XV
SHE’D THOUGHT TO SPEND an hour in the stables with the horses, but she’d given up that plan when she had happened upon Kirsty standing close against the stable wall with Rory, their heads bent close in earnest conversation. Sophia would not for the world have interrupted such a private moment, so she stopped, and turned away before they saw her. Taking care to keep her footsteps soft so she would not distract the couple, she went round again the long way past the malthouse and the laundry.
It had snowed, as Colonel Graeme had predicted, and the branches of the sleeping trees that showed above the garden wall were frosted thick with white, and further down she saw the thin smoke twisting upwards from the chimneys of the bothy at the bottom of the garden. She had not set eyes on Billy Wick since Captain Gordon’s visit weeks ago, and she had no desire to meet him now, so it was with dismay that she caught sight of his hunched figure standing black against a snowy shrub whose crooked branches arched and reached towards the inland hills as though attempting to escape the fierce winds blowing off the bleak North Sea.
Sophia was about to seek escape herself, and carry on along the laundry wall and round the corner to the kitchen, when another movement from the garden made her pause, and look more closely. Billy Wick was not alone. A second man, much larger and well-wrapped against the cold, a thick wool plaid drawn cloak-like round his head and shoulders, had come now to stand beside the gardener. There was no mistaking who it was—the only question, thought Sophia, was what business Captain Ogilvie could have with Billy Wick.
Whatever it was, they took some few minutes about it; in that time her troubled frown grew still more troubled when the hands of both men moved and some unknown object passed between them.
It was only when the two men parted, disappearing from her view so that she could but guess that Captain Ogilvie was making his way back along the path towards the house, and might at any moment come upon her without notice, that she moved. Her steps were ankle-deep in snow but quick with purpose, and the hands that drew her cloak more tightly round her sought to warm the chill she felt within, as well as from without.
She found the colonel, as she’d hoped she’d find him, in the library. He smiled above the pages of his book as she came in. ‘Have ye returned so soon? I would have thought ye’d had enough defeat for the one day.’
Ignoring the chess board, she asked, ‘May I speak with you?’
He straightened as though something of her urgency had reached him. ‘Aye, of course.’
‘Not here,’ she told him, knowing Ogilvie would soon be back and often chose this room himself to sit in. She needed someplace private, where they would not risk an interruption. As her fingers met the thick folds of her cloak, she asked on sudden inspiration, ‘Will you walk with me?’
‘What, now? Outside?’
She nodded.
With his eyebrow lifting on a note of resignation, Colonel Graeme took a last look at the warming fire and closed his book. ‘Aye, lass. I’ll come and walk with ye. Where to?’
The snow was not so deep along the cliff top, where the wind had blown inland into low drifts that lay soft and melting from a long day in the sun. It was late afternoon, and shadows tangled thickly with each other on the ground beneath the snowy branches of the trees that edged the flowing stream. The scent of burning wood fires from the chimneys of the cottages smelled homely to Sophia, and the smoke that curled to whiten in the air above the wood appeared to mirror her own misting breath.
They walked between the cottages, and up the windy hill beyond, and down onto the wide fawn-colored beach. The sand felt firm beneath her feet, not soft and shifting as it had been in the summer, and the dunes were dusted white with snow through which the tufted golden grass still rose to bow and bend before the wind that tossed the waves ashore.
In all that long, broad curve of sand there was no other person to be seen. No other person who could hear them. Yet Sophia went on walking, looking not for privacy but inspiration.
All the while that they’d been on the path, she had been trying to decide how best to tell him that she thought his friend, the captain, might be more than he appeared. There were no easy words, she knew, for such a thing, and she might not have mentioned it at all if she had not felt such a strongly warning sense that what was happening had happened once before. She set her mind, and chose to take that for her starting-place, and ventured, ‘When your nephew was at Slains, he told me once of his adventures in the company of Simon Fraser.’
Colonel Graeme’s eyes sought out her face with sudden interest. ‘Did he, now? What did he tell ye of the matter?’
‘That the king did send him here with Simon Fraser to enquire how many men might rise if there were a rebellion, and to meet with all the well-affected nobles in the Highlands and in Edinburgh.’
‘It was the queen, King Jamie’s mother Mary, who did send him, for she does esteem him highly. Did he tell ye that?’
She shook her head.
‘Aye, well, he’s not a lad to give himself much credit, but ’tis true. In fact, when Fraser did return to France without John it distressed the queen so greatly she said Fraser was a murderer, and did her best to see him thrown in prison. She’s a very loyal woman is Queen Mary, and she’ll not forget her favorites.’
She had not known that Moray was a favorite of the queen, and it gave her pride, but still she did not wish to be distracted from her purpose, and she would have moved to speak if Colonel Graeme had not said, ‘The queen was wrong about the murder, mind. ’Twas only that Fraser had scuttled away like a rat without sending John word of his leaving, so John was left stranded in hiding some months afore he could find a safe passage to France for himself. I’d gone earlier, else I’d have been there to help, for the business was all in the wind then and he was in danger.’
Distracted again, she looked over and echoed, ‘You’d gone earlier?’
‘Aye,’ he said, and then as if it were a well-known fact he added, ‘I was here, too, sent with Fraser as John was, by orders from Saint-Germain. Did he not tell ye his uncle came with him?’ The answer was plain on her face for he smiled and said, ‘No, he’d not say. He’s a close man with words, John. A rare one for keeping things secret.’ He looked away, toward the rolling sea, and missed the change in her expression. ‘Did he tell ye Simon Fraser was a traitor?’
‘Yes.’
‘A blow to John, that was, for he did hold the man in high regard. I had a sense of it myself when we came over. Something was not right with Fraser from the start. But John…’ He paused, and gave a shrug. ‘Well, John was younger then and counted Fraser as his friend. He found it very hard.’
Sophia said, ‘All men, I think, would be surprised at such betrayal by a friend.’
He caught her tone and turned again as if to question it. ‘Ye did not bring me all this way to speak of Fraser, lass. What’s on your mind?’
She took a breath. ‘I do suspect that Captain Ogilvie might be a spy.’
She’d feared that he might laugh, or even answer her with anger. He did neither; only asked her, ‘Why is that?’
And so she told him what she’d seen, and what she thought she’d seen—the little packet that had passed from Captain Ogilvie to Billy Wick. ‘I think that it may have been money.’
‘Lass.’ He gave her an indulgent sideways look.
‘The gardener is an evil-minded man, and not well thought of by the other servants. He is not a man to trust. I could not think of any reason Captain Ogilvie might speak with him, except to gain some knowledge of the house and its affairs.’ She kept her eyes upon the sand and said, ‘I hope I’ll not offend you, Colonel Graeme, if I say I find you much like Mr Moray, and I would not wish to see you suffer as he suffered at the hands of someone who does not deserve your friendship.’
There was no sound for a moment but the breaking of the waves against the frozen shore. And then the colonel asked her, ‘Do ye worry for my welfare, lass?’
He sounded quite as moved by that as Moray had when he had made a similar discovery, all those months ago. That moment too, Sophia thought, had happened here, on this same beach, but then the blowing wind had been a warmer one and underneath a bluer sky the sea had seemed a place of hope and promise.
‘There’s no need,’ said Colonel Graeme, kindly. ‘And ye needn’t worry about Ogilvie—he’s not like Simon Fraser, and he’s served the Stewart kings too long to turn a traitor now.’
She raised her head and saw from looking at his face that he’d dismissed her warning, but the small unquiet voice within her would not rest. ‘But even so, you will be careful?’
‘Aye, lass. For your sake, since it troubles ye so much, I will be careful.’ But he said it in the same way that a naughty child might promise to be good, and there were crinkles at the corners of his eyes that let her know he did not think the matter serious. ‘Now, was that the only thing ye had to tell me?’
From his tone she half-believed he had expected something more, but when she gave a nod he seemed to find that satisfactory.
‘Well then, let’s start back, for I’ve seen all I want of snow the day, and I can hear a dram of whisky calling from the fireside back at Slains.’
Though she was disappointed she had not convinced him about Ogilvie, she could not help but smile. ‘You go,’ she told him. ‘I would stay a while, and walk along the beach.’
He looked along the sand without enthusiasm. ‘If ye have a mind to stay, I’d best stay, too.’
‘There is no need.’ She tossed his own phrase back at him. ‘I will be safe. There was a time when I did walk here nearly every day.’
‘Oh, aye?’ He seemed to smile, though she could not be sure. ‘But ye did tell me that ye did not like the sea in winter.’
‘And you told me, if I tried, that I might come to see its virtues.’
‘So I did.’ This time the smile was unmistakable. ‘I’ll leave ye to it, then, but see ye do not stay too long out in the cold.’
She gave her promise she would not, and watched him walk away along the sand, his shoulders set so much like Moray’s that the likeness caught a little at her heart and made her pull her gaze away, then look again with misting eyes. She was half-glad when she was left alone.
She climbed the dunes and found the place where she and Moray had so often sat and talked, and though the ground was snowy now she sat with legs drawn up beneath her cloak and turned her gaze toward the sea.
It had been weeks since she had been here. In the summer she’d come often, for it was upon these sands that she most strongly felt the bond that yet connected her to Moray. She’d found comfort in the thought that every wave that rolled to shore had lately traveled from the coast of France to spread its foam upon the beach before her, and would then return with the inevitable rhythm of the tides to touch the land where Moray walked. That image, small but vivid, had sustained her through the length of days while she had looked toward the wide horizon for the first glimpse of a swift approaching sail.
But none had come, and when she’d sickened from the bairn within her belly she had not felt well enough to walk so far. Besides, the bairn itself had given her a new kind of connection to the husband who was absent from her arms, if not her heart, and she had not felt such a pressing need to walk among the memories on the shore.
But now she found them here, and waiting for her, and her eyes from habit turned to search the distant line where sea met sky, with apprehension this time more than hope, because she feared what might befall the herald ship from France if it arrived at Slains while Ogilvie was there.
For all that Colonel Graeme had not been convinced, and Ogilvie himself was such a harmless-seeming man, she could not cast aside her feelings of suspicion any more than she could keep from hearing in her mind again the words that Moray had once spoken to her here, among the dunes: The devil kens the way to charm, when it does suit his purpose…
It was more than what she’d seen that morning between Ogilvie and Billy Wick. Now that she’d turned her mind toward the possibility, it also struck her that although he’d been at Slains some days the countess had not warmed to him, but kept politely distant. And the instincts of the countess, thought Sophia, rated far above all others in the house.
She looked with doubt towards the cold horizon, and again she heard a voice—not Moray’s but the colonel’s, telling them: The time is measured now in days. And as the sun dropped lower into cloud she knew what she must do.
She did not wish to disappoint the colonel, or bring trouble on his shoulders, but if he would not believe her and take action, someone must. She would approach the countess, tell her what she’d seen, and let the older woman handle things as she saw fit.
Resolved, Sophia stood, and made her way down from the dunes and back along the beach, her steps imprinted in the drifted snow. She saw the footprints left by Colonel Graeme, and the fainter tracks of some small animal—a dog, she thought—reminding her that Moray had once told her not to venture out so far from Slains unless she brought the mastiff.
She could only smile as she remembered his concern, because the beach was so deserted, and the hill that she began to climb beyond the beach so barren, she saw nothing that could possibly endanger her. She’d walked this path a score of times since Moray had departed. She could walk it with her eyes closed, and she’d never had a mishap.
So it struck her strangely that when she was halfway up the hill, she felt a sudden crawling sense along her spine that made her hesitate, and turn to look behind.
Along the curve of beach the waves rolled in with perfect innocence. The dunes were soft with shadow, and deserted. Nothing moved besides the water and the wind along the shore that stirred the grasses. She relaxed. It had been only her imagination, hearing ghosts when none were there.
She smiled a little at her foolishness, and turned again to carry on along the uphill path…and walked straight into Billy Wick.
It seemed to her, as startled as she was, that he’d come out of nowhere, flung by blackest magic on that hill to block her way. He let her back away a step and did not move to hold her, but his smile was worse than any touch. ‘And far would ye be going til, my quine, in such a hurry?’
He would feed on fear, she knew, and so she tried to hide her own, the only sign of it the clenching of her hands upon her gown. Chin raised, she told him calmly, ‘Let me pass.’
‘All in good time.’
No one could see them, where they stood. Not from the cottages, nor even from the high windows of Slains, because the hill’s slope cut them off from view. And crying out would be a waste of breath. No one would hear the sound.
She fought her rising panic and tried hard to think. Going back towards the beach would gain her nothing—she could only try to force her way around him, and attempt to run. He might not be expecting that. Nor would he expect her to break round him on the seaward side of the steep path. He’d think that she would try the other way, the inland way, where drifted snow and tufts of coarse grass stretched off softly underfoot, instead of that one narrow strip of ground that broke so treacherously downward to the blackened rocks and icy sea below.
She took a breath, and took a chance.
She had been right. Her lunge toward the seaward side surprised him, and she gained a precious lead of seconds, and she might have even got the whole way round him had he not recovered, snapping round with snake-like speed to grasp her arm as she sped by. Her own momentum, stopped short by the sudden action, threw them both off balance, and Sophia landed hard upon the frozen ground, so hard she felt the impact in her teeth and saw lights bursting in her vision.
Billy Wick fell harder still on top of her and held her pinned, his face no longer smiling. They were lying full across the path now, and Sophia knew that though the gardener was a small man, he was strong, and she might not be able to find strength enough herself to fight him. ‘Now, fit wye would ye dee that, quine? I only want the same thing as ye gave tae Mr Moray.’
Staring coldly up at him she said, ‘You’re mad.’ But fear had taken full hold of her now, and Billy Wick could see it.
‘Aye, ye’ll give it tae me gladly, quine, or else I’ll have tae tell old Captain Ogilvie aboot the things ye said tae Mr Moray in ma garden on the nicht that he was leavin. Touching scene, it was.’ His eyes held the hard satisfaction of a beast that knows its prey is caught, and means to toy with it. ‘I fairly wept myself tae hear it. I’ve nae doot Captain Ogilvie would find it touching, too. He pays me siller fae such tales, and those he works fae have lang wantit tae have Moray in their hands.’
The wind blew sharply cold around Sophia’s face, and in her ringing head she could hear Moray’s voice repeating: He must never learn that you are mine…
He had been speaking of the duke, and not of Ogilvie, but she knew that the danger was the same, for Billy Wick had all but told her now that Ogilvie was in the pay of Queen Anne’s court, and if they learned that she was Moray’s wife they would make use of her in any way they could to draw him out. She did not care for her own life—if they would threaten her alone she’d suffer it, for his sake. But it would not be her alone. There was the child. His child.
She felt Wick’s searching hands upon her body and she shrank from them, and turned her face against the snowy ground with eyes tight shut.
‘Ye see,’ he said, his rank breath hot against her face, ‘ye have nae choice.’
He shifted closer, pressing heavily upon her. And then suddenly he wasn’t there at all. Some violent force had hauled him up and off her body in one movement.
‘Oh, I think she does,’ said Colonel Graeme’s voice, as cold and dangerous as thinly frozen ice.
Sophia, scarcely able to believe it, let her eyes come open just enough to brave a look. She saw the colonel standing close behind the gardener, looking as he must have looked in battle, with his face no longer kind but deadly calm. He’d twisted Billy Wick’s one arm back in a painful hold, and had his own arm wrapped around the gardener’s neck. She saw in Wick’s own eyes the fear that he had often fed upon from others as the colonel jerked Wick back again and brought his hard mouth close beside Wick’s ear and said, ‘I think she has a choice.’
And then Sophia saw the colonel’s hand and arm, in one swift motion, sweep around and catch Wick’s jaw, and from the sound that followed and the way the gardener slumped she knew his neck was broken. Colonel Graeme cast Wick’s body to the side disdainfully. ‘Now get ye to the devil,’ he advised the corpse, and kicked it with his booted foot to send it tumbling over down the steep slope of the hillside to the rocks and sea below.
Stunned, Sophia watched him. She had never seen a man do murder. Not like this. This was, she thought, how Moray must himself be on the battlefield—he too must wear that calm face that had set aside its conscience, and his eyes would, like his uncle’s, hold a fire she did not recognize. It shook her to observe the transformation.
She was staring at him, wordless, when the colonel’s features altered once again. The soldier’s face became the face she knew, and all the fury melted from his eyes as he bent down to her. Concerned, he asked her, ‘Are ye hurt?’
She could not frame the words to answer, shaken still by Wick’s attack, by what she had just witnessed. But she slowly shook her head. The pain of that small action made her wince.
The colonel placed a gentle hand beneath her, fingers warm against her hair, and then withdrew it. She could see his palm was wet with blood. Her blood.
‘Christ.’ He looked around and seemed to be deciding something, thinking quickly. Then he leaned in close again. ‘I need ye to be brave now for me, lass. We need to get ye home, and if I could I’d carry ye, but then the people that we pass would ken that ye’ve been hurt. There would be questions. Do ye follow what I’m saying?’ Just to make sure that she understood, he spelled it out more plainly. ‘No one saw this. No one kens Wick’s dead. And when they find his body, if they do, they will believe he fell by accident. And Ogilvie,’ he told her, ‘will believe it, too.’
He held her gaze a moment, making sure she took his meaning, and she knew that he had overheard Wick’s threat to her. For that at least, she thought, she could be grateful—Billy Wick had done what she could not. He’d given proof to Colonel Graeme by his words that Ogilvie, despite his years of service to King James, had come among them as a traitor and a spy.
She knew that Captain Ogilvie must never know the truth of what had happened on this hill, or he would know that he himself had been discovered.
Looking up at Colonel Graeme, she breathed deep and found her voice again to tell him, ‘I can walk.’
He helped her stand, and held her steady on her feet, and with the hands that had so lately killed a man he gently drew the soft hood of her cloak up so it hid the blood upon her hair. ‘Brave lass,’ he called her, with a trace of pride, and placed her hand upon his arm. ‘Go slowly now, and keep your head up. ’Tis not far to go.’
That was a lie, and well he knew it, for the walk was not a short one, but she managed it, and Ogilvie himself would not have known that she was injured, had he seen them coming up the path to Slains. She did not see him anywhere, but she could not be certain he was not against some window, looking out, and so she kept her head held high as Colonel Graeme had advised her, though the throbbing in it pained her and she felt at any moment she might faint.
The chills of shock had settled well upon her and her limbs were trembling, but the colonel’s strong arm underneath her hand was a support. They had not far to go now, to the great front steps.
‘How did you know?’ she asked him, and he turned toward her, with an eyebrow lifting.
‘What, that ye had need of help? I kent when I came back here and I saw the gardener setting out. I saw the way he marked that I was on my own, and I could see he had a mind for mischief. So I came,’ he said, ‘to fetch ye home.’
A few more paces, and he’d have accomplished that. She fought the rising blackness, and looked up at him in hopes that he could see beyond the pain that filled her eyes and know her gratitude. The words took effort. ‘Colonel?’
‘Aye, lass?’
‘Thank you.’
For an answer Colonel Graeme brought his free hand over and for one brief moment squeezed her fingers where they lay upon his arm, but they had reached the entry now and no more could be said, for Captain Ogilvie himself was waiting just inside the door, to bid them welcome.
‘Ye’ve been walking, so I see.’
‘Aye,’ Colonel Graeme answered smoothly, ‘but I fear I’ve worn the wee lass out, and given her a headache from the cold.’
She forced a smile and took the cue. ‘I can assure you, Colonel, it is nothing that a short rest will not remedy.’
‘Och, there, ye see?’ said Ogilvie. ‘The lassies these days, Graeme, are a stronger breed than those we lost our hearts to.’
‘Aye,’ said Colonel Graeme. ‘That they are.’ His eyes were warm upon Sophia’s. ‘Take your rest, then. I’ve no doubt Captain Ogilvie can take your place for once across the chessboard.’ And he raised an eyebrow once again to look a challenge at the older man and ask him lightly, ‘Can I tempt ye to a game?’
And Captain Ogilvie, not knowing that the rules had changed, accepted.
‘Right.’ The colonel clapped a hand upon his old friend’s shoulder, smiling. ‘Let me see the lass upstairs and find her maid to tend her headache, first. And then the two of us,’ he said, ‘can play.’