floorboards and gave little light to see by.

She shivered at the thunder of the passing storm, and stirred to rise and tend the fire, but Moray stopped her.

‘Let it be,’ he mumbled, low, against her neck. ‘We will have warmth enough.’ And then his arm came round her, solid, safe, and drew her firmly back against the shelter of his chest, and she felt peace, and turned her face against the pillow, and she slept.

CHAPTER 14

WITH MY HAND I smoothed the scrap of paper on which I had scribbled those few lines, when I had woken from the dream I’d had that final night in France. It seemed an age ago, in some ways, that I’d dreamed it, and in other ways it seemed like only yesterday.

I’d wondered where that fragment would fit in, and now I knew.

Knew, too, why that one night had left so strong a memory it had traveled down the centuries to haunt my dreams, as well.

‘Good morning.’ Graham’s voice was rough with sleep. He had his jeans on, and a shirt, but it was hanging open, and his chest and feet were bare. ‘Have you seen Angus?’

‘He got up with me. And he’s been out,’ I said. ‘He’s fine.’ The spaniel, curled beneath my work table, rolled both his eyes up without stirring from his comfortable position and, convinced that no one needed him, went back to his contented daydreams.

Graham said, ‘You should have woken me, as well.’

‘I figured you could use the rest.’

‘Did you, now?’ His grey eyes met mine, laughing, making me blush. ‘After all my exertions last night, d’ye mean?’

‘Well…’

‘I’m not such an old man as all that,’ he said, and came over to prove it. He leaned with both hands on the arms of my chair and bent down for the kiss, and it still stole my breath. And he knew it. He drew back and smiled, looking boyishly rumpled and happy. ‘Good morning,’ he said again.

Somehow I managed to answer. ‘Good morning.’

‘Want coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

Graham straightened, and crossed to the kitchen. The cups I’d set out for us yesterday still sat untouched on the counter, beside the full kettle. We’d never gotten round to it. Five minutes through the door I had been standing where he stood right now, with my back to the sitting-room, nervously chattering on like an idiot, and the next thing I’d known he had been there behind me, his arms coming round me to turn me towards him, and then he had kissed me, and I had been lost.

It had been, in a word, unforgettable. And it would not have surprised me at all if the memory of what I had just shared with Graham survived me as strongly as Sophia’s memories of her night with Moray.

I was watching his back and the way that he moved, when he asked, ‘Did you get a lot written?’

‘I did, yes. I finished the scene.’

‘Am I in it?’

He’d meant that, I knew, as a joke, but I answered him honestly. ‘Sort of.’

Graham half-turned to look at me, raising an eyebrow. ‘Oh, aye? Who am I, then?’

‘Well, it isn’t you, exactly, but he looks a lot like you.’

‘Who does?’

‘John Moray.’

‘Moray.’ He seemed to be searching his archive of knowledge.

‘He’s a soldier in the Regiment of Lee, in France. They sent him over here with Hooke, to get the nobles ready for the king’s return.’

‘A soldier.’ Graham grinned, and turned back to his coffee making. ‘I can live with that.’

‘He was an officer, actually. A Lieutenant-Colonel.’

‘Even better.’

‘His big brother was the Laird of Abercairney.’

‘Ah, those Morays,’ Graham said, and gave a nod. ‘From Strathearn. I don’t ken too much about the family, other than that one of the later Lairds, James Moray, was famously kept from the field at Culloden—his manservant scalded his feet so he couldn’t go fight along Bonnie Prince Charlie—but he’d have been only a lad, at the time of the ’08.’