The History of Us

The conference room at the Historical Society smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and old paper. Elara set her binder on the table at the exact angle she’d rehearsed, tabs aligned in a precise rainbow. The projector warmed with a low hum. She checked her notes—timeline in twenty-four-point font, budget in eighteen, contingencies annotated with footnotes. Everything she needed for the Blackwood Estate grant was distilled, ordered, controlled.

She didn’t look at the other candidates. She didn’t need to. Her plan was airtight.

“Ms. Hale?” Chairwoman Whitcombe prompted gently. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Elara lifted her chin. “Thank you. The Blackwood Estate is a critical, at-risk repository of nineteenth-century correspondence and domestic artifacts. My proposal prioritizes stabilization, cataloging, and phased access. The first forty-eight hours will be devoted to environmental controls and triage. I’ve included a humidity mitigation plan to address the Highlands’ climate, with portable dehumidifiers and buffered storage enclosures.” She clicked to the next slide—schematics, a color-coded flow chart, polaroids of similar rescues she’d led.

She didn't rush. Precision calmed her. She walked them through her inventorying method—Box Level to Item Level metadata, Dublin Core standards, custom controlled vocabulary for marginalia. She explained that public engagement would come after conservation, never before. Photographs would be limited to documentation shots with neutral gray cards, not “content creation.”

When she finished, the room held that taut, quiet space she lived for. Interest, respect. She answered three questions with concise detail and sat, folding her hands to keep from smoothing an imaginary wrinkle on her skirt.

“Thank you, Ms. Hale,” Whitcombe said. “Next, Mr. West.”

Elara’s heartbeat stuttered. She looked up for the first time and saw the man leaning back in his chair with careless slouching ease, a camera strap looped twice around his wrist like a talisman. He had day-old stubble and the kind of eyes that caught light and made use of it. He stood without a binder. Without notes.

“Julian West,” he said, offering the room a warm, lopsided smile. His voice had that unstudied softness some men collected by accident. “Look, I know the estate is fragile. That’s why I’m proposing a narrative-driven survey. We enter, yes, with gloves and common sense, but also with curiosity. The house is a living thing trapped in a cold frame, and I want to let people feel its breath again.”

Elara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Personifying buildings was a lazy indulgence.

He clicked to his first slide—images, not of artifacts, but of hands. A caretaker’s fingers tracing a cracked leather spine. A child peering into a wooden trunk. A lace curtain lifting in draft light. His photos were infuriatingly good—clear without being clinical, intimate without being invasive. He framed absence like presence, light like touch. He talked about long exposure to catch the way dust moved in sunbeams, the sound of floorboards as a kind of score. He used words like story and witness more than he used plan.

He finished with a quiet, “If we wait for perfection before showing people why this matters, we will lose them. I say we bring them into the room while the heart is still beating.”

Polite murmurs. A younger committee member smiled openly. A senior archivist beside Elara frowned, thoughtful.

Chairwoman Whitcombe nodded. “Questions?”

Elara raised her hand. “Mr. West, you mentioned bringing people ‘into the room’ during assessment. Could you define your parameters? What staging will you avoid? What safeguards are you proposing for handling loose-leaf papers, wax seals, and textiles under your lighting?”

He looked at her, amused. “We won’t stage anything, Ms. Hale. We’ll document what’s there. I use natural light when I can. When I can’t, I diffuse. I don’t touch what’s fragile unless an archivist says it’s safe.”

“You are the applicant,” Elara said evenly. “Your proposal suggests you’ll be leading on-site documentation.”

“Alongside the resident expertise,” he said. “I’m not stupid.”

“That’s not the standard,” she said, ignoring the flicker of heat in her chest at his easy confidence. “It’s not about whether you’re smart. It’s about repeatability and minimal intervention. Your photographs are beautiful, but beauty is not the same as stewardship.”

He tilted his head. “And stewardship isn’t an excuse for paralysis.”

The room tightened around them.

She steepled her fingers. “Paralysis is failing to act because of fear. I am proposing action based on best practice. I do not expose vellum to daylong sunlight because an image might be poignant. I do not risk flaking ink for a mood.”

His jaw worked, just once. “I don’t peel up wax with my lens cap to make a shot. I know better. But if we shut the door and wait six months for a perfect climate regime, the story in that dust, in how that ribbon rubs a mark into the page, is gone. I grew up in houses that were torn down while committees debated their significance.”

The admission snagged. Elara’s focus skittered, then reformed. “You can document transience without accelerating it.”

He smiled, small and sharp. “You can also kill it by freezing it.”

“Enough,” Whitcombe said, not unkindly. “We appreciate passion from both sides. Mr. West, could you elaborate on your data management? Ms. Hale, we’ll return to your mitigation schedule shortly.”

The questions pinged back and forth, but the air between Elara and Julian stayed charged. When the formalities ended and chairs scraped back, people stood and clustered in conversational islands. Elara gathered her binder.

“Hey,” Julian said, stepping into her path. Up close, he smelled like coffee and rain. The camera knocked softly against his hip.

“Mr. West,” she said.

“Julian.”

She didn’t give him hers. He grinned anyway. “You were good. Terrifying, but good.”

“Your presentation was…” She searched for something neutral. “Engaging.”

“Engaging,” he echoed, as if tasting it. “You don’t like what I do.”

“I like preservation. I like accuracy. Your approach risks both.”

“And yours risks making history a locked room with a do-not-enter sign.”

“It’s a locked room because people like you open windows without checking the hinges.” She heard the sharpness and couldn’t make herself sand it down. “I’ve spent a decade picking up pieces after ‘engagement’ left boxes out in damp church halls.”

He didn’t flinch. He looked at her, not defensive, not cowed. Curious. “You looked at my website.”

Heat rose under her collar. “I prepare.”

“Do you prepare for the fact that sometimes people need to feel something to care?” He leaned in, voice low but not intimate. The subtle difference unsettled her more. “Blackwood matters because it breathes. If we smother it under plastic until no one remembers why it was important, what have we saved?”

“Objects,” she said. “Evidence. The truth.”

“Truth needs eyes,” he shot back, then blew out a slow breath like he’d caught himself pushing too hard. “Look, I don’t want to hurt anything. I want to help. Maybe not in your way.”

She held his gaze. He had callouses on his fingers, she noticed, the kind made by shutter buttons and climbing over fences. He probably tossed equipment into bags and trusted his instincts. The idea made her want to inhale and bite at the same time.

“We’re not on the same project,” she said, more to herself than him.

“Yet,” he said.

She tightened her grip on her binder. “Good luck, Mr. West.”

“You too, Ms. Hale.” He stepped aside, the courteous glide of a man who could be generous because he trusted his luck.

She walked past him to the elevator without looking back, heart beating faster than made sense. In the polished steel, her reflection looked composed, every hair in place. Inside, something had been nudged out of alignment—not broken, but moved. She didn’t like it.

The elevator doors opened on the lobby. She exhaled once, collecting herself, already building the list in her head: adjust the budget line for fuel if the roads were bad, add a second dehumidifier to the initial loadout, draft a firmer paragraph on image-use policy. She didn’t plan for anyone else. She didn’t plan to need to.

Her phone buzzed before she reached the street. Chairwoman Whitcombe’s name pulsed on the screen. Elara stepped to the side of the marble foyer, spine straightening, breath shallow with the practiced readiness of post-presentation calls. She answered. “Ms. Whitcombe.”

“Elara. Thank you for today. You were excellent,” the chairwoman said, voice pleasant, too pleasant.

Elara heard the pivot before it came. “But.”

“But the committee found both proposals compelling in different ways. The estate is… unusual. There are political pressures to demonstrate public value quickly, and concerns about fragility. We have decided to send both you and Mr. West to Blackwood for a preliminary one-week assessment. You’ll coordinate. At the end of the week, we’ll convene and make a final award based on your joint report.”

For a heartbeat, Elara didn’t process the words. They landed piecemeal, like loose pages scattering. Send both. Coordinate. Joint report. Her grip tightened around the phone until plastic creaked. “You’re splitting the grant?” she asked, though that wasn’t what had been said at all.

“No,” Whitcombe said. “There will be a single award. Consider this a… site trial. The estate caretaker is aware. We have flights for Tuesday morning. Weather permitting.”

“I submitted a plan predicated on independent authority,” Elara said evenly. “Chain of custody. Controlled access. I cannot meet those standards if I’m sharing decision-making with a freelance photographer whose deliverables are undefined.”

A pause. “Mr. West has assured us he’ll adhere to conservation directives on-site.”

“He also assured you dust is a narrative device,” Elara said before she could stop herself. She swallowed. “This is highly unorthodox.”

“I agree. It’s also the compromise we have. If you decline, we’ll move forward without you.”

There it was: the quiet pressure, the barely veiled threat. Elara stared at the polished floor until her reflection wavered. Years of being the calm, the safe pair of hands, the person who made committees feel they’d done the right thing. And now—this. An experiment masquerading as prudence.

She made herself inhale, slow and even. “I don’t decline,” she said. “But I’m documenting my concerns. I’ll need written confirmation that any handling decisions defer to me.”

“You’ll have a memorandum,” Whitcombe said, relieved. “Elara—this is an opportunity to demonstrate the value of your rigor to a broader audience.”

“I don’t need a broader audience,” she said softly. “I need to preserve a collection.”

The chairwoman’s tone gentled, the way people’s tones did when they believed in their own reasonableness. “We’re on the same side. I’ll email the details.”

The line clicked off. Elara lowered the phone. For a moment she just stood, the entire bright lobby moving around her with the indifferent flow of people who had their own agendas and simple days ahead.

Her chest felt tight with a fury too controlled to flare. It settled instead like a hard stone under her sternum. Unprofessional. Reckless. This wasn’t how you protected an estate; this was how you fed it to optics. She imagined Julian’s easy smile when he got the same call. He would think it vindication. He would think this meant they wanted his “story.” He’d bring his light-diffusers and his instincts and steamroll nuance with charm.

She walked out into the cool afternoon air on automatic pilot, the city’s noise thinner than usual behind the pane of her anger. By the time she reached the corner, her mind had already opened her budgeting spreadsheet in memory, deleting and adding lines: second pair of nitrile gloves for any time he thought to “help,” more silica gel, heavier Tyvek sleeves for loose materials, extra rolls of barrier tape. She would bring a printed handling guide and hand it to him on day one. She would keep the keys to whatever cabinets had working locks. She would be polite and immovable.

At home, she set her binder on the table and opened her laptop, fingers moving without pause. The email from Whitcombe was waiting: flight times, a contact for the caretaker—Angus MacRae—and a note about an impending storm front, as if the Highlands had decided to add theater. Of course.

She replied with confirmation, attached a draft of the handling directive she’d written in graduate school and updated twice since, and cc’d the committee with her list of non-negotiables: no artificial light above 50 lux without consultation, no movement of bound volumes without supports, no removal of materials from designated rooms, no publication of images before institutional approval. She read the sentences again and again until the words steadied her.

Her phone lit with a new number. She considered ignoring it and then answered. “Elara Hale.”

“Julian West,” he said, and she could hear the smile, which irritated her more than if he’d sounded smug. “So. Partners in crime.”

“Don’t say crime,” she said. “And we are not partners.”

“Co-inhabitants of a drafty manor, then.”

“Co-occupants of a site,” she corrected. “With delineated responsibilities. I’ve sent the handling protocol to the committee. You’ll receive it.”

“I can read a protocol,” he said. “I can also read a room. You’re furious.”

“I’m professional,” she said. “Fury would be counterproductive. I don’t do counterproductive.”

A beat. “Fair enough. Look, I didn’t lobby for this. They called me. I said I’d follow your lead on anything fragile.”

She blinked, thrown off balance by the concession. “Good,” she said, and hated that it came out softer. She cleared her throat. “There’s a storm forecast. Pack for cold. Bring headlamps and batteries. Power at the estate is unreliable in winter, apparently.”

“I always bring headlamps,” he said. “And coffee. I’ll stay out of your way until you tell me where I can point my camera.”

Her jaw flexed. She was not going to be charmed. “We’ll need to establish workflow the moment we arrive. The first forty-eight hours—”

“Environmental controls and triage,” he finished, not mocking, just remembering. “I do listen.”

She looked at the edge of her kitchen table. “Good. Then you know there won’t be any ‘narratives’ until we know what’s safe.”

“Elara,” he said, her name careful in his mouth, “I want to do this right.”

“Then do what I say,” she replied, and ended the call before the warmth infiltrating her voice could travel any further.

She stood for a long moment, the silence of her apartment suddenly too bright. Then she moved, a controlled flurry. Lists, stacked. Bags, opened. She retrieved her field kit from the hall closet and laid everything out on the bed: cotton gloves, nitrile gloves, pH pens, soft brushes, bone folders, microspatulas, museum gel. She added a spare scarf, thermal leggings, a wool hat. She dug out the travel dehumidifier filters and tucked them into zippered pouches, nested tape measures, tucked into the side of a hard case the laminated sign she used for community days: Please do not touch. She considered printing a smaller version and taping it to Julian’s camera.

Her fury cooled into something even sharper: resolve. If they wanted a demonstration, she would give them one. She would show them exactly what rigor looked like in the wild. She would not let a freelancer’s improvisations become precedent. She would protect Blackwood from the storm and from Julian’s charm.

She zipped the last bag and wrote, at the top of a fresh page in her notebook, in small, neat letters: One week. Boundaries. Evidence. Then she underlined each word once, closed the cover, and set her alarm for a time that would make Tuesday hurt less.

She woke before the alarm anyway, the pale gray before dawn prying the room into definition. The bed was a workbench now, every item in ranked rows. She showered quickly, pulled on leggings and an old sweater, and tied her hair in a blunt knot that wouldn’t fall into boxes or snag on rusty hinges. Coffee steamed on the dresser. She didn’t touch it until the first checklist was complete.

She returned to the bed and moved through the supplies with the calm of muscle memory. Two sets of cotton gloves, three of nitrile. A roll of Tyvek sleeves. Neutral pH storage envelopes in small, medium, and large. Archival pencils sharpened to a blunt point so they wouldn’t tear. Soft goat-hair brushes. A lens cloth—her own, for her phone camera; she wouldn’t risk touching his. Microspatulas, bone folders, a compact headlamp, backup batteries, pH pens, and two magnifiers: a loupe and a foldable linen tester. She counted silica gel packets into a labeled bag and tucked it into the corner of her hard case. Masking tape for temporary labels, painter’s tape for flagging floors, red-and-white barrier tape for “do not cross.” Two clipboards with acid-free paper, one for intake, one for incident reports.

She added a collapsible stand for her laptop, a portable keyboard for long notes, and the external drive that lived in a fireproof pouch. Zip ties. A small pry bar wrapped in cloth. A packet of disposable booties. A roll of polyethylene sheeting. An extra scarf. Wool socks. Thermal leggings. A hat the exact navy that didn’t show dust. Thin gloves for when she needed dexterity. Thicker gloves for when she’d be carrying wood because the caretaker would be elderly and the storm was not a metaphor.

She laid her itinerary next to the pile and scanned it, every block shaded and labeled. Tuesday midday arrival. Tuesday afternoon environmental assessment and stabilization triage. Tuesday night: initial walk-through with Angus to confirm structural integrity and locate main shut-offs. Wednesday morning start: light mapping and humidity logging, initial cataloguing of what could be moved safely. Schedule note: allow for conflict management with “Mr. West” in ten-minute increments—humor it if it speeds compliance. Wednesday afternoon: begin photographing box conditions—not contents—for chain of custody. Thursday through Saturday: structured review of priority trunks, letters, and bound volumes, with handling rules posted in each workspace. Nightly: secure rooms, lock cabinets, document changes. Sunday: compile preliminary findings and risk register, draft recommendations. Leave Monday. Contingencies for weather delays highlighted in yellow.

Only then did she pick up the coffee and take a careful sip. It steadied her enough to open her laptop.

She typed his name into the search bar with a neutrality that felt like a dare. Julian West. The top result was his site, the sort of minimalist portfolio page that presented nothing but image and breath around it. She hovered, then clicked.

It was as she remembered, and worse. Not worse in any technical sense—she couldn’t fault his eye even when she wanted to. Worse because each photograph seemed to walk past the neat rope lines she set around things and look them directly in the face. A salt-streaked fishing boat slumped on a shingle beach like a rib cage, the wood splintered and wet. A woman’s hands, knuckles chapped, cradling a chipped tea mug stamped with a factory logo. The light wasn’t theatrical, yet everything appeared as if it had just breathed out. He wasn’t polite with his subjects. He was intimate.

She clicked on a series titled “Holdfast,” the word simple under his name. The thumbnails resolved into rooms like people—cracked plaster, a worn banister with a groove polished by generations of palms, a window with condensation running like tears. In one frame, there was a fallen book open on a floorboard, the print blurred by a droplet. She leaned closer despite herself. The caption was nothing but a place and a year. No insistence. The insistence was in what he chose to see.

Her thumb hesitated above the trackpad. She exhaled and opened the “Work” tab. There was a set from a monastic archive on an island she had never been able to get to because the ferry was unreliable and her grant had not allowed for delays. He had shot the men’s faces with their manuscripts, not the manuscripts alone. He hadn’t touched them—she checked edges, hands, shadows, always looking for violations—but he had breathed their air in some way that translated to the screen. The vellum glowed as if warmth still lived in it. Her chest was tight. She hated how it made her feel like a spectator to something not quite appropriate and not quite avoidable.

She almost closed the tab. Instead she scrolled, jaw tense. A portrait stopped her. It was an elderly man at a kitchen table, his eyes tired, his hands folded over a letter with a browned edge. The composition was simple, a clean line from the man’s right shoulder to the paper, the light making a quiet halo of the steam rising from his tea. There was tenderness in it that snagged her like a burr. The caption: “Angus MacRae with his father’s letter. Ardnamurchan, 2017.” Her mouth went dry. Angus. He had been here before, not at Blackwood, but near, maybe. He knew what rooms in this weather sounded like.

She rubbed her forehead, then her neck. There was a video link—behind-the-scenes, she guessed. She told herself it was intelligent to know her counterpart’s methods. She clicked. It was mostly him moving in silence, arranging nothing, waiting in rooms for people to forget the camera, waiting in fields for the fog to thin. His hands were deft but unintrusive. He smiled without showing his teeth when a child handed him a shell. He stood back, hands in pockets, while a woman re-tied her scarf, not reaching to fix it. It was all so precise in its looseness that it irritated her.

She closed the video and stared at her reflection in the dark monitor for a breath. Unsettling. That was the word. His work didn’t respect the borders she set between object and story; it lived in the seepage. This was what committees liked: this bone-deep invitation to feel. It felt like a risk vector. It felt like power.

She clicked into his bio to find leverage. Awards, residencies, a short list of clients she respected and some she did not. There was a line about consulting with conservation teams, which she read twice to see if it was gratuitous. There was a photo of him, hair cut shorter than last week, a scar just visible at his left temple she hadn’t noticed in person. He looked at the lens as if asking it a question. She disliked the answering in herself.

She shut the laptop. The room snapped back into the small, manageable world of wool socks and case latches. She breathed out and slid the packed cubes into their assigned compartments. She checked and rechecked straps. She printed two copies of the handling protocol, hole-punched them, slipped them into binders with tabs. One for her. One for him. She labeled a sharpie with her initials with a strip of masking tape because pens vanished around men like him. She set out her passport, flight confirmation, and a sealed envelope of cash because rural places and storms did not care how many apps you had.

When everything was zipped, she stood at the foot of the bed and scanned for anything that would leak uncertainty. She saw none. She picked up her notebook, opened to the first page, and added a line under Evidence: Familiarize self with West’s visual tendencies; plan countermeasures. She drew a small box and filled it in. The act satisfied something simple and old in her.

In the quiet, she allowed one last image from his site to rise—the man at the table with the letter—and then she put it away like any other fragile paper, filed in a mental folder marked: do not touch unless necessary. Outside, the first drops of rain marked the window in two clean, separate tracks. She turned off the light.

By the time she reached the platform, the rain had turned insistent, a cold mist that threaded into hair and cuffs. The train shuddered in as if reluctant to do the journey. She found her carriage and stepped into warmth and the smell of damp wool and old coffee. The seats were narrow, the aisle clogged with bags. She was early enough to stake the window side, sliding her case into the overhead with both hands and wedging her backpack at her feet.

He arrived with exactly the amount of noise she’d expected—apologetic laughter for a woman he nearly bumped with his camera bag, a quick “cheers” to a porter, the clatter of boots. He paused at their row, reading the numbers. “Looks like I’m your neighbor,” he said, breath clouded, hair flattened by rain, camera bag bumping his hip like a pet.

She offered a tight nod and turned to the window. The reflection showed his grin tilt, then soften. He slid in, his shoulder close but not touching. The train lurched, and they were moving, rooftops and brick blurring.

“Thought of you when I saw the weather,” he said after a minute, tone light. “It’s like Scotland read your itinerary and said, ‘Let me spice that up.’”

“I made contingencies,” she said. She took out her binder and opened to the first tab, the noise of the rings a small barrier.

“I don’t doubt it.” He leaned back, stretching long legs and then tucking them more neatly when a trolley tried to squeeze past. “Do you drink train coffee? It always tastes like a dare.”

“I brought mine,” she said, lifting her thermos by an inch and setting it down again. She did not ask if he wanted any.

“Of course you did.” He rubbed his hands together, then unzipped his bag and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, followed by a compact flashlight, then two candles, as if he were doing a show-and-tell for an anxious audience. He glanced sideways. “For the ‘wee storm.’ Angus’s words. I met him a few years back.”

“I saw the photo,” she said before she could stop herself. Her lips pressed together. “On your site.”

“Oh.” He brightened. “He made me the strongest tea. Said it would fix my ‘thin city blood.’ He’s a good one.”

She nodded, letting it die. Landscape opened, the city loosening into scrub and damp fields. Her pen hovered over a line item. He fished a paperback from his coat pocket, dog-eared and swelling slightly from moisture. The cover was an old Ordnance Survey map taped at the spine. He didn’t open it.

“So,” he said, quieter. “Truce on methodologies before we even set foot inside? I promise not to sneeze on the vellum.”

“If you follow the handling protocol, there will be no need for truces,” she replied. “It’s not complex. It’s thoughtful.”

“I like thoughtful.” He glanced at her hands. “You labeled your pen.”

“Pens disappear.” She didn’t look at him.

“Only around men like me?” He sounded amused, not offended.

“Anecdotally,” she said, and sipped her coffee.

Silence settled. The rhythm of track and wheel smoothed her nerves by degrees. He watched the rain bead and race on the glass.

“How long have you wanted to see Blackwood?” he asked eventually.

“Since I learned it existed,” she said. “Since I was fifteen and read a footnote in a paper about private archives inaccessible to the public due to family neglect.”

“Fifteen,” he repeated, impressed. “I think at fifteen I wanted to skateboard across Spain. That didn’t happen.”

“No,” she said, deadpan. “You became a photographer who gets invited to closed archives.”

He laughed. “Accidental strategy.” The laugh faded. “It is a privilege. I know that.”

Her eyes, despite herself, flicked to the faint scar at his temple. Up close, it was a pale comma. “How did you get that?” The question slipped out before she could fence it.

He touched it, surprised. “Ferry dock. Skye. I didn’t time a jump right when the tide dropped. Learned how to fall. Learned not to try to catch expensive things with my head.”

“Wisdom comes late,” she said. “I have two rules for this week. Don’t be a hazard to yourself. Don’t be a hazard to the collection.”

“Reasonable,” he said. “Can we add a third? Don’t let me hog the blanket if we’re reduced to sharing it with Angus’s cat.”

“We won’t be sharing anything,” she said, heat blooming in her cheeks at the image his joke conjured. The train car’s air felt smaller.

“You say that like a prayer,” he murmured, then glanced away as the trolley returned. “Tea?”

“No,” she said, but he bought one and a packet of shortbread anyway, then split it without asking, setting half neatly on the edge of her tray. She left it there long enough for him to retract his hand. Eventually, she took a bite and kept reading.

He made attempts at conversation the way the rain kept trying the window. “Did you see the article about the estate’s roof from the eighties? They patched with whatever was around. There was a photograph of a galvanized bucket the size of a small bath catching leaks.”

“I saw,” she said. “I have sheeting.”

“I guessed.” He smiled into his cup. “You and your sheeting are going to save the day.”

“If by ‘day’ you mean ‘paper extracted from a hostile environment,’ yes.”

He whistled low. “Paper. Hostile environment. That’s a romance.”

She didn't rise to it. He turned his book over in his hands, then tucked it away again. The fields were snow-dusted now, the line north climbing. He shifted, the side of his thigh brushing the hem of her coat. She moved an inch toward the window.

“You looked at my portfolio,” he said, not a question.

“Yes.”

“And you hated it.”

“I said nothing about hate.” She tapped a margin with her pen. “Your work is effective.”

“Effective,” he echoed, grinning. “That’s like calling someone ‘nice.’”

“It moves people,” she said, a thread of impatience. “It makes committees think feelings are a substitute for preservation.”

“Or a companion to it,” he said, gentle. “We could try both.”

“We could try not contaminating samples with your breath,” she returned.

He put a hand up, surrender. “I will hold mine.”

The train plunged into a tunnel. Their reflection on the glass overlay the dark, their faces briefly superimposed, bracketed close. She looked away first. When they came out, the hills were closer, the sky lower and harder. He cleared his throat softly. “Do you ever—” He stopped. “Never mind.”

She let out a breath. “What.”

“Do you ever want to touch something you’re not supposed to?”

“All the time,” she said, before she could make it into something paler. The truth of it sat between them. “That’s why I have rules.”

He didn’t answer right away. The shortbread packet crinkled in his fingers, then stilled. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay.”

They rode in that word. Outside, sheep hunched against walls, black noses silvered by sleet. He shifted only to take a few photos haphazardly with his phone—blurred hedgerows, a church spire, the inside of the fogged window. She pretended not to watch.

When the conductor announced a delay ahead due to weather, a groan went through the car. He glanced at her. “Your contingencies?”

She checked her watch, then her printed timetable. “We’ll still arrive,” she said. “It will be dark.”

“Gothic,” he said. “Angus will love that.”

She capped her pen and slid it into the loop she’d sewn onto the binder’s spine. “It’s a house,” she said. “It needs heat and hands. It’s not a character.”

He smiled, small. “We’ll see.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, finally quiet, lashes dark against his cheek. She turned to the window and watched the Highlands gather themselves out of weather—mass and shadow and possibility—her mouth set, her heart beating a little faster than she could rationalize.

By the time the train eased into the small station, night had settled like a soaked wool blanket. Wind hit her face as soon as the carriage doors slid open, cutting straight through her coat and up her sleeves. The platform lights stuttered, throwing everything in unflattering relief. Julian hopped down behind her, camera bag thumping against his hip, his grin tucked into his collar. “Charming,” he said.

She tightened her scarf and walked toward the only figure waiting at the end of the platform, a man in a battered waxed coat and a cap that had seen several winters. He stood braced against the weather as if he’d been grown there. His cheeks were red and mapped with fine veins, eyes bright under bushy brows. When he smiled, it was lopsided and warm.

“Angus Black,” he announced, his voice a rough burr. “Ye must be the clever ones they’re sending to rummage in my attic.” His gaze took them in—her structured coat, his scuffed boots—and something like amusement twitched. “A wee storm’s blown in to greet ye proper. We’ll need to move.”

“Thank you for meeting us,” Elara said, extending a hand. He took it in both of his, dry and strong.

“Couldna leave ye to the bus stop,” he said. He tipped his head toward the far end of the lot, where a Land Rover sat hunched like a sleeping animal, its headlights drawing white cones in the mist. “Hop in, bairns. Road’ll go from bad to impassable soon as it thinks of it.”

The Land Rover smelled like peat smoke and damp wool. Angus drove with grim cheer, one hand on the wheel, the other gesturing at the nothing beyond the glass. “You’ll no see it till we’re on it. The house sulks when folk are away too long. But she’ll wake up once there’s feet on the boards again.”

“She is a house,” Elara murmured, more to herself than to either man.

“Ah, she’s that,” Angus agreed. “An’ a stubborn old lady besides.” The wipers thumped. Branches clawed at the sides as they left the main road for a narrower track. The sky pressed down; the world was a tunnel of wet black.

Julian leaned forward between the seats, peering. “Do you live there alone?” he asked.

“Live there with my habits,” Angus said dryly. “If that counts as company. Sometimes the wind argues. Sometimes the pipes. They take turns.” He flicked a glance at Elara. “Ye got your lists?”

“Yes,” she said, and he nodded as if reassured.

They rounded a bend, and the estate rose abruptly out of the dark—stone piled on stone, gables like lifted eyebrows, windows black and unreadable. The car’s lights panned over the façade, catching on carved lintels slick with rain, naked vines like a net across one wall. The drive was pitted, puddles reflecting pale sky where it showed. Elara’s breath fogged the window. The house was larger than any photograph had conveyed. It felt older than time and purposeful in its silence.

Angus parked crookedly near the front steps and killed the engine. The sudden quiet was a rush. “Mind yer feet,” he warned, opening his door and disappearing into the wind. Elara’s boots hit gravel, then cold stone. Rain stung her face, blew sideways into her hood. Julian shouldered her suitcase without asking, his hand steady on the handle, and followed Angus up the steps.

The door was an enormous slab with iron studs, the wood dark with centuries of hands and weather. Angus wrestled with a key the size of a small fish, muttered something, then the lock heaved and yielded. The smell breathed out: old wood, damp stone, a ghost of ash, something green. Elara stepped inside and stopped. The entrance hall stretched into shadow, a runner down the center like a strip of night. Portraits watched from high walls, their varnish catching the thin spill from a single lamp. The air was cold enough to bite the inside of her nose.

“Electric’s sulking,” Angus said. “It’ll give ye a flicker now an’ then. But she’s mostly candle and coal till we sweet-talk the boiler.” He set his lantern on a narrow table, and the light woke dust into motion. “Come away. We’ll get ye settled before the roof thinks of complaining.”

Her gloves squeaked against the handle of her case. The floorboards were wide and uneven under the runner; she felt them through the soles of her boots. Julian’s shoulder brushed hers as they followed Angus down a corridor, their footsteps soft. The house swallowed sound. Every doorway was a mouth. Every draught felt like a hand. She kept her chin up, cataloguing details: hessian lining peeling at a corner; a crack tracing down a plaster arch; a faint water stain shaped like a continent near the ceiling.

Angus pushed open a door into a room lined in shelves—an anteroom, not the library itself, but still impressive with its disarray of spines and stacked folios. A fireplace gaped, cold and black. “You’ll do your work here, most like,” he said. “Library’s bigger, but the flue’s fussy unless I coax it, an’ she’s not on her best behavior when it rains sideways.” He gave Elara an apologetic look. “Couple of wee heaters if the power wakes enough to feed them. Blankets in the chest. Tea in the kitchen that tastes like peat if you like that sort of thing. I do.”

Julian drifted toward a window and wiped a square with his sleeve, peering at the courtyard. His breath fogged the glass again, a soft flower of condensation. “It’s like a ship,” he said quietly. “Like we’re below decks.”

“It’s a house,” Elara said, automatic. But the thought lodged. The walls creaked the way hulls do. Somewhere in the bones of it, the storm spoke.

Angus led them to a narrow stair, up to a landing that split. “Rooms this way,” he said, taking the right. “They’ll keep ye from the worst of the wind. The bedclothes are clean, though a bit honest.” He opened a door on a small bedroom with a single bed, a chest of drawers, a washstand. The sheets were white and thin; the quilt was heavy with age. The radiator sat like a sulking animal under the window, cool to the touch. “There’s a hot-water bottle if ye don’t mind trusting rubber,” he said, mouth quirking. “Bathroom’s at the end, with another bloody radiator with opinions.”

He showed Julian the next room, nearly identical. They stood in the hall, breath visible. Elara felt the cold working its way up her sleeves, into her arms, under the layers to her skin. She straightened. “We can manage,” she said. “We have what we need.”

“Good lass,” Angus said, approving. He clapped his hands once, the sound startling in the hush. “I’ll go talk sweet to the boiler and then make a fire in the library proper. You’ll not feel it in your bones till then. If the lights flicker, don’t trust them. They lie.” He started back down the corridor, then paused and looked over his shoulder. “She’s been waiting,” he said, almost gently, as if telling them a weather report no one had ordered. “The house. For hands that know what they’re about.” His eyes were very blue. “Welcome home, in a manner of speaking.”

When he was gone, the quiet filled in. Julian exhaled, a sound like a laugh without humor. “Frozen in time,” he said, turning a slow circle. His breath hung and dissolved. “Literally.”

Elara went to the window. Outside, the courtyard was a sheet of wet slate, the downspouts spilling. The wind rounded the corner and struck the glass with a soft, relentless insistence. She pressed her palm to the cold pane until it hurt, then took it away and set her bag on the bed. Her movements were precise, controlled, as if the room were watching.

She listened to the house: pipes ticking, a door settling somewhere below, the wind threading through a gap in the sash and stroking the curtain. She could feel the edges of photographs in Julian’s bag, the edges of letters locked away in trunks she hadn’t seen yet. She pictured the map of tasks she had drawn, overlaying this place, transparent and neat, and then the way weather would smudge it.

In the hall, Julian cleared his throat. “Do you need help with your case?” he asked. She could see his reflection in the window, distorted and doubled.

“I have it,” she said. She turned. He nodded and retreated a step, hands in his pockets.

“We’ll need to be quick,” he said, voice softer. “Before the storm really starts.”

She nodded. “We will.” The words made small clouds in the cold. She tightened her scarf, smoothed her hair with a palm, then opened her door to the hallway again. The house exhaled and took them in.