The Remains of Love

ONE

Dinnet, Aberdeenshire

Scotland

Mrs. Christiana Newton had not intended to end up face down in a Highland bog.

But then she also hadn’t planned to be twenty-nine years of age, a widow, and scrabbling for employment to feed herself.

Fate, she realized long ago, had reserved a great many indignities for her alone.

Chrissi pushed onto her knees, gloved hands groping for purchase in the dense mud.

“Och, Mrs. Newton! Dinnae move!” Fiona called down the embankment where Chrissi had slipped. “Ye might sink deeper into the bog, and it will catch ye like quicksand. Ye must stay precisely where ye are!”

Chrissi looked up at the younger woman—an innkeep’s daughter hired with meager coin to act as a guide. Her wide eyes and the horrified “O” of her lips spoke volumes as to Chrissi’s appearance.

“Are ye hurt?” Fiona continued.

Hurt? In body—no.

“’Tis only my pride that is wounded, Fiona.” Chrissi wiped mud from her eyes. Or rather attempted to do so, but as the mud was everywhere—hands, face, bonnet, dress—she merely spread it around.

The girl swallowed, looking up the path. “Dinnae fret, Mrs. Newton. I’ll fetch help and a good length of rope.” She paused. “Just . . . dinnae move.”

Fiona disappeared in a whirl of wool skirts.

Heaving a defeated sigh, Chrissi rested back on her heels, trying not to see the situation as a metaphor for the entirety of her life—mired in the Quagmire of Futility and Despair.

It sounded like the title of a penny dreadful.

Well . . . she felt like she was living a penny dreadful.

Generally, Chrissi preferred not to be covered in rank-smelling mud and sphagnum moss, particularly right before meeting an important client—Lord Farnell, in this case.

But, as usual, excited curiosity over the archaeological remains she would be excavating had overthrown her common sense.

Eager to begin the project, she had left The Boat Inn in Aboyne in the early hours of dawn, Fiona guiding her path.

Chrissi wished to survey the glen around Kinord Castle, the ancestral seat of Lord Farnell, and conduct a preliminary study of the stone circle and large mound there before meeting with Lord Farnell himself.

Upon reaching Kinord Castle, she had noted the terrain.

The castle stood atop an impressive rise, the mountainous Cairngorms towering behind.

The standing stones and a large mound rested below the castle on a smaller hill.

And to the side of that hill, a bog stretched across the glen—a mix of marsh and fen and swamp grass.

But as Chrissi approached the stone circle, she had spotted another solitary stone standing on an island of firmer ground in the middle of the bog.

So odd, that stone, isolated from its brethren.

Her feet had drifted toward it without conscious thought, heedless of the steep embankment alongside the path.

A careless step on jutting rocks had sent her tumbling down the banked earth and into the bog.

The lone stone remained in her line of vision now, standing jauntily over the marsh. And if she craned her neck to the right, mud gripping her shoulders, she could see the tops of the standing stones on the hill above her—the ancient monument a silent witness to her folly.

Chrissi sighed.

A pair of magpies quarreled overhead. A fat bumblebee bobbled past, its rotund body defying physics by staying aloft. The swampy bog grass eventually gave way to heather and Scots pine in the distance. And all around her, the rolling hills and peaks of the Cairngorms loomed.

This excursion was to have been the beginning of Hope. A true chance to reverse the winds of fortune. To gain some semblance of financial stability for her future.

As it was, Chrissi would be lucky if Lord Farnell didn’t show her the door immediately.

Her stomach knotted at the thought despite being achingly empty.

After all, she had chosen to spend her remaining coin on hiring Fiona rather than food.

If Lord Farnell sent her packing, Chrissi would be paupered.

As an antiquarian specializing in ancient Scottish ruins, Chrissi already had to contend with male colleagues who considered her too unorthodox—translation: too female—to be a true archaeologist. However, that did not stem her attempts to continue the work she had begun with her late husband, Dr. Stephen Newton—a celebrated Oxford professor of British antiquities.

Nearly thirty years her senior, Stephen had been more friend than lover, but together, they had devised new methods for documenting and understanding archaeological remains.

So when Chrissi had received a letter from Lord Farnell’s secretary requesting her assistance in excavating a series of ancient ruins, she had leapt at the chance. His lordship wished to avail himself of her expertise and learn from her methodology, offering generous financial recompense.

Funds Chrissi desperately needed.

Unfortunately, Lord Farnell would certainly be informed of her foolish tumble and would justifiably question her abilities to head an excavation safely.

Hopefully, she would be given the chance to bathe and right her appearance before facing his lordship herself—time to compose an argument that would convince the gentleman that despite her gender and uncharacteristic clumsiness, she was competent in her expertise. Anything to prevent her dismissal.

She flexed her fingers in her gloves, fighting the encroaching chill. Even in May, Highland mud was hardly warm, and the sun did little to battle the ever-blowing cold wind.

Ten minutes later, Chrissi heard the rumble of male voices.

Ah. Rescue and humiliation had arrived.

Three male heads, hats pulled low, bobbed down the path, Fiona’s excited chatter leading them forward.

Reaching her, Fiona and two of the men—farmhands, Chrissi intuited, by the roughness of their clothing and the rope held between them—paused to look down the embankment. All three wore matching expressions of concern and, truth be told, suppressed hilarity.

Chrissi added “laughing stock” to the list of items she would need to address with Lord Farnell.

“Do we have enough rope to fetch her up, do ye ken?” the third unseen man asked.

“Aye, my lord,” one of the men said over his shoulder as they began uncoiling the rope.

My lord?

Chrissi snagged onto the honorific.

Please no!

Lord Farnell had come himself.

She could not imagine a more unbecoming scenario in which to meet her employer for the first time.

How much worse could her day become?

Truly . . . she should have known better than to ask the question, even rhetorically.

The third man peered over the edge—Lord Farnell, she gathered, due to the expensive superfine of his tailored coat and the sheen of his beaver top hat.

A jolt sizzled down her spine as she met his brown eyes.

It appeared that her day could indeed become much, much worse.

Blinking in shock, she stared up at the familiar face of Alistair Maclagan.

The only man she had ever loved.

There were likely worse ways to encounter your former betrothed after a separation of nine years.

However, at the moment, Chrissi struggled to think of one.

Belatedly, she remembered that Lord Farnell had been a distant relative of Alistair’s. What tragedies had occurred to permit Alistair to inherit the Scottish title of Lord of Parliament?

Had she known Alistair was Lord Farnell, she would never have come. But then, if he had known she was Mrs. Stephen Newton, he would never have hired her, of that Chrissi was certain.

Once, Alistair Maclagan had been her . . . everything.

The sum of every poetic cliche.

The other half of her soul. The air that breathed life into her lungs. The man she could not wait to take as husband.

Seeing him now . . .

He has changed, she thought.

Broader, muscular, and deep of chest. Lines bracketed his eyes, wheel spokes stretching toward his temples. A beard framed lips that pulled into a taut line—lips she knew to be as soft as velvet beneath her own.

His gaze was fiercer—more Scottish raider than the youthful knight errant of her memory. He had once laughed and smiled with ease, but intuition told Chrissi that his smiles were rarer now.

Hmmph.

Well, they should be.

Years. It had taken her years to recover from his betrayal.

The blackguard should have difficulty smiling after such villainy.

Betrayal and bitter regret. That was all that remained between them now.

She gazed at him, willing none of her surprise and roiling emotions to show on her face. Waiting for him to recoil in shock and astonishment.

But no.

Fate handed her one final, outrageous indignity of the day—

Alistair stared blankly at her and nodded politely, tipping his hat in greeting. Not a trace of recognition to be had.

“Lord Farnell, at your service, Mrs. Newton. I suspect this is not quite how either of us planned to meet,” he called, Scotland winding through his rolled Rs and expansive vowels. “However, your bravery is to be commended. We shall have ye topside shortly.”

Chrissi closed her eyes, swallowing back the thick lump of pain clogging her throat.

Of all the reactions she had envisioned if she ever encountered Alistair again—anger, sadness, recriminations. Shouting, perhaps. Groveling, in her more maudlin moments. Tears, even . . . preferably his.

Never once had she imagined that Alistair would have simply forgotten her.

That her existence would be banished from his memory, as if she and her heart had been so much fairy floss, strands of spun sugar whisked away on a stiff Highland breeze.

But that had been the problem from the beginning, had it not? His lack of seeing her?

Deliberately, she forced her lungs to breathe in and out—to accommodate the lacerating agony of his dismissal sitting atop her sternum like a spike-studded chest.

What a nightmare.