Page 109 of A Scot in the Storm
For one heartbeat, Rory stood in the yard and watched that candle move through the glass.
The crew gathered around him. Ewan with the lens drawings rolled beneath one arm. Tobias carrying the oil. Tavish clutching the tool roll with both hands as if it contained a newborn heir. Duncan with the spare lever over one shoulder, and last came McRae, cap low against the wind, face grim, tools wrapped in leather.
Mrs. Gable stood at the kitchen door with her arms folded and the look of a woman prepared to frighten the weather into cooperation if no one more qualified volunteered.
Rory stopped beneath the lintel and set his hand against the cold stone.
Out beyond the darkening sea, the Isabella was running blind toward the reef.
Tam Forbes had a wee son in Boddam. Robbie. A boy who would wake tomorrow either with a father or without one, depending on what they did in the next hour.
Chapter 23
Abigail
By the time the first villagers began arriving at Kinnaird Head, the storm had exhausted itself.
Frost silvered the scaffold ropes, and thin ice glazed the puddles in the yard below so that every boot crossing the headland cracked through them with sharp little snaps that drifted upward.
Abigail stood beside the eastern glass of the lantern room watching lights move slowly along the kirk road.
Lanterns swayed through the black in long golden lines while people climbed toward the tower wrapped in cloaks, wool scarves, and thick winter coats. Men from Fraserburgh harbor. Families from the cottages below the kirk. Fishermen from Boddam. Women carrying sleeping bairns bundled so deeply in blankets they looked less like children and more like suspiciously lumpy parcels of laundry.
The whole coast seemed to be coming. And suddenly the lighthouse no longer felt academic. Not an engineering achievement neatly preserved inside a dissertation chapter. Not another historical curiosity tucked safely behind museum glass.
People weren’t climbing this frozen hill to admire a piece of history. They were here because men vanished at sea, stormsswallowed boats whole, and because every woman walking this road tonight had once stood at a harbor wall staring into fog and praying for the sight of a sail.
The light meant more would come home. Behind her, Rory fitted the new bearing into place beneath the cradle assembly while Ewan held the lamp close enough for the bronze to gleam warm gold beneath the flame.
Wind moved softly around the outside of the dome with a low mournful sound that reminded Abigail, uncomfortably, of voices coming through the walls.
Below them the tower stairs echoed steadily with arriving footsteps and bursts of muffled conversation. Somewhere in the yard, somebody laughed. A horse stamped against frozen ground hard enough to rattle its harness chains.
Abigail crossed toward the stair opening and looked down.
The scaffold yard glowed gold with hanging lanterns now, people standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the unfinished tower walls while their breath curled white into the dark. Mrs. Gable and others moved through the crowd carrying steaming cups of spiced wine and bowls of hearty stew with the ruthless efficiency of battlefield surgeons.
Apparently Mrs. Gable had decided Scotland’s first mainland lighthouse would function considerably better if everyone involved was fed first.
Honestly, Abigail was beginning to suspect this was how Scottish women handled all major historical events. War? Soup. Shipwreck? Bread and cheese. Funeral? Here, have potatoes before you collapse dramatically in public and embarrass everybody.
To her amazement, nobody argued with Mrs. Gable. Not even the fishermen built like dock pilings.
Near the back of the crowd stood Magistrate Cathcart in a dark wool coat with frost silvering the shoulders.
Even from above, Abigail could feel the quiet awareness in him as he watched everything. Yet tonight he didn’t seem quite so frightening.
“Lever,” Rory said quietly.
Tobias handed it over immediately.
Abigail turned back toward the mechanism just as Rory seated the bearing into place, and her breath caught when the bronze settled cleanly.
Beside her, Ewan let out a slow breath.
“Well,” Duncan muttered, “that’s encouraging.”
McRae snorted. “Try no’ sounding so bloody surprised.”
