Sophia had not managed anything at breakfast. She’d been grateful that the countess, with the earl her son, had gone to Dunottar, and had not seen her as she’d been this morning, pale and feeling ill.
She knew the reason for it. She had not been sure at first, but now it was August, and nearly three months had passed since her marriage to Moray, and there could be no other cause for this strange sickness that came on each morning and confined her to her bed. It had been so, she well remembered, with her sister Anna, when the bairn had started growing in her belly.
Kirsty knew, as well. Her cool hand smoothed Sophia’s forehead. ‘Ye’ll not be so ill the whole time. It will pass.’
Sophia could not meet the sympathy in Kirsty’s eyes. She turned her head. ‘What will I do?’
‘Cannot ye tell her ladyship?’
‘I promised I would not.’
Drily, Kirsty said, ‘A few months more, and ye may find it difficult to keep that promise.’
‘In a few months more, I may not have to.’ Surely it could not be that much longer till the king would come, and Moray with him, and there would be no need then to hide their marriage.
Kirsty took the sense of that, and nodded. ‘Let us hope that ye are right.’ Again her hand passed cool across Sophia’s forehead, and on inspiration she said, ‘I will ask my sister if she knows of any potions that might help ye through this time.’
Sophia’s hand moved in protection to her still-flat stomach. ‘Potions?’ She remembered Anna’s agony. The evil, grinning woman with her bottles. ‘I cannot take any medicines. I would not harm this bairn.’ His bairn, she thought—born of his love for her. A part of him, inside her. She drew warmth at least from that.
‘The bairn will not be harmed,’ was Kirsty’s promise. With a smile, she said, ‘My sister’s been through this more times than most, and all her bairns came full of life and yelling to the world. She’ll know what ye should do. She’ll help ye.’
It would not be soon enough, Sophia thought, as yet another wave of sickness caught her helpless in its roll, and made her turn her face, eyes closed, against the pillow.
Kirsty stood. ‘I will send word to her, and see if she will come afore her ladyship returns.’
Before night, Kirsty’s sister came, a calming presence with her understanding eyes and gentle ways. She brought Sophia dried herbs wrapped in cloth, to brew as tea. ‘’Twill ease the sickness greatly so that ye can feel yourself again and take a bit o’ nourishment.’
It helped.
So much so that, next morning, she felt well enough to rise, and dress, and take her place at table. She was still the only person in the house, besides the servants, so there was no one to see the way she smoothed her hand across her stomach with new pride, protectively, before she sat. Her appetite was small but still she ate, and after eating sought a warmly sunlit corner of the library, to pass the morning reading.
She could draw some sense of shared communion, sitting here where Moray had so often sought escape from his forced inactivity at Slains, and feeling in her hands the smooth expensive leather bindings of the books he had so loved to read.
And one book, out of all of them, could draw her to a stronger feeling of connection to him, as though Moray’s voice were speaking out the words. It was a newer volume, plainly bound, of Dryden’s King Arthur, or the British Worthy. The pages were so slightly used she doubted whether anyone but Moray and herself had read the lines, and she was only sure that he had read them because in the letter he had left her—in that simple letter, with its sentiments so strong and sure that every night, on reading them, they banished all her worries—he had quoted from this very work of Dryden’s, and the verse, writ in his own bold hand, stayed with her as though he himself had spoken it:
‘Where’e’er I go, my Soul shall stay with thee:
’Tis but my Shadow that I take away;’
She read it over now, and touched the book’s page with her fingers as though somehow that could bring him close. A few weeks more, she told herself. A few weeks more—a month, perhaps, and then the king would surely come.
The household spoke of nothing else. The visitors still came and went, in states of great excitement, and throughout the summer Slains had seemed as busy as a royal court itself, at times, the dinner table ringed with unknown faces, men who’d traveled miles to carry secret messages from nobles to the north, and from the Highlands.
The nobles dared not come themselves. A gathering of Jacobites would only draw Queen Anne’s attention, and it was widely known the English Court had turned its ever-watchful eye toward the north, as might a hound that had caught some new scent upon the wind. This was no accident, according to the countess, who had made no false attempt to hide her own opinion of who was responsible. She’d counseled all who came to Slains that they should keep their words and actions guarded from the Duke of Hamilton. ‘If he does seek to be a wolf within the fold,’ she’d said, ‘we would do well to let him carry on believing we are sheep.’