The Winter Sea

‘Where’e’er I go, my Soul shall stay with thee:

’Tis but my Shadow that I take away;’

She read it over now, and touched the book’s page with her fingers as though somehow that could bring him close. A few weeks more, she told herself. A few weeks more—a month, perhaps, and then the king would surely come.

The household spoke of nothing else. The visitors still came and went, in states of great excitement, and throughout the summer Slains had seemed as busy as a royal court itself, at times, the dinner table ringed with unknown faces, men who’d traveled miles to carry secret messages from nobles to the north, and from the Highlands.

The nobles dared not come themselves. A gathering of Jacobites would only draw Queen Anne’s attention, and it was widely known the English Court had turned its ever-watchful eye toward the north, as might a hound that had caught some new scent upon the wind. This was no accident, according to the countess, who had made no false attempt to hide her own opinion of who was responsible. She’d counseled all who came to Slains that they should keep their words and actions guarded from the Duke of Hamilton. ‘If he does seek to be a wolf within the fold,’ she’d said, ‘we would do well to let him carry on believing we are sheep.’

The earl had smiled at that, and told her, ‘Mother, you are many things, but no man who has met you could consider you a sheep.’

Sophia privately agreed with him. The countess, who so many times had proved her strength of intellect, had this summer shown a strength of body that Sophia, for her youth, could not have matched. The older woman slept but little, rising early to her work of putting everything in order for the coming of the king—playing hostess to the many guests, and tending to her daunting correspondence. There was not a night, it seemed, but that the light within the chamber of the countess burned long after all the others were extinguished.

And the pace at which she drove herself—a pace which might have left a man exhausted—had apparently done nothing but increase her sense of restlessness.

‘For God’s sake!’ she’d exploded, only last week, when Sophia had been standing with her at the great bow window of the drawing room. ‘What can they all be thinking of ? They must come now. They must, or else the moment will be lost.’

And yet the sea beyond the window stayed dishearteningly empty. No new sails on the horizon, bringing word from Saint-Germain.

Sophia had, from habit, stood that morning upon waking at the window of her chamber, with her gaze turned eastward, hopefully, but she’d seen only sunlight on the water, hard and glittering, and after some few minutes that had pained her eyes so that she’d had to look away.

There would be no great news today, she thought, not with the countess and her son still on their visit with the Earl of Marischal at Dunottar. It was a day for rest, and solitary things. Sophia settled with the books, and read, and let the sunlight slanting through the window warm her downturned head, her shoulders, lulling her to drowsiness and then to the oblivion of sleep.

She woke to Kirsty’s gentle shaking of her arm. ‘Sophia, ye must waken.’

Sophia forced her heavy eyes to open. ‘What time is it?’

‘Past noon. Ye have a visitor.’

Sophia struggled upright in her chair, aware of Kirsty’s urgency. ‘Who is it?’

‘’Tis none other than His Grace the Duke of Hamilton, come all the way from Edinburgh by coach.’

At a loss, her mind still turning slowly after sleep, Sophia said, ‘But he’ll have come to see the countess and the earl, not me.’

‘Aye, so he will, and Rory’s riding now to Dunottar to fetch them home. But till they arrive, you’re the only one in the house fit to receive him. Come, I’ll help ye dress.’

She dressed in haste, and glanced with doubt into the looking-glass. Her face still showed the pallor of the sickness she’d just overcome, and even she could see, in her own eyes, that she was nervous.

She had no wish to face the Duke of Hamilton alone. He knows too much, so John had told her, but he knows that he does not know all, and that, I fear, may drive him to new treachery.

The countess, were she here, would be intelligent enough to see through any false advance that he might make. She would not let herself unwittingly be led into revealing any details that might harm the chances of the king, or injure those who served him. She would, in fact, if she were here, be more apt to manipulate the duke, than he would her.

But she was not here, and Sophia knew her own wits must this afternoon be sharper than they’d ever been. There was too much at stake. And not only for the king and those who followed him.

It was not of the king’s life and his future she was thinking as her hands moved lightly down the bodice of her gown, as if to satisfy themselves the tiny life that beat within her was yet safe.

Kirsty, noticing the movement, said, ‘It does not show. Ye need not fear the Duke will see.’

Sophia dropped her hands.

‘But he’ll see that,’ said Kirsty, nodding at the heavy silver ring Sophia wore now always round her neck, upon a slender silver chain that could be easily concealed beneath her clothes. The chain had slipped now from the neckline of the gown, and Kirsty pointed out, ‘It would be safer for ye not to wear it.’

She was right, Sophia knew. From Moray’s tales about his childhood she knew well that his own father, who had given him that ring, had shared an intimate acquaintance with the family of the duke, and it was likely that the duke had from a young age seen that ring on Moray’s father’s hand. Sophia could not take the chance that he would see it now and recognize it, for she knew it would not take him long to reason out how she had come to have it in her keeping.