The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(136)

‘I killed the hero.’

‘Ah.’

‘And I made the heroine give up her only child and go away.’

‘Aye, well,’ said Stuart, ‘that’ll do it.’ Swigging back a mouthful of his pint, he said, ‘So let the hero live.’

‘I can’t. He’s an actual person from history, he dies when he dies, I can’t change that.’

‘So end the book before he dies.’

A simple answer. And it would have solved a lot of problems, I admitted. Only life was rarely simple.

I was vividly reminded of that fact an hour later when we three left the Kilmarnock Arms and started walking down toward the harbor. Stuart wasn’t drunk, exactly, but the pints had left him happy and relaxed, and as we walked he put his arm around my shoulders and there wasn’t any nice way to get rid of it. Graham, walking half a step behind us, didn’t seem to mind.

Nor did he seem to mind when Stuart said he’d walk me to my cottage.

‘No, you go,’ said Graham. ‘I’ll look in on Dad.’ His hand clasped briefly at my arm, a reassuring touch. ‘I’ll see you after.’

Stuart went on talking to me cheerfully as we trudged up the slushy path together, and when I had put my key into the cottage door he came right in behind me, stamping water off his feet and in the middle of an anecdote. ‘And then I said to him, I said—’

He broke off so abruptly that it made me look behind.

He was still standing just inside the door, eyes focused on the table where I wrote. Well, not the table, but the chair in front. And not the chair exactly, but the shirt slung on the back of it: a well-worn rugby jersey, navy blue with stripes of gold and red.

He swung his gaze to mine. I was relieved I couldn’t see real disappointment in it, just a rueful realization, and acceptance. ‘It’s not me,’ he asked me, ‘is it? It was never me.’

I answered him with honesty. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, it’s all right,’ he said, lifting up one hand. He turned to go. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off to beat my brother senseless.’

‘Stuart.’

‘Not to worry, I’ll leave all his vital parts in working order.’

‘Stuart.’

Halfway out the door he stopped. Looked back, good-natured. ‘Actually, the worst part is, I haven’t got an argument to offer. Even I know that you chose the better man.’

And then he smiled, and let the door swing closed behind him, and I heard him trudging off along the path.



‘Did I not tell you?’ Graham asked me. He was setting up his next move on the chess board that I’d found in a back cupboard of the cottage. It was not quite in the same league as the one my characters had played on in the library at Slains—not all the pieces had survived, and we were using Liquorice Allsorts for my bishop and his rook—but when I set it on the small round table in between the armchairs near my fireplace, it made a close facsimile.

I looked at Graham. ‘So he’ll be all right, then?’

‘Stuie? Aye. He’s away to Peterhead tonight to search the pubs for your replacement. He’ll be fine.’

He’d moved his knight, and I was forced to take a moment to consider my response. I wasn’t the world’s best chess player, and I tried to clear my mind, in hopes some buried memory—Colonel Graeme’s teachings, maybe— might come down the line to steer my hand.

Graham waited. ‘I’ve been thinking of your problem with the book.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘You say that after Moray dies, his widow has to leave their child as well?’

‘That’s right.’

‘There’s no way she can keep it? When my dad lost Mum, the only thing that kept him going was the fact he still had Stuart and myself. A grieving person’s like a person treading in deep water—if they’ve nothing to hold on to, they lose hope. They slide right under.’

I agreed. ‘But for my heroine, it isn’t quite that easy.’ I explained the situation while I made my move.

He wasn’t swayed. ‘I’d take the child anyway.’

‘Well, you’re a man. Men think differently. And a woman on her own in the early eighteenth century wouldn’t have had an easy time of it, raising a child.’

He pondered this while studying the chess board, then he moved his queen to take my Liquorice Allsort bishop, which he lifted from the board and ate, still thinking.

‘And just what,’ I asked him drily, ‘do you plan to do when my pawn makes it to the other side, and I ask for my bishop back?’

Graham gave a cocky grin, and speaking thickly through the candy said, ‘Your pawn’ll never get there. You’re in check.’

I was, at that. He’d done it neatly, and at first glance I could see no way to move my king to safety, but he hadn’t told me ‘checkmate’, so I knew it wasn’t hopeless, that there had to be a way…

‘The thing to do,’ he said, ‘is give her someone else.’

It took a moment till I realized Graham was still thinking of my book, and how to make the ending happy.

‘Give her someone else to love,’ he said. ‘Another man.’

‘She doesn’t want another man.’