The Winter Sea

He didn’t seem concerned about his dad’s suspicions. Something else I’d said had grabbed his interest. ‘Graham’s been here? When was that?’

I’d slipped up, and I knew it. ‘Oh, a while ago,’ I told him. ‘He was helping with my book.’ And then, before Stuart could think to ask anything else, I distracted his attention by leaning to push down my sock for a look at my ankle.

It worked. He said, ‘Christ, look at that.’

It was swollen. The pain, though, now that I’d stopped hobbling around, had dulled itself down to a steady throb, something I found easier to manage.

Stuart frowned. ‘You’re sure you won’t have someone look at that?’

‘I’ll show it to Dr Weir tomorrow,’ I promised. ‘But trust me, it’s only a sprain, if it’s anything. Nothing that rest and some aspirin won’t cure.’

His torn expression, I decided, wasn’t just because I wouldn’t see a doctor. More than likely it owed something to the fact that he’d have headed here to visit me tonight with a seduction scene in mind. But even Stuart, in the end, had too much chivalry to try it on with someone who’d been injured.

He brought me my aspirin and water to take it with, settled me into my chair with the phone at my side, and then smiled with the confidence of a commander who’d lost the day’s battle but fully expected a victory the next time around. ‘Get your rest, then,’ he told me. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I had every intention of resting. I did. After Stuart had gone, I leaned back in the chair and tried closing my eyes for a moment, but then the wind rose at the windows and rattled the glass and moaned low round the cottage, until the lamenting became a low murmur, like voices, and one voice from among them warned, ‘The moment will be lost.’

So I knew the idea of resting was out. It was difficult, standing and making my shuffling way to the work table, but it would have been even more difficult to sit still when my characters called.

And I knew, at this point in the story, I wasn’t the only one dealing with pain.

XI

KIRSTY SET THE BOWL of broth before Sophia. ‘Ye must eat.’

Sophia had not managed anything at breakfast. She’d been grateful that the countess, with the earl her son, had gone to Dunottar, and had not seen her as she’d been this morning, pale and feeling ill.

She knew the reason for it. She had not been sure at first, but now it was August, and nearly three months had passed since her marriage to Moray, and there could be no other cause for this strange sickness that came on each morning and confined her to her bed. It had been so, she well remembered, with her sister Anna, when the bairn had started growing in her belly.

Kirsty knew, as well. Her cool hand smoothed Sophia’s forehead. ‘Ye’ll not be so ill the whole time. It will pass.’

Sophia could not meet the sympathy in Kirsty’s eyes. She turned her head. ‘What will I do?’

‘Cannot ye tell her ladyship?’

‘I promised I would not.’

Drily, Kirsty said, ‘A few months more, and ye may find it difficult to keep that promise.’

‘In a few months more, I may not have to.’ Surely it could not be that much longer till the king would come, and Moray with him, and there would be no need then to hide their marriage.

Kirsty took the sense of that, and nodded. ‘Let us hope that ye are right.’ Again her hand passed cool across Sophia’s forehead, and on inspiration she said, ‘I will ask my sister if she knows of any potions that might help ye through this time.’

Sophia’s hand moved in protection to her still-flat stomach. ‘Potions?’ She remembered Anna’s agony. The evil, grinning woman with her bottles. ‘I cannot take any medicines. I would not harm this bairn.’ His bairn, she thought—born of his love for her. A part of him, inside her. She drew warmth at least from that.

‘The bairn will not be harmed,’ was Kirsty’s promise. With a smile, she said, ‘My sister’s been through this more times than most, and all her bairns came full of life and yelling to the world. She’ll know what ye should do. She’ll help ye.’

It would not be soon enough, Sophia thought, as yet another wave of sickness caught her helpless in its roll, and made her turn her face, eyes closed, against the pillow.

Kirsty stood. ‘I will send word to her, and see if she will come afore her ladyship returns.’

Before night, Kirsty’s sister came, a calming presence with her understanding eyes and gentle ways. She brought Sophia dried herbs wrapped in cloth, to brew as tea. ‘’Twill ease the sickness greatly so that ye can feel yourself again and take a bit o’ nourishment.’

It helped.

So much so that, next morning, she felt well enough to rise, and dress, and take her place at table. She was still the only person in the house, besides the servants, so there was no one to see the way she smoothed her hand across her stomach with new pride, protectively, before she sat. Her appetite was small but still she ate, and after eating sought a warmly sunlit corner of the library, to pass the morning reading.

She could draw some sense of shared communion, sitting here where Moray had so often sought escape from his forced inactivity at Slains, and feeling in her hands the smooth expensive leather bindings of the books he had so loved to read.

And one book, out of all of them, could draw her to a stronger feeling of connection to him, as though Moray’s voice were speaking out the words. It was a newer volume, plainly bound, of Dryden’s King Arthur, or the British Worthy. The pages were so slightly used she doubted whether anyone but Moray and herself had read the lines, and she was only sure that he had read them because in the letter he had left her—in that simple letter, with its sentiments so strong and sure that every night, on reading them, they banished all her worries—he had quoted from this very work of Dryden’s, and the verse, writ in his own bold hand, stayed with her as though he himself had spoken it: