Page 33 of A Scot in the Storm
His voice roughened slightly. “And if any man below stairs speaks to ye improperly, ye come to me.”
Something unexpectedly gentle moved beneath the command, buried so deeply she might have imagined it if she hadn’t spent time reading his words.
“Of course,” she said softly.
That slight eyebrow lift again.
She turned toward the door, managing not to trip over the skirts despite the ache in her ankle.
“Mistress Abigail.”
She looked over her shoulder.
“Whatever ye’re withholding,” Rory said evenly, “I’ll uncover it eventually.”
Blue eyes. Steady as winter water. A man built almost entirely from stubbornness, integrity, and grief carefully harnessed into usefulness.
That was the terrible part. She knew him already. Not properly. Not truly. But enough. Enough to recognize the pressure of restraint inside his voice. Enough to know the loneliness folded into those letters she had once handled wearing archival gloves beneath fluorescent lights half a world and centuries away.
And now he stood before her alive and breathing, looking at her like a puzzle he intended to solve. It felt profoundly unfair.
“I know,” she said. “I wouldn’t think much of you if you didn’t.”
Something in his mouth almost softened into a smile before discipline reclaimed it.
“Go on with ye, then.”
Out in the corridor Abigail stopped and leaned briefly against the cold stone wall.
Her heart hammered in her chest as a wave of dizziness crashed over her. She had done it. Or the first impossible version of it.
All morning she had clung stubbornly to reason, arranging facts inside her mind like documents spread across an archive table, certain some practical explanation would eventually emerge from the chaos. But she had seen the date herself.
Heard the wordcailleachwhispered in fear through the stone walls. Touched a world that should have existed only behind museum glass.
The cold granite pressed solid against her shoulder blades. No more ruling things out or pretending.
She closed her eyes briefly.
I’ve actually traveled through time.
Then she straightened and walked slowly back toward her tiny room beneath the sound of gulls, wind, and the endless Atlantic breaking itself against the rocks below the tower.
Chapter 9
Rory
Rory didna mention the strange clothes he’d found the lass wearing. Not when Abigail sat across from him that morning with bruises darkening beneath her eye and sea salt still caught in the loose strands of her hair.
And not when she laid out her careful lie about shipwrecks and lost papers with shaking hands pressed flat against her skirts.
But when she’d gone, after the study door closed softly behind her, and her footsteps faded down the stair.
Rory sealed the letter for the morning rider and set it aside beneath the paperweight. Then he sat back in his chair and looked out toward the sea while the wind worried at the tower windows.
The law, if it ever came sniffing around Kinnaird Head, would ask about the lass who’d been found on the rocks and no sign of a shipwreck.
And those clothes would cause far too many questions. He was still considering what precisely to do with them when laughter drifted up from the yard below.
