The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(101)
‘I’ll phone you,’ he promised.
I rang off in my most businesslike fashion, so it caught me off guard when Jimmy asked, ‘Was that ma son?’
It was, I thought, a good thing he was looking at the coal hod he was filling, not my face. He didn’t see me hold my breath. Head down, he remarked, ‘He’s a good-hearted loon, Stuart is, but he can be a nuisance.’
I exhaled, and relaxed. ‘It wasn’t Stuart.’ Then, because I saw a useful purpose in it, I said, ‘It was Jane, my agent. You remember Jane?’
‘Aye. She’s nae the sort o’ quine a man forgets.’
‘I’m having lunch with her this Saturday in Peterhead,’ I told him. Then, more casually, ‘I might, in fact, stay over. Spend the weekend with her family.’
Jimmy thought that sounded like a good idea, and he said as much. ‘Ye canna hide awa up here the hale time. Folk ging mad athoot a bittie company.’
I watched him tip the coal bag up and send the last bits rattling into the hod, and I thought how it must be for him, in his cottage alone. I remembered how Graham had told me his dad had been lost since his wife’s death. He might have his sons and his group of friends at the St Olaf Hotel, but it wasn’t the same thing as having a woman around all the time.
So when he’d finished with the coal and would have left me from politeness, I asked him if he’d make some tea, and then I asked him if he’d stay and have a cup, as well, and for the next two hours we sat and talked and laughed and played gin rummy with the deck of cards I used for playing solitaire.
Because, as Jimmy’d rightly said, it could be better sometimes having company than being on your own.
XIV
COLONEL GRAEME KEPT HIS word, and stayed.
Sophia reasoned that he stayed as much because he wanted to be there to see the frigate come to herald the beginning of the king’s invasion, as because he liked the hospitality of Slains, but either way she took great pleasure in his company. She came to envy Moray, that he had an uncle so engaging and as different from her Uncle John as daylight was from darkness. He talked more than his nephew, and was quicker to observe the humor in a daily happening, but he was enough like Moray that Sophia felt at ease with him and on familiar ground.
He brought a liveliness to Slains, for like his nephew he did not sit still long. If his body ceased its motion then his mind in turn grew restless and required diversion. He had them play at cards most evenings, learning all the new games now in favor at the French king’s court and Saint-Germain. And on one rainy afternoon toward the week’s end he began to teach Sophia how to play the game of chess.
He said, ‘Ye’ve got the brain for it. Not many lasses do.’
She felt quite flattered by his confidence, but wished that she could share it. With a sinking heart she watched him set the pieces out upon the wooden board that he had laid between them on the little table in the library. There seemed so many figures, finely carved of wood with flaking paint of black or white—the castle towers, and the horses’ heads, and bishops’ mitres flanking two crowned pieces taller than the rest, their painted faces staring back at her with doubt.
‘I do not have much luck at games,’ Sophia said.
‘’Tis not a game of luck.’ He set eight smaller figures in a row before the others. Sending her a reassuring glance, he said, ‘It is a game of strategy. A battle, if ye will, between my men and yours. My wits, and yours.’
She smiled. ‘Then yours will surely win.’
‘Ye cannot start a battle, lass, by thinking ye will lose it. Now come, let me show ye how it’s played.’ He was a soldier, and he taught the movements from a soldier’s viewpoint, starting with the forward lines. ‘These wee men here, the pawns, they’re not allowed to make decisions. They can only put one foot before the other, marching in a straight line to the enemy, except when they attack. Then they follow the thrust of their sword arm, see, on the diagonal.’ Moving his pawn against one of her own, he demonstrated. ‘Now, the knights, at their backs, they can move that much quicker because they’re on horseback, and bolder…’
And so piece by piece he revealed all the players and set them in play on the battlefield. Leading her through their first game, he took time with each turn to explain all her options, which moves she could make with which men, but he did not advise her. The choice was her own, and he either sat back in approval or with a good-natured grin captured the piece that she’d placed into jeopardy.
Sophia tried to learn from each mistake, and though the colonel won as she’d suspected that he would, she felt a sense of triumph that she’d given him some semblance of a battle. And her pride grew greater when the colonel said, ‘Ye did uncommonly well, lass. Did I not say ye had the brain for it?’
‘I like the game.’
‘Aye, so I see.’ He smiled at her. ‘We’ve time for yet another afore supper, if ye like.’
Her skill improved with every day.
‘She’ll have you beaten, Colonel,’ was the earl’s opinion as he watched them idly from his reading chair one afternoon.
‘Aye, ye might be right, at that.’ With steepled fingers, Colonel Graeme eyed the board and whistled lightly through his teeth. He took his time. The piece he finally moved seemed, to Sophia, a mistake because it left a weakness in his ranks that she could then attack. But when she took advantage of the opening, she saw that the mistake had been her own, as Colonel Graeme slid his bishop silently across the board and told her, ‘Check.’