TWO
Florence, Italy
Nine Years Earlier
He strode out of the billowing haze like Apollo fallen to earth.
Standing at her father’s side in the Maria Antonia railway station in the center of Florence, Italy—enormous locomotives belching steam and smoke—Chrissi could only gawk in wonder at the god-turned-mortal coming toward them.
Dark-haired and dark-eyed, her Apollo walked with broad-shouldered confidence—not arrogance, per se, but the gait of a man secure within himself. Clean-shaven and fresh-faced, he was tall but not loomingly so. As if even his height chose politeness over dominance.
And unlike other aspiring antiquarians who begged her father for a chance to assist on an archaeological expedition, this man appeared to be no stranger to physical labor—the depth of his chest and width of his biceps testified to this. Strapping, her Aunt Eunice would describe him.
He stopped in front of them, setting his leather bag on the ground and tipping his hat in greeting.
“Dr. John Rutherford, I presume?” the man asked.
Chrissi nearly shivered as the delicious rumble of his Scottish brogue rolled over her. Moreover, he was younger than she had supposed, surely no older than her own twenty years.
“Yes,” her father replied.
The man extended his hand. “Mr. Alistair Maclagan, at your service, sir.”
Alistair.
It suited him, the name. Subtly refined and stuffy. The name of an elderly gentleman smoking a pipe in the library of White’s in London. But the dare sound in Alistair hinted at danger. At a strand of devilry and mischief.
The twinkle in Mr. Maclagan’s eye confirmed this as he turned to Chrissi, obviously expecting an introduction.
“My daughter,” her father gestured, “Miss Christiana Rutherford.”
Chrissi dipped a small curtsy and extended her gloved hand.
Mr. Maclagan paused before taking her fingers lightly in his own, bowing over her knuckles.
His touch might have been a vise for how thoroughly it affected her.
Her hand hummed with the contact. She felt branded. Scorched. As if in that simple gesture, he had marked her for himself and himself alone.
Chrissi would later describe the moment to him as they walked the sunlit path to the top of Mount Ceceri overlooking Fiesole, hands clasped once more and swinging between them, the drone of cicadas in the air.
How she had simply known that Alistair would be the gentleman to win her heart.
And even later, in the aftermath of his betrayal and their subsequent breaking, she would marvel at her initial sense of surety.
At the confidence of her naive twenty-year-old self who believed the years between falling in love and leaving this earth would be merry ones, easily passed without heartache and trial, secure within the arc of true love.
But in the train station that first day, any thought of disaster was far from her mind. She was young and eager for her first love, her first kiss, her first . . . everything.
And so, as her father hailed a carozza to transport them home, she listened, rapt, as Mr. Maclagan described arriving in Pisa on a clipper ship from Edinburgh and the marvel of the railway line—opened only a year past—taking less than two hours to deposit him in the heart of Florence.
As he spoke, his eyes never left Chrissi’s face. As if, like herself, his fingertips sparked with lightning and trembled to close the space between them.
Unlike other gentlemen of her acquaintance, he wasn’t enamored of his own speaking voice. He asked questions, too, and listened intently.
“What is that church there?” he inquired as they stood waiting for the carozza, pointing to the enormous stained-glass Gothic windows overlooking the train station.
“Santa Maria Novella,” Chrissi took great pride in informing him.
After all, she had already been in Florence for several weeks.
Long enough to feel native, she supposed.
To show a newcomer around her city. “The frescoes inside are magnificent—Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, Masaccio. There are even sculptures by Brunelleschi.”
He grinned at her confident words.
“It sounds fascinating.” Though he might as well have said, Ye sound fascinating, for how Chrissi heard the words. “Ye will have to show me yourself.”
“I should be honored,” Chrissi blushed.
On the hour-long carriage ride north to Fiesole—an ancient town perched on a hilltop overlooking Florence—Chrissi and her father described the archaeological excavations underway.
Her father, Dr. John Rutherford, was a respected professor of antiquities at Oxford, ancient Rome and Etruscan cultures being his area of specialty.
His excavations in Fiesole intended to uncover the Roman and Etruscan history of the city.
For example, the remains of an amphitheater peeked out from the slope descending behind the main cathedral.
Her father suspected there had been Roman baths and possibly a temple on the site as well.
Why, just twenty years ago, a cache of a thousand silver Roman denarii had been found there—a fortune buried but never recovered.
Her father hoped to uncover more of such riches.
As the carriage curved around hills and climbed upward, the three of them excitedly discussed the possibility of finding older Etruscan grave goods—gold necklaces, carved bronze mirrors, and alabaster vases as thin as glass—artifacts similar to those found in Cerveteri or Volterra.
Just an hour after stowing his things in his room in their pensione, Mr. Maclagan was tromping around the excavation site. Chrissi raced to join him, happily explaining how he would be assisting them.
“Papa believes in stratigraphy,” she explained, motioning to a section where they had been digging.
“Stratigraphy? Like geology?” Mr. Maclagan asked, his brown eyes bringing to mind a pot of hot chocolate—indulgent and deliciously sweet.
“Yes, exactly!” she beamed at him. “Like sediments in the earth, archeology is laid down over the years. Our job as archaeologists is to carefully peel back the layers of each era, to study a time period thoroughly before moving down to the next. That is why we will start with the Roman ruins and then carefully dig farther back in time to the Etruscans who came before.”
“So ye consider yourself an archaeologist in truth?”
“Women can be archaeologists.” Chrissi hated the defensive note in her voice.
“I do not doubt it. How did ye begin?”
“My mamma died a week before my fourth birthday,” she explained as they crawled over a toppled column, “and so it has always been just Papa and me.”
“He adopted ye as his assistant, I ken,” Mr. Maclagan replied.
“Yes, and I intend to follow in his footsteps.” Fervency thrummed through her words.
He paused to stare at her, the Tuscan sun catching in the caramel flecks of his eyes. “I can see it in ye now—Miss Christiana Rutherford, archaeologist. Though I must state the truth: I rather suspect ye might be a bit of a bonnie distraction.”
“To whom, sir?” she asked on a laugh, delight and outrage in her tone.
He said nothing . . . only smiled and looked away. But not before she registered the admiration in his eyes.
Before Alistair, had anyone asked, Chrissi would have described her physical person as abysmally undecided—average, unremarkable. Was her hair blonde or brown? Her eyes gray or blue? Her height short or average? Her face plain or pretty?
She supposed her personality had to become strong in order to marshal all that indecisiveness into order.
But under Alistair’s gaze, her hair transformed into the golden brown of honey, fresh from the comb.
Her eyes turned the color of the North Sea off the coast of Stonehaven, storm-blue and undulating with life.
For him, her height was neither short nor average but the perfect size to tuck under his chin.
And he declared her face to be an enchanting echo of the Madonnas painted by Raphael or Botticelli in the Uffizi Museum.
Alistair made her feel she was anything but ordinary. He openly admired her love of learning and sympathized with her frustration that women could not attend Oxford.
Chrissi noticed his own distinct qualities, too.
How his brown eyes would stare intently into hers as she spoke of her aspirations. How the timbre of his brogue would deepen as he described Scotland and home.
The son of a solicitor from Aberdeen, with family ties to the aristocracy, Alistair had lived a life typical of the gentry—an excellent education in private school, followed by antiquarian studies at the University of St Andrews in Fife.
He longed to become a professor, like Chrissi’s father.
To make learning his life-long profession.
At twenty-one years of age, he had seized the chance to apprentice at her father’s feet.
Falling in love with him was effortless. An exhilarating free fall. Chrissi and Alistair were puzzle pieces slotting together. As if they had always been destined to live and breathe as one entity.