The Winter Sea

She liked his eyes, his face, his friendly manner. ‘No, I was not here. I only came last spring.’

‘Oh, aye?’ He showed a keener interest. ‘Was that afore or after Colonel Hooke was here, with his companion?’

They’d come around the courtyard now, and reached the steps that led upstairs, and she was grateful that she was ahead of him so that her face was hidden while her voice pretended ignorance. For though she liked this man, she could not easily forget the need for caution. Repeating, ‘Colonel Hooke…,’ she shook her head and told him, ‘I regret I have no memory of the name.’

‘’Tis of no matter.’

As they reached the upper floor the earl stepped out into the passage from the library and narrowly missed colliding with them.

‘Colonel Graeme!’ Looking as surprised and pleased as Rory had been earlier, the earl reached out to greet the colonel with a hearty handshake. ‘Where in God’s name have you sprung from?’

‘I can tell ye that, your Lordship, when ye’ve offered me a dram.’

Sophia had not heard another man, except the Duke of Hamilton, be so familiar with the earl—the colonel said ‘your Lordship’ in a tone so much at ease that he might just as well have said ‘my lad’. But from the earl’s acceptance of it she assumed the two men shared a long acquaintance, and her sense of this was strengthened when the earl, with one hand clapped around the colonel’s shoulder, steered him through the doorway of the drawing room, announcing, ‘Mother, look at who has come.’

The countess came across, delighted. ‘I heard no one at the door.’

‘I came directly from the stables. Mistress Paterson was brave enough to guide me, though I look a proper rogue and we’ve not yet been introduced.’

The countess smiled. ‘Then let me set that right. Sophia, this is Colonel Graeme. He is truthfully a rogue, as he admits, but one we welcome in our midst.’ Turning to the colonel, she said, ‘Patrick, this is Mistress Paterson, our kinswoman, who came this year to live with us.’

‘An honor.’ He did not bend low above her hand as was the current fashion; only took it in a firm and honest grasp and gave a formal nod that had the same effect.

The countess said, ‘But you must come and sit beside the fire, or else you’ll catch a fever standing in those wet clothes.’

‘Och, I’m not so weak. It was my cloak that got the worst of it, the rest of me is dry enough.’ He swung the sodden black cloak from his shoulders to prove it, and the countess took it from his hand and laid it on the fender.

‘Nonetheless,’ she said, and put her hand upon an armchair by the fireplace in a gesture that fell partway between invitation and command. The colonel gave way with a cavalier shrug, but he waited for the countess and Sophia to find their seats first before he took his own. The earl, who through all this had left the room a moment, now returned and pressed a glass half-filled with whisky in the colonel’s hand.

‘There,’ he said, ‘you have your drink. Now tell us what has brought you here. We thought you were in France.’

‘I was. I landed to the north of here two days ago, and came to you as quickly as I could. I bring a message from your brother,’ he said, looking to the countess and then past her, very briefly, to Sophia.

The countess told him, ‘Mistress Paterson is family, and does know to keep a secret.’

‘Aye, I gathered that much for myself.’ Again his eyes laughed privately within the lean face. ‘When I asked if she’d met Colonel Hooke, she near convinced me he had never been to Slains.’

Sophia blushed. ‘I was not sure…’

‘No, no, ye did the right thing, lass,’ he said. ‘Ye canna be too careful, in these times. It was my own fault, for forgetting ye did not ken who I was—I only meant to learn if ye had seen my nephew and could tell me how he looked, for though we both have been in France of late our paths seem not to cross.’

Sophia frowned in faint confusion. ‘Colonel Hooke is your nephew?’

‘No, lass.’

‘He speaks of Mr Moray,’ said the countess, and then answered in Sophia’s place, ‘Your nephew did look very well when he was here.’

The earl put in, ‘He was not pleased with me, I think. With such a price upon his head, I could not let him venture out as he desired, to journey through the Highlands, so he had to stay the whole time here with us.’

‘I see.’ The colonel’s glance touched on Sophia, giving her the feeling that he saw more than she would have wished. She felt relieved that she had already been blushing from her earlier embarrassment, so nobody could blame the heightened color of her cheeks on this new talk of Moray, or on her reaction to the news that Colonel Graeme was his uncle.

‘Still,’ the countess said, ‘he did not much complain, and seemed to keep himself well occupied. I found him very quiet.’

‘Not like me, ye mean?’ The colonel grinned. ‘Aye, John does keep his thoughts and feelings to himself, for all he feels them deeply. He was like that as a lad, and in the years he’s been a soldier he’s grown harder in the habit of it.’

‘Where is his regiment now fighting?’ asked the earl. ‘Are they in Flanders?’

And Sophia tried with downturned eyes to hide her own fierce interest in the answer.

‘Aye, they are, but John’s not with them. Hooke has kept him close, in Paris. They’ll let no one who kens anything about the young king’s plans stray far from Saint-Germain, these days, for fear the word may spread.’