“And your mum will be all ready to spoil you again,” Mr.Sinclair said.
“That she will be,” Thomas agreed with a real smile.
Just then Rose felt a raindrop hit her cheek, and she involuntarily started at the unexpected sensation. Before the war, she never would have reacted to such a faint touch, but now ... but now she felt a flutter of nervousness flare to life.
Mr.Sinclair glanced up toward the sky. “We’d better get moving if we don’t want to get caught in the storm.”
“You could stay here,” Young Thomas said. “Uncle wouldn’t mind opening his house up to Miss Van Etten.”
“No need to keep you and your uncle from the mill. We should have time to get to Widow Flett’s before it hits us in earnest,” Mr.Sinclair said as he raised a parting hand toward the Craigies and gestured with his other for her to follow.
“A relative of yours?” Rose asked as she caught up to Mr.Sinclair and forced aside her jumpiness.
“Of my stepfather, aye. Mrs.Flett was the wife of his late brother. Her granddaughter, Astrid, who lives with her, is near to my age and is like a cousin to me. I’m almost afraid to introduce you.”
“Why ever so?”
“Because I fear the two of you will join forces to provoke me, and I’ll never get another moment’s peace.” Mr.Sinclair faked a dramatic shudder that triggered a laugh from Rose that reached all the way down into her belly.
“It sounds like she and I will get along famously.”
She appreciated how Mr.Sinclair didn’t slacken his pace like most men did, as if shewantedto prance along in a mincing walk.
When they approached a handful of stone buildings, an ominous thump-thump-thump filled the air. The wind had picked up, and the light had grown thinner and grayer. It seemed like the perfect setting for a ghost story, but Rose didn’t shiver at the chill racing through her. No, she welcomed it. Something about the haunting beauty of Frest seemed to paradoxically fill her.
“The byre door has blown off its hinges again.” Mr.Sinclair sighed and strode over to the small stone shed, which had a thatched roof and a delightfully ramshackle appearance. A heavy wooden door smacked against the outer wall, as it hung attached only at the bottom.
Curious, Rose followed Mr.Sinclair. He stopped in front of the structure. Grabbing the massive, heavy wood, he lifted it up and onto the hinges as if it were nothing but papier-mâché. The bulge of his muscles under his wool sweater was the only sign of the effort he made.
As Mr.Sinclair tested his work, swinging the door back and forth, Rose noticed a curious tool peeking out. Triangular in shape, it had a wicked curved blade on the end of it.
“What in thunderation is that?” Rose jabbed her thumb in the direction of the murderous-looking implement.
Seemingly satisfied by his handiwork with the door, Mr.Sinclair peered over her shoulder. He didn’t touch her, but he’d moved so close she could feel the heat rising off his body. He smelled like sweat and dirt—a combination that really shouldn’t entice her ... but it did.
“It’s a scythe,” Mr.Sinclair announced.
“Huh?” She had completely forgotten that she’d even asked a question, let alone what it was.
“We use it to reap the bere and the oats,” Mr.Sinclair continued.
“That?” Rose refocused her attention on the piece of farming equipment. Leaning closer, she examined it. “Isn’t it cumbersome?”
“Much more efficient than the old heuk, which is what we call a sickle here on Orkney. That was just a curved blade held in the hand.”
“Isn’t there a machine that will accomplish the task?” Rose stepped back. She vaguely recalled seeing all sorts of mechanized monstrosities on the farms she’d spotted from her family’s private railcar, especially when she’d traveled through the Midwest en route to Santa Monica, California. “How much efficiency is lost doing it by hand?”
“Much,” Mr.Sinclair agreed. “There are threshers and such that would assist with the harvest. They have them on Mainland, Orkney,and some of the other isles, but not on Frest. The earl and the lairds before him did not see a need for such an investment when the crofters could just do it themselves.”
Rose thought about Young Thomas, Ann Inkster, and Mr.Sinclair himself and the many jobs that they took on to support their families. She couldn’t recall one thing that she’d done for others until she’d climbed behind the wheel of an ambulance. There she’d found herself helpless to stop the suffering. It had been like pressing a small bandage against a hemorrhage. But here ... here she had some means to make an actual difference. “Why don’t you write me a list of the modernizations you think would be useful for Frest, and I’ll take a look over it with you. I probably won’t know a jot about any of them, but you can explain their value to me.”
Mr.Sinclair glanced at her, his expression slightly guarded. “Why are you being so generous?”
“I don’t know,” Rose said honestly. “Maybe it is from listening to my father conduct business all these years. If this were a factory, it would only make sense to update the machinery. If I’m to be the laird, it seems like it is my duty.”
“You and your father are close?” Mr.Sinclair asked.
His question pricked a long-buried emotion as old memories of hiding in her father’s office flooded back. How many times had she wished he’d notice her and pull her into his lap with a chuckle? When his study was empty, she would crawl into his chair and breathe in the scent of his cigar smoke and dream of him talking to her with the same attention he’d shown his business associates.
