Page 31 of A Scot in the Storm
“Go on, then.”
“My name is Abigail. That part’s true.” She swallowed carefully. “I know what year it is.” Her glance flickered briefly toward the desk.
“I don’t have a husband. Or children. I didn’t arrive here aboard any ship I can name to you. The family I do have lives in America, farther west than you’d know, and far enough away that I cannot reach them from this shore.”
“Aye.”
“And when a magistrate comes riding up your road, he’s going to find a woman with no papers, no companions, no trunk,no passage records, and an accent he’ll place eventually if he’s spent any time in a colonial port.”
Her fingers tightened together in her lap. “Which means he’ll start asking dangerous questions very quickly.”
Rory stayed quiet as the silence stretched warm and heavy between them while wind pressed faintly against the glass.
“I’ve thought about it carefully,” Abigail continued. “The only story likely to survive examination is a shipwreck from America. A vessel caught in the weather. Papers lost. Survivors scattered. A boat put off badly in the dark.”
He tilted his head. “A convenient tale.”
“A survivable one.”
That earned her a longer look.
“Enough truth in it that I can keep it straight,” she said steadily now. “Not enough that anyone can corner me with details I don’t know.”
“And beneath it?”
Abigail met his eyes.
“The truth is much worse.”
Something unreadable crossed his face then vanished again.
“I’m not asking you to lie for me, Captain. Only not to contradict me when I lie for myself.”
He sat very still after that.
Outside, somewhere below the cliff, iron struck granite in slow rhythmic blows as the day’s work began along the lighthouse yard.
“And what exactly,” Rory asked eventually, “would ye offer in exchange for such silence?”
Relief moved through her so quickly she nearly laughed aloud. Negotiation she understood.
“I can work.”
His gaze dropped briefly to her hands.
Soft hands. Scholar’s hands. He’d noticed them the night before.
“I understand engineering,” she said before he could dismiss the idea aloud.
“Not practically the way your men do. But mathematically. Structurally. I can read drawings. I understand corrosion and bearings and load distribution. I can organize records, translate Latin, copy a clean hand, and from the look of this room you badly need someone to bully your archive into order.”
His eyes flicked toward the papers stacked beside the ledger.
“And where did a woman acquire such learning?”
“Through a long apprenticeship I’d rather not explain.”
“Hm.”
