Sophia's Secret (37 page)

The countess raised her eyebrows in astonishment. ‘
Your
crew?’

‘I know. ’Tis difficult to fathom, is it not, when I am so well loved by those I do command.’ His smile held a good-natured conceit. ‘I can assure you, it was not an easy thing to manage.’ Slicing off a piece of beef, he speared it with his knife point. ‘Several days before, I stirred a rumour round that we’d be bound for the West Indies after Leith. My men, who for the most part have been pressed to service, taken from their homes against their will, have little liking for the prospect of a passage to the Indies, with its dangers and its deprivations. By the time we’d reached the Road of Leith, they were fair fevered with anxiety. And so I went ashore, and stayed there some time on the pretext of my waiting on the Treasury to clear my old accounts, and sure enough, while I was gone, one hundred of my crewmen made good their escape in boats.’ He grinned. ‘It took two weeks for us to round them up and coax them back aboard. And in that time, of course, I could not sail.’

The countess could not quite achieve a look of disapproval. ‘I do hope you did not punish them when they returned.’

‘My men? No, all has been forgiven, and they’ve settled to their labours as before, with my advice to close their ears to idle rumours in the future.’

‘Oh, Thomas,’ said the countess, with an open smile now.

He gave a careless shrug. ‘’Tis not a tactic I am like to use again, at any rate. I can hardly hope to move my crew to mutiny a second time without it reflecting poorly on myself, and much as I do love my king, I have no strong desire to sacrifice my reputation for him.’ But he said that lightly, and Sophia had a feeling that despite the show of self-importance, Captain Gordon stood prepared to sacrifice far more if he were asked. He carried on, ‘No, I shall have to find some other means to keep these waters clear for him. It should not be so difficult. I’ve no reports of any ships to the northwards that want convoy, and no privateers have been seen on this coast for a long time, so we have no cause to make this cruise a lengthy one, nor keep close to the shore. No doubt I will be forced by the weather to stand off to sea a while,’ was his straight-faced speculation, ‘and the gales this far north can so damage a ship that, by the time we do reach England, enough small things may have suffered that we’ll likely need repair. In fact, it’s possible the
Edinburgh
may need enough attention to be put into a dry dock, and when that is done I would not be at all surprised to find some sudden business matter pressing me to ask for leave to spend some days in London. So with luck,’ he finished off, ‘the king may find his way unchallenged until Christmas.’

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 favourite 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 colourful 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 defence. ‘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 realised, 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.

She could choose to simply go along and play for time, till Moray could return…but she knew that would cost her conscience dearly. So she tried, without revealing all, to make him understand.

‘You are a kind man, Captain, and your gift is very thoughtful, but I feel it has been offered with a certain understanding, and I would not so insult you by receiving an affection I cannot return.’

His eyebrow lifted slightly, as though it had never crossed his mind that he might be refused. Sophia thought, for one long minute, that she had offended him. But finally he reclaimed the gloves, and slowly said, ‘I see.’

And she felt certain that he did see, from the way his gaze passed over her, returning with the faintest smile, conceding his defeat. ‘Perhaps I was mistaken to presume you were in need of these. It seems that Mr Moray’s gloves did fit you well enough.’

Her eyes betrayed her, gave him confirmation, and she knew it.

‘So,’ he said, quite softly. ‘Does the countess know?’

Sophia shook her head. The sudden danger of his knowing struck her cold, and she looked up at him imploringly. ‘You will not tell her?’

He was silent for so long she was not sure how he would answer. Then he gently tucked the fine embroidered gloves beneath his coat and brought his gaze to hers again with all his former gallantry. ‘You have my word,’ he promised her, and offering his arm said, ‘Now, come walk me back. My ship and crew are waiting, and I do perceive that it is past the time I should be gone.’

It was the countess’s reaction that Sophia dreaded most, but when the
Edinburgh
had once again sailed northward all the older woman said was, ‘Captain Gordon is a charming man.’

Her head was bent with care above her needlework, her comment almost absent as though she were loathe to break her concentration. But Sophia felt the pause that followed, and she knew that she was meant to answer.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A very charming man.’

‘Were I younger, I myself would likely be in love with him. But such a man,’ the countess said, ‘is not for every woman.’

She glanced up at that, and in her smiling eyes Sophia read an understanding, a forgiveness. And although they never spoke of it directly, she was sure the countess somehow knew the core of what had passed between herself and Captain Gordon on the garden path, and that whatever hopes the countess might have had were laid to rest without regret, and would no more be mentioned.

I didn’t need to look into the
Old Scots Navy
book to know that what I’d written was the truth, but I looked anyway. It was all there, as I had known it would be: the renaming of Captain Gordon’s ship, the
Royal William
, to the
Edinburgh
; his journey northwards in October, and the mutiny among his men at Leith.

And afterwards, it seemed he’d tried to keep his word to do whatever he could think of to make sure his ship would not be in the way of young King James and his invading Frenchmen, should they come.

‘The ship,’ he wrote in one report, ‘has suffered much in the bad weather we had to the northward, and wants to be repaired.’ And later, having requested and received an order to put the
Edinburgh
in a dry dock, he wrote in December to the Admiralty, ‘All the docks here are full at present, and the master builder can’t as yet determine when any of them can be cleared.’ And later still, in January, reported that the ship had been examined by a master builder who had concluded the
Edinburgh
needed a great repair, or a rebuilding. ‘There will be no necessity of my being here for some time,’ Captain Gordon had concluded, ‘therefore I desire you will please communicate this to his Royal Highness that I may have leave to come to town…’

Clever, I thought, as I closed the book. Risky, but clever. He’d kept the seas clear to the north, for his king.

But I had my suspicions the people at Slains should be worrying more about dangers that travelled by land.

November came, and brought a weary week of wind and storms, and one more unexpected guest. He came on horseback, blown across the threshold of the stables by a fiercely gusting north wind and a drenching sheet of rain, his cloak wet through and hanging heavily across his horse’s steaming flanks. To Sophia, who’d been passing time by chatting with the soft-eyed mare and feeding kitchen scrapings to the mastiff, Hugo, this new stranger bursting in upon them seemed like something flung up by a force unnatural. He looked, to her eyes, darker than the devil, and as large.

As he dismounted she withdrew a step, her hand on Hugo’s collar. It surprised her that the dog had not yet growled, nor even laid his ears back. She herself was measuring the distance to the door and wondering what her chances were of getting past the newcomer without his taking notice. He was standing with his back to her, and viewing him against the horse she saw that he was not as big a man as he had first appeared. In fact, he likely was not too much taller than herself – it was the cloak, with its great hood drawn up to shield his face, that had deceived her.

Merely wary now, she watched him while he tended to his horse, first lifting down the heavy saddle, then with clean straw rubbing dry the creature’s heaving sides. No devil, thought Sophia, would have taken such great care. She looked again at Hugo standing calmly at her side and felt her fears recede, and then they vanished altogether when the man turned finally, pushing back the black hood of his cloak to show a lean and weathered face with pleasant features neatly bordered by a trim brown beard that here and there displayed the greying evidence of middle age. He wore no wig – his hair was greying, too, and worn drawn back and tied without a care for fashion.

‘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?’