Sophia's Secret (50 page)

I hadn’t changed out of his rugby jersey, either. The long sleeve slipped over my hand as I reached across my desk. I pushed the folds back to my elbow, took the envelope in hand, and drew the papers out in one determined motion, as though I were ripping off a bandage.

It was not, in actual fact, a pedigree chart, as Graham had called it. A pedigree chart would have started with one name and worked its way backward through just the direct line. What Graham had found was more useful, in my view. It was what my father would call a ‘Descendants Chart’, beginning with the earliest known ancestor and travelling forward, like the charts of English kings and queens found in the front of history books, showing the wide web of family relationships, the children of each union and who married whom and when each person died.

The Morays of Abercairney had been a busy bunch, and it had taken several pages to trace their line up to the point of John’s birth. He was easy to find, in the section that listed his brother – the 12th Laird – his sisters Amelia and Anna, and two other brothers. I narrowed my focus to his name alone.

Written down, it was painfully brief. Just the year, and the note:
Died of wounds
…

There was no specific mention of the battle, but I was long past questioning my memories by now and I knew without doubting that Moray had fallen at Malplaquet. That name might have meant little enough to Sophia, but I knew it well. I still remembered reading Churchill’s vivid description of that battle in his volumes of biography of his own ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. I couldn’t recall the exact numbers killed in that one day of fighting, but I knew that all of Europe had been shocked and sickened by the slaughter. Marlborough himself, a seasoned warrior, had been so deeply affected by the loss of life at Malplaquet that, according to Churchill, he had been forever altered. It would take another hundred years before that death toll would be reached upon a battlefield again.

John Moray had been only one more dead among the thousands, and Sophia only one among the wives who’d been made widows, and six months ago I might have read the papers I was reading now and noted down the facts with the detachment of a researcher, and thought no more about it.

But I couldn’t do that now. I closed the papers on their folds and laid them carefully aside. The blank computer screen was waiting for my next word, but I couldn’t do that either, not just yet. And so I rose and went to put the kettle on to make some coffee.

It was no longer night but early morning, and the winter sun was rising with reluctance. Through my windows I could see the dull light spreading grey like mist above the soggy-looking landscape, and the rolling lines of white that marked the edges of the waves along the empty curve of beach.

In my mind I almost saw the lonely figure of Sophia standing on the shore, her bright hair hidden by her shawl, her saddened eyes still gazing seaward.

Even when the kettle whistled keenly to the boil and made me turn my gaze away, I saw those eyes, and knew they’d never give me peace until I’d finished with the story.

Sophia faced her pale reflection in the looking-glass while Kirsty made her choice among the new gowns that had lately been delivered by direction of the countess. There were three of them, of finest fabric, and their cost must surely have been felt by even such a woman as the countess, who had already put herself to such expense for the adventure of the king that, should he not come soon, the family’s debts might bring this noble house to ruin. But the countess had not listened to Sophia’s protestations. ‘I am overdue in tending to your wardrobe,’ she had said. ‘I should have done this when you first arrived. A pearl, though it may gleam within the plainness of the oyster, shows its beauty best when viewed against a velvet case.’ She’d smiled, and touched Sophia’s cheek with tenderness, a mother’s touch. ‘And I would have the world observe, my dear, how brightly you can shine.’

The gown that Kirsty chose was soft dove grey, a fragile thing of silk that slipped lightly over a petticoat trimmed with silver lace. Frilled lace showed delicately at the deeply rounded neckline and the hem, and fringed the full sleeves that were fastened up with buttons at Sophia’s elbows.

A velvet case indeed, she thought – but looking in the glass she did not think herself a pearl.

These last two months had left her thinner, hollow-eyed and wan. She could not dress in proper mourning clothes nor grieve her loss in public, but that loss was written plainly on her face, and even those within the household who knew nothing of the truth knew nonetheless that there was something sadly wrong with Mistress Paterson.

That had, in some ways, worked to her advantage. When the word had got about that she was leaving, many thought it was because she’d fallen ill and had been forced to seek a kinder climate than the wild northeast.

‘You’ll stay till Christmas, surely?’ Kirsty had implored her, but Sophia had replied that she could not.

‘’Tis best to be away before the snow,’ had been her explanation. Easier than saying that she could not bear the prospect of a holiday so based on hope and joy when she had neither.

‘Anyway,’ she’d said to Kirsty, ‘you will have enough to occupy your time, I think, now that Rory has at last come to his senses.’

Kirsty had blushed.

‘When will you wed? Is it decided?’

‘In the spring. The earl has given Rory leave to take a cottage by the burn. It is a small place and will need repair, but Rory feels by spring it will be ready.’

‘So you will have your cottage after all,’ Sophia had said, and smiled above the pain that she was feeling at the knowledge she must leave behind her best and truest friend. ‘I am so happy for you, truly.’

Kirsty, too, had seemed to find it difficult to keep her own emotions on a level. Now and then they’d broken through. ‘I wish you could be here to see the wedding.’

Sophia had assured her, ‘I will hear of it. I do not doubt the countess will be writing to me often. And,’ she’d promised, ‘I will send the finest gift that I can find in all of Kirkcudbright.’

Kirsty, setting her own sadness to one side a moment, had looked closely at her. ‘Are ye still decided to return there, after all that you did suffer in that place?’

‘I did not suffer in Kirkcudbright.’ She had not thought at first to travel to the west, but when the countess had begun to search among her friends and kinsmen for a place that might be suitable, the matter had been taken from her hands by the great Duchess of Gordon, who although a Jacobite, was known and well-respected by the western Presbyterians. The perfect place was found, within a house of perfect sympathy, and somehow to Sophia it had seemed a just arrangement that her life should come full circle to the place where it began. She had memories of that town and of its harbour, where her father had once walked with her and held her up to see the ships. She’d said to Kirsty, ‘Any suffering I did was in my uncle’s house and to the north of there, not in Kirkcudbright.’

‘But it is so far away.’

That knowledge hung between them now as Kirsty moved behind Sophia in the mirror and remarked, in tones that strove for brightness, ‘Ye’d best hope the maids who travel with you have the sort of fingers that can manage all these buttons.’

‘Will there be maids?’ asked Sophia.

‘Aye. The countess has arranged a proper entourage, so where you go the people will be thinking ’tis the queen herself that passes. There,’ she said, and fastened off the final button, and it seemed to strike the both of them that this would be the final time that they would stand like this together in Sophia’s chamber, where so often they had laughed and talked and shared their solemn confidences.

Turning from the mirror Kirsty bent her head and said, ‘I must ready your clothes, they’ll be coming to fetch them.’

The older gowns looked drab against the new but Kirsty set them out with care and smoothed the wrinkles from the fabric, and her fingers seemed particularly gentle on the one Sophia had most often worn, a plain and over-mended gown that once had been deep violet but had faded to a paler shade of lavender. Sophia, watching, thought of all the times she’d worn that gown, and all the memories that it carried. She had worn it on the first day she had ridden out with Moray with his gauntlet gloves upon her hands, the day that she’d first seen him flash that quick sure smile that now was burnt forever on her mind and would not leave her.

‘Would you like to keep that one?’ she asked, and Kirsty in surprise looked up.

‘I thought it was your favourite.’

‘Who better then to have it but my dearest friend? Mayhap when I am gone it will help keep me in your thoughts.’

Kirsty bit her lip, and in a voice that wavered promised her, ‘You will be there without it. Every time I look at—’ Then she stopped, as though she did not want to probe a wound that might be painful, and with downcast eyes she laid the gown aside and finished simply, ‘Thank you. I will treasure it.’

Sophia blinked her own eyes fiercely, fighting for composure. ‘One more thing,’ she said, and reaching over, drew from deep within the heap of clothes the lace-edged holland nightgown with its fine embroidered vines and sprays of flowers intertwined.

‘I’ll not take that,’ said Kirsty, firm. ‘It was a gift.’

‘I know.’ Sophia passed her hand across the bodice, felt its softness and remembered that same feeling on her skin; remembered Moray’s eyes upon her when she’d worn it on their wedding night. ‘’Tis not for you that I would leave it,’ said Sophia slowly. ‘’Tis for Anna.’

Then, because she could not face the look in Kirsty’s eyes directly, she looked down and smoothed the lovely nightgown and began to fold it carefully, with hands that shook but slightly. ‘I have nothing else to leave her that is mine. It is my hope that she will never learn the truth, that she will always think your sister is her mother, but we cannot always know…’ She lost her voice a moment; struggled to recover it, and carried on more quietly, ‘We cannot always know what lies ahead. And if she ever does discover who she truly is, then for the world I would not have her thinking that she was not born of love, or that I did not hold her dear.’

‘Sophia…’

‘And if nothing else, when she has reached an age where she can marry, you may give it to her then, just as you gave it once to me, and she can value it for that alone.’ The nightgown, neatly folded, seemed like nothing in Sophia’s hands. She held it out to Kirsty. ‘Please.’

A moment passed. Then Kirsty slowly reached to take the offering. ‘For Anna, then.’ And as her fingers closed around the nightgown something seemed to break in Kirsty, as though she’d kept silent for too long. ‘How can you bear to leave,’ she asked, ‘and her not knowing who you are?’

‘Because I love her.’ It was simple. ‘And I would not spoil her happiness. She has been raised within your sister’s house, and to her mind the other children are her sisters and her brothers, and your sister’s husband is the only father she has known.’ That had hurt more than all the rest of it, because she felt that Moray had been robbed of more than just his life, but of his rights, to know his child and be remembered. But in the end she knew that scarcely mattered, as her own pain did not matter when she weighed it in the balance of their daughter’s future. Trying to make Kirsty understand, she said, ‘She has a family here, and is content. What could I give her that would equal that?’

‘I do not doubt that Mr Moray’s family, if they knew of her, would give her much.’

Sophia had considered that. She’d thought of Moray’s ring, still on its chain around her neck, and of his saying she had but to ask his family for assistance, and they’d help her. And she’d thought of Colonel Graeme and his promise there was none of Moray’s kin who would not walk through fire to see her safe. No doubt that promise would extend to Moray’s child, as well – especially a child who looked so like him that it called his memory close.

But in the end Sophia had not chosen to reveal herself, nor ask for any help from Abercairney. It was true that in the lap of Moray’s family Anna might have had the benefit of higher social standing, but, ‘I will not take her from the only family she has known,’ she said to Kirsty now, ‘and have her live with strangers.’

‘They would be her kin.’

Sophia answered quietly, ‘That does not mean that she will be well treated. Do not forget that I was also raised by kin.’

And that reminder brought another silence settling down upon them both.

‘Besides,’ Sophia said, attempting brightness, ‘I shall worry less about her knowing she is here. Should something happen to your sister there will be the countess and yourself who both would love and care for Anna as if she were your own child.’

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty, blinking fiercely, ‘so we would.’

‘It would be selfish of me, taking her from that to face a future that at best would be uncertain, with a mother and no father.’

‘But you are young, like me,’ said Kirsty. ‘You may meet another man, and marry, and then Anna—’

‘No.’ Sophia’s voice was soft, but very sure. She felt the solid and unyielding warmth of Moray’s ring against her skin, above her heart, as she replied, ‘No, I will never find another man I wish to marry.’

Kirsty clearly did not want to see her friend lose hope. ‘Ye told me once that there was no such thing as never.’

She remembered. But the moment when she’d said that seemed so long ago, and now she knew it had not been the truth; that there were some things that could never be put right once they’d been ruined. Moray’s ship would never come, and she would never wake again to feel his touch or hear him speak her name, and nothing could restore to her the life his love had promised her.

It was all gone. All gone, she thought. But still, she summoned up a smile to show to Kirsty, for she would not have this parting with her friend be any sadder than it had to be.

And there were other partings yet to come.

An hour later, in the library, she waited for the worst of them. There was no sun today to spread its warmth across the fabric of the chairs and cheer the room. The window glass was pebbled with the remnants of the freezing rain that had all night been flung against it by a wind from the northeast, and though that rain had stopped, the wind still wailed and tried its strength against the walls, its breath so cold that there was little that the small fire on the hearth could do to counter it.