Page 92 of A Scot in the Storm
“One further matter.”
Rory broke the seal.
“The Commissioners confirm the lighting date,” Cathcart said. “December first. Four bells.”
The magistrate pulled on his gloves. “I’ll be on the headland for the lighting itself,” he said. “Hat on. Standing at the back. Hoping very much not to witness another catastrophe.”
Then he departed into the darkening afternoon with fog curling pale around the waiting coach wheels.
Rory stood at the workshop window long after the road beyond the kirk vanished into dusk. The door behind him opened softly. He knew Abigail’s step in those odd boots from America that she wore.
“He frightens me a little.”
Rory looked out toward the dark sea beyond the scaffold yard.
“He’s meant to.”
Abigail moved nearer the window beside him, shawl drawn tightly around her shoulders against the cold creeping through the stones.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Below the cliffs, fog drifted pale across the harbor mouth while somewhere farther inland a church bell carried faintly through the dusk.
“What did you tell him?” Rory asked quietly.
Abigail let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh.
“The truth.”
Rory turned slightly toward her. “That seems unlikely.”
That earned him the smallest flicker of amusement. “I told him I’m from America. Which apparently already makes me suspicious enough without embellishment.”
She tucked cold fingers deeper beneath the edge of the shawl. “I told him I don’t have family waiting for me here. Or there, really.”
Something in the way she said it settled heavily between them.
“And?” Rory asked.
“And I told him Captain Sinclair had been kind enough not to leave me half-dead on the rocks.”
Her mouth softened faintly.
“And I’ve been trying to repay the inconvenience.”
Rory looked at her fully then.
“Inconvenience,” he repeated.
“It sounded more respectable than saying I washed up on the rocks and immediately began criticizing the lighthouse.”
Despite himself, Rory laughed. The sound warmed the room more effectively than the stove had managed all afternoon.
“He asked if I trusted you.”
Something low tightened unexpectedly in Rory’s chest.
“And?”
“I told him,” she said softly, “that I did.”
