Thorup led the way out of the boathouse, casting a teasing smile over his shoulder. “Not the sort of men you would have listened to in the past.”
“They’re women.”
“Women?” Thorup tripped over the threshold, then grinned. “Pretty?”
Time to put an end to conjecture. Henrik stepped outside and tugged down the frayed sleeves of his jacket. “My dear uncle, you know the only woman for the Havmand is a havfrue. Sadly, the only one I know is cast of bronze.”
Crinkles fanned around Thorup’s gray eyes. “You didn’t answer me. Are they pretty?”
Were they? Henrik strolled toward the house. The women Henrikused to date were like odorless hothouse orchids arranged artistically in modern vases. But Else and Laila had something natural and unadorned about them, like fragrant wildflowers.
“Yes, they are,” he said. “But I mustn’t speak openly to anyone except you two and Svend.”
Thorup yanked a weed from the grass. “Someday this blasted war will be over. Then you can talk to pretty women again.”
“My tastes have changed. I want a woman as good as Mor.” He winked at Thorup. “But I’m not good enough for a woman like that.”
The man stretched back to standing, and his eyes softened. Saddened. “Your tastes aren’t the only things that have changed. Any woman as good as your sweet mother would be proud to call you her own.”
Henrik’s neck muscles twitched, and he rubbed them. Unlikely. Besides, he doubted he’d survive the war.
Henrik shouldn’t have ignored Thorup.
Without breaking his stroke, he glanced over his shoulder. Through the murky haze, he could barely distinguish the lighthouse beam on the cliffs of the island of Hven.
The wind was pushing him south, and he corrected his course. Again. Between the moonless night and the haze obscuring the stars, he had only the lighthouse and his compass to guide him.
Already his arms ached from fighting the wind and waves, and he wasn’t even halfway across.
A rumble built overhead, throbbing in menace.
An aircraft, probably a German patrol plane.
Henrik groaned, tucked his oars inside the scull, and bent over, his nose to his knees. The haze would help conceal him, but he couldn’t let anything draw the pilot’s attention—no wake behind his boat, no oar splashes, no movement.
The engine throbbed closer, and waves slapped the immobile scull and jostled it.
Thorup had stained the boat dark inside and out, and Henrikwore black from his boots to the knit balaclava over his head, covering all but his eyes.
Yet he felt bright and naked and exposed. If only he could dive deep like an actual merman, flap his fins, and swim to Sweden.
The scull bumped, its movements erratic. Icy water slipped over the side and chilled Henrik’s legs.
In the darkness, Henrik fumbled for his supply box and opened it. His pistol, his canteen—there—the little bailing bucket.
He scooped water and poured it over the side, only to have the sea toss back more, a deadly game of badminton.
Speed was the only solution, but he didn’t dare resume rowing until the airplane was gone.
And it wasn’t. Was it circling? It sounded low, each rumble distinct.
His breath came harder, and he bailed faster.
Patrol boats and aircraft were the Havmand’s greatest nemeses. The RAF bombers on their way to Germany never concerned him—but the Luftwaffe fighters who scrambled to stop them did. Other British bombers flew low and dropped naval mines. A few months earlier, Henrik had a close call with a falling mine.
But the patrol planes worried him most. They could strafe him with machine guns. Worse, they might trace him to Lyd-af-Lys. To the Thorups.
Henrik bailed as quickly as he could without creating splashes.
