Esme had a knot at the base of her neck that had been there ever since she woke up.

She rubbed at it as she sat down on the old, worn leather couch, feeling it hug her into its depths. It was one of the first purchases she and Carlisle had made when they got married all those years ago. Her mother had insisted that she select something that would last them longer, even if it did cost more. It had cost an arm and a leg, but they had certainly got their use out of it.

"Yer neck still bothering ye, sweet?" Carlisle asked, walking into the room having changed into his sleepwear.

"A bit," she said, rolling it from side to side to try and get the kink out.

Her hands were replaced by warm, rough hands. The pressure was firm but gentle and she let out a long sigh at the sensation.

"Ye work too hard," he murmured gruffly but leaned down and placed a kiss at her temple.

Esme swallowed a sigh.

They had meant to slow down the two of them.

But then they had lost so much financially.

They both would be working for a long time now, before they could slow down.

"Alice said Finlay was thinking about coming through Skye, did you see him?" asked Esme. She enjoyed spending time with her sweet niece, not the least of all because she knew everything about everyone.

"No," Carlisle replied, continuing to rub at the knot.

"Hmm," Esme mussed to herself.

"But I would guess he wanted to see Edward more than us, so I would no be surprised if he did swing through and stop there."

"Yes," she agreed, "You're right, of course. He did seem unsettled at the wedding, but of course he had to be back to Glasgow the next day."

"Aye," Carlisle said.

"Those boys always work it out. Though, I should ask Alice if he's said anything."

Carlisle made a noise at the back of his throat that was neither agreement or dismissal.

"I should see if we have any voice messages," Esme said, moving to get up.

"No, ye stay put." Carlisle took three steps over to where their phone sat in its base. There was a blinking green light to indicate that they had at least one new message.

"You have one new message. To hear the one new message, pre-"

Carlisle interrupted the voice by pressing one.

"Esme! The most wonderful thing!"

The aforementioned woman sat up straight and looked at the phone in surprise, immediately identifying her sister's voice.

"A donor from a children's foundation in the area has chosen Chase as the recipient of a miracle fund or something, I don't remember the exact name. All of his expenses are covered Esme! I…I can't even believe it, I am shaking. We can afford to see the best doctors and the best specialists. Esme I…" they listened as she swallowed audibly and heard her voice crack, "I cannot even believe it. We will be okay. We'll be okay, Esme."

Esme blinked back tears of her as she heard her little sister say, "Give my love to the family. Talk to you soon – love you!"

~O~

Isabella was pacing around with a balance sheet in her hands. It was pages and pages long and she was squinting from staring at it for so long. Her lower back was bothering her from all the sitting, so, she found herself pacing as she reviewed all of the numbers and determined their accuracy. She had spent hours combing through all of their financials, receipts, bills, ledgers, etc. and she was going to be damn certain that she had gotten it right.

She paused to take a sip out of the mug she was holding in her other hand, feeling the drink warm her. She hadn't drunk tea in years, but since arriving in the United Kingdom had picked up the habit.

As she took another sip, the door to the office opened, making her halt her pacing.

"Are ye in the middle of something, hen?"

"A great breakfast tea and a great balance sheet," she replied dryly.

Edward's lips quirked into a grin. "Aye. Do ye need to finish one or both today?"

Isabella raised an eyebrow. "No…"

"It's a distilling day. I know ye went on that tour with Jasper, but it's a whole other thing to see it actually happening, ye ken?"

Isabella glanced down at her papers and then back at Edward and whatever was in her face must have been what he was looking for.

"Aye, good enough, come on," he said, coming over and wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

"But-"

"Ye'll have nothing to plan for if we don't get this whisky made."

"Well, with the lead time of Scotch being at least 12 years, we would still need a plan for at lea- "

"Aye, enough out of ye," he said, plucking the papers out of her hand and setting them on the desk. This was quickly repeated with the tea before he led her to the door. "Think of it as an initiation."

"To Scotland or to Sleat?"

"Aye."

Isabella shook her head with a wry grin.

They joined Carlisle and Jasper in the doorway to the still house. Jasper was slipping into some industrial boots and Carlisle was scrubbing his hands in the sink. They gave her smiles and hellos as they did this. "Robert and Ian are out on the boats," Edward explained, "and we usually have at least four people."

Isabella thought of his second cousin and his large frame. "Fortunately for you, I'm sure I can lift just as heavy of weights as Robert can."

"That's the spirit, lass!" Jasper cheered, clapping her on the back as he stood up. "Use yer knees and not yer back, aye?"

"Here Bella," Edward said, getting her attention. "Ye have the bonniest hair but I dinnae think it will add much to the malt."

Isabella felt a warm tingle on her cheeks which seemed to prevent her from formulating a response. Instead, she took the hair net out of his hands and went to work tucking all of her locks into it. The bun fit in easily enough, it was the strands of baby hairs that had broken over the years that wouldn't stay in.

"Ready," she announced when it was clear that they were all waiting for her.

Edward turned his head and then smiled warmly at her. It was the type of smile that was genuine and unguarded and made her feel as human as could be.

He lifted his hand and tucked a strand that she had missed easily behind her ear. "Now yer perfect," he said quietly.

Isabella gave a quiet laugh but smiled, not catching the look that Carlisle and Jasper exchanged behind Edward.

Carlisle and Jasper moved expertly around the warehouse, doing nearly all of the work while Edward narrated to Isabella what exactly they were doing. They navigated around the large, 10-foot-tall stills easily, knowing which pipes and hoses connected to what.

"See those silver pipes back there? At the bottom of that large column? What that will be doing is keeping the heavier vapors down and making the purified alcohol vapors start to rise up. Ye see? To do that, there are copper plates in each spy glass right there, and in a wee bit, we're going to run cold water through there and separate the vapors into what we do want and what we don't, and they will come out of that condenser at the end right there."

Isabella listened with rapt attention as he spoke.

"Once we get to that stage, we'll have all the alcohol vapor that we want, but I have yet to meet someone who wants to drink vapor, so we condense it. In that condenser, there's a large copper coil and we will have all the vapors in there. We'll send that cold water through the coil so that it moves it from a vapor back to a liquid."

Edward paused and looked at her. "Does that make sense?"

Isabella nodded.

"Great, we won't be doing that for a while yet."

Isabella listened as they moved over to the wash still and Edward explained how it is used in the distillation process. She remembered some of what he was saying from her tour with Jasper, but Edward was more thorough and had an even more pronounced passion than Jasper did for it.

It was the first time since she had met him that he had really been in his element.

He's attractive.

The thought hit her like a cinder block dropped from the top of a building.

Physically, she had recognized that he was attractive. She had noticed the first day she met him. He was tall and strong with kind blue eyes and soft copper colored hair. He had a dimple when he smiled, and his teeth were mostly straight. He had strong cheekbones and a symmetrical face. She had seen this all, of course, but she had been too distracted to give it much thought.

Here though, exuding competence and ease as he spoke, it was impossible not to bear it much thought.

"…of the beer. This one is 15,000 liters. A lot of places have 30,000 liters but it's never seemed worth the investment to us. How are we doing on time?"

Jasper nodded at the small window up at the neck of the wash still. "Just about to get interesting."

Isabella looked at Edward for an explanation.

"The supply of gaseous substances leads to a wee bit of overpressure in the still and the gases will rise to the neck, right by the window there. But the walls are still cold and that's where they will condense. More and more of those droplets will start adding up and as the still is heated to 78 degrees Celsius, the liquid surface will get turbulent. Ye'll start to see big bubbles, foam, and splashes."

Edward moved a wide wooden bench over to the still and nodded again at the window. "If the boiling temperature gets too high, the liquid can get into the condenser through that arm which will clog the pipes of the condensers. So, we have the window to watch." Edward helped her to stand up on the bench so that she could see into the dark little window as well.

"For how long?" Bella asked.

"Until we can be sure that it will no get into the pipes."

"Didn't you say this stage lasts a few hours?"

"At least," Edward replied with a smirk.

Isabella looked from the little window and then back to him. "Surely there must be a more efficient way."

Edward shrugged. "Some distilleries will put soap into the wash while it's boiling. It destroys the surface tension and prevents it from going over."

Isabella thought back to the Chemistry class she had taken 10 years ago. "Does the temperature destroy the soap then so it doesn't get in?"

"Aye," Edward said approvingly. "But, I dinnae think we can brand ourselves as pure if we're doing a wee bit of cheating in the process. This method has worked for generations of McDonalds, I'm no going to be the one who says it does no."

Isabella didn't bother to say that Diageo would certainly require a wee bit of cheating; capitalism was built on exploiting efficiencies. But they had not brought up the business man since the day he had made his pitch, and that seemed to be suiting both of them as they figured out how to move forward together.

For the next couple of hours as they stood on that bench and watched the wash, they talked easily about all things Scotch. Isabella listened to what Edward would tell her about the distilling process, the history, and Sleat's specific history, and would ask questions, not bothering to hide the genuine curiosity she had about the drink. As she listened, she felt closer with her Grandad and closer with her husband.

Isabella interrupted him at one point to nod at the window. "Is it still good?"

Edward looked deeper into the window before hollering, "Jasper! Temperature check! I dinnae like how close we're getting over here."

Jasper, who was at the other side of the still at the workbench, went over to the gauges and yelled back, "Aye, taking it down three degrees."

"Two should do for now," Edward called back.

The mixture responded slowly but did get less violent in nature.

"Good eye, Bella. We'll make a distiller out of ye yet," he said in that same approving tone. "But maybe not the hair of yours." He lifted his hand and brushed another stray hair from her cheek back to one of her ears.

Isabella laughed softly.

Edward smiled at the laughter, his dimple appearing as he did so.

"We'll let Carlisle take over here so we can go get a bit to eat, but when we're back, we'll move the mix into that spirit still," he said, nodding to the other large copper container. "We'll drain it with a heat exchanger. Once we get it going in that still, we'll deal with the solid parts of the grains that are left from the wash. We are able to concentrate the pot ale through evaporation and then we can sell it as an animal feed. Ye'll remember yer question about what we were doing selling coo food? Aye, it's actually a pretty high-quality feed."

"I don't think it could get more Scottish than someone feeding their Highland cow food left over from Scotch distilling."

"Ye know Bella," he said, stepping down off of the bench and offering her a hand. "Ye just might be onto something."

~O~

The second round of distillation was a slower and more careful process and therefore, went slower. It was because, according to Edward, the second distillation had a much bigger influence on the taste of the whisky. The slower, the better the alcohol and flavor substances could be separated. That being said, it was still the same process as the wash still. They watched as the alcohol neared boiling point and the volatile foreshots evaporated.

Edward explained that they did not what the foreshots and they redirected them into the contraction called the "spirit safe" and did not let them go into the "spirit receiver." Jasper had not gotten into the nitty gritty details of that process on the tour, so Edward continued to have Isabella's rapt attention.

"Why is it all padlocked?" she asked, looking at the industrial locks around some of the pipework.

"Ah, British law. Unlike American law," he said teasingly, "stillmen are not allowed to taste the spirit. Which makes it a wee bit difficult to know when these foreshots that we dinnae want have run through and the middle cut that we do want has started. Luckily, we have generations of knowledge to have it pretty well mapped out of when that will start."

"Do you have a general disdain for Americans?" she retorted.

"No, no, I am verra fond of ye Americans," he grinned. "More of a general disdain for Mel Gibson and yer whiskey production."

Isabella raised an eyebrow.

"Two years is all that they require their whisky to be aged in. Two years is absolutely no time at all! Ye will never get as deep or rich of a flavor. And they have laws requiring them to use new barrels. It works for us because we'll buy their used barrels so our whisky can have a stronger flavor, but it's rubbish for their drink. And if you have laws on that, why don't you have laws about the cutting process?"

"Is that all?"

"That is only the top of the list."

"Should I not get you started on people that add wood chips to the blend to make it taste like Scotch without properly aging it?"

He gave her a hard look.

"Ye should not."

"Right."

"Anyway," he continued with a smirk, "If ye look at the safe, ye can see all of those glass boxes. As we collect the spirit, those wee instruments will start to swim. We'll measure the density of the whisky with that thing called a hydrometer and we can determine the alcohol content with that chart over by Jasper, based on what we're looking for. I have it pretty well memorized after all these years, but a reference never hurt anyone."

"How long does this stage take?" Isabella asked.

"Anywhere from 4-8 hours," he replied. "So we'll likely be here well into the night."

Isabella opened her mouth to reply but as an afterthought, Edward added, "Unless of course ye dinnae want to. Ye could always take the car home if ye get tired."

Other than a slight ache in her lower back that she attributed to the time on her feet, she was fine, and said as much.

"I don't know if you know this, but I'm pretty tough."

Though she had said it jokingly, he nodded seriously.

"Aye, I know ye are."

Isabella blinked in surprise and felt off-balance at the intent look in his eyes. She swallowed and then looked back over in the direction of the pipes.

"And then temperature will play a large part in the density, yes?"

Edward nodded, following her gaze. "Aye. We will want to keep an eye on the temperature the whole time. And once the foreshots are finished and the hearts are coming, the foreshots will be led back that low wine receiver. They will interact really nicely with the copper in the still, a sort of catalytic reaction which will transform the buggers into a nice aromatic substance. But once they're in that receiver, Jasper and I will change the flow direction to get those hearts into the receiver.

"That's where we have to be extra careful. We've ruined batches before if we do it too early because the spirit will taste too strong, too aggressive. Whereas doing it a little later, it does no matter and we will no be wasting any alcohol. Once the middle cut is distilled, we'll call it a night."

Isabella nodded, recognizing most of what he was talking about.

"And Esme usually sends food on distilling days, so hopefully Alice will pop over."

"Good practice to keep your wife fed?" Isabella asked with a smirk.

Edward grinned boyishly, "Aye, now ye are catching on."

"So back to the original question of yers, yes, we'll also keep a close eye on the temperature so that we can rectify any issues with the density and keep it all under control. Ye'll be doing that once we get closer to the middle cut coming in a couple of hours."

"And this whole time I thought you had me here solely as a ploy to spend time with me," Isabella said teasingly, having recovered from her earlier comment while he was speaking. Her eyes widened then, and she felt a blush over her cheeks as she realized what a flirtatious comment she had just made.

Edward was not fazed.

"Aye, that too."

He turned his back and didn't see the pleased smile that graced her face.

Perhaps they would be just fine, the two of them.

Perhaps indeed.

Wash your hands and stay home with your fevers. Should be a good month to dive into some of those fics you've been meaning to read.

All the love.