Chapter 12
Abigail
The lantern room was bitterly cold this early in the morning as Abigail climbed the tower stairs with Rory’s lens drawings tucked beneath her arm.
The taste of Mrs. Gable’s porridge still lingered on her tongue.
Oatmeal was something she rarely ate back in her own time, and if she did it was with honey, fruit and maybe a few chocolate chips tossed in.
She hadn’t slept well last night. Every time she drifted off, she dreamed about accidentally changing history and waking up to discover she’d done something terrible and irreversible.
The lantern-room door stood open. Rory had clearly been there awhile already.
Part of the mechanism lay disassembled across the stone floor, tools arranged beside it with the kind of order that came from long habit rather than fussiness.
Brass sconces burned against the miserable grey morning pressing at the glass, and a charcoal brazier glowed softly in the corner, carrying just enough heat to keep her fingers from going numb.
He looked up as she entered. No smile or wasted greeting, just a nod toward the drawings.
“Ye said ye wanted to see the arrangement firsthand.”
“I did.” She crossed the room and crouched beside the mechanism as the cold bit through her skirts. The bearing mounts were even worse than she’d expected up close, rough with salt corrosion, the brass worn nearly to seizure.
“How often are you cleaning these?”
“Every fortnight.”
“That’s nowhere near enough.”
“Aye. I noticed.”
She ran her thumb carefully along the inside bore of the nearest mount. The metal rasped faintly beneath her skin.
“With this much exposure, the wear’s accelerating every time the shaft heats.”
He handed her the calipers before she asked.
She measured the shaft carefully, doing the arithmetic in her head. No sense pretending to fumble or disguising her competence beneath false hesitation. Just the work itself, plain and direct, the way they’d agreed. It was oddly frightening not having to hide.
Her mother had always called it tinkering, usually while Abigail had some appliance spread across the kitchen floor in pieces.
Radios. Lamps. The vacuum cleaner once, disastrously.
She’d always liked understanding how things worked, feeling the satisfaction of solving mechanical problems piece by piece until order emerged from chaos again.
Now, here with Rory crouched beside her in the lantern room while rain rattled softly against the glass overhead, she could simply be herself.
“The radius needs to be widened,” she said after another measurement. “About a sixteenth of an inch.”
“Too much play?”
“More than I expected. The shaft’s been turned down before.”
“Aye. After the first failure.” Blue eyes met hers. Gracious that man was smoking hot.
“That’d do it.”
She reached for the charcoal beside his sketches. Their fingers brushed briefly as he passed it to her, his warmth against her cold skin, and something small and electric skipped up her arm before she could stop it.
Nope, no boyfriends from the 18th century, not going to happen, you have to go home.
With a shake of her head, Abigail bent her attention firmly back to the paper.
She redrew the cradle seat on a scrap, marking the revised clearance with her familiar decimal-dash notation.
“Ye’re certain?” Rory asked when she paused.
“I’m certain.” She adjusted her skirts, trying to put more of the wool fabric between her and the floor.
For the next hour they worked shoulder to shoulder. Question and answer. Measurement and counter-measurement. Engineer to engineer.
There was something almost peaceful in it.
Abigail hadn’t realized how badly she’d missed this feeling until now.
Before Lady Katherine’s journal. Before committees, accusations, and colleagues who’d looked at her afterward with careful professional pity, as though intellectual disgrace might somehow be contagious. Here there was only the work.
Only brass, geometry, salt air, and the quiet concentration of another like-minded person moving alongside her.
They sat close because the mechanism demanded it.
His knee rested only inches from hers across the scattered tools.
Whenever he leaned forward to check a measurement she became aware of the breadth of his shoulders beneath the navy wool of his coat, the heat of him lingering faintly in the chilly room.
She focused fiercely on the calipers. It didn’t help.
“The bearing surface,” Rory said after awhile, studying her revised sketch. “What metal would ye choose?”
“Softer than the shaft. You want the wear happening here instead.” She tapped the cradle with the charcoal. “Brass works well enough, but ideally? Two bronzes. Harder grade against the shaft face. Softer in the cradle.”
“The Commissioners will be delighted to hear I require more materials.”
“Tell them you’re saving three future repairs.”
One corner of his mouth shifted. Not quite a smile, but close enough to make her cheeks heat.
“Ye’ve been listening while I dictate letters to Smith.”
“I’ve been listening to you,” she said automatically, then wished immediately she’d phrased it literally any other way.
His eyes flicked toward hers. After a moment, she looked back down at the sketch.
“When you complain about supply costs,” she added much too quickly, “you sound like someone trapped in a very long-running argument.”
That earned her the faintest huff of laughter.
“There’s because I am.”
He rose then and crossed toward the brazier where the bronze stock rested wrapped in linen.
Abigail watched him work. She’d read his letters. Had known from the writing alone that Rory Sinclair was methodical, precise, and patient with machinery in a way only truly gifted engineers ever were. Watching him in person took her breath away.
The long even draw of the file through metal as concentration settled across his face. The way he checked the calipers after every pass without fail. His sleeves were rolled up. Candlelight caught against the tendons shifting beneath his forearms as he worked.
Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. His hair had come slightly loose where it’d been tied back earlier, a strand falling across his forehead every few minutes until he pushed it away absently with the back of his wrist.
He looked tired. Not exhausted exactly, but worn thin around the edges in the way people did after carrying responsibility too long without rest.
She wondered suddenly when he’d last slept properly. That thought felt far more dangerous than noticing his forearms.
With a shake of her head, she fixed her attention back on the calipers.
Ewan appeared once, surveyed the room in complete silence, set down two mugs of small beer beside the brazier, then departed without comment.
Honestly, it was the most tactful thing Ewan had done since she’d arrived.
Rory finished the cradle at last and held it up beneath the lantern light, turning it carefully between his fingers before looking toward her.
“Let’s see if ye were right.”
“Oh, excellent. No pressure.”
His mouth twitched again.
Together they fitted the new cradle onto the shaft. Abigail slid a narrow strip of paper through the clearance gap. Smooth. Perfect.
“Go on,” Rory said quietly.
She rested her fingers against the drive gear and turned the mechanism by hand. The shaft rotated smoothly without grinding or catching.
No rough scrape of failing brass.
The entire assembly moved with graceful ease, every piece settling into motion exactly as it’d been meant to all along.
Abigail sat back slowly on her heels as warm satisfaction spread through her chest.
After a few minutes Rory said, very softly,
“Oh.”
Such a small word.
She looked sideways toward him to see him watching the turning mechanism with an expression of hope on his face for the span of a heartbeat, before the old tension settled back into place.
Abigail pretended not to notice and instead looked past him through the western glass toward the cliffs below.
She’d walked the path there twice now. The second time she’d stopped near a grassy rise and found the low stack of stones set overlooking the water. Through the center rested a length of weather-darkened oak she’d recognized immediately for what it was.
A piece of a ship’s rail. Salvaged. Somehow she knew it was for his brother. Suddenly, Abigail wanted very badly to touch his sleeve, and that seemed like the sort of decision likely to complicate her life catastrophically.
“We still need load testing,” Rory said after awhile, his voice steadier now. “And heat.”
“We do.”
“Brass behaves differently once the lamp’s burning.”
“I accounted for expansion.”
“Aye, but I’d like to see it with my own eyes before trusting it.”
“Fair enough.”
He rested one broad hand against the bronze cradle as though imagining the heat there already.
“I’ll not light the full lamp tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll do a short burn and check the wear. Longer the next evening if it holds.”
“One step at a time.”
His eyes lifted toward hers immediately as Abigail became acutely aware of the warmth in the room, and somehow resisted the urge to blow down the front of her dress.
“The lubrication’s still going to fail eventually,” she said quickly. “Whale oil breaks down too fast with this much salt exposure.”
“What would ye use instead?”
“Lanolin.”
He blinked once. “Lanolin.”
“Wool grease.” She tucked a bit of loose hair behind her ear. “Mrs. Gable probably has an entire kingdom of it downstairs.”
“And ye know this because...?”
“My mother...” Abigail stopped herself. Her mother had never used lanolin for anything in her life.
“I read about it.”
Rory studied her for half a second longer. Then nodded once.
“Aye. We’ll try it.”
No prying at to how she knew, no interrogation.
The relief of that settled unexpectedly deep.
He looked at her with something warm and thoughtful in his blue eyes.
“Ye’re remarkable, Abigail.”
The simple sincerity of it nearly undid her.
“I’m just helping.”