Page 5 of A Scot in the Storm
Arthur led her farther up the spiral stairs, talking steadily while the wind rattled faintly against the narrow windows.
“Ye picked a proper northern month to arrive, by the way. October up here’s half weather and half haunting.”
He grinned over his shoulder. “Wait until the end of the month and Fraserburgh’ll turn itself inside out for Samhain.”
“Halloween?”
“Aye, that’s what you Yanks call it.” He waved a hand.
“Though the Scots were doing it long before Americans started buying pumpkin-spice everything.”
Abigail laughed.
“The locals still go in for it properly,” Arthur continued. “Bonfires down by the harbor if the wind behaves itself. Turnip lanterns. Storytelling. Children running wild hopped up on sugar and poor decisions. Sandra insists the veil’s thinner this time of year.”
“The veil?”
“Between worlds.” He said it cheerfully, like a man discussing rainfall totals.
“Old Scottish superstition. Samhain was when the dead wandered and strange things crossed over.”
He glanced back at her with a teasing look. “Good time to avoid standing stones and mysterious spirits.”
“Noted.”
“Mind you,” Arthur added, pushing open the archive door, “with the haar rolling in off the North Sea half the month, Fraserburgh looks haunted regardless.”
He pushed open a door at the top of the stairs. The archive room was small, lined with metal shelving units crammed with boxes, folders, and loose stacks of paper. A single window looked out over the North Sea. The light was flat and grey, the glass streaked with salt spray.
Beyond the cliffs, two fishing boats were already turning hard toward harbor, engines growling low against the wind as though racing the weather home before dark.
“This is you,” Arthur said. “The Commissioners’ correspondence is in those boxes along the far wall — that’s what Edinburgh wants catalogued. Letters, supply records, construction reports, anything related to the original lighthouse conversion in 1787.” He paused. “They said you’ve done work in eighteenth-century engineering history?”
“My dissertation was on structural adaptation in Scottish coastal architecture.”
She set her bag down and looked around. Dust motes hung in the grey light. The boxes were old, some of them visibly water-damaged. “This is a lot of material.”
“Aye, well. That’s why they sent for reinforcements.” He smiled. “Sandra and I are glad to have you. Cup of tea?”
“Gracious, yes.”
He disappeared down the stairs, and Abigail stood alone in the archive room with her hands in her pockets and looked out the window. The sea was the color of slate. Waves broke against the rocks below with a muffled, rhythmic thud. In the distance, fishing boats headed out, tiny dark shapes against the water.
She should feel grateful. That’s what Elaine had implied.It’s a prestigious collection. Other researchers would jump at this.
But other researchers hadn’t published a paper arguing that a Bronze Age brooch in the National Museum’s collection had been misattributed by over a hundred years, and then watched the department close ranks around the senior curator she’d contradicted. A few days ago, she’d been politely informed her contract wouldn’t be renewed. The job had gone, and with it, the health insurance. Without a job she couldn’t help cover the outrageous consult fees Sam’s trial had just quoted her.
She hadn’t told him that part. He’d have told her not to worry about it, and he’d have meant it, and that would have been unbearable.
So when the temporary job here in Scotland had appeared, she’d taken it. She needed the money to help him, and had arranged for the bulk of her paycheck to be deposited into an account Sam could access. The job here provided room and board, so it wasn’t like she’d have many expenses during her time here.
Abigail turned back to the boxes.
Whatever she felt about exile and her brother and the wreck of her career, the rest of her was leaning forward. Late-eighteenth-century rag paper had a particular smell, vegetal and faintly tannic, with the dry-leather note that meant linen sizing.
She pulled the first box off the shelf. The label was a hand-cut paper tag tied with linen twine, the writing brown and faded. She closed her eyes for half a second, breathed it in. Then she got to work. Abigail pulled on a pair of cotton gloves and opened the lid as a cloud of dust filled the space along with the smell of old paper and aged leather. Inside, bundles of letters tied with faded ribbon, their edges brown and brittle.
She picked up the first bundle.
