The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(109)

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.’



Dr Weir was pleased. ‘Well, that’s much better.’ He re-wrapped the bandage round my ankle, satisfied. ‘Much better. You took my advice and stayed off it, I see.’

Something in the way he said that prompted me to ask, ‘You didn’t think I would?’

Behind the rounded spectacles his sage eyes briefly twinkled. ‘Let’s just say you strike me as the sort of lass who likes to pipe her own tune.’

I smiled, because no one had so neatly put their finger on that aspect of my character since my kindergarten teacher in her end-of-year report had written: ‘Carrie listens to the ideas of other children, but likes her own ideas best’. I didn’t share that with the doctor, only told him, ‘Yes, well, every now and then I take advice. And it hasn’t been hard to stay off it. The book has been keeping me busy.’

‘That’s good. Are you still needing details on spies? Because I did some reading, and found you a good one. You mind how we were talking about Harley?’

Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and a man of power in the government of England, who was also Queen Anne’s spymaster. I nodded.

Dr Weir said, ‘I was reading up on Harley, with a mind to finding out a wee bit more about Defoe for you, and I came across some letters from another agent Harley sent to Scotland at the time, and who was actually at Slains.’

The feeling that was pricking at my shoulder blades was not unlike the feeling that I got when I sensed something sneaking up on me. And so it didn’t come as a complete surprise when Dr Weir said, ‘Ogilvie, his name was. Captain Ogilvie.’ He reached inside his pocket and produced some folded notepaper. ‘I copied out the letters…well, they’re excerpts, really. Not much there. But still, I thought the name might be of use.’

I thanked him. Took the papers, and unfolded them to read the lines in silence. They began with an account of Captain Ogilvie’s brief visits with the nobles of the north of Scotland and what he had learned from them, then on to Slains, where the Countess of Erroll had received him with suspicion, and where luckily for Ogilvie there’d been a certain ‘Colonel Graham’, of whom Ogilvie had written: ‘He and I served formerly in France together, and we were long bed fellows.’

Dr Weir, watching my face while I read, asked, ‘What is it?’

I lowered the papers. ‘You’ve read these?’

‘I have.’

With a faint smile I rose to my feet and crossed over to sort through the short stack of new printed pages beside my computer. Picking up the last three chapters I had written, I turned back and held them out in invitation. ‘Then,’ I told the doctor, ‘you should have a look at these.’

He did. And when he’d finished, he looked over at me, wordlessly.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s what I mean by proof, though. When I wrote that, I had no idea that there even was a Captain Ogilvie, or Colonel Graeme. Characters just come to me like that sometimes. They just show up. In any other book I would have said that my subconscious had invented them to serve the plot. But in this book, it doesn’t seem like I’m inventing anything. And now you give me this’—I held the copied letters up—‘and I have proof both men are real, and that they truly were at Slains.’