“You’re much too good for the likes of Miss Van Etten, Sinclair. When the right lass comes along, you’ll make a fine husband. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Astrid gently touched his upper arm.
“I suppose I’d be a sight better spouse than a finman,” Sinclair agreed as he hoisted his tools and headed with Astrid toward the stone house he’d helped his stepfather build.
“You’re the catch of the Northern Isles!” Astrid squeezed his arm.
He cocked his head to the side, wishing she’d stop this nonsense when they both knew the truth. His frustration made him speak a little more harshly than he’d intended. “The coward of the Northern Isles, more like.”
“No one blames you for not going to war,” Astrid said. “There wasn’t anyone to care for the croft and your half siblings after Uncle Sigurd had his stroke. The bairns would have starved—along with some of the others on Frest whose menfolk went off to fight.”
And didn’t come back.But Astrid had no need to say the words that every islander felt too keenly.
“You kept this island alive and even prospering these last few years,” Astrid told him earnestly. “There’s honor in that too.”
A vision of Widow Craigie flashed before Sinclair, her dark eyes condemning as he brought her share of the proceeds after his monthly twilight trip to Kirkwall. She’d lost her eldest son in the Battle of the Somme, her youngest at the Dardanelles, and the middle at Verdun, and her husband had died on a merchant marine vessel sunk by a U-boat.
But he, the half-English bastard of the laird, had avoided all duty to country and had skirted the seemingly endless bloodshed.
“You could not have joined the infantry or signed up for the navy, Sinclair.” Astrid tugged on his forearm now, as if trying to shake him into believing her words. And this last, at least, was true. Blind in one eye, he was ill suited as either soldier or sailor.
“Everyone knows Reggie wanted me as his batman.”
Astrid made a dismissive gesture with her free hand, her fingers seeming to sweep along the gentle grassy slope of the island. “As much affection as I had for Reggie, you were andaremeant for more than being a glorified valet to a viscount.”
“It was a way I could have seen action.” Sinclair rubbed his thumb along his scar again as he thought of his half brother’s betrayed hurt the day that Sinclair had refused to follow Reggie to war. As boys, the two of them had been inseparable ... even after Sinclair and his mother had fled from Muckle Skaill and the Earl of Mar. The cliffs and sea caves of Hamarray had been their kingdom to rule. But their relationship had already fractured the day Sinclair had caught Reggie, a notorious rake, kissing Astrid.
“That would have been a decision that a boy would make—to run off toward a facade of glory when he was sorely needed at home.” Astrid said the words that Sinclair knew to be true, but that didn’t do anything to assuage his feelings of cowardice.
“Reggie was wrong to feel slighted when you rejected his offer to be his batman,” Astrid continued, “and it was even worse of him tocomplain to the islanders. It was an action the earl would have taken. Reggie was normally better than that. In time, if he had lived, he would have apologized. I know it. I sensed his guilt when he briefly returned to Hamarray.”
But even if Reggie had rarely acted like the earl, he had been the man’s son ... and so was Sinclair. Even if the old sod had never acknowledged Sinclair, the islanders never forgot his parentage. His mother might have been an island lass, but he was the living, breathing evidence of the earl’s manipulation of the island and its people for his own pleasure. Sinclair was, and always would be, an interloper to this land of pastures, sea, and stone—a reminder of how foreign lairds had laid claim to the land that should be the crofters’ by right.
“I am glad you see it that way, Astrid, but I fear you’re in the minority.”
“If that’s so, then why have all the islanders chosen you to be their representative to talk to the earl?” Astrid halted their progress and released him so she could cross both arms over her chest.
Sinclair grunted and raised the hand not holding his tools. “I make a good lamb to slaughter.”
“I don’t see why you fail to see your importance to Frest.” Astrid’s expression became mulish. Normally, she appeared this way when trying to track down a suitable site for her rather profitable enterprise.
“I just happen to be one of the few available, able-bodied men around,” Sinclair pointed out. “I am also the least likely to be missed if Mar tosses me into Scapa Flow when I ask him to extend our prewar agreement to keep sheep on his old hunting grounds on Hamarray.”
“Thorfinn Sinclair—” Astrid began, but her obvious lecture was cut short by the appearance of Sinclair’s half siblings—all six of them.
Freya, with her long blonde braid bobbing behind her, reached them first. The cold had pinkened her cheeks, making her smattering of freckles stand out even more than usual.
“Is it true?” She tried to walk like a lady, but she couldn’t help but bounce. “Mr.Craigie said that the heiress has arrived! Is she as pretty as a fae mermaid? What was she wearing?”
“Did her boat really skim through the water like a porpoise?” Twelve-year-old Hannah was next. Her wild red hair had entirely escaped her plait, and it bounced carefree about her cherubic face. “What did it look like? Do you think I’ll get to see it?”
“Is she like a fairy princess?” Mary, the ten-year-old, asked.
Her twin sister, Barbara, immediately interjected, “No, silly. Not if she’s like a mermaid.”
“Will the sheep have to leave their home now that the Earl of Mar is back?” Margaret, the serious one at age eight, stared up at Sinclair in concern. She had the softest heart and, unfortunately, tended to listen the most to the discussion the crofters had around her father’s table, which led to endless worries.
“I want to go in a fast boat,” Alexander, the baby of the family at six, announced as he took up the rear.
The stream of questions and observations didn’t end as Sinclair’s half siblings gathered around him. They always greeted him like this—a gaggle of excitement and curiosity. He bent down to embrace them and soon found himself in the middle of a mass of skinny limbs, constant jostling, and boundless inquiries.
