Page 104 of A Scot in the Storm
Second rotation. Clean.
Tobias exhaled softly and Tavish grinned.
Rory felt Abigail’s attention sharpen beside him on the third rotation.
The bearing caught. Not hard. Not a stop. Just a grudging give somewhere deep inside the brass, a resistance so small most men would have missed it beneath the weight of the assembly.
Rory felt it through his good hand, so did Abigail.
“Stop,” they said together.
No one moved. The lantern room went so quiet the sea below seemed suddenly louder, the dull boom of water against rock carrying through stone and timber alike.
Rory removed the bearing, every movement pulled at his shoulder until pain pricked sweat cold along the back of his neck, but he kept his face steady. Pride was a poor painkiller, but it was readily available and did not require Mrs. Gable’s permission.
He set the bearing under the bench lamp. Abigail was already beside him with the calipers.
The first inspection showed nothing, but the second showed wear, and the third turn beneath the lamp found it. A hair-thin crack along the inner ring so fine it looked almost like a scratch.
Rory stared at it. There, where the brass was thinnest. Where they had shaved the seat by a hundredth of an inch to ease thecatch from last week. A hundredth. The sort of measurement men laughed at until it stood between them and disaster.
“Fatigue,” Abigail said quietly.
“Aye.”
“From the flex test.”
“Aye.”
She let out a breath. “I should have taken the load down sooner.”
Rory looked up sharply. “Ye took it down at the bell. I was the one who left it on for the second twenty.”
“It doesn’t matter who should have called it.” Her voice was calm and clipped now, the way it went when she was focused on her task. “It cracked. We recast. We have enough time.”
The room seemed to take a breath around them as Ewan looked from Rory to Abigail.
“How bad?”
Rory held up the bearing. “Bad enough.”
Tavish swallowed as Tobias whispered something that may have been a prayer or a curse. Duncan peered at the crack, frowned, and said, “Tiny little bastard.”
That startled one breath of laughter out of Abigail.
Rory wrapped the cracked bearing in linen and set it aside.
“Ewan, take the gig to Tom McRae. If the wind turns before ye reach the road, go on foot and send the horse back with Tavish.”
Tavish straightened. “Me?”
“No’ if ye look that pleased about it.”
The boy immediately tried to arrange his face into an expression of grim responsibility and failed.
“Tell McRae we need the mould heated by ten,” Rory continued. “Tell him to bring his small furnace if he’ll risk it.”
“McRae won’t risk his furnace in a southerly,” Ewan said.
