The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(98)

‘I’m sorry, did I frighten ye?’ His voice was pleasant, and it held the cadence of a Highlander. ‘Forgive me, lass. I took ye for a stableboy at first, there in the shadows. Is there one about?’

‘A stableboy?’ She did not know where Rory was, just then. She glanced around.

‘Eh, well, I only need a blanket and a stall, and I can see to those myself.’ Not far from where he stood he found an empty stall to suit his purpose, and when Rory did arrive a short time afterwards the horse was settled comfortably, the stranger having found a blanket on a nearby rail.

Rory’s eyes held recognition. ‘Colonel Graeme!’

‘Aye,’ the man acknowledged with surprise. ‘I did not think to be remembered—it must be two years since my last visit here.’

The fact that Rory had remembered, and was moving round the man with obvious respect now, told Sophia that this Colonel Graeme was no common guest.

He was still thinking of his horse. ‘He’ll need a warm feed,’ he told Rory, ‘if ye have the means to manage it. We’ve ridden hard the day, and we were all the time in rain.’

Rory nodded, but his brief and silent glance seemed more concerned about the colonel, who was soaking wet himself and sure to suffer for it if he didn’t soon get dry. ‘I’ll see him taken care of,’ Rory said, about the horse. ‘And Mistress Paterson can show ye to the house.’

‘Mistress Paterson?’ He looked at her with open interest, and Sophia could not help but smile. It was no fault of his that he’d assumed she was a servant, with her being here so freely in the stables, wearing one of her old gowns and with the mud upon her shoes. She let her hand fall from the mastiff ’s collar as she curtsied. ‘Colonel. I’d be pleased to take you to the countess and the Earl of Erroll.’

He had laughing eyes that crinkled at the corners, and his smile showed beneath the greying beard. ‘And it would please me, lass, to follow ye.’

She took him in the back way, through the stables and the storerooms to the corridor that ran along the courtyard. She’d been right about his height—his shoulders were not far above the level of her own, and he was built compactly, yet he had a presence and a strength about him and he had a soldier’s walk, not swaggering but self-assured. It made her think of Moray. And like Moray, Colonel Graeme wore, beneath his cloak, a basic leather buffcoat over breeks and boots, his swordbelt slung across his shoulder with the ease of one who had long worn it.

‘My memory is not what is was,’ he told her, with a sideways glance, ‘but am I right in thinking ye were not at Slains two years ago? Or were ye hiding with the horses then, as well?’

She liked his eyes, his face, his friendly manner. ‘No, I was not here. I only came last spring.’

‘Oh, aye?’ He showed a keener interest. ‘Was that afore or after Colonel Hooke was here, with his companion?’

They’d come around the courtyard now, and reached the steps that led upstairs, and she was grateful that she was ahead of him so that her face was hidden while her voice pretended ignorance. For though she liked this man, she could not easily forget the need for caution. Repeating, ‘Colonel Hooke…,’ she shook her head and told him, ‘I regret I have no memory of the name.’

‘’Tis of no matter.’

As they reached the upper floor the earl stepped out into the passage from the library and narrowly missed colliding with them.

‘Colonel Graeme!’ Looking as surprised and pleased as Rory had been earlier, the earl reached out to greet the colonel with a hearty handshake. ‘Where in God’s name have you sprung from?’

‘I can tell ye that, your Lordship, when ye’ve offered me a dram.’

Sophia had not heard another man, except the Duke of Hamilton, be so familiar with the earl—the colonel said ‘your Lordship’ in a tone so much at ease that he might just as well have said ‘my lad’. But from the earl’s acceptance of it she assumed the two men shared a long acquaintance, and her sense of this was strengthened when the earl, with one hand clapped around the colonel’s shoulder, steered him through the doorway of the drawing room, announcing, ‘Mother, look at who has come.’

The countess came across, delighted. ‘I heard no one at the door.’

‘I came directly from the stables. Mistress Paterson was brave enough to guide me, though I look a proper rogue and we’ve not yet been introduced.’

The countess smiled. ‘Then let me set that right. Sophia, this is Colonel Graeme. He is truthfully a rogue, as he admits, but one we welcome in our midst.’ Turning to the colonel, she said, ‘Patrick, this is Mistress Paterson, our kinswoman, who came this year to live with us.’

‘An honor.’ He did not bend low above her hand as was the current fashion; only took it in a firm and honest grasp and gave a formal nod that had the same effect.

The countess said, ‘But you must come and sit beside the fire, or else you’ll catch a fever standing in those wet clothes.’

‘Och, I’m not so weak. It was my cloak that got the worst of it, the rest of me is dry enough.’ He swung the sodden black cloak from his shoulders to prove it, and the countess took it from his hand and laid it on the fender.

‘Nonetheless,’ she said, and put her hand upon an armchair by the fireplace in a gesture that fell partway between invitation and command. The colonel gave way with a cavalier shrug, but he waited for the countess and Sophia to find their seats first before he took his own. The earl, who through all this had left the room a moment, now returned and pressed a glass half-filled with whisky in the colonel’s hand.