When the weather was fine, they’d make tea and sit in a corner of the camp grounds, far away from the others. Backs against a tree, legs stretched out in front of them, they’d sip their tea and talk. Ben didn’t do small talk. The conversation was always intense. Two scarred people whispering about all the things they’d seen and done in the name of war. They were accidental confidants who’d become fast friends through their shared experiences, and there were days when Natasha wondered if she’d go insane without Ben to confide in.
It was on one such visit—while sipping tea and eating some much-coveted chocolate Ben had managed to rustle up from somewhere—that he brought up the topic of where she’d be placed after the camp.
“They found another German soldier this week,” he said, staring off into the distance beyond the buildings. Seeing only ruins. “He tried to convince everyone he was Polish and had been forced into a German labor camp.”
“What gave him away?” Natasha nibbled at her chocolate as though it were pure, edible gold.
“His accent and bearing.” As blue eyes met hers, she wondered if there would ever be a time when the color didn’t startle her. “That and he was too healthy for the Nazis to have worked him to the bone.”
“What will happen to him?” Her stomach tightened, but her voice remained even. Ben wouldn’t bring up a story like this unless he had a reason.
“You don’t want to know, Tasha.” It was the same answer he always gave her. “They kept him in a displaced persons camp until they got to the bottom of his story.”
Ah, now it made sense. “I haven’t been relocated because they think I’m lying.” She turned toward him, searching his face for the truth she knew he’d give her. “That’s what you’re trying to tell me, isn’t it?”
His gaze remained steady, just like the man. “Yes.”
It was reflex to tighten her grip on the old tin mug of tea, but she forced herself to calmly take another sip of the weak brew. That was the thing about Ben: he didn’t try to soften news for her or hide anything—he gave it to her straight, one warrior to another, believing she could handle whatever he told her.
“If that’s the case, I have to tell the truth and take my chances in Russia,” she said evenly.
Those chances had diminished with each day she’d spent evading the Soviet Armed Forces. If they hadn’t thought she was a traitor before she’d hidden in the displacement camps, they would now. What else would explain a pilot making no effort to return to her motherland? It would never occur to the good Soviet soldiers that she didn’t want to face Stalin’s insanity. Natasha shuddered at the thought.
“You’re cold.” Ben shrugged out of his worn regulation jacket and draped it around her shoulders.
“Spasibo,” she whispered her thanks.
“I fear we made a mistake in telling the intelligence team that you’re an engineer and would be a valuable asset to whichever country you were sent.” He lifted his mug again and flexed his left leg. She knew he lived in constant pain from the damage caused to his thigh by a piece of shrapnel. A pain that would never go away. Just one more reminder of the war that Ben would carry with him forever.
“They’re wondering why a skilled engineer wasn’t conscripted into the Nazi war machine. And they suspect I’m lying to cover my involvement with the enemy.” She shrugged. “It’s nothing more than I would think if I were in their place, and we both know I am lying to everyone.”
“I think”—Ben paused, appearing to choose his words carefully—“our friendship has protected you so far, but it won’t for much longer. There are murmurs about taking you in for questioning.”
“Of course.” Natasha tucked a lock of hair behind her ear to cover the shaking in her hand. “I won’t make it through an interrogation, Ben. There are too many holes in my story, ones I’m uncertain how to fill. I’ve no background information on Lina or firsthand experience of Lithuania. I only speak the language because I studied it in school. It wouldn’t take an interrogation expert to crack me.”
“It won’t come to that.” There was steel in his voice.
She gently placed a hand on Ben’s arm. They rarely touched, but on this occasion, she thought it warranted. “It’s best if I come clean before that happens. Otherwise, they won’t believe I’m telling the truth when I explain I’m a Soviet pilot who didn’t want to return to her homeland. And it’s the only way I can protect you. If it came out under duress that you knew my secret, I couldn’t live with myself. Telling them before they discover it for themselves means I can say you know nothing.”
He shifted in place, an uncharacteristically nervous move on his part. “There is another solution.”
She cocked her head, wondering how awful it was to make Ben squirm. “Tell me; it’s okay.”
He fixed his steady gaze on her. “We could get married.”
Natasha honestly didn’t know what to say.
Ben hesitantly put his hand over hers where it still lay on his arm. “My time is almost up, and I’m heading home soon. My leg is getting worse, and according to my CO, I need rest. You could come with me, to Scotland. Quite a few Lithuanians are being relocated there.”
“I’m not Lithuanian.” It was the silliest thing to say, really, given everything else he’d told her.
His smile was sweet. “According to the camp authorities, you are. Which means it would be natural to want to go where your fellow countrymen and women were headed.”
“But married, Ben?”
“My wife would be expected to return home with me.”
Natasha took a second as she thought how best to word her worries without hurting her only friend in the world.
He squeezed her hand. “It’s all right. The marriage would only be for the sake of getting you out of here. You wouldn’t be tied to me forever…not unless you wanted to be.”
“Ben,” she whispered.
He cleared his throat and got to his feet, where he dusted off his trousers. “That’s a discussion for another time. Think it over, and I’ll come back tomorrow. But, Tasha, I’m convinced this is the only way to get you out of here before they start asking questions you can’t answer.”
As she watched him walk away, Natasha’s heart clenched. She hadn’t seen Ben as anything other than a friend, someone she trusted. She’d been in no state, physically or mentally, to consider anything else with any man.
Marriage?
Could she do it? Could she enter into another lie to get out of the one she was living? And would she toy with Ben’s heart if she did so?
As she stood, her gaze scanned a group of camp administrators standing by the office block, their attention focused on her as they talked quietly among themselves. Natasha bent to pick up Ben’s empty mug before making her way back across the barren courtyard to the dormitory.
She feared the decision on whether to take Ben up on his offer would be taken from her hands. Because he was right—her time was running out.
16
Katya couldn’t sleep, which explained why she was sitting at the dining table at one in the morning with a mug of hot tea in her hand. In front of her, spread across the table, was everything she’d managed to find out about her great-grandmother over the years. Some of it had been stored and forgotten in various family members’ attics, while other items she’d come across on her travels.
Sitting on top of it all was the marriage certificate and photo Catherine Baxter had given Brodie. And beside that, the marriage certificate filed by her great-grandfather on his and Natasha’s wedding day. They were dated barely months apart.
Using her laptop, she accessed one of the marriage and divorce database services on the internet and typed in the details for Ben and Natasha. The certificate stated that they’d married in Berlin in 1945, so she kept her fingers crossed as she searched, hoping official records of the marriage hadn’t gone missing in the war.
It took three different websites before she found a record of their marriage on a military si
te. Unfortunately, even after searching several more databases, she still couldn’t find any mention of a divorce taking place.
“You should be asleep,” Brodie said quietly as he padded into the kitchen. His feet bare, he wore an old gray T-shirt over a pair of blue tartan flannel pajama pants. The man shouldn’t have looked sexy in the getup, but he did. There was no justice in the world at all.
“So should you.” She reached for her mug of tea, only to find it empty.
“I will be as soon as I make up a bed on the couch.” He filled the kettle and switched it on. “Bain wouldn’t let me share his bed, and the floor’s hard. I’d rather try my luck with a lumpy sofa.” He gestured to her mug. “Want a refill?”
“Yeah, thanks.” They lapsed into a silence that started to feel way too awkward when she caught him staring at her lips. Suddenly, memories of their earlier kiss had her squirming in her seat.
“So,” he cleared his throat, “what’re you doing?”
Grateful for something, anything, to take her mind off that kiss, Katya lifted Ben and Natasha’s marriage certificate. “I’ve been looking for an official mention of this.”
His eyebrows shot up toward his bed-mussed hair. “I take it, from the look on your face, you didn’t find one. Does that mean it’s a fake?”
“Oh, no, it’s real all right. The look is because I couldn’t find any divorce paperwork to accompany it, and I’ve searched everywhere I can think of.”
Brodie turned to make tea for them, giving Katya an excellent view of his broad, muscular shoulders and firm behind. When he turned with a mug for her, she snapped her eyes back to the table, where they belonged. He put the mug of steaming tea on the table in front of her and took a seat beside her.
“You know, your parents are going to love the news that old Tom Savage was a bigamist.” The sad part was that Brodie wasn’t being sarcastic.
“Mum will probably write a play about the scandal, and dad will tell everyone it’s proof his family were always on the fringe of proper society. It feeds into his whole rebellious-artist image.” The scene was so familiar—the two of them up late, talking alone—that for a second, Katya forgot they were strangers now.
“At least they’ll take it better than Kitty ever has. Do you think she’s figured out that if the wedding was a sham she’s illegitimate?” Brodie moved some of the papers toward him and started sifting through them.
“I’d say so.” Katya cradled her tea and watched him scan the documents she’d collected. “It would explain her nasty attitude. People her age really care about crap like that.”
“There are people of every age who care about crap like that.” Brodie held up a piece of paper. “So, your great-granny was in a camp?”
“Not a concentration camp, if that’s what you’re thinking; it was a holding place for people who couldn’t return to their own countries. She lived there until she moved to Scotland—apparently with Ben.”
“Huh,” Brodie muttered as he read. “I didn’t know about these camps.”
Katya didn’t bother pointing out he would have known if he’d made an effort to pay attention to anything she told him before she left.
He slid another folded sheet of paper toward him. It was brown and faded, its creases testifying to how many times it’d been unfolded and refolded. “What’s this?”
“A letter great-gran wrote to her navigator—the woman who died when their plane was shot down outside Berlin. I think it was her way of coping with the death. Great-gran tells her she’s sorry she couldn’t save her, that she wishes things were different, and promises she’ll make sure her parents get the necklace she wore. I think she wrote it while she was hiding in a house in East Germany after they crashed. She talks about how hungry she is, how she can’t find food, and how the Lithuanian woman who saved her has disappeared. But she can’t ask anyone about her because she can only speak Russian and Lithuanian, not German.”
“She was shot down?” Brodie’s intense gaze focused on Katya. “You only told me she was a bomber pilot for the Soviet Union.”
“I didn’t know much more than that back then.” She waved a hand to encompass the table. “This is almost everything I’ve managed to glean about her since…well, since I left.”
“So, she hid out in Germany? Why didn’t she go back to the Soviets? I mean, they were working with the Allies to get rid of Hitler, surely an Allied soldier would have helped her get back to her squadron.”
“Stalin executed failures or saw them as traitors. And having your plane go down behind enemy lines would have been considered a failure. If she went home, she would have faced the firing squad or the Gulag, and besides, her family had already been lost to the war.” She took a sip of her tea. “She had two older brothers who were both killed at Stalingrad.”
“Hell.” Brodie shuffled through the rest of the papers. “I’m guessing she pretended to be Lithuanian to avoid being sent back to Russia.”
“That’s how she met Ben. He was a translator, and they called him in when they found her unconscious in the house of the woman who’d saved her. He found out she was Soviet, and they became friends. I’d always thought it was their friendship that brought her to Invertary; I didn’t realize it was their marriage.”
Dark eyes caught hers. “But you knew they were friends?”
“I found letters from Ben in Aunty Patty’s attic down in Glasgow.” Katya reached into the box sitting on the floor and pulled out a bundle of envelopes tied together with string. “They wrote to each other about their experiences during the war. I believe they were confidants, because Ben wrote that he’d never tell anyone else the stuff he shared with her.” She handed him the letters.
“Can I read them?” Brodie looked sheepish. “I’m curious.”
“Sure, but you’ll want the translation; those are in Russian.” She plucked a blue folder out of the box and handed it to him.
“You had them translated?”
“When I first started out, I couldn’t read Russian, so I had to have everything translated.”
Brodie’s jaw dropped as he sat back in his seat. “You speak Russian?”
“I do now.”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
“I really don’t know you at all now, do I?” Brodie said at last.
Katya sighed. “It’s been ten years, Brodie. We’re not the kids who ran off to Gretna to get married as soon as we were legal.” She gestured to him. “You’re running your own business and plan to build a house. I speak Russian, fly planes for anyone who’ll hire me, and carry around boxes full of other people’s memories.” Her smile was rueful. “People change.”
“Aye,” he muttered, his mind obviously elsewhere. “I guess they do.”
“Anyway, I’d better get some sleep.” Katya took her mug to the sink. “In a few short hours, I have to explain to the Knit or Die crew that signing you up for a mail-order bride was really a joke. That conversation should be interesting.”
Brodie turned in his seat to look at her. “Why did you come back, Kat? Really? You’ve been living a wild, adventurous life all over the planet. It doesn’t make sense that you’d come back to sleepy Invertary.”
“This is my home.” Another answer bubbled up inside of her, but she squashed it down. Brodie had nothing to do with her returning to Invertary. It was the confusion of their situation talking because she had no intention of ever letting him hurt her again. “This is where Natasha spent most of her life. It’s where Ben lived, and he saved her—no matter how he did it. Where else would be a better spot for a memorial?”
She moved to gather up the paperwork, but he placed a hand on top of it. “Do you mind if I read some of this? I don’t feel like sleeping yet.”
“Knock yourself out.” Katya turned toward the stairs. “And, Brodie? Just because we’ve had one civilized conversation doesn’t mean I’m about to hand over the land for you to build your house.”
He flashed her a dazzling smile. �
��I know.”
With that image seared into her brain, Katya returned to Brodie’s bed to try to sleep.
Much to Brodie’s dismay, Darach had been right—the whole town had turned up to watch the Knit or Die women block the lochside road through town. And when they weren’t watching the women knit, they were commenting on seeing Brodie and Katya glued to each other’s sides.
“I’d forgotten how nosy people are in Invertary,” Katya grumbled as the latest person to ask them if they were together again walked away. “I don’t even know that guy.”
“Sure you do. He used to deliver our mail,” Brodie said as yet more folk looked at him as if he were clutching a bomb instead of Katya’s hand.
“That’s Murray? Wow, he used to be such a skinny wee thing.”
“He hurt his hip and had to quit the post office. Now he watches daytime TV instead of walking all over Invertary.”
“That’s a cautionary tale,” Katya said. “Margaret Campbell’s giving me the evil eye again. At some point, we’ll have to go over there and explain about the mail-order brides.” She hesitated. “And probably set the record straight about you moonlighting as a stripper.”
Brodie frowned at her. “Aye, we should definitely sort that out. And it’s Margaret Jamieson now. She married Dougal a wee while ago.”
“Stop frowning—we’re supposed to be in love, so look happy. I keep forgetting she married Dougal. That’s one weird pairing.”
“Weirder than us right now?” He smiled at her as lovingly as he could manage, feeling his cheek muscles groan at the effort. “Can you get face strain from smiling too much?”
“I don’t know. Why is your hand so clammy? I don’t remember them being that way. It’s like holding a fish,” she whined through her smile, which was an impressive talent.
“My hand isn’t clammy; it’s your imagination. You have a clammy imagination.”
Katya started to roll her eyes at him but obviously remembered she was supposed to be in love, so “playfully” smacked him on the chest instead, her hand leaving a stinging handprint in its wake. “You’re so funny.”
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