Chapter 11
Rory
The clock had been broken for years. It sat on a shelf in the kitchen beside the hearth, made of dark walnut with a painted face gone soft with age, and brass hands frozen forever at twenty past three.
Mrs. Gable used it as a bookend, propping a Bible against it beside a crock of wooden spoons. Nobody in the household had ever bothered to mend it. Life at Kinnaird Head moved by weather, daylight, tides, and the ringing of the supper bell, not by the hour.
Rory had noticed Abigail looking at it before dawn that morning. Nearly three weeks had passed since the storm brought her ashore, though some part of him still expected the strange business of her arrival to resolve itself if he simply waited long enough.
The wind off the North Sea had come hard out of the northeast all afternoon, too fierce for the upper scaffolding, and by midday he’d sent the men below the lee of the castle wall to dress stone and sort timber rather than risk a broken neck sixty feet above the rocks.
“Winter’s coming early,” Ewan had muttered over breakfast.
By the time Rory came in through the kitchen door near dusk wanting tea and ten minutes of quiet before supper, the wind had risen hard enough to rattle the shutters. He stopped with one hand still on the latch.
Abigail sat at the kitchen table with the clock dismantled before her.
The movement lay spread across the scrubbed wood in careful ordered rows atop folded linen.
Brass gears. Springs. Tiny screws lined neatly beside her elbow.
The backplate rested near the candle, green with verdigris and darkened by old oil.
A shallow bowl of vinegar sat near her hand alongside a sewing needle she’d apparently commandeered from Mrs. Gable’s workbasket.
She hadn’t noticed him yet. The blue ribbon tied around her hair caught the candlelight as she bent over the pieces, her brow furrowed in concentration.
Outside the windows, the gale battered the castle walls.
Inside, the kitchen glowed gold with peatfire and candlelight while Abigail sat in the middle of it all repairing time itself.
Rory remained where he was in the doorway and watched her lift the escape wheel delicately between finger and thumb.
She held it toward the flame, turning it slowly, studying the teeth one by one.
Her hands were steady as she worked. He had known master shipwrights, naval engineers, watchmakers in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and an old Dutch clockmaker in Leith who could rebuild a chronometer while carrying on a conversation about herring prices.
Abigail handled the movement with the same quiet confidence all of them possessed.
It unsettled him more than he cared to admit. She muttered softly beneath her breath as she lifted the mainspring barrel free, pressed her thumb against it and made a dissatisfied little sound.
Then she said quite clearly, to the clock itself, “Work with me here. No reality TV drama. Just fit, would you?”
Rory blinked.
Abigail nudged the winding again. This time the spring gave slightly beneath her touch.
“There we go,” she murmured. “Okay. We’re getting somewhere.”
“What are ye about?”
She jumped hard enough that one of the screws rolled across the table.
For one brief heartbeat her face was entirely open. Alive with concentration and triumph and sharp delight. Then her expression vanished behind caution so quickly it was like watching a candle snuffed between fingers.
“The escapement’s fouled,” she said at once. “There’s verdigris on the pallets, so they’re not catching the escape wheel properly. And somebody overwound the mainspring.”
Rory crossed the room and dragged out the stool opposite her.
“Show me.”
She hesitated only a moment before nodding, and picking up the escape wheel again as she angled it toward the candle.
“See this?” Her finger hovered near one edge. “Uneven wear pattern. One side’s catching harder than the other. That’s drag.” She turned it carefully. “And here. The arbor’s slightly corroded. Not enough to ruin it entirely, but enough to slow the train.”
Rory leaned closer. She still smelled faintly of lavender, though Mrs. Gable’s soap and the smoke from the peatfire had softened it.
“The pallets are worse,” Abigail continued. “There’s buildup along both faces.” She reached for the vinegar. “This should clean most of it away.”
“And the mainspring?”
She tapped the barrel lightly.
“It’s wound too tightly for the movement to compensate. The whole mechanism’s fighting itself every tick.”
The words came quickly when she talked about machinery. The caution faded, uncertainty disappeared. Here, at least, she knew exactly who she was.
Rory found himself watching her mouth as much as the gears.
“Where did ye learn this?”
She shrugged one shoulder while cleaning the pallet fork with the careful point of the needle.
“It was something I did when I needed a break from my studies.”
“I didna meet many women in America repairing clocks.”
“Did you meet every woman in America?”
The answer came so dryly that Rory barked out a laugh before he could stop himself.
Abigail looked startled by the sound.
“So ye do possess a tongue sharp enough to cut rope,” he said.
“Oh, absolutely.” The corner of her mouth twitched.
Saints help him, but he liked her like this. Not frightened or uncertain, or looking over her shoulder as though the storm might return for her at any moment. Simply herself.
The household had begun adjusting itself around her almost without noticing. Mrs. Gable setting aside tea. Ewan lingering in the kitchens longer than necessary if it meant hearing her laugh.
Outside, the wind screamed down from the cliffs hard enough to make the kitchen chimney shriek.
From somewhere in the yard came Elrick’s voice, he was arguing loudly with Duncan about tarpaulins.
Abigail reached for another gear.
“When ye looked at the third bearing yesterday, ye said ye had an idea ye wished to draw out properly before speaking further.”
Her hands stilled. “I did.”
“Have ye done it?”
A small silence settled between them.
Then she nodded once.
“Do ye have it with ye?”
Mrs. Gable had fashioned her apron from a length of old linen too worn for proper household use. Abigail had tried to finish it herself though one corner remained crooked where the hem refused to sit straight. She slipped her hand into the pocket and withdrew a folded scrap of paper.
Rory watched her smooth it carefully atop the table between the dismantled clockworks.
It was a rough charcoal sketch. The drawing showed a self-seating cradle bearing. Bronze rather than brass. The shaft resting in a shallow adjustable cradle instead of a fixed sleeve. Tiny notation marks filled the margins in a shorthand unlike any engineering script Rory had seen before.
But the principle itself…
He stared at it without speaking.
For three months he had circled that cursed bearing like a ship trapped against a reef. Every arrangement seized eventually once the salt air began its work. Corrosion altered the clearances. The shaft bound. The entire mechanism failed.
This… allowed movement within wear. The bearing would compensate for its own corrosion.
He saw it instantly. Saw the solution as clearly as if someone had opened a shutter inside his head.
“Captain?” Abigail’s voice had gone very quiet.
Rory lifted his gaze slowly from the sketch.
She watched him the way sailors watched the sea after lightning struck nearby. Braced for damage.
“Where did ye learn this?”
The question came softer this time, not in accusation, but in wonder.
Abigail’s throat moved.
“If I tell you the truth,” she said quietly, “you’ll think I’m insane.”
“And if I believe ye?”
Something flickered across her face then. Pain. Fear. Loneliness so deep it hollowed the center of her expression.
“Then you’ll wish I were.”
The fire snapped softly in the hearth. Rory looked at her for a very long moment. He could demand answers now if he chose.
The practical part of him wanted precisely that. The naval officer in him distrusted mysteries on instinct. But another part of him sat looking at the charcoal sketch between them and understood something equally important.
Whatever strange road had brought Abigail Winston to Kinnaird Head, it had also brought him the answer to a problem that might save lives.
And beyond that… he didn’t want to see fear in her face again. Not if he could help it. At last he folded the paper carefully in half.
“Tomorrow morning ye’ll come to the lantern room,” he said. “We’ll machine the bronze together, and ye’ll tell me where my hand strays off true.”
Abigail blinked. “That’s all?”
“That’s enough.”
Relief moved visibly through her shoulders.
“And I’ll no’ ask again where the knowledge came from,” Rory continued. “That’s the bargain between us, as ye laid it out.”
Her eyes shone suspiciously bright in the candlelight.
“I understand.”
“Aye.” He tucked the folded sketch into the inside pocket of his coat, over his heart, though he tried very hard not to notice that detail.
At the doorway he paused. “Work with me here,” he repeated slowly. “No reality TV drama.”
Abigail groaned softly and covered her face with one hand.
“Oh no.”
“I gather ye didna intend me to hear that.”
“No.”
He scowled trying to work through the words. “What does it mean?”
She peeked at him through her fingers. “It means stop being difficult.”
“An admirable sentiment.” Rory considered it.
That startled a laugh out of her before she could stop it.
“There’s no possible way to explain reality television.”
“I should like to hear ye try.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
Her cheeks had gone pink now, whether from embarrassment or laughter he couldna tell.
Rory found the sight absurdly pleasing. He went upstairs afterward to his study while the storm battered the castle walls and the sea crashed against the rocks below Kinnaird Head.
The notebook waited where he kept it in the top drawer of his desk.
Observations.
He opened it, dipped his quill, and wrote carefully beneath the date.
The lass uses words unlike any I have ever heard.
“Okay.” Meaning aye, or very well.
“Reality TV drama.” A person or object being needlessly difficult.
He paused.
Her hands know machinery the way Ewan’s know rope and sailcloth.
Another pause, longer this time, then at last he wrote,
Mayhap she is a faerie after all, for she has bewitched the whole household, myself included.
Rory stared at the sentence for several moments after the ink dried.
Then he shut the notebook rather firmly and locked it away. When he came downstairs later, the kitchen clock ticked steadily on the mantel.
The sound startled him so badly he stopped short in the doorway.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Mrs. Gable stood at the hearth stirring stew with the expression of a woman pretending very hard not to notice what was occurring in her kitchen.
Abigail sat at the table with a charcoal smudge across the bridge of her nose, drinking a cup of tea.
Something inside Rory’s chest tightened unexpectedly. Murtagh used to do that. Come up from belowdecks with grease or tar smeared across his face and never once notice.
The memory struck so suddenly Rory had to brace one hand briefly against the back of the chair nearest him.
Abigail glanced up, smiling at him.
“You fixed it,” he said.
“That she did,” Mrs. Gable announced before Abigail could answer. “Smart lass.”
She ducked her head slightly, embarrassed by the praise.
Rory sat across from her while Mrs. Gable set down supper. Stew thick with barley and onions. Fresh bread still warm from the oven. A wedge of hard cheese beside his wine.
Outside, the storm banged the shutters. Frost would silver the cliffs by morning if the wind dropped before dawn. Inside, the clock kept ticking.
After supper, Rory wiped his hands on his napkin.
“Come to the lantern room tomorrow after breakfast. Wear something ye can kneel in. The floor’s stone.”
Abigail nodded as Mrs. Gable disappeared into the kitchens carrying the empty bowls.
Rory lowered his voice slightly. “No reality TV drama?”
Abigail looked at him in horror for one beat before laughter escaped her entirely.
Real laughter. Quick and helpless and bright.
It changed her entire face. The guardedness vanished.
The sorrow disappeared for half a heartbeat.
What remained looked younger somehow. Softer.
Like a woman who laughed often in whatever place she’d come from.
Rory looked away before she could see how the sound affected him. “Ye may use the phrase upon my lens mechanism tomorrow,” he said, reaching for his wine. “It’s been difficult for months.”
She laughed again. “I’ll remember that.”
The clock ticked steadily between them while the storm battered the cliffs beyond Kinnaird Head, and Rory Sinclair sat at the table listening to both sounds with the growing certainty that Abigail Winston was going to change everything.