Rose held herself completely still as she stared at the piece of metal hanging against Thorfinn’s chest. She wanted so badly to reveal all to Thorfinn—to have every secret between them demolished. But she could not give in to her own wants. She had to know in both her heart and her brain that she was making the right decision. This was the time for logic, not for emotion.
“What secret?”
“The earl never approved of my friendship with Reggie, but my brother—he never cared. Reggie was the sort that once he’d made up his mind, there was no swaying him. He decided he liked me when he was six and I was four, and that was that, in his view. He taught me to write—shared all his books with me—and we’d exchange messages by slipping them into a metal box he kept in his room. We locked it so his Lordship couldn’t accidently stumble upon our correspondence.”
Unlocks. Notes. Give. Him.Finally those long-ago words made a semblance of sense to Rose. Tears sprang to Rose’s eyes. Unable to contain the powerful relief pumping through her, Rose let the drops freely fall and roll down her cheeks. Thorfinn wasn’t the spy. He was the person she’d been sent by Reggie to find.
“You’rehim!” Rose grabbed both of Thorfinn’s hands with hers and squeezed. “You really arehim.”
“Him who?”
Rose pressed her fingers even harder against Thorfinn’s knuckles. “I wasn’t your brother’s paramour. I was his ambulance driver on the night he died.”
Reggie’sambulance driver?
The words exploded through Sinclair as he sat dumbly in the seat. At the revelation, his body went curiously limp yet rigid at the same time, as if it could no longer withstand the emotions clobbering him. The grief that always seemed just below the surface when it came to Reggie bubbled up and over until it threatened once again to swamp him. With that came fresh slices of new pain ... and old guilt. Somehow Rose had been there for his brother when Sinclair himself had not. She’d dodged shells to bring Reggie to safety while Sinclair had been hundreds of miles away pushing a plow in the peace of Orkney.
Had Rose been with Reggie in those final moments? Did she know why he had suddenly returned to France despite resigning his commission from the British Army? How much had his brother suffered in the end? It was the last unknown that had plagued Sinclair the worst ... and the one he was most afraid to find out.
“I have been looking for you since I arrived on Hamarray, and here you were, beside me all the time!” Rose gripped his upper arms now. Through his shock and the roar of his own emotions, he noticed that tears glistened in her eyes. She hadn’t seemed this vulnerable even after her episode of shell shock when she’d been trapped in Fornhowe.
“I have a message from the viscount—two, actually.” The words tumbled from Rose’s mouth before Sinclair could gather his own thoughts enough to form a single question. Her next sentence only caused his mind to whirl even more as new emotions piled upon the already heavy tumult.
“First, Viscount Barbury wanted me to say that he was sorry. I believe now that he meant for how he reacted after you, for good cause, declined to be his batman.”
The emotion that splintered through Sinclair was so raw that he could scarce identify it. Reggie had rarely allowed himself to acknowledge his regrets even to himself and never apologized. For Reggie to make such a statement ... grief and pain choked, sliced, and pulled atSinclair with such force he felt as if he were being drawn and quartered by them.
Yet before he could begin to process the flurry of frenetic feelings, Rose spoke again, as if he would vanish if she could not deliver Reggie’s message quickly enough. “Second, your brother wanted you to show me where he’d hidden notes on a spy ring that he claimed to have discovered.”
“Aspy ring? Here on Hamarray or Frest?” The theatrical absurdity of Rose’s claim was so at odds with the remorse and agony clawing through his insides that Sinclair almost barked out a humorlessly bitter laugh. First, she was telling him that Reggie had apologized, and now that his brother had been hunting down German agents. None of this was making sense. None of it.
“I don’t know who the spies are, where they’re located, or how far they’ve infiltrated the American and British governments, although I suspect that there may be foreign agents connected with Hamarray and Frest,” Rose said.
Her words would have struck more fear into Sinclair if he weren’t already inundated with conflicting emotions ... or if he hadn’t known Reggie’s propensity for making up a reality that suited him. After Reggie’s capture when he’d been sent home to convalesce, perhaps his brother had been so desperate to still participate that he’d drummed up the idea of espionage. Then Reggie would have had a way to claim the honor that had always seemed out of reach to him. Growing up as Mar’s son and subconsciously knowing how much evil could be hidden away would make anyone given to conspiracy theories.
“I have the key that the viscount entrusted into my care,” Rose continued. “Barbury told me to give it to you and that you’d know where to find his reports about the espionage.”
“Me?” Sinclair started to reach for Reggie’s key again but belatedly realized that it rested against Rose’s breasts. Awkwardly, he dropped hishand to his lap. “Reggie didn’t confide any of this to me. Are you sure he was in his right mind at the end? What exactly did he say?”
It occurred to Sinclair with an almost physical strike that perhaps Reggie had actually been referring to the earl’s secret life of debauchery. Maybe impending death had finally forced his brother to accept the painful truths that he’d always swept aside.
Rose lifted the chain holding the key from her neck and laid it in his hand. Sinclair automatically folded his fingers around the warm metal, wishing the message accompanying his brother’s parting gift were as solid. His hands shaking, he dropped the chain over his neck, and the two keys clanked together.
At the sound, Rose expelled a sigh, as if a heavy pack had been lifted from her back. When she spoke, her voice was tired, so very tired. “I wondered myself whether your brother had been hallucinating, but there was such conviction in his voice. There’s also the fact I’ve apparently been ambushed, twice.”
“You’ve been attacked?” Horror pulverized Sinclair’s other emotions, and his muscles froze in preparation to defend against an unseen enemy. Lightly, he grabbed Rose’s shoulders, instinctually scanning her body for scars. “Were you hurt?”
Sinclair’s alarm only grew with each detail she described about the trap laid for her in Florida and the men Myrtle had spotted right after theexplosionthat had evidently caused the cave-in at Fornhowe. He wanted to gather Rose into his arms as he would one of the bairns and hold her there, keeping her safe and the world’s peril at bay. But it wasn’t in Rose’s nature to be cosseted. She wasn’t seeking protection or even comfort but assistance with her mission—a mission that had now become his.
He would not allow spies to threaten Rose orhispeople. He hadknownthe cave-in at Fornhowe had been strange, and he should have inspected the damage further. He would not be so careless again. Now that he knew danger had found its way to Frest, he would root it out.If it turned out that one of the islanders was connected ... well, he did not want to consider that discovery ... but if a crofter was a traitor, Sinclair would do his duty to protect the peace, no matter how much it would destroy him. He and Rose would need to discover concrete evidence of a spy ring. He, like her, had little faith in the authorities and knew their prejudices against his people.
“Are you certain that Barbury told you nothing—not even cryptically?” Rose asked when she finished her explanation.
“We didn’t even write to each other, lass.” The tragedy of that still tore at him. Over the past year he’d learned to deal with the gnawing, guilty ache, but now he had new reasons to regret their estrangement. “What else did Reggie mention?”
“I think he mentioned someone named Tamsin Morris.” Rose sighed and started digging through her satchel, which she’d found on the seat between them.
“Who?” Sinclair vaguely recalled her inquiring about that name when she’d first come to Orkney.
