Page 57 of A Scot in the Storm
“It’s my design.”
“With the woman’s idea.”
Rory gave him a look.
Ewan’s grin widened. “Aye. I’ll tell the men.”
“Tell them the design was changed.”
“Changed,” Ewan repeated.
“Dinna mention her.”
“The woman who climbed out of the sea with no past, speaks strangely, and now fixes your lamp? Nay. Why would a man mention that?”
“Ewan.”
“Aye, Captain. Changed.” He started for the door, then stopped.
“Captain?”
Rory looked away from the window. “What?”
“She’s nae what she says she is.”
Rory watched the gear teeth move cleanly through another turn.
“I know.”
“But she’s helping.”
“I know that too.”
“So what are ye going to do about it?”
Rory looked at the turning mechanism. Smooth. Steady. The answer he’d needed for months sitting there in plain brass and bronze.
Abigail Winston had no story that held together or memory that made sense. She had no place in his world. But she had given him this.
“For now,” he said, “I’m going to finish the light.”
He brought her to the scaffolding that afternoon. She’d been the inside of the tower, had crouched on the cold floor with calipers in her hand and charcoal dust on her fingers. But shehadn’t seen the work from outside yet, with the North Sea spread below and the half-built tower rising out of rock and wind.
He told himself it was practical. It was, mostly. If she was to understand the lamp, she needed to understand the tower. If she was to talk about strain on the upper works, she needed to feel the wind that hit the stone and hear the sea worrying the reef below. That was all sensible enough. It didn’t explain why he wanted to see her face when she reached the top.
Abigail climbed without the hesitation he expected. Other than sailors, most men went carefully on the high scaffold, no matter how much they boasted afterward. They tested the poles with their weight, gripped the rope lashings too tightly, glanced down and then pretended they hadn’t.
Abigail hitched her skirts above her ankles and went up as if she’d spent her life climbing things she probably shouldn’t.
Halfway up, she struck her shin against a rope lashing and said something sharp under her breath that Rory didn’t know, but strongly suspected was not for kirk use.
He nearly smiled when she kept climbing. At the top, the wind battered them both. It came off the North Sea bitter and hard, tearing at coats, hair, and making speech impossible. Abigail stopped on the outer walk with one hand braced against the stone and looked out.
For a moment she didn’t say anything. The sea lay iron-dark beneath them, with white water breaking over the reefs and gulls turning hard in the wind. Below, Fraserburgh crouched against the weather, smoke lifting from chimneys and vanishing almost at once. Beyond the headland, there was only water, silver to the edge of sight.
Her hair had come loose from whatever Mrs. Gable had done with it that morning. The wind dragged it across her face. She pushed it back impatiently.
Her cheeks were flushed from the climb and the cold. Her eyes were bright as she looked at the sea, as if she knew it could be beautiful and still kill a man before supper.
