‘You look troubled,’ said the countess.
When Sophia glanced up to reply, her embroidery needle slipped under the knot she was working and pricked at the edge of her fingernail, painfully. Clenching her jaw, she succeeded in holding her silence until the sensation had fled, then she said, ‘I am not troubled, I assure you. It is only that this pattern is beyond me, and I cannot make my stitches come out evenly.’
The countess paused, and when she finally spoke her voice was fond. ‘My son did right to trust you. You can tell no lie, my dear, without it showing plainly on your face.’ Returning to her own needlework, she said decidedly, ‘We ask too much of you, to keep our secrets. That is Colonel Hooke’s opinion, and I do believe it true.’
Sophia took a cautious step into that opening. ‘The colonel is a good friend of your family, so I understand.’
‘A good friend of my brother James, the Duke of Perth. They have worked very much in step these past few years, toward a common end. It has been two years since my brother first sent Colonel Hooke across from France to visit us at Slains, and to begin to seek support among the nobles of this nation for our venture. Times were different, then. The Union was a subject only talked about, and none would have believed that it would happen, that the guardians of this country would sell Scotland’s independence for the lining of their pockets. There was then no sense of urgency, as there is now among us. For when Queen Anne dies—and, from her health, that end will come upon her soon—the Stewart line upon the British throne will die, as well. The English mean to give a foreign prince of Hanover the crown, unless we bring King James back safe from France, to take his rightful place. We might have tolerated Mary’s reign, and Anne’s, for they were sisters of the true king, born of Stewart blood, but the throne is rightly James’s, and not Anne’s. It must be his when Anne is gone, for all of Scotland will oppose a Hanoverian succession.’ She finished off a knot with force, and bit the thread to cut it. ‘Colonel Hooke no doubt will have more luck this time in treating with our nobles, and persuading them to come to an arrangement with our friend the King of France, who waits to lend us his assistance should we move to rise in arms.’
Sophia did not question Colonel Hooke’s intent. It was her intuition only that made her suspect his aims might not be as the others thought they were, and intuition, while it served her well, was not enough to justify the accusation of a man she did not know. Besides, ‘He will be leaving soon, he says.’
‘Aye. He starts tomorrow for Lord Stormont’s house at Scone, to see the Duke of Athol. My son was asked to go, as well, but he thinks it unwise that he should undertake that journey, as he has but just come home after a session of more than six months. If he did return towards Edinburgh so soon, and to such an assembly of known Jacobites, it would give the government room for a suspicion that some plot was carrying on. It is enough of a risk that, with the parliament now finished, and the chief men of the nation dispersed over the different counties, Colonel Hooke must hazard himself in traveling through a great part of the kingdom to meet with our nobles. He has a design, I believe, to divide the country into two circuits—to visit one himself, and to desire Mr Moray to go through the other, but my son does view that plan with apprehension, also.’
‘Why?’ Sophia asked.
The countess was threading her needle with deep, blood-red silk. ‘Mr Moray is a wanted man.’ She said it as though none could deem it shameful; as though, greatly to the contrary, it were a thing of pride. ‘The English for these three years past have put a price upon his head. They have offered, by proclamation, the sum of five hundred pounds sterling to any person who should seize him.’
Sophia’s needle slipped again and speared her finger as she let her hands drop to her lap. ‘Five hundred pounds!’ She’d never heard of such a sum. A tenth of that would be a fortune to most men.
The names of those who’d wronged the Crown were often published, so she knew, with five pounds offered for their capture, and that commoner amount did often stir an honest person to betray a friend. What friends could Mr Moray hope to have, she wondered, with five hundred pounds upon his head?
‘He is well-known,’ the countess said, ‘south of the Tay, in his own country, but the colonel feels that Mr Moray could with safety make a progress through the northern provinces, and settle an agreement with the Highlanders.’
Sophia frowned. ‘But why…?’ She caught herself mid-sentence.
‘Yes?’ the countess asked.
‘I do apologize. ’Tis none of my affair. But I was wondering…there surely would be other men who might have come with Colonel Hooke. Why would King James send Mr Moray here to Scotland, and so set him in the path of danger?’
‘Some men choose the path of danger on their own.’
Sophia knew this to be truth. She knew that her own father had been such a man. ‘But if he should be captured…’ she began, and then broke off again, because she did not want to think of what might happen to him if he should be recognized, and taken.
The countess, with no personal attachment, said, ‘If he should be captured, then our plans may be discovered.’ She had finished with the flower she was working, and she bit the blood-red thread through with precision. Her eyes upon Sophia’s face held something of a tutor’s satisfaction in a favored pupil who showed ease in following a course of study.
‘That,’ she said, ‘is why my son does feel uneasy.’
Sophia was uneasy in her own mind, still, when she awoke next morning. She’d been dreaming there were horses stamping restless on the ground outside the castle, with their warm breaths making mist each time they snorted, and men’s voices calling out to one another with impatience. She woke to semi-darkness. From her window she could see a slash of palest pink across the water-grey horizon, and she knew that it would be another hour or more before the family and their guests began to stir and start the day’s routine of morning draughts and breakfast. But her restlessness was strong, and within minutes she had up and dressed and left her chamber, seeking human company.
The kitchen was deserted. Mrs Grant had set a pot to boil, but she herself was nowhere to be found, nor were the other servants of the kitchen. Nor was Kirsty. Thinking Kirsty might have gone to visit Rory in his stables, Sophia crossed the yard to look, but all she found was Hugo lying listless in his bed of wool and straw. There were no horses left for him to guard, except the one mare that had brought Sophia up to Slains from Edinburgh, and from whose back she’d tumbled when she’d ridden with the countess. That mare now dozed upon her feet, as though depressed to find the stalls to either side of her were empty. When Sophia touched the velvet nose, the mare’s eyes scarcely flickered to acknowledge the caress.
‘They’ve gone, then,’ said Sophia. So it had not been a dream. Not altogether. In some half-awakened state, she truly had heard horses stamping, and the voices of the men, as Colonel Hooke and Mr Moray had struck out before the dawn on their respective missions—Hooke towards the south, and Mr Moray to the north.
She felt a sudden twist of loss, inside, although there was no cause for it. Unless it was because she’d had no chance to say goodbye. No chance to wish him well, and bid him keep his back well-guarded in that land of wild men, to whom five hundred pounds would seem the riches of a king.
She leaned her head against the mare’s soft muzzle, stroking still, and said, ‘God keep him safe.’
The male voice seemed to speak out of the air behind her. ‘Tell me, lass, what man does so deserve your prayers?’
She wheeled. It was no ghost. Within the stable doorway, Mr Moray leaned one shoulder on the heavy post, arms folded and at rest across the leather of his buffcoat. Hugo hadn’t stirred or barked, as he was wont to do when there were strangers in the stable, and the mare’s soft head stayed steady in Sophia’s startled hands.
‘I thought that you had gone,’ she blurted out, and then because as speeches went, she knew that sounded foolish, and because it might to certain ears reveal more than she cared to show, she gathered her composure and responded to his question with another of her own. ‘Did Colonel Hooke take both the geldings, then?’
‘He took the black. The young groom took the other, on an errand for the earl. And I, as you can see, am left behind.’ He seemed to mock himself with that last statement, but Sophia had a sense that he was none too pleased about it. His features were more grim and unforgiving than she’d seen them, but they softened as he looked at her, and though he had not moved within the doorway, he still seemed a full step closer when he tipped his head and asked her, ‘Is this some strange and curious custom of the Western Shires, to talk to God and horses when the sun is barely up?’
She turned her face away, and kept her focus on the mare. ‘I could not sleep. I heard the horses.’
‘Aye, there was a fair bit of confusion when they left. I do confess I might have raised my own voice, once or twice. ’Twas likely me that woke ye.’ He was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘That mare seems fond of ye.’
Sophia smiled. ‘We have an understanding. She has thrown me once, though I admit the fault was mostly mine.’
‘I am surprised. She does appear too gentle to so use a rider, and I cannot think ye capable of handling her too roughly.’
‘No, I only fell because I could not hold her when she ran. She has a wildness that she keeps well hid behind this gentle face.’
‘Aye, so it is with many women.’ Moray did move, then. She heard the rustle of his boots upon the dampened straw, and when she dared to take a sideways glance his leather-covered chest was at her shoulder. He reached to stroke the mare’s arched neck. ‘It is as well for her I do not leave this morning, for however wild she thinks herself, she would not have a liking for the hard road through the highlands, and she’d like it even less to carry such a load as me.’
So that, Sophia thought, was why he had not gone. There was no mount for him. ‘Then you must wait, and leave when Rory brings the other gelding back?’
‘No, lass. I do not leave.’ He dropped his hand and turned to lean with both his elbows on the cross-rail of the stall so that a fold of his black cloak swung round to rest upon Sophia’s sleeve. ‘The others felt it best that I remain at Slains.’
She was relieved to know that reason had at least prevailed. The earl must have persuaded Moray that to stay here would decrease the chance he might be captured, and although he did appear to be ill-pleased with the decision, from what she had observed of Moray these past days she knew his honor would compel him to abide with that which might best serve the purpose of the exiled king.
Not sure if she was meant to know he had a price upon his head, she only said, ‘You’ll doubtless find it safer.’
‘Aye.’ He seemed to find amusement in the word. ‘Which minds me, ye’ve not told me yet whose safety ye were praying for.’
He was but teasing her, she thought. It mattered not at all to him who she’d been saying prayers for in the silence of the stable. But she could not school her voice to match his lightness, any more than she could keep her chin from lifting till her wide eyes met his quiet grey ones. And she saw he was not laughing. He was truly curious.
She could not tell a lie to him. But neither could she talk—her heart had risen to her throat, and beat so strongly there that speech was quite impossible.
Which was as well, for she could not have told him, ‘It was you.’ Not in this stable, with the warmth of his own cloak upon her arm, and his broad shoulders almost touching her, and his face but inches from her own. Time seemed suspended, and it felt to her that moment might have stretched until forever; but the mare, forgotten, nudged a softly questing nose between them, and Sophia found her wayward voice.
‘The countess will be wanting me,’ she said.
And taking one quick step back from the stall—so sharp a step that Hugo, drowsy in his bed of straw, came instantly alert—she turned and fled the stables, and the watchful mastiff, and the mare, and most of all, the man whose gaze she still could feel like warming fire upon her back.