Sophia's Secret

by Susanna Kearsley

  No answer came this time except the deep sound of his breathing. He had gone to sleep. I lay there for a while longer thinking in the dark with Graham’s arm wrapped safe around me and the warmth of Angus sprawled across my feet, but in the end the question would not let me rest, and there was only one way that I knew to get a proper answer.

  XIX

  These days she was not often out of doors. Although two months had passed and spring had smoothed the sharper edges of the breezes from the sea, she kept inside with Mrs Malcolm and with Kirsty and the baby and she did not leave the house except on those rare days when her own restlessness consumed her and she felt that she must breathe the outside air or else go mad. Even then, she stayed as far as she could stay from the main road, mindful always of the fact that this was still a time of danger.

  Mr Malcolm had not yet been heard from and they did not know how he had fared. At the beginning it had seemed that every day more men were taken and imprisoned, and from the single letter that the countess had been able to send down Sophia knew it was no better in the north. Indeed the only comfort in that letter had come from one small piece of news the countess had relayed, that she’d had in a message from the Duke of Perth, her brother, at the Court of Saint-Germain: ‘Mr Perkins,’ she had written to Sophia in her careful code, ‘does tell me that he recently did call upon your husband Mr Milton and did find him well recovered of his illness, and impatient to be up again.’ From which Sophia knew, to her relief, that Moray had managed to get safely back across the Channel, and was healing from his wounds.

  That knowledge made it easier to cope with the uncertainty surrounding her, just as the sight of baby Anna sleeping in her cradle, small and vulnerable and trusting, gave Sophia every morning the resolve and strength of spirit to conduct herself with caution, so her child would be protected.

  She would not, in fact, have been upon the road today at all if it were not for Mrs Malcolm’s housemaid falling ill, so that somebody else must go to market if they were to have the food to keep them fed the next few days. Kirsty had offered, but as she had been recovering herself from that same illness and was weakened still, Sophia would not hear of it. Nor would she hear of Mrs Malcolm setting out for town, when Mrs Malcolm had already been accosted twice by soldiers who were searching for her husband.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Sophia had announced. She’d started out before the dawn, and for some time she was the only one upon the road, which made her feel more free to take some pleasure in the coolness of the wind upon her face and in the spreading colours of the sunrise. It was early in the morning yet when she first reached the outskirts of the waking town of Edinburgh and houses started rising close about her, but there still was not much movement on the road.

  So when she heard the sound of hooves and wheels approaching from behind she turned instinctively, not thinking of concealment, only curious to see who might be passing.

  It was clearly someone of importance, for the coach itself was an expensive one, the coachman richly dressed and driving horses who were sleek and black and so disdainful that they did not even turn their eyes as they drew level with Sophia.

  Inside the coach a sudden voice called out and bade the driver stop, and in a swirl of dust and dancing hooves the horses halted. At the window of the coach appeared a face Sophia knew.

  ‘Why, Mistress Paterson!’ said Mr Hall, with obvious surprise. ‘Whatever are you doing here? Come in, my dear, come in – you should not be upon these streets alone.’

  She had been worried, setting out, that she’d be recognised as being Mrs Milton, from the house of Mr Malcolm, and that somebody might question her on that account. It had not for a moment crossed her mind that she’d be recognised by anyone who knew her as herself. This was a complication she had not foreseen, and she was not sure how to manage it, but since there was no way she could refuse the priest without it stirring his suspicions, she had little choice but to reach up and take his hand and let him help her up the step into the coach.

  Inside, she found that they were not alone.

  ‘This,’ the Duke of Hamilton remarked, in his smooth voice, ‘is quite an unexpected pleasure.’ Dressed in deep blue velvet, with a new expensive wig that fell in dark curls past his shoulders, he assessed Sophia from the seat directly opposite.

  The coach’s rich interior seemed suddenly too close for her, and lowering her face to fight the feeling of uneasiness, she greeted him, ‘Your Grace.’

  ‘Where are you walking to this morning?’

  ‘Nowhere in particular. I had a mind to look about the market.’

  She could feel his eyes upon her in the pause before he said to Mr Hall, ‘The market, then,’ and Mr Hall in turn leant out to call up to the coachman to drive on.

  The duke said, nonchalant, ‘I did not know the countess was in Edinburgh.’

  Sophia, well aware that she was out of practice with his dance of words, stepped carefully. ‘My Lady Erroll is at Slains, your Grace.’

  ‘You are not here alone, I trust?’

  ‘I am with friends.’ Before he could ask more, she raised her gaze in total innocence and said, ‘I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see that you are well, your Grace. We heard that you were taken by the English, and have feared the worst.’

  She saw his hesitation, and felt confident that he would not be able to resist the urge to make himself look grander by the tale of his adventures. She was right.

  His nod was gracious. ‘I am touched by your concern, my dear. In truth, I deemed it an honour to be taken, and only wished I could have been here with my well-affected countrymen to stand in chains beside them in the king’s good cause.’

  Sophia knew he did not mean a word of it. She knew that he had seen to it that he had been at his estates in Lancashire when young King James had tried to land in Scotland. From the countess’s own pen Sophia had received the tale of how a messenger had reached the duke with news the king was coming, and in time for him to turn back and be part of the adventure, but how he, with sly excuses that his turning back might give the English warning, had continued on to Lancashire, from where he could await the outcome, poised to either take young James’s part, should the invasion be successful, or to claim his distance from it, should the English side prevail.

  It had given Sophia at least some satisfaction when she’d heard the English had imprisoned him as well, regardless. Though it now appeared he’d managed, with his usual duplicity, to orchestrate his own release. How many other lives, she wondered, had he been content to sell to pay the price of his?

  She could not keep from asking, when he’d finished telling in dramatic style the tale of his arrest and journey down to London, ‘Did you see the other nobles there? How does it go for them?’

  He looked at her with vague surprise. ‘My dear, have you not heard? They are all freed. Save of course for the Stirlingshire gentry, but I could do nothing to argue their case – they had taken to arms, you see, actually risen in force, and the English could not be persuaded to let them escape being tried, but I trust they will come through it fairly.’

  Mr Hall, leaning over, explained to Sophia, ‘The duke did kindly take it on himself to argue for the release of his fellow prisoners, and the English were not equal to his arguments.’

  Sophia took this news with mingled gratitude and deep distrust. However glad she might be that the Earl of Erroll and the others were now free and would be coming home, she could not help but think the duke would not have done such an enormous thing unless he stood to profit by it somehow. And her own sense told her still that he was not upon their side.

  The coach drew rattling to a stop upon the cobbles of a crowded street, with people pressing round and voices shouting and a thousand jumbled smells upon the air. ‘Here is the market,’ said the duke.

  Sophia, in her eagerness to leave that plush, confining space and get clear of the duke’s unsettling scrutiny, leant forward with such sharpness that the chain around her neck slid from its p
ins and tumbled from her bodice, and the silver ring gleamed for an instant in the light before she quickly caught it in her hand and slipped it back again.

  She was not quick enough.

  She knew, when she glanced over at the duke, that he had seen it. And although his face to any other eyes might have appeared unchanged, she saw the subtle difference in it; heard the altered interest in his voice when he remarked, ‘I do have business to attend, but I will send my coachman back so that when you are finished here you may return in safety to the place where you are staying with your…friends.’ The emphasis on that last word was not for her to hear, but still she heard it, notwithstanding, and it made her blood run cold.

  Sophia tried to keep her own face bright, to make her voice sound normal. ‘That is kind of you, your Grace, but I am being met and will be in good company, so there will be no need.’

  His gaze was narrowed now, and fixed on her in thought. ‘My dear Miss Paterson, I do insist. I cannot bear to think of you, in company or otherwise, upon these streets without a fitting escort. Here, Mr Hall will walk with you and see you do not come to harm.’

  He had her, and he knew it. She could tell it from his smile as he sat watching Mr Hall get out and hand Sophia down onto the cobbled street. The duke’s eyes in the dimness of the coach were like the eyes of some sleek predatory creature that had trapped its prey and could afford to wait before returning to devour it. ‘Your servant, Mistress Paterson,’ he said, and with a slight nod of his head he gave his driver orders to go on.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Hall said, looking round in expectation as the black coach clattered off into the growing crowd. ‘What was it in particular that you desired to buy?’

  Sophia’s thoughts were racing far beyond her efforts to collect them, and it took her half a minute to reply. The market place was ringed with tall tenements whose upper storeys projected to more closely crowd the already close space and cast shadows across the rough cobbles. And over their roofs she could see the stern outline of Edinburgh castle set high on its hill like a sentry, and seeming to watch all that happened below. She could not see, at first, any route of escape.

  Then her searching eyes fell on a small stand not too far away, set near a narrow gap between the buildings, and she forced a smile. ‘I should be glad to have a close look at those ribbons.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  She’d always thought the priest a good man, and because of that she felt a bit ashamed of what she had to do, but there was simply no escaping it. She could not risk remaining here until the duke returned – she did not know what he intended.

  She thought of Moray’s parting words about the duke: ‘Ye must be careful, lass,’ he’d warned her. ‘He must never learn that you are mine.’

  Too late, she thought. Too late.

  The duke’s reaction to his glimpse of Moray’s ring had left her little room to doubt that he had recognised it, and knew all too well to whom that ring belonged.

  But she was not about to let him learn about the child.

  She’d reached the stand now where the spools of ribbon, lace and silk were all arrayed in bright display. Sophia took a moment to examine one, and then another, then in what appeared an accident she knocked three spools of ribbon so they tumbled from the stand and spilt their rolling trails of colour on the stones and caused confusion in the steps of people passing.

  ‘Oh!’ she cried, pretending great dismay, and begged forgiveness.

  ‘’Tis a trifle,’ Mr Hall assured her, bending to assist the ribbon-seller in retrieving all the tangled rolls. ‘Do not distress yourself, we soon shall have things right again.’

  Sophia waited through two more unsteady breaths, until she saw that everyone around was well embroiled in the mess, and then she turned and slipped into the shadowed gap between the houses and began to run as fast as she was able. The alley was tight-walled and smelt of refuse, but to her relief it brought her out into a steeply downhill street that seemed deserted, and from there she made her way through twisting lanes and narrow wynds till she came at last upon a churchyard with a high stone wall and gate, and taking shelter there she pressed herself into as small a form as possible behind the leaning stones, among the shadows.

  She did not dare to attempt the road in daylight, for she knew that once she left the town’s last limits she would be exposed and vulnerable. The duke, on being told that she had run away, would surely seek her on that road before all others. Better she should wait for dark, and hope by then he’d think that she was either well away or safely hidden in the town.

  It was the longest afternoon and evening she had ever spent. Her head ached, and the hunger raked like claws against her insides, and her thirst was something terrible, and every footfall on the street outside the little churchyard made her heart begin to race again in panic.

  But at length the shadows deepened, and the noises in the streets grew more infrequent, and she took a breath for courage, straightened out her stiffened limbs, and cautiously set off again.

  She did not afterwards remember much about the journey back along the open road, except that it was long and dark and filled with terror and imaginings, and by the time she finally reached the Malcolm’s house she’d nearly reached the limit of her strength.

  But she had some small portion of it yet to spare. Her entrance caused much turmoil in the house as Kirsty and their hostess met her at the door with questions and concern, but she brushed all of it aside and would not sit in spite of all their urgings.

  Struggling to catch her breath, she fixed her gaze on Kirsty’s. ‘Has anybody been here?’

  Kirsty answered, ‘No,’ but in a tone of apprehension. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘We must go.’ Sophia looked to Mrs Malcolm. ‘Can you find us horses, or a coach, at this late hour?’

  ‘I can but try.’

  ‘And Anna…’ Turning worried eyes toward the closed door to the bedchamber, Sophia said to Kirsty, ‘We must wrap her well, the night is not a warm one.’

  ‘Sophia,’ Kirsty tried again, more firmly. ‘What has happened?’

  But there was no way to answer that in Mrs Malcolm’s presence without giving more away than would be wise. She only said, ‘We are not safe here any longer.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘We are not safe,’ Sophia said again, and with her eyes implored her friend to silence.

  It was best, she knew, if Mrs Malcolm did not know the details of their journey, for then no one else could force her to divulge that information. Sophia did not know herself how she and Kirsty would be able with the baby to endure the hard trip north to Slains – she only knew that they must somehow manage it, for Anna’s sake.

  They must return to Slains, and to the countess. She alone, Sophia thought, would know what they should do. It had started to snow.

  It was only the last feeble blast of the winter before it conceded defeat to the spring, but the wind cut like ice through the front of my jacket till Graham moved closer in front of me, blocking the cold while he took my lapels in his strong hands and folded them together with the care of someone dressing a small child to ward off chills. His eyes smiled faintly when they touched upon the bold stripe of his old rugby jersey underneath my coat.

  ‘You’d best not let my brother see you in that shirt.’

  I hadn’t thought of that. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind me stealing it?’

  ‘You’ve given it more use this weekend than it’s had in years. And anyway, the colour suits you.’ As another swirl of snowflakes blew between us he leant closer still and gathered me against him, with his chin resting comfortably close to my temple.

  It felt strange to be so openly affectionate in public, standing out here on the bus station platform with other people only steps away from us. I was used to keeping how we felt about each other secret, but in Aberdeen I’d finally had a taste of how things could be. How they would be. And I liked it.

  Graham sensed my subtle change in mood and bent his h
ead to ask me, ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just…I had a really good time this weekend.’

  ‘You don’t have to go.’

  It was, I thought, a bit like being tempted in the desert by the devil. But I resisted. ‘Everyone expects me back today, that’s what I told them, and I don’t want to worry your father.’ Drawing back enough to tilt my head so I could see his face, I pointed out, ‘It’s not like you can call him up and tell him where I am, now is it?’

  Graham grinned. ‘My dad’s not such a Puritan.’

  ‘Even so.’ I glanced at the clock on the platform. ‘The bus is late.’

  ‘Nae bother.’

  ‘You don’t have to wait, you know. I mean, it’s very noble of you, standing out here with me in the snow, but—’

  ‘And whose fault is that? You should have let me drive you back.’

  ‘You should have let me take a cab,’ I said. ‘I can afford it.’

  ‘Aye, I know you can. But no true Scot would let his woman waste her thirty pounds to take a taxi when the bus can get her there for five.’

  He was only teasing, of course, and taking the bus had been as much my idea as his – there was a comforting anonymity about riding a bus, and I liked to watch the people sitting round me. But I found his choice of words amusing. ‘So I’m your woman, am I?’

  ‘Aye.’ I felt the circle of his arms grow firmer and the look he angled down at me was warm. ‘You were mine from the moment I met you.’

  It was hard not to feel the effect of those words even though they were ones I had written myself, in the scene where Sophia and Moray had said their farewells. ‘You’ve been reading my book.’

  ‘I have not.’ He looked quizzical. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, because what you just said – my hero says almost exactly the same thing.’

  ‘Your hero…oh, hell,’ Graham said. ‘I forgot. No, it’s still here.’ He felt in his coat’s inside pocket and took out a long business envelope. ‘That’s what I’ve found on the Morays, so far. It’s not much, just the pedigree chart for the family with births, deaths and marriages, if that’s of use to you.’