Page 72 of A Scot in the Storm
Abigail stopped walking as Rory watched her. She was doing it again, looking at everything as though she’d never seen the world before.
She paused at a blacksmith’s stall to examine hand-forged nails one by one, turning them carefully between gloved fingers. At the fishmonger she asked questions about the morning catch with such earnest fascination the man looked half-convinced she might secretly be royalty.
At another stall she ran her fingertips lightly over carved wooden spoons polished smooth by use.
“First time at market?” the fishmonger asked.
“Yes,” Abigail said. “It’s beautiful.”
The fishmonger blinked, then looked slowly around at the muddy street full of fish guts and shouting men.
“It’s the weekly market,” he said cautiously.
“I know, but look at all of it.” She gestured broadly. “The handmade parts of daily life, everyone coming together, it’s fascinating.”
She caught Rory watching her.
“I just think it’s neat,” she finished.
“Neat,” Rory repeated as they moved on.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m nae starting anything. Ye think fish guts areneat.”
“It’s anthropologically interesting.”
“Aye, and ye’re anthropologically interesting. Which is what I’ve been trying to tell ye for weeks.”
She laughed softly, then stopped beside a stall selling kitchen tools.
“Ye do that,” Rory said.
“Do what?”
“Look at things as though ye’ve never seen them before.”
Abigail picked up a wooden bowl, her fingertips lingering over the smooth edge.
“Maybe I haven’t,” she said quietly. She looked at him when she said it.
Questions crowded behind his teeth about where she came from, the impossible things she knew, and the sadness that sometimes crossed her face when she thought nobody noticed, but he had the good sense not to ask them in the middle of the market.
The insult came on Broad Street. They’d just finished at the nail merchant and were heading toward the oilman through the thickest part of the market. The smell of fried herring and wet wool hung heavy in the air.
Abigail walked beside him with the hood of the cloak pushed back from her face, her cheeks bright from the wind.
Three women stood beside the oat merchant’s stall. One older than the others. Widowed, by the look of her black shawl and severe cap. The sort of woman who had spent her life surviving hard winters and burying the dead.
She caught sight of Abigail, staring at the lass with the kind of attention that had nothing to do with curiosity. Without breaking eye contact, she turned her head slightly and spat onto the cobbles three feet from Abigail’s boots.
The spit darkened the frost-covered stone.
The younger women beside her dropped their eyes immediately. And somewhere behind them a little girl’s voice rang out clear as a bell.
“Mam,” the child whispered loudly, pointing. “Is that her? The one the sea put out?”
Her mother grabbed her hand sharply. “Wheesht, child.”
