The Winter Sea

XXI

SOPHIA FACED HER PALE reflection in the looking-glass while Kirsty made her choice among the new gowns that had lately been delivered by direction of the countess. There were three of them, of finest fabric, and their cost must surely have been felt by even such a woman as the countess, who had already put herself to such expense for the adventure of the king that, should he not come soon, the family’s debts might bring this noble house to ruin. But the countess had not listened to Sophia’s protestations. ‘I am overdue in tending to your wardrobe,’ she had said. ‘I should have done this when you first arrived. A pearl, though it may gleam within the plainness of the oyster, shows its beauty best when viewed against a velvet case.’ She’d smiled, and touched Sophia’s cheek with tenderness, a mother’s touch. ‘And I would have the world observe, my dear, how brightly you can shine.’

The gown that Kirsty chose was soft dove grey, a fragile thing of silk that slipped lightly over a petticoat trimmed with silver lace. Frilled lace showed delicately at the deeply rounded neckline and the hem, and fringed the full sleeves that were fastened up with buttons at Sophia’s elbows.

A velvet case indeed, she thought—but looking in the glass she did not think herself a pearl.

These last two months had left her thinner, hollow-eyed and wan. She could not dress in proper mourning clothes nor grieve her loss in public, but that loss was written plainly on her face, and even those within the household who knew nothing of the truth knew nonetheless that there was something sadly wrong with Mistress Paterson.

That had, in some ways, worked to her advantage. When the word had got about that she was leaving, many thought it was because she’d fallen ill and had been forced to seek a kinder climate than the wild northeast.

‘You’ll stay till Christmas, surely?’ Kirsty had implored her, but Sophia had replied that she could not.

‘’Tis best to be away before the snow,’ had been her explanation. Easier than saying that she could not bear the prospect of a holiday so based on hope and joy when she had neither.

‘Anyway,’ she’d said to Kirsty, ‘you will have enough to occupy your time, I think, now that Rory has at last come to his senses.’

Kirsty had blushed.

‘When will you wed? Is it decided?’

‘In the spring. The earl has given Rory leave to take a cottage by the burn. It is a small place and will need repair, but Rory feels by spring it will be ready.’

‘So you will have your cottage after all,’ Sophia had said, and smiled above the pain that she was feeling at the knowledge she must leave behind her best and truest friend. ‘I am so happy for you, truly.’

Kirsty, too, had seemed to find it difficult to keep her own emotions on a level. Now and then they’d broken through. ‘I wish you could be here to see the wedding.’

Sophia had assured her, ‘I will hear of it. I do not doubt the countess will be writing to me often. And,’ she’d promised, ‘I will send the finest gift that I can find in all of Kirkcudbright.’

Kirsty, setting her own sadness to one side a moment, had looked closely at her. ‘Are ye still decided to return there, after all that you did suffer in that place?’

‘I did not suffer in Kirkcudbright.’ She had not thought at first to travel to the west, but when the countess had begun to search among her friends and kinsmen for a place that might be suitable, the matter had been taken from her hands by the great Duchess of Gordon, who although a Jacobite, was known and well-respected by the western Presbyterians. The perfect place was found, within a house of perfect sympathy, and somehow to Sophia it had seemed a just arrangement that her life should come full circle to the place where it began. She had memories of that town and of its harbor, where her father had once walked with her and held her up to see the ships. She’d said to Kirsty, ‘Any suffering I did was in my uncle’s house and to the north of there, not in Kirkcudbright.’

‘But it is so far away.’

That knowledge hung between them now as Kirsty moved behind Sophia in the mirror and remarked, in tones that strove for brightness, ‘Ye’d best hope the maids who travel with you have the sort of fingers that can manage all these buttons.’

‘Will there be maids?’ asked Sophia.

‘Aye. The countess has arranged a proper entourage, so where you go the people will be thinking ’tis the queen herself that passes. There,’ she said, and fastened off the final button, and it seemed to strike the both of them that this would be the final time that they would stand like this together in Sophia’s chamber, where so often they had laughed and talked and shared their solemn confidences.

Turning from the mirror Kirsty bent her head and said, ‘I must ready your clothes, they’ll be coming to fetch them.’

The older gowns looked drab against the new but Kirsty set them out with care and smoothed the wrinkles from the fabric, and her fingers seemed particularly gentle on the one Sophia had most often worn, a plain and over-mended gown that once had been deep violet but had faded to a paler shade of lavender. Sophia, watching, thought of all the times she’d worn that gown, and all the memories that it carried. She had worn it on the first day she had ridden out with Moray with his gauntlet gloves upon her hands, the day that she’d first seen him flash that quick sure smile that now was burned forever on her mind and would not leave her.

‘Would you like to keep that one?’ she asked, and Kirsty in surprise looked up.

‘I thought it was your favorite.’

‘Who better then to have it but my dearest friend? Mayhap when I am gone it will help keep me in your thoughts.’

Kirsty bit her lip, and in a voice that wavered promised her, ‘You will be there without it. Every time I look at—’ Then she stopped, as though she did not want to probe a wound that might be painful, and with downcast eyes she laid the gown aside and finished simply, ‘Thank you. I will treasure it.’

Sophia blinked her own eyes fiercely, fighting for composure. ‘One more thing,’ she said, and reaching over, drew from deep within the heap of clothes the lace-edged holland nightgown with its fine embroidered vines and sprays of flowers intertwined.

‘I’ll not take that,’ said Kirsty, firm. ‘It was a gift.’

‘I know.’ Sophia passed her hand across the bodice, felt its softness and remembered that same feeling on her skin; remembered Moray’s eyes upon her when she’d worn it on their wedding night. ‘’Tis not for you that I would leave it,’ said Sophia slowly. ‘’Tis for Anna.’

Then, because she could not face the look in Kirsty’s eyes directly, she looked down and smoothed the lovely nightgown and began to fold it carefully, with hands that shook but slightly. ‘I have nothing else to leave her that is mine. It is my hope that she will never learn the truth, that she will always think your sister is her mother, but we cannot always know…’ She lost her voice a moment; struggled to recover it, and carried on more quietly, ‘We cannot always know what lies ahead. And if she ever does discover who she truly is, then for the world I would not have her thinking that she was not born of love, or that I did not hold her dear.’

‘Sophia…’

‘And if nothing else, when she has reached an age where she can marry, you may give it to her then, just as you gave it once to me, and she can value it for that alone.’ The nightgown, neatly folded, seemed like nothing in Sophia’s hands. She held it out to Kirsty. ‘Please.’

A moment passed. Then Kirsty slowly reached to take the offering. ‘For Anna, then.’ And as her fingers closed around the nightgown something seemed to break in Kirsty, as though she’d kept silent for too long. ‘How can you bear to leave,’ she asked, ‘and her not knowing who you are?’

‘Because I love her.’ It was simple. ‘And I would not spoil her happiness. She has been raised within your sister’s house, and to her mind the other children are her sisters and her brothers, and your sister’s husband is the only father she has known.’ That had hurt more than all the rest of it, because she felt that Moray had been robbed of more than just his life, but of his rights, to know his child and be remembered. But in the end she knew that scarcely mattered, as her own pain did not matter when she weighed it in the balance of their daughter’s future. Trying to make Kirsty understand, she said, ‘She has a family here, and is content. What could I give her that would equal that?’

‘I do not doubt that Mr Moray’s family, if they knew of her, would give her much.’

Sophia had considered that. She’d thought of Moray’s ring, still on its chain around her neck, and of his saying she had but to ask his family for assistance, and they’d help her. And she’d thought of Colonel Graeme and his promise there was none of Moray’s kin who would not walk through fire to see her safe. No doubt that promise would extend to Moray’s child, as well—especially a child who looked so like him that it called his memory close.

But in the end Sophia had not chosen to reveal herself, nor ask for any help from Abercairney. It was true that in the lap of Moray’s family Anna might have had the benefit of higher social standing, but, ‘I will not take her from the only family she has known,’ she said to Kirsty now, ‘and have her live with strangers.’

‘They would be her kin.’

Sophia answered quietly, ‘That does not mean that she will be well treated. Do not forget that I was also raised by kin.’

And that reminder brought another silence settling down upon them both.

‘Besides,’ Sophia said, attempting brightness, ‘I shall worry less about her knowing she is here. Should something happen to your sister there will be the countess and yourself who both would love and care for Anna as if she were your own child.’

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty, blinking fiercely, ‘so we would.’

‘It would be selfish of me, taking her from that to face a future that at best would be uncertain, with a mother and no father.’

‘But you are young, like me,’ said Kirsty. ‘You may meet another man, and marry, and then Anna—’

‘No.’ Sophia’s voice was soft, but very sure. She felt the solid and unyielding warmth of Moray’s ring against her skin, above her heart, as she replied, ‘No, I will never find another man I wish to marry.’

Kirsty clearly did not want to see her friend lose hope. ‘Ye told me once that there was no such thing as never.’

She remembered. But the moment when she’d said that seemed so long ago, and now she knew it had not been the truth; that there were some things that could never be put right once they’d been ruined. Moray’s ship would never come, and she would never wake again to feel his touch or hear him speak her name, and nothing could restore to her the life his love had promised her.

It was all gone. All gone, she thought. But still, she summoned up a smile to show to Kirsty, for she would not have this parting with her friend be any sadder than it had to be.

And there were other partings yet to come.

An hour later, in the library, she waited for the worst of them. There was no sun today to spread its warmth across the fabric of the chairs and cheer the room. The window glass was pebbled with the remnants of the freezing rain that had all night been flung against it by a wind from the northeast, and though that rain had stopped, the wind still wailed and tried its strength against the walls, its breath so cold that there was little that the small fire on the hearth could do to counter it.

Before the fire, the wooden chess board with its small carved armies waited patiently upon its table, but looking at it only called to mind the fact that they had had no word of Colonel Graeme yet, from France, and did not know if he was numbered in the wounded or the dead of Malplaquet. His quick grin crossed her memory and she turned from it, her back towards the chess board as she trailed her hand instead along the gilded leather bindings of the nearest bookshelf, searching out of habit for the book that she had sought out more than any other these past years—the newer volume, plainly bound, of Dryden’s King Arthur, or the British Worthy. The pages that had once been lightly used now showed the marks of frequent reading, for this book had always managed to bring Moray close, somehow, despite the miles between them.

It still did. She felt the same connection when she held it that she’d felt before, and when she chose a random page and read the lines they spoke to her as strongly and as surely as they’d always done, although they did not speak this time of love but of defeat, a subject fitting to her mood:

‘Furle up our Colors, and Unbrace our Drums;

Dislodge betimes, and quit this fatal Coast.’

She heard the door behind her softly open and then close again, and heard the slow distinctive rustle of the gown across the floor that marked the countess’s approach. Sophia, looking down still at the open book, remarked, ‘I have so often read this play I ought to know its lines as well as any actor, yet I still find phrases here that do surprise me.’

Drawing close, the countess asked, ‘Which play is that?’ and read the title, and her eyebrow lifted slightly. ‘I suspect, my dear, that you may be the only person in this house who has attempted reading that at all. If it amuses you, then take it with you as my gift.’

Had it been any other book she might have raised a protest, but she wanted it so badly for herself she merely closed her hands around it and said thank you.

‘Not at all. You must take several, now I think of it.’ The countess scanned the shelves with newfound purpose. ‘The Duchess of Gordon does assure me she has lodged you with the very best of families in Kirkcudbright, but notwithstanding that, my dear, they are still Cameronians, devoutly Presbyterian, and likely will have little use for pleasures such as reading. No, you must take some books from here, else you’ll have nothing there to read but dry religious tracts.’ She chose some volumes, took them down and stacked them near the chess board. ‘I shall have these added to your box. Here, let me have the Dryden, too.’ She stretched her hand to take it from Sophia, who released it with reluctance, but with heartfelt thanks.

‘You are too kind.’

‘Did you imagine I would send you all that way with nothing?’ Looking down herself, the countess made a show of straightening the edges of the books as though that small act mattered greatly. ‘I presume that you are yet resolved to go? I would not have you think you cannot change your mind. ’Tis not too late.’

Sophia tried to smile. ‘I doubt the servants who have labored these past days to make arrangements for my leaving would be pleased were I to change my mind.’

‘There are none here who wish to see you leave. The servants would be overjoyed to see you stay at Slains.’ She met Sophia’s eyes. ‘And so would I.’

‘I wish I could.’ Sophia felt the stir of sadness. ‘But there are too many memories here, of him.’

‘I understand.’ The countess always seemed so strong that sometimes it was easy to forget that she had also lost a husband, not so long ago, and knew what it was like to live with memories. ‘There may yet come a time when you do count them as a comfort.’ And her eyes were very gentle on Sophia’s downturned face. ‘It does get easier, in time.’

Sophia knew it did. She knew from having lost her parents and her sister that the sharpness of her grieving would be blunted by the passing years, and yet she also knew that losing Moray had cut deeper than the others put together. His death had left her feeling more alone than she had ever felt before, and she herself might well grow old and die before enough years passed to dull the pain she carried now inside her.

There were footsteps in the corridor; a soft knock at the door.

‘Do you feel strong enough to do this?’ asked the countess, and Sophia bit her lip and shook her head before she answered, ‘But I must.’

‘My dear, you need not if it brings you too much pain. The child is not yet two years old, and being such a young age is not likely to remember.’

It was, Sophia thought, the very argument she’d made to Moray when he’d told her of his infant nephew, whom he’d never had the chance to meet. She understood his answer, now. Deliberately, she raised her head and in a quiet voice replied, ‘I will remember her.’

The countess studied her a moment with concern, then gave a nod and crossed to let in Kirsty’s sister, leading Anna by the hand.

The little girl was finely dressed as though for church, with ribbons in her hair. She did not venture far into the room, but stood and held fast to the skirts of Kirsty’s sister, who looked over at Sophia in apology. ‘She did not sleep well last night, she was troubled by her teeth. I fear she’s out of sorts, the day.’

Sophia’s smile was brief, and understanding. ‘We are none of us as cheerful as we should be.’

‘I will leave her here alone with you a moment if you wish it, but—’

‘There is no need.’ Sophia shook her head. ‘It is enough that I should see her. Come, and sit with me.’

They sat where she’d so often sat with Colonel Graeme by the fire, the chess men lined up tidily across the board between them. Anna seemed to find them fascinating. Kirsty’s sister would have kept the little girl from touching, but the countess, who’d stayed standing by the mantelpiece, insisted that the child could do no harm. ‘The men are made of wood, and cannot easily be broken.’

Not like real soldiers, thought Sophia with a pang of sudden sorrow. Moray would not ever see his daughter’s face, nor see those small, fair features form the image of his own as Anna, with her father’s focused concentration, lifted knights and bishops from the board by turns and held them in her little hands.

Sophia watched in silence. She had spent the past days planning this farewell, rehearsing what she meant to do and say, but now that it had come the words seemed out of place. How did you tell a child who did not know you were her mother that you loved her, and that leaving her was all at once the bravest and the worst thing you had done in all your life, and that you’d miss her more than she would ever know?

And what, Sophia asked herself, would be the point? She knew within her own heart that the countess had been right, that Anna’s mind was yet too young to hold this memory; that as surely as the wind and waves would shift the sands till next year’s coastline bore no imprint of the one the year before, so too the passing days would reshape Anna’s mind until Sophia was forgotten.

Which was only as it should be, she decided, biting down upon her lip to stop its sudden trembling.

Reaching out, she stroked the softness of her daughter’s hair, and lightly coughed to clear her voice. ‘You have such lovely curls,’ she said to Anna. ‘Will you give me one?’

She did not doubt the answer; Anna always had been quick to share. And sure enough, the child gave an unhesitating nod and stepped in closer while Sophia chose one ringlet from beneath the mass of curls and gently snipped it with her sewing scissors. ‘There,’ she said, and would have straightened, but the little girl reached up herself to wind her tiny fingers in Sophia’s hair, in imitation.

And that one small touch, so unexpected, made Sophia close her eyes against the sharpness of emotion.

She felt, in that brief instant, as she’d felt when it had only been herself and Anna newly born, and lying in the bed at Mrs Malcolm’s, with the wonder of her daughter sleeping warm against her body and the feeling of those baby fingers clutching both her hair and Moray’s silver ring…and suddenly she felt she could not bear it, what she knew she had to do.

It was not fair. Not fair. She wanted Anna back, to be her own again. Her own and no one else’s. And she would have sold her soul at any price to turn time back and make it possible, but time would not be turned. And as the pain of that reality tore through her like a knife, she heard her daughter’s voice say, ‘Mama?’ and the blade drove deeper still, because Sophia knew the word had not been meant for her.

She breathed, and swallowed hard, and when her eyes came open there was nothing but their shining brightness to betray her weakening.

Anna said a second time to Kirsty’s sister, ‘Mama?’, and the other woman asked, her own voice curiously husky, ‘Do ye want to have a lock of Mistress Paterson’s, to keep?’

Sophia said, ‘My curls are not as nice as yours,’ but Anna tugged with firm insistence, so Sophia raised the scissors to her own hair and cut off a piece from where those baby fingers had so often clung in sleep.

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty’s sister, when the child turned round to show her prize. ‘It is a bonny gift, and one ye’ll want to treasure. Let me borrow this wee ribbon and we’ll cut it into two, and then ye both can bind your curls to keep them better.’ Over Anna’s head her eyes sought out Sophia’s. ‘I will send ye more.’

Sophia’s fingers trembled so they could not tie the ribbon, but she folded it together with the curl into her handkerchief. ‘The one is all I need.’

The other woman’s eyes were helpless in their sympathy. ‘If there is anything at all…’

‘Just keep her safe.’

And Kirsty’s sister gave a nod, as though she could not speak herself. And in the silence of the room both women, and the countess too, looked down at Anna, who in childish oblivion had once again begun to move the pieces on the chess board.

With an almost steady smile, Sophia asked, ‘Which one do you like best, then, Anna? Which one is your favorite?’

She had expected that the little girl would choose a knight—the horses’ heads had held her interest longest—or a castle tower, but the child, after some consideration, chose a different piece and showed it on her outstretched hand: a single, fallen pawn.

Sophia thought of Colonel Graeme, when he’d taught her how to play the game, explaining of the pawns: ‘These wee men here, they’re not allowed to make decisions. They can only put one foot before the other…’

Looking down, she saw the pieces of the chess set scattered anyhow across the board and lying on their sides like soldiers felled in battle, and she saw that in their midst one piece still stood: the black-haired king.

She looked again at Anna’s pawn and blinked to keep the tears back, but her smile held. ‘Yes, that one is my favorite, too.’

And careless of propriety, she bent to wrap her arms round Anna one last time and hold her close, and make a final memory of the scent of her, the feel of her, the softness of the brush of curls against her cheek, so she’d have that at least to keep her company through all the hollow years to come. Then quickly—for the little girl, confused, had started drawing back—Sophia kissed the top of Anna’s head and loosed her hold. ‘It is all right, my darling, you can go.’

Anna stood her ground a moment longer staring upwards as though somehow she suspected more was going on than she could understand. Her solemn face and watchful eyes were so like Moray’s at that instant that Sophia felt a painful twist of memory, like a hand that tugged against her heart and stopped it in mid-beat. She drew a shaking breath, determined, and her heart resumed its rhythm once again.

As all things must.

Still Anna stood and watched in silence, and Sophia tried to smile again but could not manage it, nor raise her voice much higher than a whisper. ‘Go,’ she gently urged the child. ‘Go to your mother.’

And she did not cry. Not then. Not even when the little girl was led away, with one last backward look that would forever haunt Sophia’s dreams. She did not cry. She only rose and went to stand before the window, where the cold wind off the sea was blasting hard against the glass and wailing still that it could not come in, while last night’s rain yet clung hard to the panes like frozen tears.

The countess did not speak, nor leave her place beside the mantelpiece.

‘So, you see,’ Sophia said, ‘my heart is held forever by this place. I cannot leave but that the greatest part of me remains where Anna is.’

‘It would be so no matter how you left her,’ said the countess. ‘I have said goodbye to my own daughters, one by one.’ Her voice was softly wise. ‘And now to you.’

Sophia turned at that, and saw the sadness in the older woman’s smile.

The countess said, ‘I can assure you it is never such an easy thing to wish a child farewell.’

Beneath that quiet gaze Sophia felt her chin begin to tremble once again, and as the room became a blur she stumbled forward to the countess’s embrace.

‘My dear.’ The countess held her close and stroked her hair as if she were as small as Anna, and in greater need of comfort. ‘I do promise that you will survive this. Faith, my own heart is so scattered round the country now, I marvel that it has the strength each day to keep me standing. But it does,’ she said, and drawing in a steady breath she pulled back just enough to raise a hand to wipe Sophia’s tears. ‘It does. And so will yours.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because it is a heart, and knows no better.’ With her own eyes moist, the countess smoothed the hair back from Sophia’s cheek. ‘But leave whatever part of it you will with us at Slains, and I will care for it,’ she said. ‘And by God’s grace I may yet live to see the day it draws you home.’