“If only the RAF could sink those ships in Norway.” Arthur huffed. “How many bombing raids have they sent? All in vain.”
Lachlan shrugged. “I’m not a pilot, but they say it’s very difficult to bomb a ship deep in a fjord.”
“A shame. Think how the Admiralty could use all our ships patrolling the North Sea.”
“Aye.”
“Say.” Arthur turned and rested his shoulder against the bulkhead. “What’s the latest on the Churchill Barriers? Any progress?”
A smile rose. “They identified the rabblerousers among the prisoners of war and sent them to camps on the mainland.”
“Very good. Did that help?”
“Aye, that and ... an unconventional use of facts.”
“Unconventional use of facts?” One of Arthur’s dark eyebrows arched high. “Lying?”
Lachlan grimaced. “More like emphasizing one aspect of the truth.”
The second eyebrow rose.
Lachlan tipped his head to the side. “The barriers are defensive works, aye, but the roads on top are a civilian project, which prisoners are allowed to work on. The Provost of Kirkwall and the commandant of the prison camp, Major Buckland, talked to the Italians. They convinced them that causeways connecting the outlying islands would be very good for the Orcadian people.”
“Clever.”
“Aye.” Several months ago, he would have bristled at the thought. But Joe Pizzuto and his friends were working hard and cheerfully. They were indeed constructing civilian roads—and barriers to defend their own enemies. And they accepted it.
Lachlan did too. All his life he’d followed conventions in a rigid line. The past nine months had tugged and stretched him out of line, into using unconventional means to accomplish good goals.
It ached. Yet it seemed a proper ache.
****
“And the cricket pitch was never the same again.” Arthur finished his boyhood tale with a mischievous glint in his dark eyes.
Lachlan joined Cilla and Irene in laughter as they sat around the table in the dining room of the Thurso Hotel, the dishes long cleared and only teacups remaining.
“Oh, Irene.” Cilla patted the table between her and her new friend. “How can you marry such a man?”
Irene leveled a serious gaze at her. “Someone needs to reform him.”
Lachlan chuckled. Arthur needed no reforming.
“She has her work cut out for her.” Arthur’s gaze brimmed over with adoration. “A lifetime of work.”
Irene’s big blue eyes turned to Lachlan. “How about you? Did you get in trouble as a lad?”
“Aye.”
Cilla gasped. “Never.”
“Och aye. My mother and father could tell many a tale.”
“One.” She took a sip of tea and glanced at him over the rim of her teacup. “I’d settle for one story.”
Mother’s favorite tale floated to the top, and he rested his forearms on the edge of the table. “When I was a lad of eight, one of the local lads told me his mother used peat fires for cooking. So I dragged Neil to the closest bog and used my mother’s best kitchen knives to carve out bricks of peat. We wheeled a wheelbarrow of peat into the kitchen and filled Mother’s oven. Her modern coal-burning oven.”
“Oh no,” Cilla and Irene said in tandem.
