Chapter 12 #2
“Aye,” he said quietly. “I know.”
For a moment neither of them moved, then Rory stood and offered her his hand.
His palm was warm and rough as he pulled her easily to her feet. Abigail ended up far closer to him than she’d intended, close enough to see the pale scar cutting faintly along his jawline, close enough to smell salt and smoke and wool warmed by the brazier.
He let go a beat too late, or maybe exactly when he meant to. She stepped back first and brushed stone dust unnecessarily from her skirts.
They worked another three hours in the lantern room before carrying the drawings downstairs after supper to continue at the kitchen table while Mrs. Gable cleaned around them.
The kitchen felt hot after the tower. Lamplight pooled gold across the scarred wooden table. Rain ticked softly at the windows. In the dining room, the old clock kept steady time with small clicks.
Rory sat opposite her with his sleeves still rolled back, candlelight catching now and then against the scar along his jaw whenever he leaned over the drawings.
He wasn’t a historical figure here. Not handwriting preserved in old letters beneath museum glass.
Just a living man sitting three feet away from her at a kitchen table in 1787, smelling faintly of salt, wool, smoke while discussing gear tolerances.
Which honestly felt more surreal than the time travel at this point.
He leaned across once to trace a ratio along the page with one finger.
His forearm brushed hers lightly. The contact lasted maybe two seconds.
Oh no, she thought distantly. Oh, this is bad.
“This could work,” Rory said at last, sitting back slightly. “Three successful burns before I write Smith.”
“Sensible.”
“I couldna have done this without ye.” His eyes looked impossibly blue in the lamplight.
Emotion rose so quickly in her throat she needed a moment.
“You designed the original system.”
“Doesna matter.” He gathered the papers carefully into a neat stack. Her rough sketches ended up folded together with his own drawings as naturally as though they belonged there. As though she belonged there.
“Ye saw what I couldna.”
The room had gone very quiet. Even Mrs. Gable seemed suddenly farther away.
Rory tied the drawings together at last and rose from the table.
“Ye should get some sleep,” he said softly. “Tomorrow I’ll finish the second cradle. Then we test the burn tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
He left her alone in the kitchen with the lamp flickering against the walls.
She listened to his boots as she sat very still.
Abigail had given him knowledge from centuries ahead of his own.
Altered a lighthouse mechanism that technically shouldn’t exist yet in precisely this form.
The lamp would light sooner now. Ships would see the coast faster.
Men who might otherwise vanish beneath the waves might live instead.
Was that changing history?
Or had history already included her, accounted for her knowledge?
The letters already existed. She’d held them in her own hands in 2026 with Arthur’s terrible over-steeped tea cooling beside her elbow. Which meant this had already happened.
Her helping Rory had always been part of the story. It made her head hurt.
“Don’t think about it,” she muttered to herself.
Excellent advice. Completely impossible.
She banked the kitchen fire the way Mrs. Gable had shown her, though still badly enough that Mrs. Gable would probably sigh over it tomorrow morning, then carried a lamp upstairs to her room.
The chamber was cold enough that her breath clouded faintly in the dark.
Abigail slid beneath the blankets and stared upward listening to the creaks of the castle and the sound of the waves.
She thought about the way Rory had said remarkable in that quiet Scottish voice of his.
The way his hand had lingered near hers. The tiny half-smile he tried not to show. The soft astonished oh when the mechanism finally turned cleanly beneath the shaft.
And, because apparently her life hadn’t become complicated enough lately, she thought about how happy she’d been sitting beside him at the kitchen table.
“You’re falling for a lighthouse engineer from 1787,” she informed herself.
The ceiling offered no useful feedback.
“You have to go home. Sam needs you, you’re all he has left.”
That was tomorrow’s crisis. Tonight she let herself lie there smiling in the dark while the storm rolled against the cliffs beyond the castle walls and the clock downstairs ticked steadily onward through the night.
Mrs. Gable did Sundays properly. Abigail had assumed, at first, that this would involve grim Presbyterian suffering in some organized ceremonial form.
Instead it involved Reverend Ogilvie preaching for nearly an hour before the entire household returned to the castle hungry enough to devour furniture, whereupon Mrs. Gable produced a dinner so spectacular Abigail briefly wondered whether the woman had secretly hired additional cooks overnight.
There was mutton stew thick with carrots and neeps.
Fresh bread with a crust that cracked loudly beneath her knife.
Crowdie cheese from Pittendrum that tasted somewhere between cottage cheese and divine forgiveness.
Stewed plums appeared mysteriously beside Abigail’s elbow without explanation. And there was whisky.
Ewan caught her staring at the bottle.
“Have ye had Scotch before, lass?”
“I have.”
“Aye,” he said solemnly. “But likely not ours.”
He poured a careful measure into a small horn cup and handed it across the table.
“Slowly,” he warned. “Unless ye’d enjoy dying.”
Abigail took a cautious sip.
Smoke. Heat. Peat. Then warmth spreading steadily downward into her chest.
“Oh,” she managed.
Ewan grinned broadly. “Aye.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Eighteen-year barrel from Banff.”
“The lighthouse celebration whisky,” Tobias added.
“Though at this rate,” Ewan said, “Mrs. Gable plans to finish it before the lighting occurs.”
Across the table Mrs. Gable made a dismissive sound that strongly suggested she considered this excellent contingency planning.
The men sang after dinner. Abigail hadn’t expected that either.
Elrick possessed a voice large enough to shake the window glass.
Tobias carried a small wooden whistle in his coat pocket apparently for precisely these occasions.
One song was in Gaelic, mournful and beautiful enough to raise the gooseflesh along her arms despite understanding only fragments of it.
Another told the story of a fisherman lost off Buchan and the wife who watched the cliffs for him every winter afterward.
It should’ve been unbearably sad, instead it felt strangely tender.
Firelight warmed the stone walls gold and amber. Wet wool steamed gently beside the hearth. Whisky and peat smoke curled richly through the room while rough-handed men sang together after supper, everyone warm and enjoying each other’s company.
This was the history Abigail had always loved most. Not kings or battles, this. The living texture of ordinary people gathered around warmth and music while winter pressed dark against the windows outside.
The sort of thing historians spent their entire careers trying unsuccessfully to reconstruct from scraps, letters, and inventories.
She sat very still and let herself memorize everything. Across the table Rory looked toward her over the rim of his whisky cup.
Their eyes met and he lifted the cup slightly in a small private salute before lowering it again.
Something warm unfolded low in her chest.
And for the first time since arriving in the past, Abigail realized with sudden dangerous clarity that a part of her no longer wanted to leave.