Page 51 of A Scot in the Storm
Rory looked away before she could see how the sound affected him. “Ye may use the phrase upon my lens mechanism tomorrow,” he said, reaching for his wine. “It’s been difficult for months.”
She laughed again. “I’ll remember that.”
The clock ticked steadily between them while the storm battered the cliffs beyond Kinnaird Head, and Rory Sinclair sat at the table listening to both sounds with the growing certainty that Abigail Winston was going to change everything.
Chapter 12
Abigail
The lantern room was bitterly cold this early in the morning as Abigail climbed the tower stairs with Rory’s lens drawings tucked beneath her arm. The taste of Mrs. Gable’s porridge still lingered on her tongue. Oatmeal was something she rarely ate back in her own time, and if she did it was with honey, fruit and maybe a few chocolate chips tossed in.
She hadn’t slept well last night. Every time she drifted off, she dreamed about accidentally changing history and waking up to discover she’d done something terrible and irreversible.
You’re about to work with a man who wrote you a letter in 1788,she reminded herself as she reached the top of the stair.Let’s try not to destroy western civilization before breakfast.
The lantern-room door stood open. Rory had clearly been there awhile already. Part of the mechanism lay disassembled across the stone floor, tools arranged beside it with the kind of order that came from long habit rather than fussiness. Brass sconces burned against the miserable grey morning pressing at the glass, and a charcoal brazier glowed softly in the corner, carrying just enough heat to keep her fingers from going numb.
He looked up as she entered. No smile or wasted greeting, just a nod toward the drawings.
“Ye said ye wanted to see the arrangement firsthand.”
“I did.” She crossed the room and crouched beside the mechanism as the cold bit through her skirts. The bearing mounts were even worse than she’d expected up close, rough with salt corrosion, the brass worn nearly to seizure.
“How often are you cleaning these?”
“Every fortnight.”
“That’s nowhere near enough.”
“Aye. I noticed.”
She ran her thumb carefully along the inside bore of the nearest mount. The metal rasped faintly beneath her skin.
“With this much exposure, the wear’s accelerating every time the shaft heats.”
He handed her the calipers before she asked.
She measured the shaft carefully, doing the arithmetic in her head. No sense pretending to fumble or disguising her competence beneath false hesitation. Just the work itself, plain and direct, the way they’d agreed. It was oddly frightening not having to hide.
Her mother had always called it tinkering, usually while Abigail had some appliance spread across the kitchen floor in pieces. Radios. Lamps. The vacuum cleaner once, disastrously. She’d always liked understanding how things worked, feeling the satisfaction of solving mechanical problems piece by piece until order emerged from chaos again.
Now, here with Rory crouched beside her in the lantern room while rain rattled softly against the glass overhead, she could simply be herself.
“The radius needs to be widened,” she said after another measurement. “About a sixteenth of an inch.”
“Too much play?”
“More than I expected. The shaft’s been turned down before.”
“Aye. After the first failure.” Blue eyes met hers. Gracious that man was smoking hot.
“That’d do it.”
She reached for the charcoal beside his sketches. Their fingers brushed briefly as he passed it to her, his warmth against her cold skin, and something small and electric skipped up her arm before she could stop it.
Nope, no boyfriends from the 18thcentury, not going to happen, you have to go home.
With a shake of her head, Abigail bent her attention firmly back to the paper.
