Sophia's Secret (39 page)

‘I have sources. How is it?’

‘Not bad. Dr Weir says I need to stay off it a couple of days.’

‘Ah.’

‘Why “ah”?’

‘Because I had a proposition for you, but if you’re supposed to rest…’

‘It’s just a sprain, it’s not that bad.’ I glanced around to make sure I was still alone. ‘What kind of proposition?’

‘Well, I thought that since my brother’s home and looking after Dad, and since it’s difficult for me to come to you with those two hanging round the cottage all the time…I thought that you might like to come to Aberdeen this weekend.’

It was my turn to say, ‘Ah.’

‘You could bring your computer,’ he said, ‘so you won’t lose your writing time. I’ve got some marking of my own to do.’

‘It’s not that. It’s just I promised to have lunch with Jane, my agent, up in Peterhead on Saturday.’ I didn’t tell him that Jane had, in essence, invited him, too. There was no way I’d even consider subjecting him this early on to Jane’s scrutiny. She could be worse than my father when it came to grilling my boyfriends, and I didn’t want Graham grilled. He was special.

‘Nae bother,’ he said. ‘I could come and get you after lunch. We’d still have half the afternoon and evening, and all Sunday.’

Put like that, and with his voice so close against my ear, persuading me, I couldn’t think of any reason not to tell him, ‘All right, then. I’d love to.’

‘Good.’

Jimmy, still whistling, was coming back. Raising my voice to a more normal tone, I said, ‘OK, I’ll phone you tomorrow. We’ll work out the details.’

‘I’ll phone
you
,’ he promised.

I rang off in my most businesslike fashion, so it caught me off guard when Jimmy asked, ‘Wis that ma son?’

It was, I thought, a good thing he was looking at the coal hod he was filling, not my face. He didn’t see me hold my breath. Head down, he remarked, ‘He’s a good-hearted loon, Stuart is, but he can be a nuisance.’

I exhaled, and relaxed. ‘It wasn’t Stuart.’ Then, because I saw a useful purpose in it, I said, ‘It was Jane, my agent. You remember Jane?’

‘Aye. She’s nae the sort o quine a man forgets.’

‘I’m having lunch with her this Saturday in Peterhead,’ I told him. Then, more casually, ‘I might, in fact, stay over. Spend the weekend with her family.’

Jimmy thought that sounded like a good idea, and he said as much. ‘Ye canna hide awa up here the hale time. Folk ging mad athoot a bittie company.’

I watched him tip the coal bag up and send the last bits rattling into the hod, and I thought how it must be for him, in his cottage alone. I remembered how Graham had told me his dad had been lost since his wife’s death. He might have his sons and his group of friends at the St Olaf Hotel, but it wasn’t the same thing as having a woman around all the time.

So when he’d finished with the coal and would have left me from politeness, I asked him if he’d make some tea, and then I asked him if he’d stay and have a cup, as well, and for the next two hours we sat and talked and laughed and played gin rummy with the deck of cards I used for playing solitaire.

Because, as Jimmy’d rightly said, it could be better sometimes having company than being on your own.

Colonel Graeme kept his word, and stayed.

Sophia reasoned that he stayed as much because he wanted to be there to see the frigate come to herald the beginning of the king’s invasion, as because he liked the hospitality of Slains, but either way she took great pleasure in his company. She came to envy Moray, that he had an uncle so engaging and as different from her Uncle John as daylight was from darkness. He talked more than his nephew, and was quicker to observe the humour in a daily happening, but he was enough like Moray that Sophia felt at ease with him and on familiar ground.

He brought a liveliness to Slains, for like his nephew he did not sit still long. If his body ceased its motion then his mind in turn grew restless and required diversion. He had them play at cards most evenings, learning all the new games now in favour at the French king’s court and Saint-Germain. And on one rainy afternoon toward the week’s end he began to teach Sophia how to play the game of chess.

He said, ‘Ye’ve got the brain for it. Not many lasses do.’

She felt quite flattered by his confidence, but wished that she could share it. With a sinking heart she watched him set the pieces out upon the wooden board that he had laid between them on the little table in the library. There seemed so many figures, finely carved of wood with flaking paint of black or white – the castle towers, and the horses’ heads, and bishops’ mitres flanking two crowned pieces taller than the rest, their painted faces staring back at her with doubt.

‘I do not have much luck at games,’ Sophia said.

‘’Tis not a game of luck.’ He set eight smaller figures in a row before the others. Sending her a reassuring glance, he said, ‘It is a game of strategy. A battle, if ye will, between my men and yours. My wits, and yours.’

She smiled. ‘Then yours will surely win.’

‘Ye cannot start a battle, lass, by thinking ye will lose it. Now come, let me show ye how it’s played.’ He was a soldier, and he taught the movements from a soldier’s viewpoint, starting with the forward lines. ‘These wee men here, the pawns, they’re not allowed to make decisions. They can only put one foot afore the other, marching in a straight line to the enemy, except when they attack. Then they follow the thrust of their sword arm, see, on the diagonal.’ Moving his pawn against one of her own, he demonstrated. ‘Now, the knights, at their backs, they can move that much quicker because they’re on horseback, and bolder…’

And so piece by piece he revealed all the players and set them in play on the battlefield. Leading her through their first game, he took time with each turn to explain all her options, which moves she could make with which men, but he did not advise her. The choice was her own, and he either sat back in approval or with a good-natured grin captured the piece that she’d placed into jeopardy.

Sophia tried to learn from each mistake, and though the colonel won as she’d suspected that he would, she felt a sense of triumph that she’d given him some semblance of a battle. And her pride grew greater when the colonel said, ‘Ye did uncommonly well, lass. Did I not say ye had the brain for it?’

‘I like the game.’

‘Aye, so I see.’ He smiled at her. ‘We’ve time for yet another afore supper, if ye like.’

Her skill improved with every day.

‘She’ll have you beaten, Colonel,’ was the earl’s opinion as he watched them idly from his reading chair one afternoon.

‘Aye, ye might be right, at that.’ With steepled fingers, Colonel Graeme eyed the board and whistled lightly through his teeth. He took his time. The piece he finally moved seemed, to Sophia, a mistake because it left a weakness in his ranks that she could then attack. But when she took advantage of the opening, she saw that the mistake had been her own, as Colonel Graeme slid his bishop silently across the board and told her, ‘Check.’

She had not seen it coming, and she stared in disbelief now at the bishop sitting poised to take her king. To her dismayed expression, Colonel Graeme said, ‘Ye have to watch the whole field, lass, and use your wits afore your weapons. When ye saw me move that knight, your first thought was to take the rook that I’d left unprotected, was it not? And so most soldiers who are new to battle think their first directive is to take the ground, to run against the enemy and do him damage where they can.’

‘And is it not?’

He shook his head. ‘Not always, no. In war, as in the game of chess, ye also must defend your king.’ His smile was wise, forgiving of her youth and inexperience. ‘No battle can be called a victory if the king is lost.’

Sophia gave a nod to show she understood, her frowning gaze directed at the board. She saw no move that she could make to bring her own king out of danger, yet she knew there must be one because the colonel had not told her ‘checkmate’, merely ‘check’. Her stubborn concentration did not waver till the countess came in search of them.

The older woman’s face was set in firm lines as she told her son, ‘We have another visitor, and one who does not sit well in my favour. He has come to us with letters from the Earl of Marischal, but there is something in his aspect which I do not trust.’

The visitor was waiting at his leisure in the drawing room – an older man who looked to be past sixty years of age, though he was large in body with a heavy-featured face and hands that seemed to swallow up the earl’s when they shook formally in greeting. He was taller than the earl, which made him well above six feet, and wore the costume of a Highlander, and would have been a fierce imposing figure had his face not held the weariness of one who had been beaten down by time.

‘By God!’ said Colonel Graeme, just now entering the room behind Sophia, ‘Captain Ogilvie!’

The countess turned. ‘You know each other?’

‘Aye, we served in France together,’ Colonel Graeme said, and crossed to greet the older man with pleasure. ‘We do share a long acquaintance. How the devil are ye?’

Captain Ogilvie seemed equally as pleased to find a comrade and a fellow soldier in the house, and stood a little straighter as he answered, ‘Well enough, though I’ve grown too old now to fight, and must seek my living elsewhere.’ From his tone Sophia guessed the change of livelihood had been a bitter tonic for him, one that he’d found difficult to take. ‘What of yourself? I would have thought ye’d be in Flanders.’

‘Aye, well, I was given leave to come to Scotland on a family matter,’ was the colonel’s smooth excuse. ‘But I’ll be returning shortly.’

Standing to one side, the countess watched this unforeseen reunion with a guarded face that gave no hint of what she might be thinking. Sophia could not see herself what troubled the countess so much about Ogilvie. His eyes, to her, seemed kind enough when she was introduced to him.

The countess said, ‘You must be tired, Captain, if you’ve ridden from the Earl of Marischal’s this day. You must stay here at Slains until you are recovered from your travels.’

Ogilvie’s bow was deep, and filled with open gratitude. ‘You are too kind, your Ladyship.’

She smiled. ‘Not at all. Come, let me call a man to show you to your room.’

When he’d left the room her smile vanished, and she turned to Colonel Graeme with an air of expectation. ‘Patrick, tell me all you know about this man.’

The colonel told her bluntly, ‘He’s deserving of your trust.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because he’s withstood more than you or I have done, in service to the Stewarts. Twenty years ago he fought for old King James, and he was one of those brave Highlanders who charged the pass of Killicrankie with Dundee and broke the English lines. And when the tide then turned again, he joined that band of Highland men who chose to follow old King James to exile. A hundred and fifty of them there were, and they sacrificed all that they had to serve James, surviving on a common soldier’s pay. There is an island in the Rhine yet called the Scotsmen’s isle, because they charged it in the Highland way, by night and wading arm in arm through water to their shoulders, and they took that island from a stronger force. The king of France considers them a legend, as do all at
Saint-Germain
. But there are few of them surviving. When I first met Captain Ogilvie ten years ago, the hundred and fifty had dwindled to twenty. By now it must surely be less.’

The story appeared to have moved the young earl. ‘I have heard of those Highland men, but I did not think to have one seek shelter beneath my own roof.’ Coming forward he said to the colonel, ‘Of course he is welcome.’

The countess said, ‘Yes. Thank you, Patrick, for laying my worries to rest.’

But Sophia thought, watching her, that she still guarded her features with care, as though some of the doubts yet remained.

It was clear Colonel Graeme had none of his own. The next morning, as he sat down with Sophia to resume their interrupted game of chess, the door to the library opened and Ogilvie, seeing them already there and well occupied, apologised and started to withdraw, but Colonel Graeme would have none of it. ‘Come in and join us, Captain.’

‘If you’re sure ’tis no intrusion.’

‘None at all. Besides, it may improve our game to have an audience.’

Sophia doubted whether there was anything that would improve her game this morning, trapped as she still was, her king held helplessly in check. While Captain Ogilvie settled himself in a chair by the fire, she took the opportunity to study once again the way the pieces were positioned on the board, in hopes she’d chance upon the move that would release her king from peril.

Colonel Graeme watched her closely from across the table, making no attempt to hide his amusement. ‘There is a way,’ he told her, ‘to get out of that.’

‘You would not wish to tell me what it is?’ She knew he wouldn’t. He had never told her how to move or given her advice, but in the teaching of this game he had from time to time seen fit to help her train her sight along the proper line.

He did it now. ‘It does involve your queen.’

‘My queen…’ She looked, but still she could not see it. And then, of a sudden, ‘Oh,’ she said, and made the move.

‘See?’ Colonel Graeme’s smile seemed proud of her. ‘I told ye. Now your king is safe. At least,’ he told her, teasing, ‘for the moment.’

Ogilvie looked on with partial interest, but Sophia knew he would not sit for long before the urge to tell a story overcame him. He had kept them fully entertained at last night’s supper with his tales, for having lived so long he had amassed a wealth of stories, and the telling of them seemed to bring him pleasure. Neither did Sophia have any objection to hearing them. She found them fascinating, full of bold adventure – though she would have listened, truth be told, if they had all been dull, because her heart was not so hard she could deny a man like Ogilvie, whose days of grandeur and of glory were all now behind him, the chance to live those days again in memory, while he spoke.

‘Aye,’ said Ogilvie, relaxing back into his chair, ‘’Tis often in the power of the queen to save the king. Our young King Jamie owes much to his mother. He would not be living at all were it not for her bravery in taking him over the sea.’