Kind of. The issue is it makes the following year counts and time lines sound strange. For instance with the guy saying “Three months to know…” Obviously Beaumont was already there for 8 years, doing who knows what, but he definitely knew the place pretty well after 8 years. It raises the question of what he spent the three months actually doing? Checking the books, making calculations, what? And why would they choose him? If he comes from outside the work site, and the consultation is the first time he’s actually inspected the site, seen the books and made the calculations it makes a bit more sense. Especially given that “…they’d both been simple masons on the cathedral in Roche-Verte a quarter of a century ago.” It makes it sound like Arnaud and him are work always working together, but if Beaumont is not the master of the site, and hadn’t risen to master previously, how could he keep his right hand man around for all that time? I think you should just drop that whole sentence.