The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(90)

The telephone rang.

‘No,’ he said, ‘you stay sitting. I’ll get it.’

The phone was a portable one, and I’d hoped he would just bring it over, but no—being Stuart, he answered it first. I was praying it wasn’t my mother, or, worse still, my father, when Stuart said charmingly, ‘No, she’s just resting. Hang on a minute.’ Crossing back, he handed me the phone.

I closed my eyes, prepared for anything. ‘Hello?’

Jane’s voice was dry. ‘Shall I ring back another time?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘I just wondered. You sound…busy.’

‘I—’

‘You don’t need to explain,’ she swept away my explanation. ‘I’m your agent, not your mother.’

Actually, I might have found it easier if it had been my mother on the phone, because my mother, while she did have her opinions, didn’t pry, whereas Jane would never let this drop, no matter what she’d said, till she’d had all the details. Still, she’d known me long enough to not come at me all at once, with questions. ‘I won’t keep you long, at any rate. I only called to ask you up for lunch,’ she said, ‘on Saturday.’

I hesitated. Saturdays and Sundays were the days I spent with Graham, and I didn’t like to lose them. But I valued, too, my time with Jane and Alan, and their baby, and surely by Saturday I would be able to walk. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I’d love to come.’

‘Good. Will you need me to come fetch you in the car, or do you have a driver now?’

I didn’t take the bait. ‘I’ll let you know.’

‘Local man, is he?’

‘Jane.’

‘Right, I’ll keep out of it. Let you get on with your evening.’ I heard the conspirator’s smile in her voice as she wished me good night and rang off.

I sighed, and set down the receiver. Stuart didn’t notice. He was standing at the door, beneath the black electric meter, making some adjustment to it. Realizing that I was off the phone, he turned and grinned. ‘Don’t look. You’re nearly out of time on this. I’m fixing it.’

‘Yes, well, your brother’s done that once already, and your father’s bound to figure out, someday, that I’m not paying what I should.’

He didn’t seem concerned about his dad’s suspicions. Something else I’d said had grabbed his interest. ‘Graham’s been here? When was that?’

I’d slipped up, and I knew it. ‘Oh, a while ago,’ I told him. ‘He was helping with my book.’ And then, before Stuart could think to ask anything else, I distracted his attention by leaning to push down my sock for a look at my ankle.

It worked. He said, ‘Christ, look at that.’

It was swollen. The pain, though, now that I’d stopped hobbling around, had dulled itself down to a steady throb, something I found easier to manage.

Stuart frowned. ‘You’re sure you won’t have someone look at that?’

‘I’ll show it to Dr Weir tomorrow,’ I promised. ‘But trust me, it’s only a sprain, if it’s anything. Nothing that rest and some aspirin won’t cure.’

His torn expression, I decided, wasn’t just because I wouldn’t see a doctor. More than likely it owed something to the fact that he’d have headed here to visit me tonight with a seduction scene in mind. But even Stuart, in the end, had too much chivalry to try it on with someone who’d been injured.

He brought me my aspirin and water to take it with, settled me into my chair with the phone at my side, and then smiled with the confidence of a commander who’d lost the day’s battle but fully expected a victory the next time around. ‘Get your rest, then,’ he told me. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I had every intention of resting. I did. After Stuart had gone, I leaned back in the chair and tried closing my eyes for a moment, but then the wind rose at the windows and rattled the glass and moaned low round the cottage, until the lamenting became a low murmur, like voices, and one voice from among them warned, ‘The moment will be lost.’

So I knew the idea of resting was out. It was difficult, standing and making my shuffling way to the work table, but it would have been even more difficult to sit still when my characters called.

And I knew, at this point in the story, I wasn’t the only one dealing with pain.





XI

KIRSTY SET THE BOWL of broth before Sophia. ‘Ye must eat.’

Sophia had not managed anything at breakfast. She’d been grateful that the countess, with the earl her son, had gone to Dunottar, and had not seen her as she’d been this morning, pale and feeling ill.

She knew the reason for it. She had not been sure at first, but now it was August, and nearly three months had passed since her marriage to Moray, and there could be no other cause for this strange sickness that came on each morning and confined her to her bed. It had been so, she well remembered, with her sister Anna, when the bairn had started growing in her belly.

Kirsty knew, as well. Her cool hand smoothed Sophia’s forehead. ‘Ye’ll not be so ill the whole time. It will pass.’

Sophia could not meet the sympathy in Kirsty’s eyes. She turned her head. ‘What will I do?’