Page 84 of A Scot in the Storm
“Then wear it.”
Night settled fully over Kinnaird Head beneath gathering wind.
Abigail lasted perhaps an hour in her room before surrendering entirely. She wrapped the shawl tightly around herself and climbed the stairs barefoot and silent through the sleeping tower.
Light still glowed beneath the lantern-room door. She stopped one landing below instead of entering and for a long moment she simply sat listening to the faint mechanical rhythm overhead.
She couldn’t resist. “Did you cut the channel?”
Rory’s voice came through the closed door above her. “I’m capable of measuring a hair, Abigail.”
A startled laugh escaped before she could stop it.
“Did it settle properly?”
“Aye.”
“Good.”
Neither of them opened the door or crossed the final distance. At last Rory spoke again, his voice roughened faintly by fatigue.
“Ye should sleep.”
“So should you.”
Eventually she rose and descended slowly back toward her room while pale revolving lantern light swept intermittently through the narrow stair windows.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
And somewhere high above her, Rory remained awake in the lantern room while the sea hurled itself endlessly against the dark Scottish coast below.
Chapter 19
Rory
The road back from Fraserburgh vanished beneath the fog before Rory reached the harbor turn.
The haar had rolled inland from the sea, thick as wool batting, swallowing the road, the cliffs, and half the mare beneath him until the world narrowed to hoofbeats, and the faint white drift of his horse’s breath.
The last of the autumn color had gone from the hedgerows, leaving only black branches rattling above stone walls slick with damp. Somewhere beyond the fog, waves struck the cliffs below Kinnaird Head with a heavy grinding rhythm that seemed to vibrate up through the earth itself.
The mare hated weather like this. Rory could feel the tension running beneath the saddle with every step she took. Her ears flicked sharply. Once she tossed her head hard enough the reins jerked through his gloves.
“Easy.”
He should have stayed in Fraserburgh and waited for clearer weather, but the trip had already cost him half the afternoon and most of his patience.
The mare shied sideways suddenly.
Rory tightened the reins instinctively. “Easy.”
Her muscles bunched beneath him as something moved in the ditch beside the road. A burst of black wings exploded upward from the fog with an awful shrieking cry.
The mare screamed outright, took one violent leap sideways as the world disappeared beneath hime.
