Page 116 of A Scot in the Storm
“Ye threatened it.”
“Firmly.”
Abigail laughed softly.
Rory felt the sound of it like warmth after a long day out in the cold.
Outside, wind moved around the tower in long low mournful notes while the lighthouse beam swept pale across the kitchen ceiling at steady intervals.
The Widow’s Light. The name had spread all along the harbor now.
Yesterday a fisherman’s wife had arrived carrying smoked haddock and enough gratitude to make Rory deeply uncomfortable after her husband made it back to the harbor safely through the storm by following the beam through the fog.
Sometimes he still woke before dawn convinced the mechanism had failed in the night. He’d lie there listening for the sea and the distant turning rhythm of the assembly overhead until memory caught up with him again.
The light was still standing. Murtagh hadn’t died for nothing.
The grief never lessened. It simply settled differently now, less like drowning and more like carrying a stone beneath the ribs.
And lately, with Abigail near him, he’d begun noticing moments again. Warm kitchens. Firelight. Laughter drifting through rooms. Hope, dangerous as it was.
Mrs. Gable wiped flour from her hands an hour later and announced, “Come with me.”
Abigail blinked. “Where?”
“The village.”
“Why?”
“Because your boots are surrendering to Scotland.”
Rory’s gaze dropped automatically toward the shoes drying near the hearth.
There was indeed another hole near the toe.
A faint frown touched his face before he could stop it. “That wasna there last week.”
“They’re vintage.”
Mrs. Gable snorted. “The cobbler will weep.”
Within half an hour the two women vanished into the storm wrapped in cloaks and scarves while the kitchen settled quieter without Abigail in it.
Rory sat beside the hearth with his whisky while Duncan and Ewan disappeared to argue over pulley chains in the workshop. Tavish promptly fell asleep upright near the door like a man ambushed by soup and warmth.
Rory tried reading correspondence from Edinburgh and discovered after several minutes he’d absorbed precisely none of it because his thoughts kept drifting stubbornly elsewhere.
Abigail laughing beside the fire, wrapped in his heavier coat last night on the cliffs, staring out toward the sea with homesickness hollowing her eyes.
The back door opened again with a burst of wind and snow.
Mrs. Gable entered first carrying a basket beneath one arm, Abigail following behind her wearing new boots.
Good leather. Proper soles. Laced warm against the ankle.
“Happy now?” Abigail asked.
He looked toward the boots again. “Aye.”
