The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(96)

From the table’s end, the earl asked, disbelieving, ‘Can you do that?’

‘I can try.’

The countess said, ‘You must be careful.’

‘I am careful.’

‘You are good,’ she told him. ‘And I mean to see that young King James does know it.’

Gordon flashed a smile and shrugged. ‘He can reward me when he comes,’ he said, ‘by making me an admiral.’

When the meal was over, he sat back and viewed his stomach with a pretence of dismay. ‘Your cook does try to make me fat each time I come here.’

‘It was not the cook,’ the countess said, ‘who made you take three helpings of the pudding.’

‘Aye, you’re right. Still, I’d be well advised to take a bit of exercise, else I may sink my ship when I return to her. I wonder,’ he said casually, and looked along the table, ‘if your lovely Mistress Paterson would join me for a turn around the gardens.’

With three heads turned to look at her, Sophia could not think of any graceful way to tell him no. She might have claimed a headache, but she’d not have been convincing since she’d been behaving normally the whole time of the meal. Besides, the countess was watching her now with a motherly interest. Sophia could not disappoint her by treating their favorite guest rudely. She nodded. ‘Of course.’

It was cool in the garden. The walls blocked the bite of the wind off the sea, but the air held the chill breath of autumn. Those flowers that had not yet died had begun to fade, and everything had a more desolate feel. But a songbird, alone by the high wall, sat trilling his melody bravely, undaunted.

Sophia had not ventured out to the garden too often since Moray had gone. She had come with the countess a few times, to walk and admire the colorful blooms of the summer, and once she had come out with Kirsty to help gather herbs. But she’d always been uncomfortably aware of Billy Wick, whether he was at work in the open or scuffling unseen in some weed-tangled corner. His dark-windowed stone bothy crouched like a loathsome great toad at the foot of the gardens against the high twisting trees edging the burn, and she could not look upon it without feeling in her heart a touch of dread, of something evil that was watching her, and waiting.

Billy Wick himself was in full view today, at work with shears among the branches of the lilac tree—the same tree she had stood beneath with Moray that last night, when it had showered her with petals and he’d kissed her…

‘I must confess,’ said Gordon, ‘when I met you first, I did not know how you would fare at Slains. You seemed too quiet, and the countess is’—he paused, to find the word—‘a forceful woman.’

She was well aware he meant that as a compliment, but still she felt the need to rise a little to the countess’s defense. ‘She is a woman of intelligence and grace.’

‘She is that, yes. And it is clear she has been teaching you the way of it. You’ve changed, these past few months.’

She could have told him that she had changed more than he could know, and that it had not been the countess’s achievement, but she only said politely, ‘For the better, I do hope.’

‘Indeed.’ He turned his head to smile down at her. He had not moved to offer her his arm, but walked beside her at his ease. ‘You will forgive me if I say that you seemed yet a girl when you arrived, and now in this short time you have matured into a woman. ’Tis a stunning transformation.’

He was charming her deliberately, and might have said as much to any girl who struck his fancy, but Sophia had to steel herself to keep from laying one protective hand across her belly, as though fearing he could truly see the secret that had altered her. She told him, ‘You do flatter me.’

‘I tell the truth.’

Beyond his shoulder, Billy Wick was watching them in furtive silence, busy with his shears. And of a sudden it was more than she could bear to see him hacking at the lilac tree, to see the leafless branches fall to lie upon the barren ground, defiled. She looked to Gordon. ‘Shall we try another path? The sun is in my eyes.’

‘Of course.’ He chose the path that ran between the roses, with their spent blooms scattered pale beneath the thorny shrubs. Reaching in his coat, he drew a flat and narrow parcel out and held it lightly in his hand. ‘When I was in London, waiting for the Edinburgh to be refitted, I did chance to see these in the window of a shop. They made me think of you.’

He would have passed the parcel to her but she hesitated. ‘Captain Gordon…’

‘Please.’ He stopped walking on the path and smiled his most persuasive smile. ‘’Tis but a trifle.’

With reluctant hands, Sophia took the gift. The paper wrapping came away to show a pair of dainty gloves worked in white leather, with embroidered knots of gold. She held them dumbly, thinking back to when he’d last been here—when she had sat on Moray’s gloves to hide them, in the drawing room; to hide the fact that she had just been wearing them.

He said, ‘I do believe I told you that your hands deserved to have a softer covering than Mr Moray’s gauntlets.’

She remembered. ‘Yes, you did.’ She felt the lovely gloves a moment longer in her hand, then held them out towards him. ‘I cannot accept them. It would not be right.’

‘How so?’ He stood his ground, amused. This was a different sort of dance, Sophia realized, than the one that she’d been led through by the cunning Duke of Hamilton— the steps were more straightforward, but she still could not afford to put a foot wrong. Captain Gordon was a man whose handsome face and charm had doubtless gained him much, and he was clearly seeking now to add Sophia to his winnings.