Susanna Kearsley - The Winter Sea

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 harbor, 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 burned 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 favorite.’

‘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.’