Sophia's Secret

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘He is not.’ Another slanting look, that seemed to somehow be assessing her. ‘But Colonel Hooke’s design is to restore a king to Scotland, and I’ll wager he himself cares little whether ’tis King Jamie or His Grace the Duke of Hamilton who takes the throne when all the cards are played. Hooke has gone now, I believe, to judge where lie the loyalties of your good people of the Western Shires, for it is on the Presbyterians our planned rebellion hangs. They are well-organised, and having not before this time aroused the temper of the Crown they have been left well-armed. If they declare for Jamie Stewart, all is well. But if they do declare for Hamilton, then I ken well where Hooke will stand.’

  The prospect left her troubled. ‘But that will mean civil war.’

  ‘Aye, lass. And that,’ he said, with cynicism, ‘may be what the French king did design from the beginning.’

  Sophia frowned. They’d come along the beach now to the windblown drifts of sand that marked the edges of the dunes. She did not notice for a moment that they were no longer walking. It was only when her hand was given back to her, and Moray started taking off his boots, that she came fully to awareness.

  With a glance at her wide eyes, he said, ‘I’m not about to ravish ye. I did but think to try the water. Will ye join me?’

  She did not understand at first, and stammered in alarm, ‘You mean to bathe?’

  Which brought one of those rare, quick smiles to light his face with pure amusement. ‘Christ, lass, if the sight of me without my boots is giving ye the vapours, I’d not want to risk removing something else.’ Then, as she flushed a deeper red, he added, ‘I mean to wet my feet among the waves, and nothing more.’ He held his hand out. ‘Come, ’tis safe enough. Ye said ye did not fear me.’

  He was testing her, she knew. It was another of those challenges with which he seemed determined to present her, as if seeking to discover just how far she could be pushed beyond propriety.

  She raised her chin. ‘I’ll have to take my slippers off.’

  ‘I’d think it most advisable.’

  He turned his head and watched the hills while she rolled off her stockings, too, and tucked them in her slippers, which she left upon the sand beside his boots. There could be no disgrace in going barefoot, she decided. She had known of several ladies of good quality who went unshod within their homes and in full view of company, though that, she did admit, was for economy, and not because they wished to show a man he could not best them.

  In the end, though she had come to it reluctantly, it proved to be the greatest pleasure that she could remember since her childhood. The water was so cold it struck the breath out of her body when she stepped in it, but after some few minutes it felt warmer to her skin, and she enjoyed the wetly sinking feel of sand beneath her feet and was refreshed. Her gown and skirts were an impediment. She lifted them with both hands so the hemline cleared the waves, and like a child, cared little that it gave a wanton view of her bare ankles. Moray seemed to take no notice. He was walking slowly through the water, looking down.

  ‘What are you searching for?’ she asked.

  ‘When I was but a lad, my mother told me I should keep my eyes well open for a wee stone with a hole in it, to wear around my neck, as it would keep me safe from harm. ’Tis but a tale, and one she likely did invent to keep her wild lad occupied, and out from underfoot,’ he said. ‘But having once begun the search for such a stone, I do confess I cannot end the habit.’

  She looked at him, barefooted in the sea and with his head downturned in concentration, and it was not difficult to glimpse the small, determined lad he must have been once – perhaps walking on a beach like this one, with the sun warm on his shoulders and his breeks rolled to his knees, and with no worry in his mind save that he had to find a pebble with a hole in it.

  He cast a brief look back at her. ‘Do I amuse ye?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and dropped her own gaze. ‘No, I only—’ Then she stopped, as something in the water drew her eye. She quickly bent to scoop it up before the sand should shift again to cover it. She’d let go one side of her gown to have a hand free, and she let drop both sides now, and raised the other hand to turn her find against her palm.

  It gleamed like black obsidian, an oblong pebble half the size of her own thumb, held by its weight within her hand while grains of wet sand trickled through her fingers to all sides.

  Moray turned. ‘What is it?’

  And Sophia, with a smile of triumph, stretched her palm towards him. ‘Look.’

  He looked, and with a cheerful oath splashed back to have a better look. He did not take the stone from her, but cupped his larger hand beneath her wet one and with gentle fingers turned the stone, as she had done, to see the hole carved through it by some trick of nature, just above its centre.

  She said, ‘Now you have your stone.’

  ‘No, lass. It does belong to you.’ He closed her fingers round it with his own, and smiled. ‘Ye’d best be taking care of it. If what my mother said was true, ’twill serve ye as a talisman against all evil.’

  His hands were warm, and spread their heat along her arm so that she scarcely felt the wet cold of the waves that dragged against her heavy gown. But still she shivered, and he noticed.

  ‘Christ, you’re wetted through. Come out and let the sunshine dry you, else her ladyship will have my head for giving ye the fever.’

  In the shelter of the dunes, she sat and spread her gown upon the sand while Moray pulled his boots back on and came to sit beside her. ‘There,’ he said, and tossed her slippers and her stockings in her lap. ‘Ye’d best put those on, too. The wind is chill.’ Again, he turned his eyes away to let her keep her modesty, but commented, ‘If ye do mend those slippers any more, they’ll be but seams of thread.’

  She only said, ‘They were my sister’s.’ But she fancied, from his silence, that he understood why she had sought to keep them whole.

  More soberly, he asked, ‘How did she die?’

  Sophia did not answer him for so long that she knew he must be wondering if she had heard him, but the truth was that she did not know the way to tell the story. In the end, she tried beginning with, ‘Anna was thirteen, two years my elder, when my mother went aboard the ship to Darien. We were then living with our aunt, my mother’s sister, and a woman of good heart. And with our uncle, who was—’ Breaking off, she looked away, across the endless water. ‘He was nothing like my aunt. He was a Drummond, and it is by grace of his connection to the countess that I now do find myself at Slains, but that is all the kindness he did ever show me, and he did not show me that till he himself was dead.’ She turned her sleeve above the elbow, so that he could see the slash of puckered skin. ‘He showed me this, instead.’

  She saw the flash of something dark in Moray’s eyes. ‘He burnt you?’

  ‘I was slow,’ she said, ‘in bringing him his ale. This was my punishment.’

  ‘Was there no one to aid you?’

  ‘He did use my aunt the same. He had been careful not to do so when my mother had been with us, for my father had left money for our keeping and he did not wish to lose so great an income. But when news came that my parents both were lost…’ She raised one shoulder in a shrug, to hide the pain that had not eased. ‘His rages did increase with my aunt’s illness and her passing, but my sister bore the worst of it to shield me. She was beautiful, my sister. And she might have made a loving wife to any man, had not—’ She bit her lip, and called upon her courage to go on, ‘Had not my uncle used her in that way, as well.’

  She did not look at Moray, and he did not speak, but in the silent air between them she could sense his question.

  ‘He did never touch me as he touched her. She had made him promise not to, in exchange for her compliance, and for all he was a villain he did keep his word.’ The next part was more difficult. ‘But Anna was with child when she died. My uncle’s child. He would not have the neighbours know it, and so he did call upon the knowledge of a woman who did claim that she co
uld stop the bairn from growing.’ There was sunlight on the crest of the horizon, but Sophia’s eyes, while fixed upon it, only saw the darkness of that awful night – the dirty, grinning woman with her evil-smelling potions. Anna’s terror as their uncle held her down. Her screams. The stench of death. Sophia finished quietly, ‘If I did still believe in God, I would have said He took my sister to Himself from pity.’

  Moray, looking at her steadily, said nothing, and she took the little pebble in her hand and clutched it tightly, till she felt its hard impression. ‘’Tis an ugly tale,’ she said, ‘and likely I should not have told you.’

  ‘Ye surely did not stay,’ he asked her, ‘in that house?’

  ‘I had no choice. But Uncle John fell ill himself soon after, and so lost his power to harm me.’

  Moray did not touch her, but she felt as though he had. ‘Ye have my word,’ he said with quiet force, ‘that no man ever will again do harm to ye, while I do live.’ His eyes were hard, and dark with what she took for anger, but it was not meant for her. ‘And ye can tell that to the gardener up at Slains, for if he—’

  ‘Please,’ she interrupted him, alarmed. ‘Please, you must promise you’ll not fight with Billy Wick.’

  His eyes grew harder still. ‘Ye would protect him?’

  ‘No, but neither would I have you make an enemy of such a man on my account, for he would seek his vengeance, then, and you have much to lose.’

  The pebble in her hand was hurting now. She loosed her grip, and braved a glance at Moray. He was watching her, his grey eyes still a shade too dark, but not, she thought, with anger. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. ‘Are ye worried for my safety?’

  She had no voice to answer him. She nodded, once, but faintly.

  ‘Lass.’ And then she saw the memory strike him, and he asked her slowly, as though he yet disbelieved it, ‘Was it me that ye were praying for, that morning in the stables?’

  She tried to look away, but he reached out to hold her face within his hand and turn it back again. He asked her, low, as though it mattered, ‘Was it me?’

  He was too close, she thought. His eyes were too intense upon her own, and held her trapped so that she could not look away, or move, or breathe in proper rhythm. And she could think of no defence to offer but, ‘I do not pray,’ she told him, though her voice was none too steady and without conviction. ‘I do not believe in God.’

  He smiled, in that quick and blinding flash that left her speechless. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘so ye did tell me.’ And he took her face in both his hands and brought it to his own, and kissed her.

  It was no hardened soldier’s kiss. His mouth came down on hers with care, with something close to reverence, mindful of the fact that she had never been so touched before, and it was like a wave had rolled upon her in the sea and sent her tumbling underwater. For that swirling moment, all she felt was him – his warmth, his touch, his strength, and when he raised his head she rocked towards him, helplessly off balance.

  He looked down at her as though he’d felt the power of that contact, too.

  Sophia felt a sudden need to speak, although she knew not what to tell him. ‘Mr Moray—’

  But his dark eyes stopped her. ‘I’ve a name, lass,’ he replied, ‘and I would hear ye say it.’

  ‘John—’

  But even as she spoke the word, she knew that it was ill-advised, for once again he stopped her with a kiss that shook her senses still more deeply than the first, and she found herself with no more will to speak for quite some time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My father, on the phone, had no idea. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I thought he read it, somewhere. Wasn’t there a piece in one of Greg Clark’s books about a little stone that had a hole in it?’

  ‘The Talisman,’ I named the story by one of my favourite Canadian writers. ‘Yes, but Grandpa didn’t get it from there. Don’t you remember, he always used to say he liked that story because his own father had told him the same thing – that if you found a little stone that had a hole in it, it would protect you, keep you safe from harm.’

  ‘Well, there you go. My father never talked to me the way he talked to you girls, but if he said that his father told him, that’s your answer, isn’t it?’

  ‘But how far back,’ I asked him, ‘does the thing about the stone go, in our family? Who first started it?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you, honey. Does it matter?’

  Looking down, I smoothed my thumb across the little worn pebble in my hand. I’d found it just last year in Spain, though I’d been looking for one ever since my grandfather had told me of it when I was a child. He’d never found one of his own. I’d often seen him strolling, head bent, at the water’s edge, and I had known what he was searching for. He’d told me if I found one, I should wear it round my neck. I hadn’t done that, yet. I’d been afraid the cord I’d threaded through the hole would break, and so I’d kept the stone safe in the little case I used to carry jewellery when I travelled, and had trusted it to do its job from there.

  I closed my hand around it, briefly. Put it back among the necklaces. ‘Not really, no,’ I told my father. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’ Wondered if that superstition had come down to me from a bright-haired young woman who’d heard it told once while she’d walked on the beach with a soldier, a long time ago…

  ‘Hey,’ my father said, and changed the subject, keen to share the satisfaction of discovery. ‘I’ve got another generation back on our Kirkcudbright bunch. Remember Ross McClelland?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ We shared an ancestor in common, and my father, having first run into Ross back in the sixties on an early trip to Scotland, had been writing to him ever since. I’d never met the man myself, but I recalled the Christmas cards. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Fine. It sounds like his wife’s not too well, but you know Ross, he doesn’t complain. Anyhow, I called him up last week to tell him I’m back working on that branch of the family tree again, and I told him what we’d managed to find out about the Patersons – not that they’re really connected to him, but he still found it all interesting. And when I said I’d ordered Sophia Paterson’s baptism record through the LDS library here, and was just waiting for it to come in, he said he had some time free and, since he was right there anyway, he might just poke around himself and see what he could find.’

  I shifted the phone on my shoulder, smiling at the faint tone of envy that had crept into my father’s voice. I knew how much he would have loved to be poking around, too, in churchyards and reading rooms. Toss in a sandwich for lunch, and the odd cup of coffee, and he’d be in heaven. ‘That was nice of him,’ was all I said.

  ‘You’re telling me. I just got off the phone with him. Sophia Paterson,’ he told me, reading off the details, ‘Baptised eighth December, 1689, daughter of James Paterson and Mary Moore, and it lists both the grandfathers, too – Andrew Paterson and William Moore. I’ve never seen that in a register before.’ He was beaming, I could tell. ‘Ross hasn’t found James and Mary’s marriage yet, but he’s still looking, and at least with all those names it will be easier to verify.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I said, and meant it. ‘Really great.’ But I was thinking, too. ‘I wonder…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Could you ask him to keep one eye open for the death,’ I asked, ‘of Anna Paterson?’

  ‘Of who?’

  ‘Sophia’s sister. She was mentioned in their father’s will, remember?’

  ‘Oh, right. Anna. But we don’t know when she died.’

  I bit my lip. ‘Try the summer of 1706.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Carrie.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why won’t you tell me where you’re getting all this from?’

  ‘I’ve told you, Daddy,’ I said, wishing I could lie more convincingly, ‘it’s just a hunch.’

  ‘Yes, well, so far all your hunches have hit the bull’s-eye. You’re not turning psychic on me, are you?’


  I tried for a tone that implied the idea was nonsense. ‘Daddy.’

  ‘All right.’ He gave up. ‘I’ll see if Ross will take a look. You don’t know where, exactly, she’d be buried?’

  That last bit was faintly sarcastic, but I answered anyway. ‘No. I don’t think in the town itself, though. Maybe just outside Kirkcudbright. Somewhere in the country.’

  ‘Right. And Carrie? If you nail this one, we’ll have to have a little talk,’ he said, ‘about your hunches.’

  The week flew by more quickly than I’d thought it would. The story was in full run, now – I wrote until the need for sleep took hold of me, and slept till noon, then woke and got back at it, rarely bothering with proper meals, preferring bowls of cereal instead, and pasta eaten with a spoon straight from the tin, things I could eat while I was working and that didn’t leave a lot to clean up, afterwards. The coffee cups and spoons began to gather in the sink, and by week’s end I didn’t bother looking for a clean shirt but just took the one I’d worn the day before, the one that I’d left slung across the bedroom chair, and shrugged it on again.

  I didn’t care. I wasn’t in the real world, any longer. I was lost within my book.

  Like someone living in a waking dream, I walked among my characters at Slains, and gained increasing admiration for the countess and her fearless son as they involved themselves more deeply than before in secret preparations for the coming of King James. That angle of the plot, as always, held me fascinated. But this week, my storyline kept turning more and more upon the growing love between John Moray and Sophia.

  How much of that was memory, and how much was my imagining the romance that I might have had myself, I didn’t know, but their relationship developed with an ease that drove my writing as a fair wind blows a ship upon its course.

  They were not lovers, yet. At least, they hadn’t shared a bed. And in the castle, in the presence of the others, they did nothing that would give away their feelings. But outside, beyond the walls of Slains, they walked, and talked, and stole what moments they could make their own.