Sophia's Secret (13 page)

Stuart might be nice to look at. Graham was the kind of man I couldn’t look away from.

Maybe that was why, when he had gone, the first thing that I did was make a beeline for my workbook. In the section bookmarked ‘Characters’, I wrote three pages, longhand – the descriptive details of a man with eyes the colour of the winter sea.

I didn’t know exactly how I’d use him yet, but I had a suspicion that when I began to write tonight he’d turn up somewhere, entering the story with that easy, rolling stride that said he had a right to be there.

It was nearly time for supper when the knock came at my door.

I knew it was unlikely to be Graham, but my face must still have shown at least a trace of disappointment when I saw that it was Dr Weir, because he said, apologetically, ‘I didn’t interrupt your work, I hope?’

Recovering, I said, ‘Oh, no, of course not. Please, come in.’

‘I’ll not stay long.’ He wiped his feet, and stepped inside. ‘I promised Elsie I’d be home by dark. I’ve found those plans that I was telling you about, the plans that show Slains as it was in the old days, before the Victorian earls made it over. And I found a few old photographs I thought might be of interest to you. Where did I put them, now?’ Feeling inside his coat pocket, he found the small envelope holding the photos. The plans he’d brought rolled in a brown cardboard tube that he’d put, in its turn, in a clear plastic bag so it wouldn’t get wet. A wise precaution, I decided, since the strong wind off the sea had spattered water on his eyeglasses.

He took them off and wiped them while I put the plans and photos on my work table. ‘I don’t have any Scotch,’ I said, ‘but I could make you tea or coffee.’

‘No, my dear, I’m fine.’ He looked around with open interest and approval. ‘Jimmy’s made this very cosy.’

‘He’s been wonderful.’

‘Aye, all the Keiths are fairly that,’ he told me. ‘Even Stuart, for his faults. He got you back home in the one piece, I see.’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘He’s a good lad, Stuart is, but…’ The doctor appeared to be choosing his words. ‘He’s still a lad, in many ways.’ Which, so I gathered, was meant as a fatherly warning.

I smiled, to show him there wasn’t a need. ‘Yes, I’ve noticed.’ And then, pretending ignorance, I asked him, ‘What’s the other brother like? The one who teaches?’

‘Graham? Well now, Graham is a very different animal from Stuart. Very different.’ He turned thoughtful. ‘He’s a person you should talk to, now I think of it. His memory’s remarkably good, and he has the resources to look things up for you. Besides,’ he said, ‘he’s something of a Jacobite himself, young Graham. Anything to do with the ‘08, he’ll likely know it. He lives down in Aberdeen now, but he comes up nearly every weekend. You might see him sometimes on the beach – he has a dog with him, a little spaniel dog.’ He tapped his watch. ‘Is that the time? I must be going. Keep those photographs as long as you’ve a use for them. The plans, as well. I hope they’ll be some help.’

I knew they would be, and I told him so.

Mind you, I thought, when he had gone and I was left alone again, they’d also serve to make my morning’s work a waste of effort. Crossing to my work table, I pushed my made-up floor plan to one side so I could make room for the real one.

It slid smoothly from its tube, and I unrolled it on the table, pinning down the upcurled edges with a ruler and the long edge of my workbook. There it was – the proper layout of Slains castle, drawn to scale and neatly labelled.

I examined it, then frowned, and with a disbelieving hand reached for the plan I’d drawn this morning. I laid it carefully alongside, for comparison.

There was no way, I thought, this could have happened. But it had.

They were the same.

Not just a little bit alike. They were identical. The kitchen, and the drawing room, the chamber where Sophia slept, the little corner room with light for sewing, they were all here, in the places where I’d put them in my writing, where I’d seen them in my mind.

But how? How did a person draw a thing so perfectly they’d never seen before?

I felt a stirring in the depths of my subconscious, and again the woman’s voice within my mind said softly, ‘So, you see, my heart is held forever by this place…’

Except the voice I heard this time was not Sophia’s.

It was mine.

Jane was calming, on the telephone. ‘All right, it’s weird, I’ll grant you that.’

I told her, ‘Weird is not the word. It’s freaky.’

‘Carrie, darling, you’ve got a photographic memory. You can quote entire conversations that we had three years ago. I’m telling you, you’ve seen the castle plans somewhere before, that’s all. You’ve just forgotten.’

‘If my memory’s so terrific, why would I forget?’

She sighed. ‘Don’t argue with your agent. Just accept the fact I’m right.’

I had to smile at that. I’d never even tried to have an argument with Jane, because I’d known I wouldn’t win. When she was certain she was right, I stood a better chance of moving mountains than of changing her opinion. ‘You don’t think I’m turning psychic?’

‘When you start to win the lottery,’ she promised me, ‘I’ll think you’re turning psychic. If you want to know the truth, I think you’re simply so absorbed in this new book that you’re letting yourself get exhausted. You need a night off. Put your feet up, do nothing.’

I pointed out that there was nothing
to
do, if I didn’t write. The cottage had no television.

‘So find a pub, have a few drinks.’

‘No, that’s no good, either. I’m going walking in the morning, up the coast path. I can’t be hung over.’

Her voice grew accusing. ‘You promised me you wouldn’t walk that coast path on your own.’

‘I won’t be on my own.’ The minute I’d said that I wished that I hadn’t. Jane had a ferret’s own instinct for sniffing things out, and I hadn’t a hope of running something like Graham Keith under her radar.

‘Oh, yes?’ Her tone was a study in nonchalance. ‘Who’s going with you?’

‘Just someone my landlord knows.’ Trying to muddy the scent, I told her how Jimmy had come back from his favourite haunt with his list of people I was supposed to meet. ‘He’s got me on a schedule.’

‘Very helpful of him.’ But she came right back to, ‘What’s his friend like? Young? Old? Good-looking?’

I said, ‘He lectures in history, at the university in Aberdeen.’

‘That isn’t what I asked.’

‘Well, what do most history professors look like, in your experience?’

She let me leave it there, but I had known her long enough to know she wasn’t finished asking questions. This was only the beginning. ‘Anyhow,’ she said, ‘don’t write tonight. Your poor brain obviously needs a rest.’

‘You may be right.’

‘Of course I’m right. Ring me tomorrow, will you, after your walk, so I’ll know that you didn’t go over the cliffs?’

‘Yes, Mom.’

But I did take her advice about not working. I didn’t even read for research, though the pages Dr Weir had given me the night before – the articles having to do with Slains castle, along with the copies of Samuel Johnson’s and Boswell’s account of their visit there – sat in their folder, enticingly close to my armchair. Deliberately, I took no notice of them. Instead, I made a cup of tea and switched on the electric fire and sat there doing absolutely nothing till I fell asleep.

She didn’t like the gardener. He wasn’t like Kirsty, or Rory, or Mrs Grant the cook; or the slow-moving maltman who kept to the dark, fragrant brewing house and whom Sophia had actually seen only once; or the dairy and byre maids who did little more than go giggling past her whenever she ventured outdoors. No, the gardener was different.

He was not a very old man, but he looked it sometimes, bending over his hard-scraping tools, with his sharp-featured face and the mirthless dark eyes that seemed always, whenever Sophia looked round, to be fixed upon her.

Now that spring had come, he seemed to be around Slains all the day, although he didn’t live there.

‘Oh, aye,’ Kirsty said, with understanding. ‘Billy Wick. I canna bide the man, myself. He makes me feel I’m standing in my shift, like, when he looks at me. The late earl had a fondness for his father, who was gardener here afore. ’Tis why her ladyship, the countess, keeps him on.’ She had been laying fires, and now was walking back along the corridor towards the kitchen, with Sophia following. There wasn’t anyone around to raise an eyebrow at the two girls keeping company. A message had come that morning from the present Earl of Erroll, who had been expected these days past, and on receiving it, the countess had retreated to her chamber to reply.

So when they reached the kitchen door, Sophia walked right through in Kirsty’s wake, and even Mrs Grant did not look disapproving, having long since given up her attempts to persuade Sophia of the impropriety of mixing with the servants. It was clear to all that Kirsty and Sophia, being ages with each other and of friendly dispositions, would be difficult to keep apart. Here in Scotland, it was common for the sons of lairds and sons of farmers to sit side by side in school, and play at games together in their youth, a custom which produced a friendly feeling in the greater houses between those who served and those who sat at table. And as long as Kirsty showed Sophia all the deference and respect that was befitting to their roles when they were in the main rooms of the castle, Mrs Grant appeared to care but little these days what they did when they were on the servants’ side.

She, too, had nothing good to say about the gardener. ‘Allus lookin tae hisself, is Billy Wick. He couldna fairly wait tae see his father deid sae he could get his fingers on the siller that was left. There wisna much. Tis why he keeps on here. But Billy thinks hisself above the likes of us. Ye keep well clear of him,’ she warned Sophia, motherly. ‘He’s nae the sort o man ye need tae ken.’

Rory, coming through the back door, caught the last bit and his eyebrows lifted just a bit, enquiring.

Mrs Grant said, ‘We’re nae spikkin aboot ye. Tis Billy Wick I meant.’

He simply gave a nod and said, ‘Oh, aye,’ which meant he either was acknowledging her comment or agreeing with it. Guessing Rory’s mind was never easy. He took an oatcake from a nearby plate and ate it, and when Mrs Grant prepared to scold him for it, he answered it was likely all the food he’d have that afternoon. ‘I’m away within the hour with her ladyship. We ride to Dunottar.’

Another clifftop castle to the south of Aberdeen – the home, so Kirsty told Sophia now, of the countess’s nephew by marriage, the Earl Marischal. It was not uncommon for there to be visits between Slains and Dunottar, but not within an hour’s notice. Kirsty frowned. ‘Would there be trouble, then?’

‘I dinna ken.’ Rory shrugged. ‘Her ladyship telt me to get the horses ready and prepare to ride with her, and that much I can do.’

‘And you, Kirsty,’ said Mrs Grant, ‘should nae worry aboot what the countess does, or why. Things happen in this house that none of us need question.’

Kirsty bore the reprimand in silence, but she pulled a face when Mrs Grant had turned her back.

The cook, not turning, said, ‘And if ye carry on wi that, I may forget I have a mind tae let ye have a holiday the morn.’

Kirsty stopped, amazed. ‘A holiday?’

‘A wee one, aye. I’d need ye back again by supper, but with her ladyship away to Dunottar, and Mistress Paterson the only one about, there widna be sae much tae do I couldna spare ye for the day.’

The prospect of a day to spend whatever way she wished left Kirsty without speech a moment, something none of them had seen.

But she knew what she would do with such a gift. ‘I’ll go to my sister.’

‘Ye’ll have a long walk,’ Rory said.

‘Tis but an hour up the coast, and I’ve nae seen her since the birth of her last bairn.’ Inspired, she asked Sophia, ‘Will ye come with me? She’ll give us dinner, that I’m sure of. Even Mrs Grant’s fine broth is nae match for my sister’s kail and cakes. And she would be that glad to meet ye.’

Mrs Grant was not so sure it would be fitting for two girls to walk so far, and on their own.

‘Och, we’ll have the castle in our view the whole way,’ Kirsty argued. ‘And her ladyship is highly thought of in these parts, so none will think to harm us when they ken we come from Slains.’

‘The countess,’ Mrs Grant said, looking squarely at Sophia, ‘widna like it.’

To which Kirsty’s pert reply was, ‘Will ye tell her?’

Mrs Grant considered silently. ‘No,’ she said, and turned back to her cooking. ‘I’ll say naethin. But ye’d do well tae mind that, even here, the devil turns men’s thochts when it amuses him.’

‘Is that what ails ye, Rory?’ Kirsty smiled at the groom. His stoic features didn’t change, but his eyes warmed a trifle.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘but I’m long past redemption. Take the dog,’ was his advice on leaving, as he tucked a final oatcake in his jacket. ‘Devil’s thoughts or no, there’s none will lay a hand on ye with Hugo at your heels.’

Sophia thought it sound advice, and the next morning after breakfast when she started out with Kirsty, she held Hugo, the huge mastiff, by his lead. Hugo’s bed was in the stables, and by day he roamed the castle grounds with Rory, as a child might keep close by his father’s knee. He was a gentle beast, for all he barked at strangers and at any sound he took to be a threat. But when they passed the garden wall where Billy Wick was hoeing over stony earth to make a plot for planting physick herbs, the mastiff curled his lip and laid his ears back, growling low.

The gardener took no notice. Straightening his back, he leant upon the hoe and looked them over. ‘Comin tae see me, my quines?’ His hard eyes speculated in a way Sophia found discomforting.

She knew that Kirsty felt it, too, because the younger girl lied bravely, ‘We’re away to run an errand for her ladyship.’ And without further explanation, she urged Sophia to quicken her pace and the two of them passed by and out of the castle’s great shadow. Ahead lay the broad, grassy sweep of the land curving clean to the edge of the black cliffs, the sea stretching wide to the sunwashed horizon.