Page 29 of A Scot in the Storm
She found the study at the end of the corridor, the door ajar.
Rory Sinclair stood beside the window with his hands clasped behind his back.
Morning light silvered the edges of him, catching dark hair still damp from seawater or washing. In the daylight he seemed taller than she remembered from the storm, broad through the shoulders, lean through the waist, carrying the weathered steadiness of a man shaped more by cliffs and winter seas thandrawing rooms. His coat hung open over a linen shirt gone soft with wear, and one dark stocking showed a streak of granite dust near the knee.
He turned as she entered, eyes moving over her face, noticing the bruise beneath her eye, the tender split lip, and how she favored her left foot.
The assessment was swift and precise enough to make her feel briefly like damaged masonry under inspection.
But when his gaze lingered on the bruise, the corner of his mouth tightened almost invisibly before the expression vanished again beneath restraint.
“Sit.”
The word came quietly enough that obedience felt less like submission than common sense.
Abigail lowered herself into the hard wooden chair and folded her hands in her lap to stop them fidgeting.
Rory remained standing near the window a moment longer, forcing her to squint slightly against the light while he stayed half-shadowed within it. Deliberate, she thought immediately. The positioning of a man accustomed to asking questions.
“How’s yer head?”
“Ringing. My left ear still feels like it’s underwater.”
“The foot?”
“Sore. Not sprained, I think.”
“And the tooth?”
“Still attached.” She shifted in the chair.
That earned the faintest shift in his expression. Not amusement exactly. Something quieter. Then his gaze settled fully on her face.
“And yer tongue?”
Abigail blinked. “My what?”
“Yer speech.” He tilted his head slightly. “Ye’re American, I think.”
The shock hit hard enough that her body reacted before her mind did. She jerked backward in the chair, pulse leaping painfully into her throat.
Rory watched her absorb it with maddening calm.
“How did you know?”
“I’ve sailed farther than Skye.” His accent roughened slightly around the words.
“Boston in seventy-two. Philadelphia two years after that. I’ve spent enough nights listening to American merchants and sailors drink themselves stupid in dockside taverns to ken the sound of the colonies when I hear it.”
He moved away from the window at last, slow and unhurried as tidewater.
“Ye dinna sound Boston. Nor wholly Philadelphia. But ye sound closer to both than anywhere else I’ve been.”
Abigail’s mouth had gone dry, she was going to have to be very careful around him.
“You clip yer vowels. Speak too quickly when ye’re frightened. Ye useokay, which no gentlewoman in Edinburgh has ever once said to me in conversation.”
One eyebrow lifted slightly. “And ye speak Gaelic like somebody taught ye from a grammar book three thousand miles from the Highlands.”
