‘Ye’ve but to ask, and ye may freely borrow some of mine.’ His tone was dry. ‘I have two sisters and three brothers.’
‘It must vex you that you may not see them while you are in Scotland.’
‘Aye. My elder brother William, who is Laird of Abercairney, has a wee lad not yet eighteen months of age, who would not ken me from a stranger. I had hoped that I might put that right this month, but it appears I will not have the chance.’
She tried to temper his regret with the reminder, ‘But a lad so young, were he to meet you, still would not remember you.’
‘I would remember him.’ There was a tone within his voice that made her glance at him and wonder if he found it very hard to live in France, so far from those he loved. It was no strange thing for a Scottish man to live abroad, and younger sons of noble families, knowing well they never would inherit lands themselves, did often choose to serve in armies on the continent, and build lives far from Scotland’s shores. The Irish Colonel Hooke, so she’d been told, had done just that and had a wife and children waiting now for him in France. She did not know for certain that John Moray did not have the same.
‘Have you any sons, yourself ?’ she asked, attempting to speak lightly so that it would seem his answer did not matter.
He looked sideways at her. ‘No, I have no sons. Nor daughters either. Or at least no lass has yet presented me with such a claim. And I’d think my mother would prefer it were I married first, afore I brought new bairns into the family.’
‘Oh,’ Sophia said, because she could not think of any other thing to say.
She felt him watching her, and though he had not altered his expression she could sense he was amused by her confusion, so she turned their talk along a different course.
She asked, ‘And do you live at Court?’
‘At Saint-Germain? Faith, no,’ he said. ‘’Tis not a place for such as me. I find my lodgings where the King of France sees fit to send my regiment, and am content with that, although I do admit that when, from time to time, I am called back to Saint-Germain, I find King Jamie’s court a grand diversion.’
She had heard much of the young King James—the ‘Bonny Blackbird’， so they called him, for his dark and handsome looks—and of his younger sister, the Princess Louise Marie, and of the grandeur and gay parties of their exiled court in France, but she had never had occasion to meet someone who had been there, and she longed to know the details. ‘Is it true the king and princess dance all night and hunt all morning?’
‘And make promenades all afternoon?’ His eyes were gently mocking. ‘Aye, I’ve heard it rumored, too, and it is true they both are young and on occasion have a mind to take such pleasure as they can, and who can blame them, after all that they have lived through. But the duller truth be told, the princess is a lass of charming sensibility, who does comport herself in all ways modestly, and young King Jamie spends his hours attending to his business matters, foreign and domestic, with the diligence that does befit a king. Although,’ he added, so as not to disappoint her, ‘I recall that Twelfth Night last, there was a ball held at Versailles at which King Jamie and the princess danced past midnight, and at four o’clock were dancing still, the princess all in yellow velvet set with jewels, and diamonds in her bonny hair, and some two thousand candles burning round the hall to give the dancers light. And when the ball was over and the king and princess came out in the torchlight of the Cour de Marbre, the Swiss Guard of the French king did salute them to their carriage, and they drove back home to Saint-Germain surrounded by a company of riders, richly dressed, and with the white plume of the Stewarts in their hats.’
Sophia sighed and briefly closed her eyes, imagining the picture. It was so removed from all that she had known, and so romantic. How incredible it all would be, she thought, to have the king at home again. The first King James had fled to exile in the year Sophia had been born, and in her lifetime there had been no King of Scots upon the ancient throne in Edinburgh. But she had listened, raptured, to her elders, as they reminisced about the days when Scotland’s destiny had been its own to manage. ‘Will he truly come?’ she asked.
‘Aye, lass. He’ll come, and set his foot on Scottish soil,’ said Moray. ‘And ’tis my resolve to see the effort does not cost his life.’
She would have asked him more about the court at Saint-Germain, but Moray’s gaze had swung away and out to sea, and suddenly he pulled upon the gelding’s reins and brought him to a standstill.