Page 7 of A Scot in the Storm
“Miss you too. Hey, I gotta go, Jamie’s firing up the grill and he’s threatening to make fish tacos again, which means I need to intervene before he burns down the parking lot. Call me this weekend?”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She hung up and stood in the kitchen with the phone against her chest. The cottage was quiet except for the wind brushing against the windows and the sound of the waves. She was six thousand miles from her only brother, who was waiting on a donor that might never come, and she was here to catalogue the correspondence of a lighthouse engineer who’d been dead for over two hundred years.
She washed her plate, brushed her teeth, and went to bed. Tomorrow she’d start on the archive in earnest. And if the work was unglamorous, the town grey, and her career in shambles—well. She’d been through worse. Probably.
Abigail fell asleep listening to the wind and the sea, dreaming of Sam on a long, clean wave that had no shore.
Chapter 3
Rory
Fraserburgh, Scotland
September, 1787
The wind was tryingto kill him, and Rory was losing his patience. Winter already prowled the edges of the North Sea though autumn had barely begun.
He stood on the scaffolding sixty feet above the ground, one hand braced against the castle wall, the other gripping a line that was supposed to secure the pulley housing. The North Sea gale hit him full in the face, salt spray stinging his eyes, the cold cutting straight through his coat. Below, his crew huddled against the base of the tower, looking up at him with expressions that ranged from concerned to frankly appalled.
“Captain!” Ewan’s voice barely carried over the wind. “Come down, ye daft man!”
Rory ignored him. The pulley housing had worked loose in last night’s storm, and if it came free, it would take out the hoist mechanism and two weeks of scaffolding. He wasn’t losing two weeks. Not with the Commissioners breathing down his neck and the budget already stretched past the breaking point.
He wrapped the line twice around the anchor post, pulled it taut, and tied it off with fingers that had gone numb ten minutes ago. The knot held. He tested it once, twice, then started down.
Ewan was waiting at the bottom, arms crossed, wearing the expression of a man who had opinions and was going to share them whether anyone wanted to hear them or not.
“Yer going to get yourself killed,” Ewan said.
“I didna get killed.”
“Ye didna get killedtoday.”
Rory pulled his gloves off and flexed his hands. “Is the mortar set on the upper courses?”
“Aye, but Elrick’s grumbling about the lime again. Says the local supplier’s sending dross. And this time he might be right. I had a look myself. The color’s off.”
Rory swore under his breath.
“Show me.”
They crossed the construction yard. Rory pulled the lid off the nearest barrel, rubbed a pinch of the lime between his fingers, and frowned.
“Underburnt. Half of this willna set. Send it back.”
“And the Commissioners?”
“Will write us a letter. We’ll write one back. By the time we’ve finished apologizing to each other we’ll have proper lime.”
Ewan grinned. “Ye’ve a way with words, Captain.”
“I’ve a way with losing my temper.” Rory shook the lime off his fingers. “There’s a difference.”
