Chapter 6
Rory
Fraserburgh, Scotland
Rory braced one gloved hand against the cold stone wall of Kinnaird Head Castle while the wind tried its level best to throw him into the North Sea.
Above him, the scaffolding groaned like an old ship under strain. Timber creaked. Rope ends snapped sharply against the stone. Rain lashed sideways across the headland hard enough to sting exposed skin.
Most sensible men had already retreated to the workers’ lodgings below. Rory Sinclair had never been especially sensible.
“Captain!”
Ewan MacLeod appeared through the rain with his plaid whipped half loose around his shoulders. “Leave the damned rigging!”
“Two more lines.” Rory hauled another rope tight around the anchor post.
“For the love o’ God, man, ye’ll break yer neck.”
“Aye, likely.”
The storm had rolled in fast from the north, black clouds swallowing the horizon just before dusk.
By full dark the sea had become a living thing below the cliffs, waves smashing themselves against the rocks with the same relentless violence Rory remembered from another storm fourteen years earlier.
Another ship. Another reef. The night full of screaming men carried beneath black water while he stood helpless against the storm.
He shoved the memory aside before it could root too deeply.
He had work to do.
The lighthouse conversion was already behind schedule thanks to weather and shortages from Edinburgh. If this gale destroyed the upper rigging, they would lose another fortnight rebuilding it.
And winter was coming hard this year. Samhain night always seemed to drag strange weather in behind it. Old wives’ tales, perhaps, but half the men working Kinnaird Head still crossed themselves when storms rose on October’s last night.
Lightning split the sky as the strike hit the Wine Tower.
For one strange suspended heartbeat the entire headland glowed white. Every raindrop seemed frozen in midair.
The thunder cracked at the exact same instant, a brutal concussion that shook the scaffolding beneath Rory’s boots. He felt it through his teeth, then darkness slammed back into place.
“Saints preserve us,” Ewan muttered.
“Bad night for spirits abroad,” one of the men called nervously from the scaffolding above them.
Ewan spat rainwater from his mouth. “Samhain’s got the lot of ye acting like old women.”
Rory climbed down half blind, boots slipping on the wet timber.
The air smelled not merely of smoke and rain and wet stone, but of something softer woven through the storm itself.
Lavender and roses. ’Twas a woman’s scent. The hairs along the back of Rory’s neck rose sharply.
“Did ye smell that?” Ewan asked.
“Aye.”
The wind still screamed around them, but near the Wine Tower something had changed. Rory could feel it. The feel in the air before a battle, before disaster.
“Stay here,” he said.
“Rory—”
“Stay. Here.”
He grabbed the lantern and headed toward the tower. The cobbled path gleamed slick beneath the rain. Beyond the cliffs the sea crashed endlessly against the rocks below, white foam briefly visible each time lightning flashed across the horizon.
Kinnaird Head loomed dark above him. The Wine Tower stood near the edge of the cliffs, old stone black with rain and age.
It had survived storms for centuries. Tonight it looked almost alive.
Rory felt suddenly, absurdly certain that if there truly were nights when the veil between worlds thinned, this would be one of them.
He slowed, mouth agape, crossing himself, as he watched the rain stop abruptly around the tower itself, a perfect circle of dry ground surrounded the base of the tower while rain fell in silver sheets beyond it.
Rory crossed himself instinctively. “Saints preserve me.”
The scent of lavender grew stronger as he rounded the seaward side of the tower and stopped dead.
A woman lay sprawled across the rocks. For one absurd moment Rory thought the sea itself had conjured her.
No wreckage littered the shoreline. No broken mast or shattered hull lay tangled among the rocks below the cliffs, nor any sign of a ship driven onto the shoals by the storm. There was only the woman.
Dark hair spread across the wet stone beneath her like spilled ink. Strange clothing clung to her body, trousers made of some heavy blue fabric unlike anything Rory had ever seen. Her short jacket looked scorched at one sleeve, the cuff blackened and curled.
Lightning flashed again, catching the metal fastenings on her boots. Not buckles, but something else.
Rory crouched beside her carefully. Blood marked the corner of her mouth, and there was another thin trail that ran from her left ear down her neck.
He frowned. He had seen injuries like that before on men too close to cannon fire, divers who surfaced too quickly, and sailors thrown hard against timber during storms.
But not on women who appeared from nowhere beneath a tower struck by lightning.
“What in the bloody hell…”
He pressed two fingers gently against her throat. A strong pulse beat beneath his hand. She was alive, her warm breath brushing his knuckles.
The tide was rising quickly. Within the hour these rocks would be underwater.
“Miss?”
No response.
He glanced once more along the shoreline. Still no ship. No lanterns at sea. No survivors shouting through the dark. Only the storm.
Rory looked back down at her face.
She was younger than he first thought. Mid-twenties perhaps. Her features were delicate beneath the bruising already forming along one cheekbone.
She did not look Scottish, nor quite English either, though Rory could not have said precisely why. And despite the blood and the cold, she looked stubborn by the set of her jaw. The sort of woman who argued even when she was losing.
“Miss.” He touched her shoulder lightly. “Can ye hear me?”
Her eyes flew open. Brown flecked with gold. She sucked in a sharp breath and tried to sit up too quickly as pain crossed her face.
“Easy.” Rory caught her arm before she pitched sideways into the rocks again.
She stared at him. Not the way shipwreck survivors stared at their rescuers. Not with relief or confusion, but as if the very sight of him made no sense at all.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Her voice carried a strange cadence. English, certainly. But off somehow, he frowned. Almost like the people he’d met in the Americas.
“Where’s your ship?”
“My what?”
“Were ye thrown overboard?”
“I…” She looked wildly around at the tower, the cliffs, the crashing sea. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Ye dinna think so?”
Rory studied her more carefully. Rainwater slid down her face. Her hands trembled as she pressed them flat against the stone beside her, almost as though reassuring herself the rocks were real.
“What’s your name, lass?”
There was a long pause before she answered.
“Abigail.”
The name suited her somehow, soft at first hearing yet carrying an unexpected steadiness beneath it.
“Well then, Abigail.” He rose and held out a hand.
“The tide’s coming in, and if ye stay here much longer the sea will finish what the storm started.”
Her fingers were ice cold when she took his hand. Rory pulled her carefully to her feet, catching her when she swayed.
“I’m fine.”
“Aye,” he said dryly. “And I’m the King of France.”
Despite everything, a tiny startled sound escaped her. Almost a laugh.
Something inside Rory’s chest loosened unexpectedly at the sound, though whether from relief or curiosity he could not have said.
Strange lass.
He shrugged off his heavy greatcoat and wrapped it around her shoulders. It nearly swallowed her whole.
The scent of rain and salt and wool surrounded them both.
“Come on.”
The climb from the rocks toward the castle was treacherous even in fair weather. Tonight the sea was vicious.
Rory kept one hand firmly around Abigail’s wrist while they picked their way along the slick path.
Her strange boots slipped twice.
“Mind yer footing.”
“I’m trying.”
“What are those things on your feet?”
“They’re hiking boots.”
“Hiking.”
Another odd word he filed away.
The next wave hit without warning. A wall of seawater exploded across the path waist-high.
Abigail cried out as she lost her footing. Rory felt her hand slip from his, saw her body twist sideways toward the drop. For one terrible heartbeat another pair of dark eyes flashed through his mind.
Murtagh.
Wet fingers slipping through his grasp.
Not again. He lunged hard enough to wrench his shoulder as his hand closed around Abigail’s wrist. The momentum slammed her against him, the force nearly throwing them both into the surf.
Rory planted his boots and hauled her upright with every ounce of strength he possessed as she collided against his chest, breathless and shaking.
He could feel the frantic beat of her heart through the soaked layers between them.
The wave receded as they remained exactly where they were. Too close.
Rory became abruptly aware of the softness of her pressed against him, of lavender beneath the rain and seawater, and of the way her fingers had closed tightly in the front of his shirt while he held her upright above the surf.
Abigail looked up slowly at him, rain clinging to her lashes. For one suspended moment the world narrowed to the two of them standing above a black raging sea.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Rory swallowed once.
“Aye,” he said roughly. “Well. Try no’ to fall off the cliff again. I’ve had a difficult few days.”
To his astonishment, she laughed. A real laugh this time, brief and breathless and still edged with shock, yet unexpectedly warm in the middle of the storm. And somehow that small sound in the middle of the storm unsettled him more than the lightning had.
He kept hold of her wrist the rest of the way to the castle.
Inside the workers’ hall, conversation died instantly.
The peat fire crackled loudly in the silence as every man in the room turned to stare.