Page 40 of A Scot in the Storm
“Ye’re fighting it. Porridge doesna like to be bullied.”
Abigail stared into the pot. She had somehow entered into a hostile relationship with breakfast.
The second attempt was worse. The third achieved the remarkable feat of being simultaneously scorched at the bottom and raw in the middle. Mrs. Gable examined the pot in silence while Abigail stood beside her smelling faintly of smoke and humiliation.
“Perhaps,” Abigail said carefully, “I should devote myself to water-hauling instead.”
“Ye’ll try again tomorrow.” The words landed with all the mercy of a prison sentence.
The knock came just before noon.
“That’ll be Mistress Haldane,” Mrs. Gable said, wiping flour from her hands. “Mind yerself.”
“Who—”
The door opened before she finished speaking.
The woman who stepped inside was small and neat, somewhere in her fifties, with a tidy grey braid wrapped twice around her head and a dark cloak pinned precisely at the throat. She carried a stoneware jug in one hand and a linen bundle in the other.
“Margaret,” she said warmly.
Then her gaze settled on Abigail.
“And this’ll be the lass the sea spit out.”
Mrs. Gable’s posture straightened slightly.
“Aye. Abigail, this is Mistress Isobel Haldane from the kirk road. She’s brought ye a loaf.”
“And milk.” Mistress Haldane set the jug down. “Sit, lass. Ye look run half to death already.”
Abigail sat because it felt less dangerous than standing.
Mrs. Gable poured tea while Mistress Haldane settled herself opposite Abigail with the composed warmth of a woman who knew every birth, death, marriage, scandal, and unpaid debt within ten miles of the kirk.
The smile never left her face. Neither did the scrutiny.
“My brother’s the kirk elder,” Mistress Haldane said conversationally. “Ye’ll meet Reverend Ogilvie on Sunday, I’d expect. Long-winded man, but kind-hearted.”
“I look forward to it.”
Which was the sort of thing one apparently said to church elders’ sisters in any century.
“Margaret tells me the Captain believes ye came ashore from a wreck.”
“So he says.”
“And American.”
Abigail wrapped both hands around the warm teacup.
“Yes.”
Mistress Haldane nodded slowly.
“The Captain’s a good ear for a tongue. Sailed abroad during his Navy years. And what’s left to ye, lass, of yer time before the rocks?”
“Pieces.” Abigail chose the word carefully. “A ship. Weather. A boat in the dark. Falling into the cold sea. I remember my name. Not much else.” She gave a theatrical shudder.Take that Anne Hathaway. That was as good as your role in Les Misérables.
