The Winter Sea (24 page)

The servants’ rooms were at the far end of the castle. Kirsty’s window overlooked the stables, where she nightly would see Rory tending to the stalls and horses. Underneath the window stood a simple box, and from this Kirsty drew a length of fine white fabric. When she held it up, Sophia saw it was a nightgown, delicately broidered with pale vines and flowers intertwined, and edged at neck and sleeves with bits of lace.

‘’Tis my own work,’ said Kirsty proudly. ‘I’ve not yet finished all the flowers, but I’d thought I’d have more time afore the countess planned a marriage for ye. I didna ken that ye would be arranging one yerself.’

The holland fabric ran like silk between Sophia’s fingers. ‘Kirsty, it is beautiful,’ she said, so touched that she could feel the spring of tears behind her eyes. ‘Wherever did you find the time, with all your duties?’

‘Well, now,’ Kirsty turned the praise aside, self-consciously, ‘it helps me to relax at night. I made one for my sister when she married, and ye’ve been a second sister to me since ye did arrive, and so I thought it only right that ye should have one, too. I ken ye canna wear it here at Slains, but when ye’ve gone to France…’ She paused then, as Sophia turned her gaze towards the floor. ‘He will take ye to France when he goes, will he not?’

Sophia thought of what he’d told her on the bridge when she had asked if they were truly married:
Ye can tell that to the countess, when she comes to try to marry ye to someone else.
Still looking down, she said to Kirsty, ‘No. He does not mean to take me with him.’

‘But why not?’

She did not know. She only knew that Moray came to no decision lightly, without cause. She raised her head, and showed a smile she did not feel. ‘It is enough that he did take me for his wife.’

Fine words, she thought, and bravely spoken, but they did not cheer her then, nor yet an hour later, when she summoned them a second time within her mind as she stood lonely in her chamber.

The wind had changed from off the sea, and cooled the air so sharply that, although it was now early June, the fires had been lit. She shivered out of gown and shift beside the warmth of her small hearth, and let the lovely nightgown slide like satin down her arms, her shoulders, till its hemline softly brushed her feet. Before the looking-glass, she stood and stared at her reflection, seeing not herself but an uncertain bride, with brightly curling hair and shining eyes and cheeks that seemed so highly colored that she raised her hands to cover them.

A voice spoke from the darkness. ‘Christ,’ said Moray, ‘you are beautiful.’

Sophia dropped her hands, and wheeled about. She could not see him clearly, just his shape, deep in the shadows of the corner of the chamber. He was standing with his back against the wall, beyond the flicker of the firelight.

His quiet voice would not have carried through the walls, she knew, and she took care to keep her own voice just as low. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Ye needn’t look so nervous. ’Tis no crime,’ he said, ‘for me to watch my wife prepare for bed.’

Her face grew warmer still within the pause that followed, and she felt his eyes upon her.

‘Where,’ he asked her, slow and with appreciation, ‘did ye get that garment?’

Smoothing both her hands along the soft folds of the nightgown, she replied, ‘It was a wedding-gift, from Kirsty.’

‘So ye’ve told her, then.’ His voice held mild surprise.

‘She knew already. Rory saw us on the footbridge.’

‘Well, I don’t doubt they’ll keep the secret. And ’twill be some comfort to ye, having Kirsty to confide in.’
When I’m gone
. He did not speak the words, and yet they hung as clearly in the air between them as if they’d been said aloud.

Sophia wrapped her arms around herself as though she’d felt a sudden chill. ‘Will you not come into the light? I cannot see you. ’Tis like talking to a ghost.’

She heard the slight, half-laughing breath that told her he was smiling, but he did not leave his place against the wall. ‘Two years ago,’ he said, ‘when Colonel Hooke first came to treat in Scotland, he did set a secret meeting with the Duke of Hamilton at Holyroodhouse. A daring thing, and dangerous for both of them if they had been discovered. Hooke did tell me that the chamber where they met was kept in darkness, by the order of the duke, so that if he were later asked if he had seen Hooke, he could answer with full honesty that he had not.’

‘And do you then intend that we should do the same?’ she asked him lightly. ‘So that if the countess asks me, I can tell her with my conscience clear that I did never see you in this room?’

‘It is a thought, at that.’ His tone was quietly amused. ‘Ye’ve no great gift for lying, lass.’

‘I’ll have no need to lie. And you already gave me leave to tell the countess we were man and wife.’

‘Aye, so I did, but only if she aims you at the altar with another man. Till then, ’tis best we keep it private. Just for us.’ She heard his shoulders shift against the stone, and then he stepped into the light, and smiled. ‘This night is ours alone.’

And she
did
close her eyes, although she had not meant to, and stood trembling while he came to her, his hardened hands not hard at all as they brushed warm upon her hair, her upturned face, her shoulders. There they stopped, and slipped beneath the lace-edged neckline of the nightgown. Moray’s head bent so the angle of his jawline pressed her cheek, his mouth against her ear. She felt his warm breath stir her hair. He asked, ‘Why are ye shaking? Are ye frightened?’

Not quite trusting to her voice, she shook her head.

He said, ‘I would not have ye fear me.’

‘I do not.’ She found the words, but in a voice that trembled, too. ‘I do not fear you, John. I love you.’

His mouth traveled in a smile across her cheek, and once again the hands upon her shoulders moved beneath the nightgown, and the silken fabric whispered to the floor. And as he lifted her, his mouth came down on hers with so much strength of feeling that the world behind her tight-shut eyes began to spin, and seemed no longer dark, but filled with bursting lights of wonderment.

Against her lips he breathed, ‘I love ye more.’

And then the time for words was over.

She woke, to hear the roaring of the sea beneath her windows and the raging of the wind against the walls that made the air within the room bite cold against her skin. The fire was failing on the hearth, small licks of dying flame that cast half-hearted shadows on the floorboards and gave little light to see by.

She shivered at the thunder of the passing storm, and stirred to rise and tend the fire, but Moray stopped her.

‘Let it be,’ he mumbled, low, against her neck. ‘We will have warmth enough.’ And then his arm came round her, solid, safe, and drew her firmly back against the shelter of his chest, and she felt peace, and turned her face against the pillow, and she slept.

C
HAPTER
14

W
ITH MY HAND
I smoothed the scrap of paper on which I had scribbled those few lines, when I had woken from the dream I’d had that final night in France. It seemed an age ago, in some ways, that I’d dreamed it, and in other ways it seemed like only yesterday.

I’d wondered where that fragment would fit in, and now I knew.

Knew, too, why that one night had left so strong a memory it had traveled down the centuries to haunt my dreams, as well.

‘Good morning.’ Graham’s voice was rough with sleep. He had his jeans on, and a shirt, but it was hanging open, and his chest and feet were bare. ‘Have you seen Angus?’

‘He got up with me. And he’s been out,’ I said. ‘He’s fine.’ The spaniel, curled beneath my work table, rolled both his eyes up without stirring from his comfortable position and, convinced that no one needed him, went back to his contented daydreams.

Graham said, ‘You should have woken me, as well.’

‘I figured you could use the rest.’

‘Did you, now?’ His grey eyes met mine, laughing, making me blush. ‘After all my exertions last night, d’ye mean?’

‘Well…’

‘I’m not such an old man as all that,’ he said, and came over to prove it. He leaned with both hands on the arms of my chair and bent down for the kiss, and it still stole my breath. And he knew it. He drew back and smiled, looking boyishly rumpled and happy. ‘Good morning,’ he said again.

Somehow I managed to answer. ‘Good morning.’

‘Want coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

Graham straightened, and crossed to the kitchen. The cups I’d set out for us yesterday still sat untouched on the counter, beside the full kettle. We’d never gotten round to it. Five minutes through the door I had been standing where he stood right now, with my back to the sitting-room, nervously chattering on like an idiot, and the next thing I’d known he had been there behind me, his arms coming round me to turn me towards him, and then he had kissed me, and I had been lost.

It had been, in a word, unforgettable. And it would not have surprised me at all if the memory of what I had just shared with Graham survived me as strongly as Sophia’s memories of her night with Moray.

I was watching his back and the way that he moved, when he asked, ‘Did you get a lot written?’

‘I did, yes. I finished the scene.’

‘Am I in it?’

He’d meant that, I knew, as a joke, but I answered him honestly. ‘Sort of.’

Graham half-turned to look at me, raising an eyebrow. ‘Oh, aye? Who am I, then?’

‘Well, it isn’t you, exactly, but he looks a lot like you.’

‘Who does?’

‘John Moray.’

‘Moray.’ He seemed to be searching his archive of knowledge.

‘He’s a soldier in the Regiment of Lee, in France. They sent him over here with Hooke, to get the nobles ready for the king’s return.’

‘A soldier.’ Graham grinned, and turned back to his coffee making. ‘I can live with that.’

‘He was an officer, actually. A Lieutenant-Colonel.’

‘Even better.’

‘His big brother was the Laird of Abercairney.’

‘Ah,
those
Morays,’ Graham said, and gave a nod. ‘From Strathearn. I don’t ken too much about the family, other than that one of the later Lairds, James Moray, was famously kept from the field at Culloden—his manservant scalded his feet so he couldn’t go fight along Bonnie Prince Charlie—but he’d have been only a lad, at the time of the ’08.’

I wondered in silence if that later Laird might have been ‘the wee lad not yet eighteen months of age’ whom Moray had been speaking of that day he’d first gone riding with Sophia, and who, he had complained, would not have known him from a stranger.

‘I’ll have to read up on the family,’ said Graham, ‘and see what sort of character you’d be giving me. John Moray, you said?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And what’s the part that he plays in your book?’

‘Well…he’s kind of the hero.’

The kettle was boiling, but Graham ignored it. He looked round again, eyes warm. ‘Is he, now?’

I nodded.

‘I thought you were writing everything around Nathaniel Hooke.’

‘Hooke wasn’t here much. He was off around the country, meeting nobles. Moray stayed at Slains all through the month of May, and into June.’

‘I see.’ The kettle clicked off, sullenly, as though it somehow knew we wouldn’t want it this time either. Graham turned to fully face me, leaning back against the counter, arms folded comfortably over the unbuttoned shirt. ‘And just what did he get up to, your John Moray, in the time that he was here?’

‘Oh, this and that.’ I didn’t blush this time, but from his knowing eyes I knew I might as well have done.

‘Is there a woman in all this?’

‘There might be.’

‘Well, then.’ His intent was clear before he’d straightened from the counter, but that didn’t stop me laughing when he lifted me, as easily as if I had weighed nothing, and cradled me warm to his half-bare chest. ‘Graham!’

His arms tightened. ‘No, you’ve said already that you like your writing to be accurate.’ He headed for the bedroom. ‘And my Dad did say,’ he added, with a wicked smile, ‘that I should help ye any way I could, with your research.’

The phone was ringing.

Barely conscious, I rolled over on the bed, my body weighted by the tangled sheets and blankets. I could see the indentation on the pillow where Graham’s head had rested close beside mine while we’d slept. But he was gone.

I had a recollection, vaguely, of his leaving. Of his kissing me, and tucking in the blankets, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what he’d said. And I had no idea, now, what time it was, what day it was. The room was nearly dark.

The phone kept ringing, from the front room, and I rose and went to answer it.

‘Oh, good. You’re there,’ my father said. ‘I tried to call you earlier, but you weren’t home. Where were you?’

I could hardly tell him where I’d really been, or why I had ignored the phone the first time it had rung, just after lunch. And I was glad he wasn’t in the room to see my face when I said, ‘Oh, just out.’

‘More research?’

It was a good thing he couldn’t see my face then, either. ‘Something like that.’

‘Well, dear, it’s time for us to talk. I’ve had a call from Ross McClelland.’

Bracing myself for the coming questions, I said, ‘Yes?’

‘He found a burial for Anna Mary Paterson, in August, 1706. Not far outside Kirkcudbright. In the country.’

‘Oh.’

‘So now, I think it’s time you told me where you’re getting all of this.’

‘I can’t.’

That threw him off. ‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll think I’m crazy.’

‘Sweetheart.’ I could hear the dryness of his tone across the line. ‘Do you remember when you first got published, and I asked you where you got your stories from, and you said you just heard the voices talking in your head and wrote down what they were saying?’

I remembered.

‘Well,’ he told me, ‘if I didn’t pack you off to the asylum
then
, what makes you think I’ll—’

‘This is different.’

‘Try me.’

‘Daddy, you’re an engineer.’

‘And what does that mean? I can’t have an open mind?’

‘It means you don’t believe in things that can’t be proven.’

‘Try me,’ he repeated patiently.

I took a breath and told him. For good measure, I threw in the bits of information Dr Weir had scrounged for me, in hopes they’d make things sound more scientific, but the essence of it was, ‘And so I seem to have inherited her memories, and my being here at Slains has somehow called them to the surface from wherever they’ve been stored.’

A pause. Then he said, ‘Interesting.’

‘See? You think I’m crazy.’

‘Did I say that?’

‘You don’t have to. I remember your reaction when Aunt Ellen said she’d seen a ghost.’

‘Well, a ghost is one thing. This is DNA,’ he said. ‘And anything is possible, with DNA. You know they use it now, in genealogy, to trace specific lineages? If Ross McClelland and I had our blood tested, we’d show the same markers on our DNA, because we’re both descended from the same man.’

‘David John McClelland’s father,’ I said, frowning.

‘That’s right. Hugh. He had two sons, David John and William, but he died when they were young, and both the boys wound up in northern Ireland somehow. Sent to be raised up by their relatives, I guess. The Scottish Presbyterians had settled into Ulster by that time, but they still liked to send their sons across to Scotland to find wives, and likely that’s why our McClellands came back over to Kirkcudbright. William found his wife, and never did go back to Ireland. And David found Sophia.’

If I didn’t answer right away, it was because I didn’t want to be reminded that Sophia hadn’t ended up with Moray. I had gotten so caught up in their romance, I didn’t like to think of any ending for them but a happy one.

‘It’s too bad,’ said my father, not quite serious, ‘you didn’t get
David’s
memory. I’d love to find out anything about his early years in Ireland, before he got married. The family Bible doesn’t start till then.’

I said, reacting to his tone of voice, and not his words, ‘I knew it.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘Honey, whether I believe or not, it doesn’t matter. I can’t offer any explanation of my own, how you came up with all those names and dates from nowhere, so I guess that your genetic memory theory makes about as much sense as anything.’

‘Well, thanks.’

‘I mean, I’d hoped it was a book you’d found, or something.’

‘Sorry to disappoint.’

‘You haven’t disappointed me,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me back two generations on the Patersons. And like I said, I’ll keep an open mind.’

I knew my father well enough to know he’d keep that promise, and that if I passed on any other details I ‘remembered’ from Sophia’s life, he’d search for documenting evidence, the same as he’d have done if I
were
finding information in a book.

But I didn’t choose to tell him, yet, that it might just be possible Sophia’s marriage to our own McClelland hadn’t been her first; that three years earlier, she might have bound herself by handfast to a young Lieutenant-Colonel in the French king’s service.

That was knowledge that I wanted to hold closely to myself a while longer.

There was nothing that my father could have found to prove it, anyway, and even if there had been, something deep within me wanted me to keep Sophia’s secret, as she’d kept it for herself, those many years ago.

And I obeyed the instinct, though I knew it was irrational. I had already written down the scene, and when the book was published there’d be other people reading it, and nothing would be secret. But for this small time between, I felt responsible to Moray and Sophia to protect their hour of happiness, to help them hold it just a little longer…though I knew that like the beach sand that had slipped between Sophia’s fingers, it could not be held.