‘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 colors 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 recognized 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 recognized 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 leaned 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 honor 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.’