The Winter Sea

When the men had departed the countess sagged visibly, showing the strain of her hard ride from Dunottar. Turning to Sophia, she began to frame a question, but Sophia said, ‘He came just after midday and has been with me for all this time. And as you did suspect, he seemed determined to confuse me into telling him the secrets of this house.’

The countess softened. ‘Oh, my dear.’

‘I told him nothing.’ She was feeling more than tired, now. The sickness was returning, but she fought it as she used the chair’s support to rise and stand before the countess. ‘I was careful.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ the countess said again, but with a thread of warm approval in her voice. ‘I am but sorry you were here alone to shoulder such a burden.’

‘It was no great trouble.’

‘Nonsense. It has wearied you.’ The countess moved to help her. ‘You are pale.’

‘’Tis but a headache.’

‘Go and rest, then. You have earned it.’ Once again Sophia felt that gentle touch upon her cheek, so like the memory of her mother’s loving hand. The countess smiled. ‘You have done well, Sophia. Very well. Now go and get some rest. The earl and I are equal to the duke’s designs. We have him well in hand, and I would not for all the world have you fall ill because of such a man.’ Her brief embrace was soothing. ‘Up you go, and seek your chamber. I’ll send Kirsty to attend you.’

So Sophia gladly went, and after that remembered little of the evening, which she passed in waves of sickness and of sleep. But in the morning, whether from the drink of herbs that Kirsty’s sister had supplied or from some miracle, the sickness had departed, and the duke had gone as well, his dark coach setting off along the northern road before the sun was fully risen, and himself no wiser than he’d been before he’d come to Slains.

‘It isn’t broken.’ Dr Weir’s hands moved reassuringly across my swollen ankle. ‘If you’d broken it, you’d feel it here’—he gently squeezed the place—‘not here. It’s just a sprain.’ He’d slipped easily into the role he’d retired from. He might have been sitting here wearing a white coat and stethoscope, questioning one of his surgical patients, not sitting here next to my fireplace and wearing a fisherman’s sweater that still held the damp from the rain.

Reaching for a roll of wide elastic bandage, he glanced up from beneath his eyebrows. ‘Stuart said you took a tumble off the path.’

Stuart evidently hadn’t trusted me to keep my word and show my injured ankle to the doctor on my own, so he’d arranged this morning’s house call. I suspected that his version of my accident, no doubt with ample mention of his own role in my rescue, would have gone a bit beyond the simple fact that I had fallen from the path, but, ‘Yes, that’s what I did.’

This time the upwards glance was curious. ‘It’s not a narrow path.’

I could think of no good reason not to tell him what I thought might be the truth. ‘Well, I was daydreaming a bit, not really paying much attention, and I think that I was walking where I thought the path would be.’ I met his eyes. ‘Where I remembered it had been.’

‘I see.’ He took this in. ‘How very interesting.’ In silent thought he wrapped the bandage firmly round my ankle and sat back with the expression of a scientist considering a curious hypothesis. ‘It’s possible, of course. The hillside would have changed a good deal since that time, from the erosion of the wind and tides. It’s possible the old path fell away.’

‘And I fell with it.’ With a rueful smile, I turned my ankle, testing it.

‘Aye, well, you’ll want to take care up at Slains, then, won’t you? You’ll do more than hurt your ankle if you lose your footing there.’

I looked beyond his shoulder to the window with its view of those red walls that clung so fiercely to the rocky cliffs, in shadow now that dark clouds had begun to mass above the sea to block the sun. ‘I don’t imagine I’ll be up there in the next few days.’

He paused, then asked me, ‘When you’re up there, walking through the rooms, what does it feel like?’

It was tricky to explain. ‘Like everyone just left the room as I walked in. I almost hear their steps, the swishing of their gowns, but I can never quite catch up with them.’

‘I thought perhaps,’ he said, ‘you might see flashes of the past, there in the ruins.’

‘No.’ I looked a moment longer and then pulled my gaze away. ‘The memories aren’t at Slains, itself. They’re locked in my subconscious, and they come out while I’m writing, though I’m not sure they are memories till I’ve had a chance to test them.’ And I told him how his Old Scots Navy book had proved my Captain Gordon scenes were factual. ‘I’ve decided not to read the book at all, I’m only using it to verify the details once I’ve written down a scene. But not everything is that easy to prove. I’ve just found out my heroine is pregnant, for example, so to prove she really was I’d have to find a record of the child’s birth or baptism that lists Sophia as the mother. Records from so long ago don’t always tell you what you need to know, if you can track them down at all. There are a lot of people in our family tree my dad can’t find, and he’s been working on the thing for years.’

‘But you’d be at a slight advantage with Sophia Paterson,’ he pointed out. ‘You have a window on her life.’