Chapter 13
Rory
The prototype worked.
Rory stood alone in the lantern room at half past seven in the morning. The gear train turned with a slow, steady pulse, brass finding bronze without scrape or catch.
Three months of frustration. Two failed redesigns. A dozen careful letters to the Commissioners written politely enough to hide the fact that he’d come close to throwing the whole mechanism into the sea.
And now this. The solution had come from a woman who wouldn’t say where she’d learned it, who’d watched the bearing for less than an hour, seen what he had missed, and drawn a cradle on the back of a torn ledger page as if such things were perfectly ordinary.
“It works,” he said.
A boot scraped at the threshold behind him.
“Did ye say something?” Ewan asked.
Rory didn’t look away from the mechanism. “It works. The bearing. It works.”
Ewan stepped farther into the room, his cap pushed back, cheeks red from the climb. He bent and watched the shaft turn through three full rotations, then he grinned.
“The woman’s idea?”
“It’s my design.”
“With the woman’s idea.”
Rory gave him a look.
Ewan’s grin widened. “Aye. I’ll tell the men.”
“Tell them the design was changed.”
“Changed,” Ewan repeated.
“Dinna mention her.”
“The woman who climbed out of the sea with no past, speaks strangely, and now fixes your lamp? Nay. Why would a man mention that?”
“Ewan.”
“Aye, Captain. Changed.” He started for the door, then stopped.
“Captain?”
Rory looked away from the window. “What?”
“She’s nae what she says she is.”
Rory watched the gear teeth move cleanly through another turn.
“I know.”
“But she’s helping.”
“I know that too.”
“So what are ye going to do about it?”
Rory looked at the turning mechanism. Smooth. Steady. The answer he’d needed for months sitting there in plain brass and bronze.
Abigail Winston had no story that held together or memory that made sense. She had no place in his world. But she had given him this.
“For now,” he said, “I’m going to finish the light.”
He brought her to the scaffolding that afternoon.
She’d been the inside of the tower, had crouched on the cold floor with calipers in her hand and charcoal dust on her fingers.
But she hadn’t seen the work from outside yet, with the North Sea spread below and the half-built tower rising out of rock and wind.
He told himself it was practical. It was, mostly.
If she was to understand the lamp, she needed to understand the tower.
If she was to talk about strain on the upper works, she needed to feel the wind that hit the stone and hear the sea worrying the reef below.
That was all sensible enough. It didn’t explain why he wanted to see her face when she reached the top.
Abigail climbed without the hesitation he expected. Other than sailors, most men went carefully on the high scaffold, no matter how much they boasted afterward. They tested the poles with their weight, gripped the rope lashings too tightly, glanced down and then pretended they hadn’t.
Abigail hitched her skirts above her ankles and went up as if she’d spent her life climbing things she probably shouldn’t.
Halfway up, she struck her shin against a rope lashing and said something sharp under her breath that Rory didn’t know, but strongly suspected was not for kirk use.
He nearly smiled when she kept climbing. At the top, the wind battered them both. It came off the North Sea bitter and hard, tearing at coats, hair, and making speech impossible. Abigail stopped on the outer walk with one hand braced against the stone and looked out.
For a moment she didn’t say anything. The sea lay iron-dark beneath them, with white water breaking over the reefs and gulls turning hard in the wind.
Below, Fraserburgh crouched against the weather, smoke lifting from chimneys and vanishing almost at once.
Beyond the headland, there was only water, silver to the edge of sight.
Her hair had come loose from whatever Mrs. Gable had done with it that morning. The wind dragged it across her face. She pushed it back impatiently.
Her cheeks were flushed from the climb and the cold. Her eyes were bright as she looked at the sea, as if she knew it could be beautiful and still kill a man before supper.
“It’s extraordinary,” she called.
The wind took half the word.
“What?”
She leaned closer, one hand still steady on the stone. “I said it’s extraordinary.”
“Aye. The view’s nae poor.”
She laughed.
The wind carried most of it away, but he heard enough. It was quick and bright and gone before she could stop it.
Rory looked out to sea before he made a fool of himself staring at her.
They stepped through into the lantern room from the outside platform. With no dome above yet, the wind moved through the chamber, circling the stone, tugging at loose paper, making the brazier smoke bend low before it found a way out.
Abigail walked the perimeter slowly this time. Yesterday, she’d only looked at the mechanism. Today she looked at the room itself, ran gloved fingers over the stone and stopped now and then to study the mortar joints and upper courses.
“What mix are you using here?”
He blinked at her like a bloody owl. “Lime mortar. Sand from below. Stone dust when we’ve got it.”
“And the dome sits on this course?”
“Aye.”
She tipped her head back. The wind pulled another dark strand loose from her pins.
“This is going to have to be incredibly robust. The force up here will be brutal once winter really settles in.”
Rory folded his arms. “How do ye know?”
She didn’t turn right away.
“I’ve read a lot about structural engineering.”
“Have ye?”
“A bit.”
She said it the way a man might say he knew a little about ships after crossing the Atlantic or sailing around the world.
Movement below caught his eye. The crew had slowed.
Not stopped altogether, because not even Elrick was fool enough to stand idle while Rory watched from above, but near enough.
Men leaned on mallets. Tavish stood with his face tipped up, curious as a boy at a fair.
Duncan had his arms crossed and was muttering to another mason.
Elrick’s scowl could have cracked stone.
A woman on the scaffolding, not just a lass, but a strange woman. Asking questions of the captain and studying the work as if she had any right to judge it. By evening, half the harbor would know. By morning, the tale would have grown legs.
“We should go down,” Rory said.
Abigail glanced below. “Because they’re watching?”
“Because they’re talking.”
“Does it matter?”
“In a place this small?” He looked at her. “Aye.”
She nodded. No argument or wounded pride. She simply gathered her skirts and went back toward the ladder. “I’d like to climb down the scaffolding as well, really get the feel.”
That unsettled him almost as much as the questions she asked. They climbed down with the wind pushing at their backs.
When they reached the ground, work resumed at once. Mallets struck stone. Rope creaked. Men bent over tools and mortar buckets and blocks as if they hadn’t been watching at all.
Rory felt their attention. A man could hear talk before the first word was spoken.
That evening, Ewan found him in the lantern room, checking the prototype again before the first burn.
“The men are talking,” Ewan said from the door.
Rory kept his eyes on the bearing. “I know.”
“Elrick says she’s your paramour.”
“Elrick’s a fool.”
“Aye, but he’s a loud fool. That’s the difficult kind.”
Rory turned the gear by hand once more. Smooth. Still smooth.
“They’re asking who she really is,” Ewan said. “And what she is. A woman who climbs scaffolding like a lad, asks questions like an engineer, and seems to ken more about the work than half the crew. That isna a small thing.”
“I said I know.”
“Do ye?”
Rory looked up then.
Ewan held his gaze. There were not many men on the headland who would have done that. Ewan had earned the right by years of telling him things he didn’t want to hear and then remaining within reach afterward.
Though Rory had never struck him, not once.
“What would ye have me do?” Rory asked.
“Name what she is to you before others name it for you.”
“There’s nothing to name.”
Ewan’s brows rose. “There’s something. I dinna ken what it is. Maybe ye dinna either. But there’s something, and every man with eyes saw it today.”
“She was found half drowned on the rocks,” Rory said. “She has no memory and nowhere safe to go. There’s nothing improper in giving shelter to a lass in need.”
“That’ll sound fine to Reverend Ogilvie.” Ewan stepped farther into the room and lowered his voice.
“It willna stop the fishmonger’s wife from telling three women she saw the captain with a pretty stranger at the castle. Nor Elrick from saying ye let her put hands on the lamp because she’s warming your bed.”
Rory’s hand tightened on the crank.
“She is not.”
“I ken that.”
“Do ye?”
“Aye.” Ewan’s voice gentled. “But knowing a thing and keeping the parish from chewing on it are no’ the same.”
Rory looked back at the mechanism. The shaft turned obediently. And every time it turned cleanly, he thought of Abigail in the kitchen with charcoal on her fingers.
“I’ll deal with Elrick.”
“Deal with the talk too. It’ll follow her before it follows you.”
That was true. Rory disliked it for being true. Talk could stain a woman faster than smoke stained stone. He had brought Abigail into his house because the sea had nearly taken her and because leaving her alone to gossip would have been cruel. Now the gossip had found her anyway.
Ewan nodded toward the lamp. “Will ye light her tonight?”
“Aye. Two hours. We’ll see how the bearing runs under heat.”
“Want me to stand watch with ye?”
“No. Abigail wants to see it.”
“Of course she does.”
There was no mockery in it. Not much, anyway.
Ewan turned to go, then stopped. “Rory?”
“What now?”
“Go slow.”
“With the lamp?”
“With the lass.”
He scowled.
“I’m going.” Ewan lifted both hands. “But ye’ve not slept properly since the wreck, and ye’re no’ always wise when grief’s had its teeth in you.”
Ewan gave him one last look and left him with the mechanism and the sound of the sea below.
Abigail came up at eight with a shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders and a small earthenware jar tucked under one arm.
Lanolin. She had raided Mrs. Gable’s wool stores and warmed the grease by the hearth until it was soft enough to work. The smell came with her, sheep, smoke, and kitchen warmth in the cold room.
“I brought the glamorous solution,” she said, setting the jar beside the mechanism. “Behold. Sheep grease.”
Rory looked from the jar to her face.
“Sheep grease,” he repeated.
“Very technical term.”
“Aye. I’d guessed.”
She gave him a quick look, almost smiling, then dipped a narrow wooden paddle into the jar.
Once she bent to the work, the humor left her.
She smoothed the lanolin thin along the bearing surface, pausing every few strokes to check it with the side of her thumb.
“Not too much,” she said. “If there’s excess, it’ll sling off the shaft once it starts turning.”
“Aye.”
He wiped where she indicated. She checked the surface, nodded once, and reseated the shaft with him.
“Ready when you are, Captain.”
Rory set the drive weight. The chain took tension and he released the pawl.
The mechanism began to turn, slowly at first, then steady. The room filled with the small, familiar sound of motion.
Rory lit the lamp. The wick caught on the first draw.
He adjusted the chimney until the flame settled tall and clean.
He had trimmed it that morning with the brass scissors from his old midshipman’s kit, the same pair he had carried through storms, watches, deaths, and more years than he cared to count.
Through the lens, the beam stretched outward.
The light moved, sweeping across the water as Rory stood very still.
He had drawn this beam in ink. Argued for it in letters.
Defended it to men who had never stood on a black reef in bad weather with a dead sailor under their hands.
He had promised Smith, the Commissioners, the crew, himself, and a brother who would never grow older than the night the Ardent went down.
Beside him, Abigail was quiet.
The beam came around again.
“Well done, Captain,” she said at last.
His throat tightened, which irritated him. “Well done, Abigail.”
They stood together and watched the light go out across the water.
The mechanism ticked through its gears. The first hour passed. Then the second began. Below, the castle was awake.
Rory heard Mrs. Gable cross the yard once. He heard Ewan’s voice from the lodgings, low and satisfied. A door opened somewhere below and shut again. Men were awake though no one had told them to be. The whole headland was waiting.
At the two-hour mark, Rory touched the outer housing. It was warm, but not hot.
He glanced at Abigail. “It holds. Two hours was the test.”
Rory kept his hand near the bearing housing and felt the heat move into the cold air. His whole working life had run along the edge between caution and stubbornness. Some days he knew the difference. Some days he only learned it after. Tonight, under his fingers, the heat felt manageable.
“What if we run her another two?” he asked.
Abigail looked at him for a second, but he saw the hesitation.
“Thermally, she should be fine,” she said. “The clearance should hold.”
“Should.”
“It’s your call, Captain.”
That was the trouble with command. In the end, no one else carried it for you. “My call is to keep watching her.”
Abigail drew the shawl tighter around herself and nodded. “Then I’ll watch her with you.”
The third hour began.