Sophia fought the urge to hold her own breath as she crept in her imagination through the watchful shadows with the queen. She bit her lip.

“The night was so dark,” Captain Ogilvie said, “that they could barely see each other. And the crossing of the Thames in violent wind and rain was treacherous. But when they finally reached the other side, the coach and six that had been meant to meet them was not there. The queen was forced to shelter from the weather by a church wall, in a dangerous exposure, and so wait until her guardsman went to fetch the coach. They nearly were discovered. ’Twas but Providence protected them, as it did later on that wild night when they were almost stopped along the road to Gravesend. They escaped that too, but narrowly, and made it safely to the coast, where others joined them for the journey over sea to France. An awful voyage that was, too, but through it all the queen made no complaint. A rare, brave woman,” he proclaimed her, “and ’tis by her courage we do have a king today, for if they had remained in England nothing would have saved them.”

Colonel Graeme, who, Sophia thought, would also have a memory of those troubled days of treachery, agreed. “It is a stirring tale.”

“Aye, well, I had it straight from the Comte de Lauzon. He was there—he was one of the two men that guided Queen Mary that night out of Whitehall and over the river and down to Gravesend, and he went the whole journey to France with her, too. He saw all that did happen, and kept it stopped up in his memory, till one night I helped him unstop it with wine.” Captain Ogilvie smiled, in remembrance. “He told me other tales, as well, but few I’d want to tell a lass.” But he did think of one that was not too offensive, and settled himself deeper still in his chair while he told it.

Sophia half listened, and smiled when she was meant to at the scandalous behavior of the comte, but her own imagination had been captured so completely by the story he’d just told them of Queen Mary’s flight from England into France, that hours later she was thinking of it still.

She stood a long time at the great bow window of the drawing room that afternoon and gazed upon the sea, and wondered how it would have felt to have been cast upon those rough and wintry waves, with no sure knowledge of what future lay ahead for the wee infant son you carried in your arms, and only fears about the safety of your husband in the land that you were leaving, and might never see again. How deep, she wondered, must have been the queen’s despair?

She was not aware of anybody entering the room till Colonel Graeme spoke, behind her, in a calming tone that seemed to know her mood and sought to lighten it. “I would not be surprised to see it snow before this day is out. Those clouds do have the look of it.”