Page 53 of A Scot in the Storm
“Oh, excellent. No pressure.”
His mouth twitched again.
Together they fitted the new cradle onto the shaft. Abigail slid a narrow strip of paper through the clearance gap. Smooth. Perfect.
“Go on,” Rory said quietly.
She rested her fingers against the drive gear and turned the mechanism by hand. The shaft rotated smoothly without grinding or catching.
No rough scrape of failing brass.
The entire assembly moved with graceful ease, every piece settling into motion exactly as it’d been meant to all along.
Abigail sat back slowly on her heels as warm satisfaction spread through her chest.
After a few minutes Rory said, very softly,
“Oh.”
Such a small word.
She looked sideways toward him to see him watching the turning mechanism with an expression of hope on his face for the span of a heartbeat, before the old tension settled back into place.
Abigail pretended not to notice and instead looked past him through the western glass toward the cliffs below.
She’d walked the path there twice now. The second time she’d stopped near a grassy rise and found the low stack of stones set overlooking the water. Through the center rested a length of weather-darkened oak she’d recognized immediately for what it was.
A piece of a ship’s rail. Salvaged. Somehow she knew it was for his brother. Suddenly, Abigail wanted very badly to touch his sleeve, and that seemed like the sort of decision likely to complicate her life catastrophically.
“We still need load testing,” Rory said after awhile, his voice steadier now. “And heat.”
“We do.”
“Brass behaves differently once the lamp’s burning.”
“I accounted for expansion.”
“Aye, but I’d like to see it with my own eyes before trusting it.”
“Fair enough.”
He rested one broad hand against the bronze cradle as though imagining the heat there already.
“I’ll not light the full lamp tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll do a short burn and check the wear. Longer the next evening if it holds.”
“One step at a time.”
His eyes lifted toward hers immediately as Abigail became acutely aware of the warmth in the room, and somehow resisted the urge to blow down the front of her dress.
“The lubrication’s still going to fail eventually,” she said quickly. “Whale oil breaks down too fast with this much salt exposure.”
“What would ye use instead?”
“Lanolin.”
He blinked once. “Lanolin.”
“Wool grease.” She tucked a bit of loose hair behind her ear. “Mrs. Gable probably has an entire kingdom of it downstairs.”
