Page 102 of A Scot in the Storm
“For the man who found me on the rocks and carried me up the path.”
Rory set down his cup carefully and drew one slow breath without looking away from her.
“For the morning at the shingle.”
Mrs. Gable exhaled softly behind her whisky cup like a woman setting down a basin she’d been carrying too long.
The fire settled low in the hearth.
Then Tobias lifted the whistle. A plain Scots tune Abigail didn’t know. Duncan joined in by the second verse, his rough low voice threading through the kitchen while candlelight flickered softly across weathered faces and steaming plates.
She didn’t understand all the words. Not fully. But halfway through the song, while Rory watched her across the firelight with something entirely unguarded in his eyes, she thought perhaps she understood the feeling of them.
And when he caught her looking at him, he didn’t look away. Abigail didn’t sayI’ve fallen in love with you.
Chapter 22
Rory
The glass had been falling since midnight. Years at sea and more on the coast had taught him to feel the weather in his bones. The tower stones held the damp differently. The ropes in the yard settled with a weight. Even the horses below the lodgings stood closer to the lee wall, heads down.
He went to the workshop before anyone else stirred and checked the barometer hanging beside the inner door. The mercury had dropped again. Lower than eight last night. Lower than midnight.
“Southerly,” he muttered. Coming in before the day was out.
The workshop was dark except for the lamp he carried, and the dull red mouth of the banked stove. Cold brass waited on the bench. Abigail’s chalk marks still ghosted the slate board from late last night, fine white scratches marking tolerances, angles, and clearances no sane person should have been thinking about over a Thanksgiving feast.
But then Abigail had never struck him as particularly sane.
Clever, yes. Brave. Infuriating. Too thin and too beautiful, and there were times he found it difficult to breathe around her.
Rory set the lamp on the bench and unrolled the drawings, comparing them yet again to what they’d made together.
By the time Ewan came in, Rory had already taken down the test lever and the clean linen for the housing.
Ewan glanced at the barometer.
“Glass is falling.”
“Aye, I saw it last.”
“Southerly by midday.”
“Aye.”
Ewan rubbed one hand over his red beard and looked toward the yard. “The gulls were up over the harbor an hour ago. Came in over the headland in three rings before they settled.”
“That’s nae a fair-weather flight.”
“No.” Ewan’s mouth flattened. “Nor is it a fair-weather face ye’re wearing.”
“I didna know ye’d become a scholar of faces.”
“I’ve suffered yours long enough to learn.”
Rory almost smiled. Almost.
The brace beneath his coat pulled tight across his injured shoulder when he reached for the housing diagram. Janet Cruickshank had wrapped him with the merciless efficiency of a woman binding a dangerous parcel. She’d also informed him that if he undid it before she allowed it, she would come back with rope and a Bible and make the arrangement permanent.
