Page 23 of Midnight on the Scottish Shore

23

Wednesday, December 31, 1941

Although Cilla had spent most of 1941 despising solitude, now she relished being alone as her bicycle sped down the slope of Dunnet Head.

Brilliant pinks and oranges from the setting sun edged the clouds and cast opalescent light across the sky.

Alone. Outside. And on her way to a party.

Cilla whooped, disturbing a trio of birds, and she laughed.

Over the years, she’d treasured gifts from family and friends, but none had delighted her like the gift from Commander Yardley on Christmas Day.

A key to the lighthouse.

The gift of freedom. The gift of trust.

No longer did Imogene or Gwen need to accompany her outside the lighthouse or on trips into town. Soon after, Cilla had taken the bus into Thurso to shop and meet townspeople, all by herself.

One of the reasons for the gift was so Cilla could attend Free Caledonia meetings and gather realistic details for her reports. First, she’d asked Lachlan for permission, which he’d granted, provided none of those details pointed to real people in the group.

But now—the best part of the gift—a party, Cilla’s first in almost a year.

Imogene and Gwen were attending a New Year’s Eve dance at the RAF field in Wick, but Cilla had a better invitation, to the Mackenzie home for Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year.

Mrs. Mackenzie had said Hogmanay involved food, music, and dancing, but all Cilla heard was “party.” People would be there, lots of people, and she pedaled even faster.

She arrived at Creag na Mara out of breath but elated.

Mrs. Mackenzie greeted her at the door wearing an ankle-length tartan skirt, a white blouse, and a tartan sash over one shoulder. “Welcome, Cilla. We’re glad you came.”

“Thank you for inviting me.” Cilla set down her suitcase and unbuttoned her overcoat.

The other day she had felt so elegant when she spent eleven clothing ration coupons—one-sixth of her yearly allotment—on a new dress in Thurso. The peacock-blue wool gabardine draped beautifully on the surplice bodice, mirrored with a draping effect on the skirt—but the skirt fell only to her knees, apparently too informal for the occasion.

She gave her hostess an apologetic look. “I’m afraid I’m underdressed, but this is my best dress.”

“Och, you’re bonny. What a becoming color on you.” Mrs. Mackenzie swept her arm to the stairs. “Let me show you to your room. I’m glad you brought a bag. Hogmanay lasts into the wee hours.”

Cilla followed her hostess upstairs with her suitcase and coat.

At the top of the stairs, Lachlan stood in a black jacket and a kilt. She hadn’t seen him in his kilt since that night on the beach, but this time he wore a mild smile rather than a murderous scowl.

Cilla smirked. “I see Lachlan is wearing his best dress too.”

Mrs. Mackenzie laughed. “Wheesht. Never call a kilt a dress.”

Cilla batted her eyes in mock na?veté. “A skirt?”

Mrs. Mackenzie sent a fond smile over her shoulder. “I’m glad Lachlan has someone to tease him.”

Lachlan thumped his chest with a fist. “You want your son submitted to torture?”

“Aye, if it makes you smile.”

Cilla passed Lachlan—who was indeed smiling. A fluttering feeling lifted her chest, as if dozens of seabirds had roused from the cliffs.

“Right this way, Cilla.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She hurried after her hostess.

“You’ll be in here, sharing with Irene, if you dinnae mind. She’s Arthur’s girlfriend.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Cilla entered a cozy room with two beds, carved wooden furniture, and rugs on the flagstone floor.

“I’m very glad you came.” Mrs. Mackenzie pulled the drapes closed on the darkening sky. “I’m sure it’s difficult spending holidays far from home and kin.”

Cilla’s throat clenched. “Ja.”

Mrs. Mackenzie turned on a lamp on the dressing table, illuminating the silver threads in her curled and coiled hair. “Do you have any way to write home?”

“Nee.” She shook her head. Why was she sliding into Dutch?

“Far from your boyfriend too.” Mrs. Mackenzie’s tone soothed.

But her words confused. Cilla didn’t have a boyfriend. But hadn’t Lachlan asked her to mention a boyfriend in the Netherlands to prevent parental matchmaking? She’d never had the opportunity—but perhaps Lachlan had.

“Uh, yes.” Cilla whirled around, set her suitcase on a bed, and opened it. Lying to the person who had been kindest to her hurt most of all.

“What’s his name? What’s he like?”

“His name is ... Dirk.” Although they’d never stepped out, she could picture his face, recall his laugh. “He was funny, brave—he was in the resistance.”

“Was?”

Cilla had slipped, and she sucked in a breath. She grabbed the red suit she’d wear tomorrow and hung it in the wardrobe. “I haven’t seen him in almost a year, and we hadn’t dated long. I’m fine. I really am.”

Mrs. Mackenzie murmured in sympathy.

Cilla whirled around, spread her arms wide, and grinned. “I came here for a party. Farewell, 1941. Welcome, 1942. May you treat us far better than your predecessor did.”

Mrs. Mackenzie chuckled and headed for the door. “I’ll leave you to freshen up. The guests will be arriving around five o’clock. Come down whenever you fancy.”

“Thank you.” One glance in the mirror, and Cilla startled. Lipstick worn off, hair a tangled mess from riding in the wind. Maybe her appearance was what had amused Lachlan.

After she fixed her hair and makeup, Cilla headed downstairs. Voices rose from the drawing room. The sofas and upholstered chairs had been exiled to the perimeter of the room, the other furniture had been removed, and three large trestle tables filled the center.

Lachlan sat at a table with a dark-haired naval officer and a brunette in a soft pink evening gown.

All three stood, and Lachlan swept his arm toward her. “Cilla, please meet my friends, Lt. Arthur Goodwin and Irene Drever. Arthur and Irene, this is Cilla van der Zee, the apprentice lightkeeper at Dunnet Head.”

Cilla shook hands with Irene, a pretty little thing with huge blue eyes in her heart-shaped face, then with Arthur. “I’m glad to meet you. Lachlan has much good to say about you.”

“Is that so?” Arthur said in an English accent, and dark brown eyes narrowed at Lachlan. “Yet he hasn’t mentioned one word of you. Why is that, Lachlan?”

Bright pink stained Lachlan’s cheeks. Of course he hadn’t mentioned the double agent he was working with.

Cilla clucked her tongue with a playful smile. “You’re trying to matchmake for poor lonely Lachlan, yes?”

“Why, yes.” Arthur stood about two inches shorter than Cilla and carried himself with absolute confidence.

Cilla sat on a wooden bench to signal the others to return to their seats, and she gave Arthur and Irene a mischievous lift of her eyebrows. “If he’d mentioned me, he might have exposed himself to teasing. Since I have a boyfriend in the Netherlands, he would have suffered teasing for nothing. And he hates teasing, calls it pure torture. Whatever you do, do not tease this man. He simply isn’t strong enough.”

Lachlan leaned arms on the table, each strong enough to break one of Cilla’s like a twig, and he grumbled, but with a flicker of a smile.

“I say.” Arthur nudged his girlfriend with his shoulder. “What a shame she has a boyfriend. She seems the right sort for our Lachlan.”

Irene wagged her head. “But do we know the right sort, Arthur? We’ve failed miserably.”

More grumbling from Lachlan. “Aye, you have.”

Cilla laughed and whacked his arm lightly. “If that’s how you speak to women, the failure is yours, not theirs. Is that how you speak to Irene, Arthur?”

“To Irene? Never.” Arthur embraced her around her waist. “She’s the sun in my northern winter, the sugar in my tea, the—”

“The blather in my ear.” Irene hefted out a sigh.

Oh, Cilla liked them. “How did you meet?”

“We met in March.” A sweetness radiated from Irene’s face. “He was a customer at my parents’ café in Kirkwall. He wouldnae stop pestering me for a date.”

“Why would I? I knew in an instant she was the one for me.”

Cilla smirked at Irene. “I gather you weren’t so easily convinced.”

Irene directed her blue eyes to the beams in the ceiling, then across the table to Cilla, dreamy yet serious. “After the first date, I could tell he was a man of fine character, a man who knew who he was and what he wanted in life. Then I knew what I wanted in life.”

“That’s ... lovely.” Cilla had always fallen for men with many pretty words but little else to say for themselves. Now a man loomed to her side, hovered, filled her perception. A man of few words—and often the wrong words—but of genuine kindness and fine character.

With a billowing, sinking, brightening, darkening certainty, she knew what she wanted in life.

And could never have.

“Och, the Bains are here.” Lachlan stood from the table and strode to the drawing room door, where he greeted a couple with four sandy-haired children, all dressed in a tartan of green and blue with black stripes. Lachlan shook hands with a boy of about twelve, bowed to twin girls of about eight, who giggled and curtsied, and swung a little boy up onto his hip. “Come, young Douglas, shall we see where my mother hid the mutton pie?”

“Och aye!”

Lachlan turned back to Cilla and his friends with a relaxed smile. “Dinner awaits. Shall we?”

“Och aye,” Cilla said.

The dining room table was heaped with pies and more. Mrs. Mackenzie stood chatting with an elderly couple Cilla recognized from church, and Mr. Mackenzie talked to a curly-haired blonde and two sons grown into their height but not their comfort with that height.

“Steak pie is traditional for Hogmanay,” Lachlan said. “But with the war on, we’ll be having mutton and potato.”

Mrs. Mackenzie beckoned to Cilla, introduced her to Mr. and Mrs. Fraser, then encouraged her to serve herself—as many of the others were doing.

Cilla took a plate and filled it with savory-smelling food. Across from her, Lachlan took careful instructions from young Douglas about what to put on the boy’s plate.

She stifled a groan. Why did he have to be good with children too?

By the time she finished, several other families had arrived, and the little ones chased each other around. Such a close community, so caring with each other.

Her feet froze in the doorway to the drawing room. What would happen when MI5 committed fake sabotage on Burns Night? Would these people look on each other with suspicion and fear? Would they turn on each other as some did in the Netherlands?

The plan gleamed on paper, but the light of community revealed ugly blemishes.

“Come on, lassie.” Lachlan’s deep voice rumbled behind her. “You’re standing between a hungry wee lad and his food.”

Little Douglas hunched his shoulders and gave her a shy smile.

She forced out a chuckle, entered the room, and sat at a table. Arthur and Irene joined her, as did Lachlan after he filled his own plate.

Irene asked Cilla her story, Cilla told it, and soon she was chatting with them about the differences between life in Amsterdam, London, and the far north of Scotland.

How long had it been since she’d freely talked and laughed with people her age? Only in this home, at Creag na Mara, did she feel truly like herself.

Yet she’d omitted crucial details from her story, about who she was and her work at Dunnet Head. Even now, she wasn’t truly herself. Would she ever be again?

Irene grinned at her. “You should visit me in Kirkwall. I could show you the beauties of Ork—oh, I cannae. You cannae visit—security, you know.”

“I know,” Cilla said. “Someday. When this is over.”

Mr. Mackenzie stood behind Lachlan and leaned over. “Your mother wants the room cleared for dancing.”

All around them, ladies collected plates and silverware, so Cilla did likewise. She and Irene carried stacks to the kitchen, where two older women instructed them to dry whilst they washed.

After they finished the dishes, the trestle tables had disappeared from the drawing room and the benches now lined the walls. Lachlan and his father held bagpipes under their arms, and a loud, discordant whine emitted from the pipes over their shoulders.

Cilla slid onto a bench beside Irene. “This will be fun. I’ve always liked the bagpipes. I didn’t know Lachlan played.”

“I didnae either,” Irene said. “But he’d never toot his own horn.”

“He’s tooting those pipes though,” Arthur said with a lopsided grin.

The droning of the two sets of pipes merged into one, Mr. Mackenzie tapped his foot a few times, and the men launched into a jaunty tune. Mr. Mackenzie’s fingers flew and fluttered, whilst Lachlan’s moved slowly, playing the harmony, most likely.

The music filled the air, thrumming through Cilla’s chest.

“Rhona!” Mrs. Fraser nudged Mrs. Mackenzie, and everyone applauded.

With a demure smile, Mrs. Mackenzie went to the center of the room and hitched up her skirts on one side. She curved her free arm up in the air and danced, light on her feet, hopping, circling, pointing one foot to the side, to just below her knee, front and back and front again.

How fun it looked, and Cilla’s feet tapped the floor in mimicry.

The tune finished in a long drone, and Mrs. Mackenzie smoothed her skirts back in place and laughed. “I’m not as quick as I used to be.”

From the glow in her husband’s eyes, he found her as lovely as the day they’d met—if not more so.

Cilla’s heart squeezed from the beauty of a longstanding love.

“Come, come.” Mrs. Mackenzie tugged the hands of two younger women, who came to the center of the room and performed a similar dance, with more height and bounce but no less joy.

Then came a trio of little girls, with little polish but plenty of charm.

All the while, Lachlan played, his eyes bright as he watched dancers and guests. Whenever his gaze landed on Cilla, her heart squeezed in a different way, a new way, an aching—splendidly aching—way.

Mr. Fraser took two swords from their mountings on the wall, approached Lachlan with a heft to his chin, and laid the swords, crossed, upon the floor.

Cilla’s breath halted, and she leaned closer to Irene. “Is he challenging him to a duel?”

“No.” Irene chuckled. “It’s the sword dance.”

With his pipes droning, Lachlan tilted his head and shrugged, declining. But his father poked him with an elbow.

Lachlan rolled his eyes and set down his bagpipes, which squawked in protest.

Cilla pressed her hands together and restrained a squeal. The man was not the dancing sort—this could be great sport.

With his hands on his hips, Lachlan bowed to the swords, his red hair glinting in the lamplight. His father played a military tune, and Lachlan danced, one arm curved upward, the other on his hip.

He ... was the dancing sort.

He hopped from side to side, and his feet flashed among the quadrants formed by the crossed blades. He flung up both arms, returned them to his hips, and his kilt swung around his muscled legs in a mesmerizing way.

He smiled, relaxed and joyful.

Cilla’s breath faltered, and her cheeks warmed.

The tempo picked up, and Lachlan stamped out a quick pattern around the blades, agile yet entirely masculine.

Cilla’s heart picked up tempo too.

Lt. Lachlan Mackenzie, serious and dutiful and honest—she’d come to respect and admire those traits in him. But he was also kind and loyal and humorous and extraordinarily attractive.

The ache grew, the splendid ache, and she knew what it was.

She loved him.