The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(124)

No answer came this time except the deep sound of his breathing. He had gone to sleep. I lay there for a while longer thinking in the dark with Graham’s arm wrapped safe around me and the warmth of Angus sprawled across my feet, but in the end the question would not let me rest, and there was only one way that I knew to get a proper answer.





XIX

THESE DAYS SHE WAS not often out of doors. Although two months had passed and spring had smoothed the sharper edges of the breezes from the sea, she kept inside with Mrs Malcolm and with Kirsty and the baby and she did not leave the house except on those rare days when her own restlessness consumed her and she felt that she must breathe the outside air or else go mad. Even then, she stayed as far as she could stay from the main road, mindful always of the fact that this was still a time of danger.

Mr Malcolm had not yet been heard from and they did not know how he had fared. At the beginning it had seemed that every day more men were taken and imprisoned, and from the single letter that the countess had been able to send down Sophia knew it was no better in the north. Indeed the only comfort in that letter had come from one small piece of news the countess had relayed, that she’d had in a message from the Duke of Perth, her brother, at the Court of Saint-Germain: ‘Mr Perkins,’ she had written to Sophia in her careful code, ‘does tell me that he recently did call upon your husband Mr Milton and did find him well recovered of his illness, and impatient to be up again.’ From which Sophia knew, to her relief, that Moray had managed to get safely back across the Channel, and was healing from his wounds.

That knowledge made it easier to cope with the uncertainty surrounding her, just as the sight of baby Anna sleeping in her cradle, small and vulnerable and trusting, gave Sophia every morning the resolve and strength of spirit to conduct herself with caution, so her child would be protected.

She would not, in fact, have been upon the road today at all if it were not for Mrs Malcolm’s housemaid falling ill, so that somebody else must go to market if they were to have the food to keep them fed the next few days. Kirsty had offered, but as she had been recovering herself from that same illness and was weakened still, Sophia would not hear of it. Nor would she hear of Mrs Malcolm setting out for town, when Mrs Malcolm had already been accosted twice by soldiers who were searching for her husband.

‘I’ll go,’ Sophia had announced. She’d started out before the dawn, and for some time she was the only one upon the road, which made her feel more free to take some pleasure in the coolness of the wind upon her face and in the spreading colors of the sunrise. It was early in the morning yet when she first reached the outskirts of the waking town of Edinburgh and houses started rising close about her, but there still was not much movement on the road.

So when she heard the sound of hooves and wheels approaching from behind she turned instinctively, not thinking of concealment, only curious to see who might be passing.

It was clearly someone of importance, for the coach itself was an expensive one, the coachman richly dressed and driving horses who were sleek and black and so disdainful that they did not even turn their eyes as they drew level with Sophia.

Inside the coach a sudden voice called out and bade the driver stop, and in a swirl of dust and dancing hooves the horses halted. At the window of the coach appeared a face Sophia knew.

‘Why, Mistress Paterson!’ said Mr Hall, with obvious surprise. ‘Whatever are you doing here? Come in, my dear, come in—you should not be upon these streets alone.’

She had been worried, setting out, that she’d be recognized as being Mrs Milton, from the house of Mr Malcolm, and that somebody might question her on that account. It had not for a moment crossed her mind that she’d be recognized by anyone who knew her as herself. This was a complication she had not foreseen, and she was not sure how to manage it, but since there was no way she could refuse the priest without it stirring his suspicions, she had little choice but to reach up and take his hand and let him help her up the step into the coach.

Inside, she found that they were not alone.

‘This,’ the Duke of Hamilton remarked, in his smooth voice, ‘is quite an unexpected pleasure.’ Dressed in deep blue velvet, with a new expensive wig that fell in dark curls past his shoulders, he assessed Sophia from the seat directly opposite.

The coach’s rich interior seemed suddenly too close for her, and lowering her face to fight the feeling of uneasiness, she greeted him, ‘Your Grace.’

‘Where are you walking to this morning?’

‘Nowhere in particular. I had a mind to look about the market.’

She could feel his eyes upon her in the pause before he said to Mr Hall, ‘The market, then,’ and Mr Hall in turn leaned out to call up to the coachman to drive on.

The duke said, nonchalant, ‘I did not know the countess was in Edinburgh.’

Sophia, well aware that she was out of practice with his dance of words, stepped carefully. ‘My Lady Erroll is at Slains, your Grace.’

‘You are not here alone, I trust?’

‘I am with friends.’ Before he could ask more, she raised her gaze in total innocence and said, ‘I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see that you are well, your Grace. We heard that you were taken by the English, and have feared the worst.’

She saw his hesitation, and felt confident that he would not be able to resist the urge to make himself look grander by the tale of his adventures. She was right.