Behind her, she heard Hooke call Moray’s name again, more loudly, and an instant later Moray’s steps fell heavily along the garden path, and in a voice that sounded rougher than his own, he said, ‘I’m here. Is everything then ready?’

What came after that, Sophia did not hear, for she was through the door and running still, past Mrs Grant and Kirsty, and she did not stop till she had reached the solace of her chamber.

From her window, she could see the trail of moonlight on the sea, and rising dark across its silver path the tall masts of the Heroine, her sails now being raised to take the wind.

She felt the small, warm hardness of his ring, clenched in her fist so tightly that it bit into her hand and brought her pain, but she was grateful for the hurt. It was a thing that she could blame for all the tears that swam against her vision.

There was nothing to be gained, she knew, by weeping. She had wept the day her father, with one last embrace, had sailed for unknown shores, and she had wept still more the day her mother had gone after him, and weeping had not given them safe passage, nor yet brought them home again. She’d wept that black night that her sister, with the unborn bairn inside her, had been carried off in screams and suffering, and weeping had not left her any less alone.

So she would not weep now.

She knew that Moray had to leave, she understood his reasons. And she had his ring to hold, his unread letter to remind her of his love, and more than these, his promise that he would come back to her.

That should have been enough, she thought. But still the hotness swelled behind her eyes. And when all the frigate’s sails were filled with wind, and set for France, and the dark ship was loosed upon the rolling sea, Sophia blinked again, and one, small traitor of a tear squeezed through the barrier of lashes and tracked slowly down her cheek.

And then another found the path that it had taken. And another.

And she had been right. It did not help. Although she stood a long time at her window, watching steadily until at last the winging sails were swallowed by the stars; and though her tears, the whole time, slid in silence down her face to drop like bitter rain among the lilac petals scattered still upon her gown, it made no difference, in the end.

For he was gone from her, and she was left alone.

CHAPTER 15

I’D NEVER DONE MUCH gardening. My mother had, when I was young—but being young, I hadn’t paid attention. I’d assumed that, in the winter, there was nothing to be done, but Dr Weir was bent and busy in his shrubberies when I walked over in the afternoon.

‘We’ve not seen you about these past few days,’ he said. ‘Have you been away?’

‘Well, in a sense. I’ve been at Slains,’ I said, ‘three hundred years ago. That’s why I’m here, because a couple of my characters, so far, have mentioned spies.’

‘Oh, aye?’

‘Daniel Defoe, in particular.’

‘Ah.’ He straightened. ‘Well, I might be able to assist you there. Just bear with me a minute while I check the stakes and straps on Elsie’s lilac, after last night’s wind.’

I followed him with interest to the bare-branched shrub, much taller than the others, at the far end of the border, by one window of the bungalow. ‘That’s a lilac?’

‘Aye. I haven’t had much luck with it. It’s meant to be a tree, but it’s a stubborn-minded thing, and it won’t grow.’

The bark felt smooth against my fingers, when I touched it. Leafless, it stood half the height of that which I’d remembered in the garden up at Slains, against the wall where Moray and Sophia had said their farewells. But even so, it touched a chord of sadness in my mind. ‘I’ve never liked the smell of lilacs,’ I confessed. ‘I always wondered why, and now I think I’ve found the answer.’

‘Oh?’ The doctor turned. His eyes, behind the spectacles, showed interest. ‘What is that?’

And so I told him of the scene I had just written.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s very telling. Scent is a powerful trigger for memory.’

‘I know.’ One whiff of pipe tobacco could transport me straight back to my childhood and my grandfather’s small study, where we’d sat and eaten cookies and discussed what I had thought were grown-up things. It had been there that he’d first told me of the small stone with a hole in it, and how it would protect me if I ever chanced to find one.

Dr Weir asked, ‘What becomes of him, the soldier in your book?’

‘I don’t know, yet. He must not have come back, though, because three years after he left Slains, the real Sophia was back in Kirkcudbright,’ I said, ‘marrying my ancestor.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, they were dangerous times. He most likely got killed on the Continent.’

‘You don’t think he could have died in the ’08, do you? In the invasion attempt, somehow?’

‘I don’t think that anyone died in the ’08.’ He gave a faint frown as he tried to remember. ‘I’d have to read over my books, to be sure, but I don’t mind that anyone died.’

‘Oh.’ It would have been a nice romantic feature for my plot, I knew, but never mind.

The doctor straightened from his work, his round face keen. ‘Now, come inside and have a cup of tea, and tell me what you’d like to know about Daniel Defoe.’

Elsie Weir had a decided opinion of the man who had written such classics as Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. ‘Nasty little weasel of a man,’ she called him.