Page 52 of A Scot in the Storm
She redrew the cradle seat on a scrap, marking the revised clearance with her familiar decimal-dash notation.
“Ye’re certain?” Rory asked when she paused.
“I’m certain.” She adjusted her skirts, trying to put more of the wool fabric between her and the floor.
For the next hour they worked shoulder to shoulder. Question and answer. Measurement and counter-measurement. Engineer to engineer.
There was something almost peaceful in it. Abigail hadn’t realized how badly she’d missed this feeling until now. Before Lady Katherine’s journal. Before committees, accusations, and colleagues who’d looked at her afterward with careful professional pity, as though intellectual disgrace might somehow be contagious. Here there was only the work.
Only brass, geometry, salt air, and the quiet concentration of another like-minded person moving alongside her.
They sat close because the mechanism demanded it. His knee rested only inches from hers across the scattered tools. Whenever he leaned forward to check a measurement she became aware of the breadth of his shoulders beneath the navy wool of his coat, the heat of him lingering faintly in the chilly room.
She focused fiercely on the calipers. It didn’t help.
“The bearing surface,” Rory said after awhile, studying her revised sketch. “What metal would ye choose?”
“Softer than the shaft. You want the wear happening here instead.” She tapped the cradle with the charcoal. “Brass works well enough, but ideally? Two bronzes. Harder grade against the shaft face. Softer in the cradle.”
“The Commissioners will be delighted to hear I require more materials.”
“Tell them you’re saving three future repairs.”
One corner of his mouth shifted. Not quite a smile, but close enough to make her cheeks heat.
“Ye’ve been listening while I dictate letters to Smith.”
“I’ve been listening to you,” she said automatically, then wished immediately she’d phrased it literally any other way.
His eyes flicked toward hers. After a moment, she looked back down at the sketch.
“When you complain about supply costs,” she added much too quickly, “you sound like someone trapped in a very long-running argument.”
That earned her the faintest huff of laughter.
“There’s because I am.”
He rose then and crossed toward the brazier where the bronze stock rested wrapped in linen.
Abigail watched him work. She’d read his letters. Had known from the writing alone that Rory Sinclair was methodical, precise, and patient with machinery in a way only truly gifted engineers ever were. Watching him in person took her breath away.
The long even draw of the file through metal as concentration settled across his face. The way he checked the calipers after every pass without fail. His sleeves were rolled up. Candlelightcaught against the tendons shifting beneath his forearms as he worked.
Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. His hair had come slightly loose where it’d been tied back earlier, a strand falling across his forehead every few minutes until he pushed it away absently with the back of his wrist.
He looked tired. Not exhausted exactly, but worn thin around the edges in the way people did after carrying responsibility too long without rest.
She wondered suddenly when he’d last slept properly. That thought felt far more dangerous than noticing his forearms.
With a shake of her head, she fixed her attention back on the calipers.
Ewan appeared once, surveyed the room in complete silence, set down two mugs of small beer beside the brazier, then departed without comment.
Honestly, it was the most tactful thing Ewan had done since she’d arrived.
Rory finished the cradle at last and held it up beneath the lantern light, turning it carefully between his fingers before looking toward her.
“Let’s see if ye were right.”
