“Yes.”
“Will you show me the way?”
“Yes, of course. When?” a delighted Duncan said.
“As soon as this smokie is gone.”
* * *
A short while later, Caitrin and Duncan—she half-expected him to scamper, barking in mad circles around her, and chase after a stick—climbed Heaval and sat on its peak. To their left, the Minch glittered under a vaulting sky; below, the tiny island of Vatersay politely pointed the way south; and to her right the Atlantic Ocean rippled its muscular indifference to the world. She scanned the waters through her binoculars. “What are the islands?”
“That’s Vatersay. Sandary, Pabbay, and Mingulay are beyond it,” Duncan said, pointing to the islands. “Lady Gordon Cathcart owns all this, and she’s never even been here.”
Caitrin was surprised at the anger in his voice and patted his hand. Duncan plucked a stem of grass and scissored it between his teeth. “There was a big storm, and my father’s boat was wrecked on Mingulay. But there was no one there to help him because they had all been cleared off the island. Lady Gordon Cathcart has a magnificent country estate in England.”
“Things will change, Duncan. After this war, we’re going to make it different for people like us.”
Through the binoculars, she scanned from the islands across to the Minch. And stopped. “After—”
“After what?”
A shock flashed through her. There was the fishing boat. It was just a few miles offshore, cutting through the reflected glare and heading for Castlebay. They were coming to her. She saw something else. Off to her right a bank of dark clouds was growing. A late autumn storm would hit Castlebay about the same time the fishing boat anchored.
“After what?” Duncan repeated.
“Let’s go, Duncan. Now.” She was on her feet and running, half-tumbling down the hill, too fast for Duncan to keep up.
27
The storm formed high in the Arctic and swept over Iceland to slow and scatter a homeward-bound convoy in the Western Approaches. As a saving grace, it also made the predatory U-boats ineffective by driving them deeper underwater. It howled down onto the Outer Hebrides, pivoted left at the southern islands, and swung toward Castlebay. The rain sluiced in horizontally, obliterating all shape and color, hissed across the quayside, and hammered against the MacNeils’ windows.
In the sitting room, Caitrin lowered her binoculars because it was impossible to see anything through the rain-smeared glass. But she knew they were out there, moored off the castle; there was just enough time before the storm struck to read the fishing boat’s name: Island Star. Only a few hundred yards across the bay separated her from them, but it might as well have been a million miles.
“Tea?” Barbara entered with a tea tray and set it down on a table in front of the sofa. “I have homemade shortbread, marmalade, and Dundee cake too.”
“Oh, yes, please,” Caitrin said as she sat with Barbara.
“Being so isolated out here, and with this war rationing, it’s getting harder to enjoy life’s little luxuries. Soon almonds and sultanas are going to be impossible to find,” Barbara said, and added with a conspiratorial smile, “but we islanders do manage to look after each other. There are always unexpected little miracles.”
Caitrin bit into a piece of cake. “This is delicious.”
“Dundee cake was supposedly first made by Keiller, the marmalade company, for Mary, Queen of Scots, because she did not like glacé cherries in her cake.”
“A fussy eater was our Mary.”
“They do say she was a girl known to lose her head over the silliest of things,” Barbara said and grinned.
Caitrin laughed.
“It’s good to see you laugh,” Barbara said. “I have been a little concerned about you.”
Caitrin’s smile faded. “I wondered when you’d ask why I’m here this late in the year.”
“As I was going to St. Ives.”
“What?” Caitrin was puzzled, then understood. “As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Our three lusty musketeers.”
“Yes. Well done. I do not inquire about their matrimonial status, although they are not the Casanovas they imagine themselves to be, especially your brother Dafydd. He is very much smitten by his young lady, Sandra. And she with him. I’m sure you’ll get to meet her soon.”
“I hope so, and before the wedding.”
“However”—Barbara sipped her tea and looked over the rim of her cup at Caitrin—“if I were the inquiring kind, I would say your presence in Castlebay probably has something to do with the strange fishing boat moored in the harbor. The Island Star.”
“And you would be right.”
“Hmm.” Barbara raised an eyebrow. “Try the shortbread.”
“The men on the boat took something very valuable, and I intend to get it back.”
“Something of yours?”
“No, something of ours, the whole country.”
“Oh, that is serious. You’re doing it all alone?”
“Yes, so far.”
“The island’s radio is broken, and we sent the pigeons with messages for a boat to bring new valves. It will take a while before we’re in touch with the mainland.”
