The Winter Sea

VIII

THE COUNTESS LOOKED ROUND, smiling, as Sophia passed the doorway of her private rooms. ‘My dear, would you have seen Monsieur de Ligondez?’

She meant the captain of the French ship, the Heroine, which that morning had, unheralded, returned from Norway, sliding down the coast so very stealthily that none at Slains had noticed it until the boat that bore the captain had been rowed halfway to shore. The earl, who had not risen from his bed yet, had been forced to beg Monsieur de Ligondez’s indulgence for the short while it would take to dress and drink his morning draught and make himself prepared.

The countess, also, had just finished dressing.

But Sophia had herself been up some time, and knew exactly where the French ship’s captain was. ‘I do believe,’ she said, ‘that he is walking now with Mr Moray, in the garden.’

‘Then would you be good enough to go and seek him there, and tell him that my son and I are ready now to welcome him.’

Sophia hesitated. She had not been in the garden these three days since Billy Wick had put his hands on her, and she had no desire to go there now in case he tried it once again. But she could not refuse the countess. With a brave lift of her chin, she answered, ‘Yes, of course,’ and did as she’d been asked.

It was another fair spring morning. Songbirds greeted her with twittering more cheerful than the crying of the gulls that wheeled, high specks of white, above the cliffs beyond the garden wall. Her shoulder brushed a vine that loosed a fragrance sweetly unfamiliar from its soft, unfolding leaves, and when she walked her gown brushed lightly over bluebells growing close against the ground.

She did not give herself to daydreams this time, though, but kept her eyes fixed open, and her ears alert. Not far off, she could hear the quiet voices of Monsieur de Ligondez and Moray, though she could not understand their words, and so presumed they must be speaking in the language of the French. She turned her steps towards the sound, and felt so near her goal that she had almost let her guard down when the heavy steps fell in behind her on the path.

She would not show him fear again, she thought. Not looking round, she kept her shoulders square and walked more briskly, heading for the voices with such single-minded focus that she burst upon the speakers like a pheasant flushed by dogs out of the underbrush.

The French ship’s captain stopped mid-sentence, startled. Moray turned to look first at Sophia, then beyond her to the gardener, who had changed his course unhurriedly away from them, towards the malthouse.

Quickly, to distract his narrowed gaze, Sophia said, ‘The countess sent me here to find you.’

Moray’s grey eyes settled once more on Sophia’s face. ‘Did she, now?’

‘She would inform Monsieur de Ligondez that she is ready, with the Earl of Erroll, to receive him.’

Moray translated her message for the Frenchman, who bowed low and left them.

Moray made no move to follow. Squinting upwards at the sky, he said, ‘The day is wondrous fair.’

She could do nothing but agree with him. ‘It is.’

‘Have ye yet breakfasted?’

‘I have, sir, yes.’

‘Then come,’ he said, ‘and walk with me.’

It was no invitation, she decided, but a challenge. He did not make a formal offer of his arm, but shifted, with his hand firm on his sword hilt, so his elbow lifted slightly from his body.

She considered. She had well observed that there were roads in life one started down by choice, that led to ends quite different from what might have been if one had chanced to take another turning. This, she thought, was such a crossroads. If she were to tell him no, and stay behind, the comfort of her world would yet continue, and she’d surely be the safer for it. If she told him yes, she had a fair idea where that road would lead, and yet she felt the stirring of her father’s reckless blood within her and she yearned, as he had done, to set her course through waters yet uncharted.

Reaching out, she set her hand upon the crook of Moray’s elbow, and the look he angled down at her was briefly warm.

She asked, ‘Where would you walk?’

‘Away from here.’

Indeed, the ordered garden seemed too small for him. Within it, he was as the bear she’d once seen caged for baiting, pacing ceaselessly around its strong-barred prison. But the garden walls proved easier to breach than iron bars, and in a moment they had passed beyond its boundaries to the wider sweep of greening cliff that dipped towards the village and the pink sand beach beyond.

It was yet early, and Sophia saw no faces in the windows of the village peering out to mark their passage. Likely everyone was still abed, she thought, and just as well, at that. Her cautious glances did not go unnoticed.

Smiling, Moray asked her, ‘D’ye fear that being seen with me will harm your reputation?’

‘No.’ She looked at him, surprised. ‘It is not that. It—’ But she could not bring herself to tell him of her true fear, that behind one of these curtained windows, someone even now was taking note of him and planning to expose him. She had heard the tales of other captured Jacobites, and how they had been cruelly tortured by the agents of the Crown who had put one man to the boot and shattered both his ankles when he would not talk. And she could not imagine Moray talking, either.

Looking down, she said, ‘I do not fear your company.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, lass.’ He brought his arm against his side and kept her hand close to him as he steered their steps between the sleeping cottages and down again onto the beach.

The sea was wide. Sophia could no longer see the bare masts of the French ship brought to shelter on the far side of the castle rocks. She only saw the bright sky and the water, with its endless waves that rolled to shore in white-curled ranks that fell in foam against the sand and then retreated to the broad horizon.

As she watched, she felt again the pulsing of her father’s blood within her veins, and asked impulsively, ‘What is it like to sail upon a ship?’

He shrugged. ‘That does depend on whether ye do have the constitution for it. Colonel Hooke would no doubt say it is a wretched way to travel, and I would not call him wrong. To be so close confined with many men and little air does not improve my temper. But to be on deck,’ he said, ‘is something altogether different. When the ship is running fast, sails filled with wind…’ He searched for words. ‘It feels, then, like to flying.’

She did not suppose that she would ever know that feeling, and she told him so.

He said, ‘Ye cannot ever say which way this world will take ye. Had ye told me when I was a lad that I would leave the fields of home to fight the battles of a foreign king, I would have called ye mad.’ He slanted a kind look at her. ‘Mayhap ye’ll walk a ship’s deck, after all.’ And then he looked ahead, and added in an offhand tone, ‘I’ve no doubt Captain Gordon could arrange it, if you asked.’

Sophia shot a quick look upwards, searching for some clue in his expression as to why he felt so cold towards the captain. There was more between the men, she knew, than could be laid to her account. She said, ‘You do not like him.’

‘On the contrary, I do admire him greatly.’

‘But you do not like him.’

He took several strides in silence. Then he said, ‘Three years ago I came here by the order of King Jamie, in the company of Simon Fraser. D’ye ken the name?’

She knew it well, as did the whole of Scotland. Even in a nation such as theirs, where the rough violence of the past ran like a stream submerged beneath the everyday affairs of men, a rogue like Simon Fraser set his deeds apart by their depravity. To gain himself the title of Lord Lovat, he had sought to kidnap and marry his own cousin, the heiress to the last lord, but his plot had gone awry and he had taken, in her stead, her widowed mother. All undaunted, he’d decided that the mother was as useful as the daughter to his purposes, and calling on his pipers to play forcefully to drown the lady’s screams, he had subjected her to brutal rape before a band of witnesses, and claimed the weeping woman for his wife.

Fraser had not kept his title long and had been outlawed for his deeds. He had fled to exile before finally being pardoned, but the black stain of such villainy would not soon be erased.

Sophia’s pale, set face showed plainly that she knew whom Moray spoke of.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘’twas all the time like walking with the devil, but the devil kens the way to charm when it does suit his purpose, and to most at Saint-Germain that year it seemed that Simon Fraser was the key to raising Scotland for the king. He had a plan, he claimed, and he convinced the king’s own mother of its virtues, so she sent him here to test the ground. They chose me to come with him, I was later told, because it was believed that by my honor and my family’s reputation I’d more easily commend myself to those we wished to meet with than would such a man as Fraser. They were right.’ The reminiscence set a shadow on his face. ‘We were received by many honorable men. And Simon Fraser did betray them all. And me.’ His smile was thin. ‘He was, throughout our visit, telling all he knew to agents of Queen Anne.’

That, thought Sophia, must have been how Moray had been branded as a traitor to the queen, and earned the price upon his head.

‘I was full ignorant of this. ’Twas Captain Gordon who enlightened me,’ he said. ‘At table with my father, he did call me fool, and worse, that I would let myself be so used by a man who, by his treachery, would surely bring to pain and ruin men of better character. And so it came to pass. I saw good men of my acquaintance taken prisoner, and battered in the pillory, and sentenced to be hanged. And though I managed to escape, my father took my shame upon himself and bore it with him to his grave.’

Sophia felt a pang for him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘It was no lie, what Gordon said—I was a fool. But life does carry lessons with it. Never since that time have I been easily deceived.’

She chose her next words carefully, because she did not know if Moray shared her own distrust of Colonel Hooke. ‘’Tis well, then, Colonel Hooke is not like Simon Fraser.’

‘He is not.’ Another slanting look, that seemed to somehow be assessing her. ‘But Colonel Hooke’s design is to restore a king to Scotland, and I’ll wager he himself cares little whether ’tis King Jamie or His Grace the Duke of Hamilton who takes the throne when all the cards are played. Hooke has gone now, I believe, to judge where lie the loyalties of your good people of the Western Shires, for it is on the Presbyterians our planned rebellion hangs. They are well-organized, and having not before this time aroused the temper of the Crown they have been left well-armed. If they declare for Jamie Stewart, all is well. But if they do declare for Hamilton, then I ken well where Hooke will stand.’

The prospect left her troubled. ‘But that will mean civil war.’

‘Aye, lass. And that,’ he said, with cynicism, ‘may be what the French king did design from the beginning.’

Sophia frowned. They’d come along the beach now to the windblown drifts of sand that marked the edges of the dunes. She did not notice for a moment that they were no longer walking. It was only when her hand was given back to her, and Moray started taking off his boots, that she came fully to awareness.

With a glance at her wide eyes, he said, ‘I’m not about to ravish ye. I did but think to try the water. Will ye join me?’

She did not understand at first, and stammered in alarm, ‘You mean to bathe?’

Which brought one of those rare, quick smiles to light his face with pure amusement. ‘Christ, lass, if the sight of me without my boots is giving ye the vapors, I’d not want to risk removing something else.’ Then, as she flushed a deeper red, he added, ‘I mean to wet my feet among the waves, and nothing more.’ He held his hand out. ‘Come, ’tis safe enough. Ye said ye did not fear me.’

He was testing her, she knew. It was another of those challenges with which he seemed determined to present her, as if seeking to discover just how far she could be pushed beyond propriety.

She raised her chin. ‘I’ll have to take my slippers off.’

‘I’d think it most advisable.’

He turned his head and watched the hills while she rolled off her stockings, too, and tucked them in her slippers, which she left upon the sand beside his boots. There could be no disgrace in going barefoot, she decided. She had known of several ladies of good quality who went unshod within their homes and in full view of company, though that, she did admit, was for economy, and not because they wished to show a man he could not best them.

In the end, though she had come to it reluctantly, it proved to be the greatest pleasure that she could remember since her childhood. The water was so cold it struck the breath out of her body when she stepped in it, but after some few minutes it felt warmer to her skin, and she enjoyed the wetly sinking feel of sand beneath her feet and was refreshed. Her gown and skirts were an impediment. She lifted them with both hands so the hemline cleared the waves, and like a child, cared little that it gave a wanton view of her bare ankles. Moray seemed to take no notice. He was walking slowly through the water, looking down.

‘What are you searching for?’ she asked.

‘When I was but a lad, my mother told me I should keep my eyes well open for a wee stone with a hole in it, to wear around my neck, as it would keep me safe from harm. ’Tis but a tale, and one she likely did invent to keep her wild lad occupied, and out from underfoot,’ he said. ‘But having once begun the search for such a stone, I do confess I cannot end the habit.’

She looked at him, barefooted in the sea and with his head downturned in concentration, and it was not difficult to glimpse the small, determined lad he must have been once— perhaps walking on a beach like this one, with the sun warm on his shoulders and his breeks rolled to his knees, and with no worry in his mind save that he had to find a pebble with a hole in it.

He cast a brief look back at her. ‘Do I amuse ye?’

‘No,’ she said, and dropped her own gaze. ‘No, I only—’ Then she stopped, as something in the water drew her eye. She quickly bent to scoop it up before the sand should shift again to cover it. She’d let go one side of her gown to have a hand free, and she let drop both sides now, and raised the other hand to turn her find against her palm.

It gleamed like black obsidian, an oblong pebble half the size of her own thumb, held by its weight within her hand while grains of wet sand trickled through her fingers to all sides.

Moray turned. ‘What is it?’

And Sophia, with a smile of triumph, stretched her palm towards him. ‘Look.’

He looked, and with a cheerful oath splashed back to have a better look. He did not take the stone from her, but cupped his larger hand beneath her wet one and with gentle fingers turned the stone, as she had done, to see the hole carved through it by some trick of nature, just above its centre.

She said, ‘Now you have your stone.’

‘No, lass. It does belong to you.’ He closed her fingers round it with his own, and smiled. ‘Ye’d best be taking care of it. If what my mother said was true, ’twill serve ye as a talisman against all evil.’

His hands were warm, and spread their heat along her arm so that she scarcely felt the wet cold of the waves that dragged against her heavy gown. But still she shivered, and he noticed.

‘Christ, you’re wetted through. Come out and let the sunshine dry you, else her ladyship will have my head for giving ye the fever.’

In the shelter of the dunes, she sat and spread her gown upon the sand while Moray pulled his boots back on and came to sit beside her. ‘There,’ he said, and tossed her slippers and her stockings in her lap. ‘Ye’d best put those on, too. The wind is chill.’ Again, he turned his eyes away to let her keep her modesty, but commented, ‘If ye do mend those slippers any more, they’ll be but seams of thread.’

She only said, ‘They were my sister’s.’ But she fancied, from his silence, that he understood why she had sought to keep them whole.

More soberly, he asked, ‘How did she die?’

Sophia did not answer him for so long that she knew he must be wondering if she had heard him, but the truth was that she did not know the way to tell the story. In the end, she tried beginning with, ‘Anna was thirteen, two years my elder, when my mother went aboard the ship to Darien. We were then living with our aunt, my mother’s sister, and a woman of good heart. And with our uncle, who was—’ Breaking off, she looked away, across the endless water. ‘He was nothing like my aunt. He was a Drummond, and it is by grace of his connection to the countess that I now do find myself at Slains, but that is all the kindness he did ever show me, and he did not show me that till he himself was dead.’ She turned her sleeve above the elbow, so that he could see the slash of puckered skin. ‘He showed me this, instead.’

She saw the flash of something dark in Moray’s eyes. ‘He burned you?’

‘I was slow,’ she said, ‘in bringing him his ale. This was my punishment.’

‘Was there no one to aid you?’

‘He did use my aunt the same. He had been careful not to do so when my mother had been with us, for my father had left money for our keeping and he did not wish to lose so great an income. But when news came that my parents both were lost…’ She raised one shoulder in a shrug, to hide the pain that had not eased. ‘His rages did increase with my aunt’s illness and her passing, but my sister bore the worst of it to shield me. She was beautiful, my sister. And she might have made a loving wife to any man, had not—’ She bit her lip, and called upon her courage to go on, ‘Had not my uncle used her in that way, as well.’

She did not look at Moray, and he did not speak, but in the silent air between them she could sense his question.

‘He did never touch me as he touched her. She had made him promise not to, in exchange for her compliance, and for all he was a villain he did keep his word.’ The next part was more difficult. ‘But Anna was with child when she died. My uncle’s child. He would not have the neighbors know it, and so he did call upon the knowledge of a woman who did claim that she could stop the bairn from growing.’ There was sunlight on the crest of the horizon, but Sophia’s eyes, while fixed upon it, only saw the darkness of that awful night—the dirty, grinning woman with her evil-smelling potions. Anna’s terror as their uncle held her down. Her screams. The stench of death. Sophia finished quietly, ‘If I did still believe in God, I would have said He took my sister to Himself from pity.’

Moray, looking at her steadily, said nothing, and she took the little pebble in her hand and clutched it tightly, till she felt its hard impression. ‘’Tis an ugly tale,’ she said, ‘and likely I should not have told you.’

‘Ye surely did not stay,’ he asked her, ‘in that house?’

‘I had no choice. But Uncle John fell ill himself soon after, and so lost his power to harm me.’

Moray did not touch her, but she felt as though he had. ‘Ye have my word,’ he said with quiet force, ‘that no man ever will again do harm to ye, while I do live.’ His eyes were hard, and dark with what she took for anger, but it was not meant for her. ‘And ye can tell that to the gardener up at Slains, for if he—’

‘Please,’ she interrupted him, alarmed. ‘Please, you must promise you’ll not fight with Billy Wick.’

His eyes grew harder still. ‘Ye would protect him?’

‘No, but neither would I have you make an enemy of such a man on my account, for he would seek his vengeance, then, and you have much to lose.’

The pebble in her hand was hurting now. She loosed her grip, and braved a glance at Moray. He was watching her, his grey eyes still a shade too dark, but not, she thought, with anger. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. ‘Are ye worried for my safety?’

She had no voice to answer him. She nodded, once, but faintly.

‘Lass.’ And then she saw the memory strike him, and he asked her slowly, as though he yet disbelieved it, ‘Was it me that ye were praying for, that morning in the stables?’

She tried to look away, but he reached out to hold her face within his hand and turn it back again. He asked her, low, as though it mattered, ‘Was it me?’

He was too close, she thought. His eyes were too intense upon her own, and held her trapped so that she could not look away, or move, or breathe in proper rhythm. And she could think of no defense to offer but, ‘I do not pray,’ she told him, though her voice was none too steady and without conviction. ‘I do not believe in God.’

He smiled, in that quick and blinding flash that left her speechless. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘so ye did tell me.’ And he took her face in both his hands and brought it to his own, and kissed her.

It was no hardened soldier’s kiss. His mouth came down on hers with care, with something close to reverence, mindful of the fact that she had never been so touched before, and it was like a wave had rolled upon her in the sea and sent her tumbling underwater. For that swirling moment, all she felt was him—his warmth, his touch, his strength, and when he raised his head she rocked towards him, helplessly off balance.

He looked down at her as though he’d felt the power of that contact, too.

Sophia felt a sudden need to speak, although she knew not what to tell him. ‘Mr Moray—’

But his dark eyes stopped her. ‘I’ve a name, lass,’ he replied, ‘and I would hear ye say it.’

‘John—’

But even as she spoke the word, she knew that it was ill-advised, for once again he stopped her with a kiss that shook her senses still more deeply than the first, and she found herself with no more will to speak for quite some time.