Sophia's Secret (41 page)

Colonel Graeme’s eyes sought out her face with sudden interest. ‘Did he, now? What did he tell ye of the matter?’

‘That the king did send him here with Simon Fraser to enquire how many men might rise if there were a rebellion, and to meet with all the well-affected nobles in the Highlands and in Edinburgh.’

‘It was the queen, King Jamie’s mother Mary, who did send him, for she does esteem him highly. Did he tell ye that?’

She shook her head.

‘Aye, well, he’s not a lad to give himself much credit, but ’tis true. In fact, when Fraser did return to France without John it distressed the queen so greatly she said Fraser was a murderer, and did her best to see him thrown in prison. She’s a very loyal woman is Queen Mary, and she’ll not forget her favourites.’

She had not known that Moray was a favourite of the queen, and it gave her pride, but still she did not wish to be distracted from her purpose, and she would have moved to speak if Colonel Graeme had not said, ‘The queen was wrong about the murder, mind. ’Twas only that Fraser had scuttled away like a rat without sending John word of his leaving, so John was left stranded in hiding some months afore he could find a safe passage to France for himself. I’d gone earlier, else I’d have been there to help, for the business was all in the wind then and he was in danger.’

Distracted again, she looked over and echoed, ‘You’d gone earlier?’

‘Aye,’ he said, and then as if it were a well-known fact he added, ‘I was here, too, sent with Fraser as John was, by orders from
Saint-Germain
. Did he not tell ye his uncle came with him?’ The answer was plain on her face for he smiled and said, ‘No, he’d not say. He’s a close man with words, John. A rare one for keeping things secret.’ He looked away, toward the rolling sea, and missed the change in her expression. ‘Did he tell ye Simon Fraser was a traitor?’

‘Yes.’

‘A blow to John, that was, for he did hold the man in high regard. I had a sense of it myself when we came over. Something was not right with Fraser from the start. But John…’ He paused, and gave a shrug. ‘Well, John was younger then and counted Fraser as his friend. He found it very hard.’

Sophia said, ‘All men, I think, would be surprised at such betrayal by a friend.’

He caught her tone and turned again as if to question it. ‘Ye did not bring me all this way to speak of Fraser, lass. What’s on your mind?’

She took a breath. ‘I do suspect that Captain Ogilvie might be a spy.’

She’d feared that he might laugh, or even answer her with anger. He did neither; only asked her, ‘Why is that?’

And so she told him what she’d seen, and what she thought she’d seen – the little packet that had passed from Captain Ogilvie to Billy Wick. ‘I think that it may have been money.’

‘Lass.’ He gave her an indulgent sideways look.

‘The gardener is an evil-minded man, and not well thought of by the other servants. He is not a man to trust. I could not think of any reason Captain Ogilvie might speak with him, except to gain some knowledge of the house and its affairs.’ She kept her eyes upon the sand and said, ‘I hope I’ll not offend you, Colonel Graeme, if I say I find you much like Mr Moray, and I would not wish to see you suffer as he suffered at the hands of someone who does not deserve your friendship.’

There was no sound for a moment but the breaking of the waves against the frozen shore. And then the colonel asked her, ‘Do ye worry for my welfare, lass?’

He sounded quite as moved by that as Moray had when he had made a similar discovery, all those months ago. That moment too, Sophia thought, had happened here, on this same beach, but then the blowing wind had been a warmer one and underneath a bluer sky the sea had seemed a place of hope and promise.

‘There’s no need,’ said Colonel Graeme, kindly. ‘And ye needn’t worry about Ogilvie – he’s not like Simon Fraser, and he’s served the Stewart kings too long to turn a traitor now.’

She raised her head and saw from looking at his face that he’d dismissed her warning, but the small unquiet voice within her would not rest. ‘But even so, you will be careful?’

‘Aye, lass. For your sake, since it troubles ye so much, I will be careful.’ But he said it in the same way that a naughty child might promise to be good, and there were crinkles at the corners of his eyes that let her know he did not think the matter serious. ‘Now, was that the only thing ye had to tell me?’

From his tone she half-believed he had expected something more, but when she gave a nod he seemed to find that satisfactory.

‘Well then, let’s start back, for I’ve seen all I want of snow the day, and I can hear a dram of whisky calling from the fireside back at Slains.’

Though she was disappointed she had not convinced him about Ogilvie, she could not help but smile. ‘You go,’ she told him. ‘I would stay a while, and walk along the beach.’

He looked along the sand without enthusiasm. ‘If ye have a mind to stay, I’d best stay, too.’

‘There is no need.’ She tossed his own phrase back at him. ‘I will be safe. There was a time when I did walk here nearly every day.’

‘Oh, aye?’ He seemed to smile, though she could not be sure. ‘But ye did tell me that ye did not like the sea in winter.’

‘And you told me, if I tried, that I might come to see its virtues.’

‘So I did.’ This time the smile was unmistakable. ‘I’ll leave ye to it, then, but see ye do not stay too long out in the cold.’

She gave her promise she would not, and watched him walk away along the sand, his shoulders set so much like Moray’s that the likeness caught a little at her heart and made her pull her gaze away, then look again with misting eyes. She was half-glad when she was left alone.

She climbed the dunes and found the place where she and Moray had so often sat and talked, and though the ground was snowy now she sat with legs drawn up beneath her cloak and turned her gaze toward the sea.

It had been weeks since she had been here. In the summer she’d come often, for it was upon these sands that she most strongly felt the bond that yet connected her to Moray. She’d found comfort in the thought that every wave that rolled to shore had lately travelled from the coast of France to spread its foam upon the beach before her, and would then return with the inevitable rhythm of the tides to touch the land where Moray walked. That image, small but vivid, had sustained her through the length of days while she had looked toward the wide horizon for the first glimpse of a swift approaching sail.

But none had come, and when she’d sickened from the bairn within her belly she had not felt well enough to walk so far. Besides, the bairn itself had given her a new kind of connection to the husband who was absent from her arms, if not her heart, and she had not felt such a pressing need to walk among the memories on the shore.

But now she found them here, and waiting for her, and her eyes from habit turned to search the distant line where sea met sky, with apprehension this time more than hope, because she feared what might befall the herald ship from France if it arrived at Slains while Ogilvie was there.

For all that Colonel Graeme had not been convinced, and Ogilvie himself was such a harmless-seeming man, she could not cast aside her feelings of suspicion any more than she could keep from hearing in her mind again the words that Moray had once spoken to her here, among the dunes:
The devil kens the way to charm, when it does suit his purpose
…

It was more than what she’d seen that morning between Ogilvie and Billy Wick. Now that she’d turned her mind toward the possibility, it also struck her that although he’d been at Slains some days the countess had not warmed to him, but kept politely distant. And the instincts of the countess, thought Sophia, rated far above all others in the house.

She looked with doubt towards the cold horizon, and again she heard a voice – not Moray’s but the colonel’s, telling them:
The time is measured now in days
. And as the sun dropped lower into cloud she knew what she must do.

She did not wish to disappoint the colonel, or bring trouble on his shoulders, but if he would not believe her and take action, someone must. She would approach the countess, tell her what she’d seen, and let the older woman handle things as she saw fit.

Resolved, Sophia stood, and made her way down from the dunes and back along the beach, her steps imprinted in the drifted snow. She saw the footprints left by Colonel Graeme, and the fainter tracks of some small animal – a dog, she thought – reminding her that Moray had once told her not to venture out so far from Slains unless she brought the mastiff.

She could only smile as she remembered his concern, because the beach was so deserted, and the hill that she began to climb beyond the beach so barren, she saw nothing that could possibly endanger her. She’d walked this path a score of times since Moray had departed. She could walk it with her eyes closed, and she’d never had a mishap.

So it struck her strangely that when she was halfway up the hill, she felt a sudden crawling sense along her spine that made her hesitate, and turn to look behind.

Along the curve of beach the waves rolled in with perfect innocence. The dunes were soft with shadow, and deserted. Nothing moved besides the water and the wind along the shore that stirred the grasses. She relaxed. It had been only her imagination, hearing ghosts when none were there.

She smiled a little at her foolishness, and turned again to carry on along the uphill path…and walked straight into Billy Wick.

It seemed to her, as startled as she was, that he’d come out of nowhere, flung by blackest magic on that hill to block her way. He let her back away a step and did not move to hold her, but his smile was worse than any touch. ‘And far would ye be going til, my quine, in such a hurry?’

He would feed on fear, she knew, and so she tried to hide her own, the only sign of it the clenching of her hands upon her gown. Chin raised, she told him calmly, ‘Let me pass.’

‘All in good time.’

No one could see them, where they stood. Not from the cottages, nor even from the high windows of Slains, because the hill’s slope cut them off from view. And crying out would be a waste of breath. No one would hear the sound.

She fought her rising panic and tried hard to think. Going back towards the beach would gain her nothing – she could only try to force her way around him, and attempt to run. He might not be expecting that. Nor would he expect her to break round him on the seaward side of the steep path. He’d think that she would try the other way, the inland way, where drifted snow and tufts of coarse grass stretched off softly underfoot, instead of that one narrow strip of ground that broke so treacherously downward to the blackened rocks and icy sea below.

She took a breath, and took a chance.

She had been right. Her lunge toward the seaward side surprised him, and she gained a precious lead of seconds, and she might have even got the whole way round him had he not recovered, snapping round with snake-like speed to grasp her arm as she sped by. Her own momentum, stopped short by the sudden action, threw them both off balance, and Sophia landed hard upon the frozen ground, so hard she felt the impact in her teeth and saw lights bursting in her vision.

Billy Wick fell harder still on top of her and held her pinned, his face no longer smiling. They were lying full across the path now, and Sophia knew that though the gardener was a small man, he was strong, and she might not be able to find strength enough herself to fight him. ‘Now, fit wye would ye dee that, quine? I only want the same thing as ye gied tae Mr Moray.’

Staring coldly up at him she said, ‘You’re mad.’ But fear had taken full hold of her now, and Billy Wick could see it.

‘Aye, ye’ll gie it tae me gladly, quine, or else I’ll have tae tell old Captain Ogilvie aboot the things ye said tae Mr Moray in ma garden on the nicht that he was leavin. Touching scene, it was.’ His eyes held the hard satisfaction of a beast that knows its prey is caught, and means to toy with it. ‘I fairly wept myself tae hear it. I’ve nae doot Captain Ogilvie would find it touching, too. He pays me siller fer such tales, and those he works fer have lang wantit tae have Moray in their hands.’

The wind blew sharply cold around Sophia’s face, and in her ringing head she could hear Moray’s voice repeating:
He must never learn that you are mine
…

He had been speaking of the duke, and not of Ogilvie, but she knew that the danger was the same, for Billy Wick had all but told her now that Ogilvie was in the pay of Queen Anne’s court, and if they learnt that she was Moray’s wife they would make use of her in any way they could to draw him out. She did not care for her own life – if they would threaten her alone she’d suffer it, for his sake. But it would not be her alone. There was the child. His child.

She felt Wick’s searching hands upon her body and she shrank from them, and turned her face against the snowy ground with eyes tight shut.

‘Ye see,’ he said, his rank breath hot against her face, ‘ye have nae choice.’

He shifted closer, pressing heavily upon her. And then suddenly he wasn’t there at all. Some violent force had hauled him up and off her body in one movement.

‘Oh, I think she does,’ said Colonel Graeme’s voice, as cold and dangerous as thinly frozen ice.

Sophia, scarcely able to believe it, let her eyes come open just enough to brave a look. She saw the colonel standing close behind the gardener, looking as he must have looked in battle, with his face no longer kind but deadly calm. He’d twisted Billy Wick’s one arm back in a painful hold, and had his own arm wrapped around the gardener’s neck. She saw in Wick’s own eyes the fear that he had often fed upon from others as the colonel jerked Wick back again and brought his hard mouth close beside Wick’s ear and said, ‘I think she has a choice.’

And then Sophia saw the colonel’s hand and arm, in one swift motion, sweep around and catch Wick’s jaw, and from the sound that followed and the way the gardener slumped she knew his neck was broken. Colonel Graeme cast Wick’s body to the side disdainfully. ‘Now get ye to the devil,’ he advised the corpse, and kicked it with his booted foot to send it tumbling over down the steep slope of the hillside to the rocks and sea below.