Page 61 of A Scot in the Storm
Rory set the drive weight. The chain took tension and he released the pawl.
The mechanism began to turn, slowly at first, then steady. The room filled with the small, familiar sound of motion.
Rory lit the lamp. The wick caught on the first draw. He adjusted the chimney until the flame settled tall and clean. He had trimmed it that morning with the brass scissors from his oldmidshipman’s kit, the same pair he had carried through storms, watches, deaths, and more years than he cared to count.
Through the lens, the beam stretched outward.
The light moved, sweeping across the water as Rory stood very still.
He had drawn this beam in ink. Argued for it in letters. Defended it to men who had never stood on a black reef in bad weather with a dead sailor under their hands. He had promised Smith, the Commissioners, the crew, himself, and a brother who would never grow older than the night theArdentwent down.
Beside him, Abigail was quiet.
The beam came around again.
“Well done, Captain,” she said at last.
His throat tightened, which irritated him. “Well done, Abigail.”
They stood together and watched the light go out across the water.
The mechanism ticked through its gears. The first hour passed. Then the second began. Below, the castle was awake.
Rory heard Mrs. Gable cross the yard once. He heard Ewan’s voice from the lodgings, low and satisfied. A door opened somewhere below and shut again. Men were awake though no one had told them to be. The whole headland was waiting.
At the two-hour mark, Rory touched the outer housing. It was warm, but not hot.
He glanced at Abigail. “It holds. Two hours was the test.”
Rory kept his hand near the bearing housing and felt the heat move into the cold air. His whole working life had run along the edge between caution and stubbornness. Some days he knew the difference. Some days he only learned it after. Tonight, under his fingers, the heat felt manageable.
“What if we run her another two?” he asked.
Abigail looked at him for a second, but he saw the hesitation.
“Thermally, she should be fine,” she said. “The clearance should hold.”
“Should.”
“It’s your call, Captain.”
That was the trouble with command. In the end, no one else carried it for you. “My call is to keep watching her.”
Abigail drew the shawl tighter around herself and nodded. “Then I’ll watch her with you.”
The third hour began.
Chapter 14
Rory
It was ten minutes into the third hour when Rory first heard the catch. Small. Nearly nothing.
The mechanism had a rhythm when it ran cleanly, steady enough that a man who’d spent years around gearwork felt it more than heard it. This was different. One tooth. One hesitation. Not every turn. Every third.
Rory didn’t move at once. He listened through five more rotations. There. Again.
Abigail’s head lifted sharply from the notebook in her lap.
