Page 41 of A Scot in the Storm
“Mm.”
The older woman sipped her tea.
“What part of America?”
“That’s one of the pieces I can’t bring back.” Abigail gave a small apologetic shake of her head. “The Captain says Philadelphia or near it.”
“And ye canna say if he’s right.”
“No.”
“I had the name of my own town in my head this morning,” Abigail added softly, “and it vanished somewhere between the spinning wheel and the porridge.”
That earned the faintest twitch at the corner of Mrs. Gable’s mouth.
Mistress Haldane set down her cup.
“Can ye dress a herring?”
The change of subject came so quickly Abigail nearly choked on tea.
“A what?”
“A herring.”
Mistress Haldane unfolded the linen bundle and produced a silver fish, cool and faintly damp, its scales catching the firelight.
“Hands remember things the mind forgets.”
Mrs. Gable, stirring the hearth pot behind them, did not turn around. Which meant she had expected this.
A knife appeared beside Abigail’s cup.
Abigail looked at the fish with growing despair. She had watched documentaries about herring curing. Had once written a conference paper with an entire section devoted to the Moray fish trade.
None of that proved remotely useful while holding an actual slippery fish beneath the attentive gaze of a Scottish church elder’s sister.
Okay, she thought.Vent to gill. Remove guts. Keep backbone intact for salting.
She picked up the knife. The fish immediately became incomprehensible. She turned it over once. Then back again.Somehow the gills appeared to have moved while she was blinking.
Mistress Haldane waited serenely.
Abigail cut. The knife slid at a ridiculous angle, opened the belly unevenly, and promptly sliced her thumb.
A bead of blood welled bright against the pale flesh of the fish. Abigail stared at it. She was a historian with a doctorate from Columbia University and she had just lost a fight with a herring.
“Och,” Mistress Haldane said kindly. “Yer hand.”
“The knife slipped.”
“It’s only a wee cut. Margaret, a cloth.”
Mrs. Gable brought linen.
Abigail wrapped her thumb while trying not to die of embarrassment.
Mistress Haldane took the knife gently from her hand and dressed the fish in six clean practiced motions. Gill. Vent. One neat pull of the wrist. Done.
