“So you really haven’t heard of her?” Rose pulled out a cigarette and jabbed it in his direction.
“Nay. Morris is not a common surname in Orkney, and like I’ve said, Tamsin is Welsh—not Scots or Norse.”
“Maybe we don’t need her.” Rose flipped the roll of tobacco between her fingers. “We know where the key fits now.”
“But I haven’t seen that box since before the war. It could be anywhere. What exactly did my brother say?”
Rose stopped moving for a second, and then she leaned back. Sighing, she stared up at the circle of daylight.
“If it is too hard ...,” he said softly, not knowing what memories threatened her. He did not want her to suffer like she had that night in Fornhowe.
“No. It’s necessary,” she said softly, “and I don’t know for sure if it will trigger my shell shock. I can think about the war, but I try notto concentrate too hard ... to put myself back there in the moment. Would ... would you mind holding my hand, being my anchor to the present?”
Her bravery nearly undid Sinclair, as did her unspoken trust. He tenderly cradled her right hand between both of his and sat there silently as she allowed herself to drift into the past. Her pupils seemed to dilate ever so slightly, and her fingers shook. Sinclair ached thinking of the images she saw—images that included the death of his best friend and older brother.
“He told me to come here, to Hamarray Isle. That you’d know what to do. And he mentioned a name. I could make outTamclearly but not the rest of the first word. Then he said a surname that started with Mor or maybe even Nor. He ... he was hard to understand by then.”
Pushing away the clawing emotions at why his brother’s voice would have been garbled, Sinclair instead focused on the message Reggie had been trying so desperately to send to him.Tam. Mor. Tam. Nor.
The screech of a guillemot interrupted his thoughts. Aguillemot. Cousin to the puffin.
Realization traveled through Sinclair with such force that his own limbs started to shake. It seemed as if his body could no longer contain the revelations pummeling him, one after another. “I know where he hid the metal box we used as boys.”
“Where? How?” Rose excitedly threw her arms around him. Although they were slender, there was no denying their strength as she squeezed him.
“In another sea cave—this one in the middle of a gap between the cliffs. The only way to reach it is to climb down from the headlands. It was one of our favorites because it was a roosting place for puffins.” Old memories crowded alongside new, urgent fears. Sinclair knew where his brother must have secreted his notes on the spy ring, but what would those records reveal? And what would their contents do to the strongly woven social fabric of Frest? Would it cause it all to fray?
“Puffins? The bird you just mentioned. The one you said I’d like.”
“Aye. The ones I said were called tammie norries by us Orcadians.”
The gold flecks in Rose’s topaz eyes deepened as she realized why he was so certain as to where his brother had hidden the old steel box. “It wasn’t Tamsin Morris after all. It wasn’t even a woman.”
“Nay. Just a comical little auk with bright-orange feet and an even more colorful bill.”
“A bird. I’ve been searching for abirdthis whole time. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of Astrid’s naturalists.”
“I’m glad you came looking, lass.” Sinclair cupped her cheeks, the feel of her soft skin against his palms a steadying balm against all the feelings battering him. She was real and warm and solid.
“So am I.”
Their gazes held. Despite everything that had just transpired, the heat between them immediately began to swirl. But this wasn’t the time to get lost in the flames. And mayhap the interruption was for the best. Rose had a way of setting every fiber of him alight, and Sinclair didn’t want to be left as a pile of cinders when she inevitably departed Orkney and returned to her own glittering world.
His stepda was right about one thing—in this relationship Sinclairwasthe mere mortal. And he needed to keep all his wits about him if he and Rose were to defeat a group of violent traitors intent on reigniting the Great War.
Rose’s foot slipped, sending a pebble skittering over the edge of a narrow path and down into the ravine below. Her body tensed as her heart slammed uncomfortably against her chest. In front of her, Thorfinn carefully pivoted, concern etched into his face. “I can go myself. We don’t need the two of us to retrieve the box.”
Resolutely, Rose pushed back her nervousness and shook her head as she clutched one of the ragged outcroppings of rock as she descended. “I’ve spent months searching and crossed an ocean twice. I’m not giving up when I’m this close.”
“I promise I won’t open it. I’ll leave that honor to you.” Thorfinn stood as boldly as if he were standing in the middle of a flat plain instead of on a tiny sliver of rock barely large enough to hold his two feet. He reminded her of the bighorn sheep she’d seen out West that could gracefully bound up or down any sheer cliff at will. Perhaps the mild-mannered crofter had more adventurer in him than either of them had realized. He was clearly at home on these outcroppings, the wind whipping around him sending blond tufts of his hair flying.
“I have never backed down from a challenge, and I refuse to allow some jagged old sandstone to intimidate me.”
“Keep minding your step, though,” Thorfinn warned. “It only gets trickier from here.”
Delightful.
He slowly moved forward, showing Rose how to place each foot. She concentrated on the rocky ledge, wishing she could instead take in the stunning views. They were situated in the center of a ragged gash between the cliffs. Before them, the turquoise-blue sea beckoned, stretching far into the horizon. Water rushed through the narrow channel below, echoing off the walls. Waves crashed with such violence that the spray reached Rose and Thorfinn and doused both sides of the split in the rocks. Delicate flowers grew in the sandstone crevices, their pink buds dancing in the breeze. The ever-present seabirds swooped to a perch on the rocks and then darted back out into the air.
