Page 75 of A Scot in the Storm
“Come on, then,” he said. “I want to show ye something.”
They walked farther along the cliffs than the usual path to the castle. The headland stretched out over the sea, all black rock and long grass.
The sun had already begun its slow descent westward. At this latitude afternoon disappeared quickly once it started. Another hour, perhaps less, before the cold rose properly from the ground.
Rory knew a flat stretch of stone near the cliff edge where a man could sit above the water without being seen.
He led her to the stone as she settled beside him. The wind moved softly through her new shawl.
Far overhead a skein of pink-footed geese crossed southward in a ragged V, their cries echoing faintly over the water. The light had shifted into early evening now. Not darkness yet, but that slow winter burning where gold deepened toward amber and the sea turned molten beneath the falling sun.
She sat close enough that he could hear her breathing, feel the warmth of her through the layers of wool between them. And with a sudden terrifying certainty Rory realized how much he had come to care for her.
“Tell me something,” Abigail said quietly.
Rory didn’t talk about himself. For fourteen years he had carried grief the way a man carried a stone inside his chest. Quietly. Without complaint. Without inviting anyone close enough to touch it. But somehow he found himself speaking to her.
“My brother’s name was Murtagh.”
She didn’t interrupt, didn’t say she was sorry or offer comfort too quickly the way people often did when grief made them uncomfortable. She simply listened. And there was something about the way Abigail listened that made a man feel less alone inside his own thoughts.
“He was twenty,” Rory said. He nodded toward the reef below where white water broke over black stone.
“Drowned right there. October of seventy-three. Six months into his first commission aboard theArdent. I was lieutenant on watch that night.”
The sea rolled endlessly as a gull cried somewhere far below.
“Storm came at dusk.” Rory kept his eyes on the horizon. “We were too close in. Lachlan called for sea room and I hauled the wheel over, thought we’d clear the reef.”
His jaw tightened. “We didn’t. I sent Murtagh below when the storm first broke. Wanted him out of the worst of it. After we struck the reef I went after him.”
The words lodged hard in his throat. “We reached the companionway ladder. Water rising everywhere. The ship rolling under us.”
His left hand tightened unconsciously against his knee. “I reached down. He reached up.”
Rory stared at his hand.
“I had him by the wrist.” His voice roughened.
“I had him.”
The cliffs below blurred slightly in his vision. “The ship took another wave. His shirt cuff tore off in my hand.”
He swallowed once. “And then he was gone.”
Abigail simply listened, waiting. Her silence was kinder than sympathy.
“I dove after him three times. Lachlan and Henderson had to drag me back before the ship rolled completely.”
The sea below them darkened toward iron.
“When I woke on the rocks there were twenty-nine survivors.”
He looked out toward the reef.
“Seven men gone. Including him.” The wind carried the scent of salt and cold stone.
“There was no light here then,” Rory said quietly. “No beacon. No warning. If there had been…”
