Chapter 8
Abigail
Conversation in the kitchen stopped when Abigail walked in.
Two men she hadn’t seen last night, sat at the long table.
Both looked up at once, stared at her for one stretched heartbeat, then bent their attention back to their porridge with suspicious haste.
The older man flexed his hand around his spoon in a movement she recognized unpleasantly from the night before.
Not quite the sign Elrick had made at her, but close enough to make her flinch.
They muttered together beneath their breath in a thick Lowland Scots Abigail could barely follow. Then one of them slipped briefly into Gaelic, sharp and instinctive as a prayer.
Marbh.
Dead.
Her own Gaelic was the sort learned badly and enthusiastically during a summer on Skye while chasing archival references and pretending she understood more than she did. Enough for greetings. Enough to ask directions. Enough to recognize when fear pushed someone back into an older tongue.
Not enough to catch the rest. For once, she was grateful.
Mrs. Gable pointed her toward a stool near the hearth and set down a wooden bowl filled with thick grey porridge. No honey. No cream. But at least it was hot.
The first spoonful struck the chipped tooth on the left side of her mouth and pain flashed hot enough to maker her eyes water.
She chewed carefully on the other side while trying not to look as miserable as she felt.
The bowl itself distracted her as she stopped mid-chew. Turned birch. Hand-lathed. The rim worn satin-smooth by years of use. Faint concentric rings still visible beneath the finish where the maker’s tools had passed imperfectly through the grain.
In her time, something like this would sit beneath museum glass with a placard discussing eighteenth-century domestic craftsmanship and uncertain provenance. Here it simply held breakfast.
The kitchen spread wide beneath the castle in a haze of peat smoke and amber firelight.
Iron cranes blackened with soot swung above the hearth.
Dried herbs hung in fragrant bundles from the rafters, rosemary and thyme alongside others she couldn’t immediately name.
Along the stone wall stood rows of crocks sealed with cloth and twine.
Somewhere beneath the smoke lingered the sharp clean scent of saltwater carried inland on damp wool and boots.
November had arrived hard along the Buchan coast overnight. Cold sea fog drifted beyond the windows, blurring the harbor into pale grey shadow.
The castle felt lived in and warm despite the granite. And every person there was watching her when they thought she wasn’t looking.
Mrs. Gable noticed the wince she failed to hide.
“The mouth, is it?”
“A tooth,” Abigail admitted. “Chipped, I think. Thankfully not broken.”
Mrs. Gable gave a small grunt while ladling something into another pot over the fire. “Porridge is nae helping it. I’ll make ye broth later.”
“Thank you.”
The older woman nodded once as if gratitude were an unnecessary ornament and jerked her chin toward the stairs.
“Up wi’ ye now. First door at the landing.”
Abigail stood taking her bowl to the counter.
“And lass.”
She paused.
“Stand straight when ye go in. He’s nae a man that likes slouching. And if he asks ye a thing twice, the second answer had best resemble the first.”
A warning lay there beneath the dry tone.
“I understand,” Abigail said quickly.
Mrs. Gable’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
The climb upstairs left Abigail shakier than she wanted to admit. Her ankle ached, and every bruise from the night before seemed to groan in protest as the warmth of the kitchen faded behind her.
The castle unfolded around her in narrow passages and low stone arches polished smooth by generations of passing hands. Wind hummed faintly somewhere inside the walls.
She found the study at the end of the corridor, the door ajar.
Rory Sinclair stood beside the window with his hands clasped behind his back.
Morning light silvered the edges of him, catching dark hair still damp from seawater or washing.
In the daylight he seemed taller than she remembered from the storm, broad through the shoulders, lean through the waist, carrying the weathered steadiness of a man shaped more by cliffs and winter seas than drawing rooms. His coat hung open over a linen shirt gone soft with wear, and one dark stocking showed a streak of granite dust near the knee.
He turned as she entered, eyes moving over her face, noticing the bruise beneath her eye, the tender split lip, and how she favored her left foot.
The assessment was swift and precise enough to make her feel briefly like damaged masonry under inspection.
But when his gaze lingered on the bruise, the corner of his mouth tightened almost invisibly before the expression vanished again beneath restraint.
“Sit.”
The word came quietly enough that obedience felt less like submission than common sense.
Abigail lowered herself into the hard wooden chair and folded her hands in her lap to stop them fidgeting.
Rory remained standing near the window a moment longer, forcing her to squint slightly against the light while he stayed half-shadowed within it. Deliberate, she thought immediately. The positioning of a man accustomed to asking questions.
“How’s yer head?”
“Ringing. My left ear still feels like it’s underwater.”
“The foot?”
“Sore. Not sprained, I think.”
“And the tooth?”
“Still attached.” She shifted in the chair.
That earned the faintest shift in his expression. Not amusement exactly. Something quieter. Then his gaze settled fully on her face.
“And yer tongue?”
Abigail blinked. “My what?”
“Yer speech.” He tilted his head slightly. “Ye’re American, I think.”
The shock hit hard enough that her body reacted before her mind did. She jerked backward in the chair, pulse leaping painfully into her throat.
Rory watched her absorb it with maddening calm.
“How did you know?”
“I’ve sailed farther than Skye.” His accent roughened slightly around the words.
“Boston in seventy-two. Philadelphia two years after that. I’ve spent enough nights listening to American merchants and sailors drink themselves stupid in dockside taverns to ken the sound of the colonies when I hear it.”
He moved away from the window at last, slow and unhurried as tidewater.
“Ye dinna sound Boston. Nor wholly Philadelphia. But ye sound closer to both than anywhere else I’ve been.”
Abigail’s mouth had gone dry, she was going to have to be very careful around him.
“You clip yer vowels. Speak too quickly when ye’re frightened. Ye use okay, which no gentlewoman in Edinburgh has ever once said to me in conversation.”
One eyebrow lifted slightly. “And ye speak Gaelic like somebody taught ye from a grammar book three thousand miles from the Highlands.”
Heat flooded her face despite the cold room.
“No,” she said softly when he nodded, as if asking whether he should continue. “That’s enough.”
“Mm.”
He stood with his weight subtly balanced to one side, adjusting unconsciously against movement that no longer existed beneath him. A sailor’s posture. Even on stone he carried the memory of shifting decks inside his body. She had read about those years at sea in his letters.
Read about storms and damaged hulls and nights spent taking measurements by lantern light while waves broke over the rails hard enough to crack ribs.
But knowing a thing from paper and seeing it standing six feet away from you were entirely different experiences.
Her pulse beat harder. She’d been speaking to an engineer since the moment she arrived, and engineers collected details the way archivists collected documents.
“It’s no’ an accusation,” Rory said at last. “I’m telling ye what I’ve heard. So ye understand what others may hear as well.”
“Okay.” She shut her eyes briefly. “I mean... thank you.”
The corner of his mouth shifted again.
“Ye can keep saying it if ye like. The men already think ye foreign.”
Right. Because apparently getting thrown backward through time by a supernatural Scottish winter goddess was not enough humiliation on its own.
He studied her another moment before speaking again.
“Last night I said we’d have words this morning.”
“You did.”
“I said ye’d tell me either the truth, or what ye could of it, or else a lie good enough I could live beside.”
There wasn’t a threat in his voice, and somehow that made the conversation worse.
“Which one am I getting?”
She had spent the entire night turning possibilities over inside her head while wind battered the tower walls and pain pulsed through her body. Every explanation sounded impossible. Every lie fragile.
So instead of answering immediately, she rose and crossed slowly toward the desk.
Rory watched her without interruption. The restraint in him felt dangerous in ways shouting never could.
On the desk lay a half-finished letter beside an open ledger. Abigail recognized the handwriting instantly before she even read the date.
10th October 1787, inked carefully atop the ledger, blurred briefly beneath a rush of dizziness.
Not concussion or hallucination or a coma, but 1787.
Her hand tightened against the edge of the desk. Nearby, pinned beneath a brass weight, sat the corner of a broadsheet carrying the same year in faded print. The room tilted slightly around her.
No explanation arrived to rescue her from any of it. She turned back and sat down again before her knees gave way.
Rory hadn’t moved, but something in his attention sharpened almost imperceptibly as he watched her absorb what she’d seen.
“The one I can live with,” she said finally, her voice thinner than she intended. “Though I think it’s closer to a lie than the truth.”
Something shifted in his expression then. Not softness. More the subtle recalculation of a man adjusting weight against uncertain weather.
At last he pulled the second chair closer and sat opposite her.
“Go on, then.”