Page 45 of A Scot in the Storm
Lantern light spilled gold across the wet stones ahead of them. Somewhere near the harbor tavern voices rose and fell beneath the scrape of chairs and the occasional burst of laughter.
Then the fiddle began. Abigail slowed instinctively. The melody drifted down toward the water, thin at first beneath the wind, then clearer as the fiddler found the tune properly. Slow. Haunting. Nothing like the bright dancing reels she’d heard during Samhain.
Beside her, Rory went completely still. Not enough that anyone else might notice, but she noticed.
The change moved through him like a shadow crossing water.
“What?” she asked quietly.
Rory kept looking toward the harbor tavern below the cliffs.
“That song,” he said after a moment. “I havena heard it played in years.”
The fiddle carried across the dark water again, low and mournful enough to tighten something unexpectedly deep in Abigail’s chest.
She looked toward the distant lantern glow near the tavern windows. “Tell me about it?”
Rory rested his forearms against the damp stone wall overlooking the harbor.
“It’s an old tune.” His voice had gone quieter. “The Piper’s Lament, some call it now.”
Abigail felt the small hairs rise along her arms beneath the cloak.
“The Wine Tower story,” she said carefully.
He glanced at her, faint surprise crossing his face.
“So they’ve told ye that one already.”
“One of the laundry girls did. About the Fraser girl and the piper.” She thought about the pamphlet at the museum, hearing it at the Samhain celebration.
“Aye.” Rory looked back toward the sea. “Isobel Fraser. Fell in love with a fisherman’s son, depending who tells it. Or a stable hand. Or a wandering piper.”
His mouth curved slightly. “The details improve considerably after enough whisky.”
“The storm part stays the same.”
“It does.”
The fiddle continued somewhere below them. Abigail could almost imagine it echoing up from another century entirely.
“They say her father locked her in the tower,” Rory said. “And had the lad shut inside the cave beneath it until she came to her senses.”
Abigail looked automatically toward the dark outline of the Wine Tower rising against the night sky above Kinnaird Head.
“And then the storm came,” she said softly.
“Aye.”
His expression shifted.
“The sea flooded the cave before morning.” He folded his arms loosely against the stone. “By the time they reached him, the lad had drowned.”
The fiddle dipped lower, the melody winding itself through the dark harbor like smoke.
“And Isobel?” Abigail asked, though she already knew.
“They say she climbed the tower roof and threw herself onto the rocks below.”
