Rose managed a doe-eyed smile. She had no intention of ever marrying and creating obligations and expectations that she didn’t want. She definitely wouldn’t wed into the British peerage with all its unspoken rules and requirements.
“Where are these islands?” Rose asked. “In the Channel?” Were they near any important shipping lines? Naval bases?
“Oh, much more far flung than that.” Mar chuckled, clearly pleased with himself for having stumped her. “They are to the north. In Orkney.”
In Orkney.
The two words blasted through Rose with even more force than when Mar had revealed his ownership of Hamarray. During the majority of the war, the home port of the British Grand Fleet—the most powerful collection of warships in the world—had been in Scapa Flow, a huge natural harbor that lay between many of the islands of Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland. Only the Grand Fleet’s powerful presence had kept the German dreadnoughts harmlessly in Wilhelmshaven for the bulk of the war. The sheltered anchorage of the British had played a key role in the conflict, and a spy ring there would have been able to gather intimate details about the movements of the largest contingent of the Royal Navy.
Admiral Beatty had moved the home of the Grand Fleet to the Firth of Forth last April, but Scapa Flow still remained critical. The interned German High Seas Fleet—a naval force second only to Britain’s—was now impounded in the great natural harbor and under the guard of British battle cruisers. If foreign agents wanted to restart the fighting, they would need the assistance of the remnants of the formerly mighty Kaiserliche Marine. Any attempt to free the vessels—no matter how ill advised—could explode the tentative peace and ignite the still-glowing embers of war.
“Ork-Knee?” Rose feigned ignorance, hoping that Mar would reveal more without her asking too many direct questions that mightraise his suspicion. Depending on how close Hamarray was to Scapa Flow, the earl could have easily entertained both Admirals Jellicoe and Beatty, which would have given him a perfect opportunity to pry out secrets from the men. He might have even dined with Lord Kitchener, England’s Secretary of State for War.
More horror detonated inside Rose as she recalled the suspicious circumstances surrounding Lord Kitchener’s death. The important British leader had drowned when his cruiser, the HMSHampshire, had sunk after leaving the safety of Scapa Flow en route to diplomatic meetings in Russia. Many suspected a German U-boat was responsible, and there were whispers of conspiracy plots.
What if spieshadbeen involved? Did one of them include the Earl of Mar? What had Viscount Barbury unearthed? If foreign agents had arranged the death of one of England’s most influential men, Rose did not want to contemplate what tragedy they could orchestrate if they managed to free the Imperial Fleet.
“Orkney is part of the Scottish Northern Isles,” Mar explained patiently, drawing Rose’s attention back to him. “You may have heard it mentioned during the war. It is where the British Grand Fleet had its home base. Now it is the watery prison of all the vessels of the German Navy.”
“Oh, there!” Rose clutched her hands together. “To think your little islands will be part of history.”
Mar bristled almost imperceptibly at the wordlittle, just as Rose had intended. She wanted to provoke him into bragging.
“Both Hamarray and Frest are situated in Scapa Flow, where the ships were anchored. Why, you could see Jellicoe’s flagship, theIron Duke, from the window of my manor house.”
Indeed. How fortuitous.
“Is it now frightening to espy the German dreadnoughts instead?” Rose faked another shiver.
Mar shifted in his chair so that he faced her, his knee almost touching hers. “I have not been to Hamarray recently.”
Rose’s heart kicked as she realized that he was preparing to extend an invitation to the very place she’d been searching for.
“You haven’t? But don’t you wish to witness the might of Germany under the control of the Royal Navy?”
Mar smiled. “Thatisa capital idea, my dear. Would you care to join me?”
“I would be absolutely delighted,” Rose said—and this time she had to suppress a shiver. She might have just agreed to accompany a traitor to a remote island that he’d managed to keep away from Society’s wagging tongues—a traitor who might have arranged for the death of his own son.
But Rose had also just solved one of the clues Viscount Barbury had left for her. Perhaps all the answers awaited her in Hamarray.
Frest, Orkney
Visitors to Hamarray had arrived, bringing with them both the return of the Sheep Problem and the Earl of Mar.
Thorfinn Sinclair had heard from the staff at the big house that the cursed laird had actually arrived a few days earlier, ordering his beleaguered servants into a frenzy of preparation. It marked the first time that the toff had brought women of his class to the island instead of his normally boisterous male chums and their latest selection of misfortunate painted ladies.
According to Janet Inkster, whose daughter, Ann, worked at the mansion, Mar had thundered more than once that he wanted to impress one of his guests in particular: Miss Rose Van Etten, an American heiress. Since the laird needed both a new heir and plenty of blunt, it wasclear to all of Hamarray and Frest that he was in the market for a wife—and for that reason, and that reason only, Sinclair pitied the unknown Miss Van Etten.
Sinclair rose from the loamy ground to warily watch the sleek speedboat slice through the waters of Scapa Flow. In sharp contrast to the dark sense of foreboding brewing inside him, it was an unusually fair day for April in the Northern Isles. The good weather was the only reason he’d heard the purr from the pleasure craft. Normally the constant roar of the angry wind would have drowned out the noise of an engine, even a motor as powerful as this one. Of course, any guests of the earl would bring nothing but the finest, mightiest toys with them.
When the roar had first broken through the cry of seabirds and the sound of surf, Sinclair had originally thought the sound came from one of the Royal Navy’s Coastal Motor Boats. During the Great War, the ever-present roar of their engines had never failed to remind him that while other men battled the enemy, he remained pushing his plow on Frest—vital to his family’s survival but useless to the cause.
Now the CMBs were back—not as sentinels protecting the heart of the British Navy but as jailers guarding the decaying might of the enemy. No longer did the CMBs search for the looming masts of mighty ships of the Kaiserliche Marine or even the periscopes of the small but deadly U-boats. They knew exactly where the enemy fleet was. Its rusting hulls and skeleton crews were hostages—sureties to guarantee that accords benefiting the Allies would be reached at the conclusion of the negotiations at Versailles. It was a peace Sinclair hadn’t fought for but one for which he was immensely grateful.
The vessel before him now, though, wasn’t a gray CMB with imposing Lewis guns poking out like the quills of a hedgehog. It was a bonny craft with gleaming wooden sides and the wordsThe Briaremblazoned over the hull. Like anything associated with the earl and his cronies, it was extravagant and showy. Even from this distance, Sinclair could spy the craftsmanship in the pattern made from different types of expensivetimber. It looked nothing like his stepfather’s ancient sloop with its hodgepodge of lumber, some of the “new” planks little better than the rotting pieces they had replaced. But trees didn’t grow often or well on the windswept isles, and none stood on the one that Sinclair called home. Luckily, like his stepfather, he had learned long ago to make do with what he could scrounge.
The female passenger on the motorboat gestured toward the howe on Sinclair’s croft, and the woman operating the vessel swung closer to shore. The craft obeyed its mistress’s command with flawless precision. The women’s focus seemed riveted to the peculiar mound that the old islanders had claimed was the home of an impish trow. Although not a true believer himself, Sinclair had always loved listening to the old tales, especially when his late mother had told them. No one could spin a yarn like her, although Sinclair tried his hardest to recount the old stories to his younger half siblings—just as he would attempt to describe these newcomers to them.
