THREE
Alistair paced the great hall of Kinord Castle as if wearing a path in the Axminster carpet would somehow help untangle the fankle of his thoughts.
Hands clasped behind his back, he walked from the impressive hearth to the enormous windows at the south end of the hall and back again.
Generally, Scottish castles were dark and dreary places with narrow windows built for defense, not illumination.
But his predecessor had removed almost the entirety of the south wall of the great hall, replacing it with pane after pane of glass.
Not only did the large window harness the warmth of the sun and flood the room with light, it also gave a commanding view over the surrounding landscape—the boggy marsh melting into rolling hills, thick with Scots pine and fields of fluffy sheep, stretching to the peaks of Ben Avon and Beinn a’ Bhùird in the distance.
The scenery did nothing to quiet his mind.
Chris was here.
Alistair’s stuttering brain could scarcely reconcile the absurdity of the situation.
After pulling her from the bog—truthfully, she was fortunate not to have broken her wee neck or been drowned in the fen, tumbling down the embankment as she had—they had retired to the castle. Alistair had summoned servants and a bath, both for himself and for her.
She was currently in his best guest room, surely attempting to wash moss and dirt from her hair and cursing the Fate that had deposited her on his doorstep.
As for himself, the mud had been easily dispatched from his person.
Would that thoughts of Christiana Rutherford Newton were banished as easily.
This was to have been his year.
The year that he reclaimed his life from the memories of her and their lost love.
Particularly, Alistair had resolved to recoup his love of archeology.
He had abandoned the field after his tumultuous break with Chris.
Even if he had wished to continue with his studies, Dr. Rutherford had made it clear Alistair would not be welcomed.
Antiquarians were a tight lot, and Dr. Rutherford had stood beside his daughter.
But Alistair’s ascension to the title of Lord Farnell two years ago had come with a respectable fortune attached. And as Dr. Rutherford had passed away, Alistair felt the time had come to again explore archeology.
Hence his hiring of Mrs. Newton. As the wife of Dr. Stephen Newton, she had gained a reputation for her own expertise in ancient Celtic excavations, working alongside her husband and even publishing the occasional paper jointly with him.
Alistair had never heard a mention of her Christian name . . . pun intended, he mused to himself.
Dr. Newton had passed away over two years ago, but his widow had continued his work. Therefore, the professor’s widow had been the most logical—nearly the only—choice when hiring an archaeologist to assist Alistair in understanding the history of his—
A rap on the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Come,” he called.
Mrs. Craib, his housekeeper, entered, bobbing a polite curtsy. “Should I still plan on Mrs. Newton joining the party for tea, my lord? Or do ye ken she would prefer a wee rest? The poor thing was proper clatty, dripping mud on the flagstones as she was.”
Yes, what would Mrs. Newton prefer? Well, likely to be quit of him. But until she said as much . . .
“Plan on Mrs. Newton joining us, Mrs. Craib. I shall inform ye if that plan changes.”
The housekeeper bobbed another curtsy before leaving in a rustle of wool skirts and the clink of keys on a chatelaine.
Alistair resumed his pacing.
He paused at the window, gaze automatically straying to the hillside just south of the castle.
From here, he could see the standing stone circle—five stones surrounding a larger central monolith.
An impressive mound sat behind the circle, keeping watch as the hill descended to the boggy fen beyond.
The landscape held a sort of hierarchy .
. . castle to standing stones to burial mound to bog.
What was the purpose of the standing stones? And what was under the turf of the mound? A burial cairn? A barrow, like those found in England? The remains of a Pictish fort?
Without Mrs. Newton, he feared he would never know.
But knowing Mrs. Newton was Chris . . .
No. It simply wouldn’t do. Alistair would prefer to spend the rest of his days staring at the mound and wondering than to endure months of Christiana Rutherford’s presence.
All that remained now was to find a polite way to send her packing.
The door snicked open again at his back.
“Mrs. Stephen Newton, my lord,” his butler, Jamieson, intoned.
Chris glided through, motioned forward by the butler.
“Will ye have Mrs. Craib send up some refreshment, Jamieson?” Alistair asked.
“Of course, my lord.”
Jamieson bowed before retreating, leaving the door open as a nod to propriety.
And then . . . Alistair and Chris and were alone.
Before today, he would have said that the pain of losing her had healed. That he had licked his wounds and grieved and come out the other end a revived man.
A better man, even.
But now . . . facing her again . . .
The gash of her loss pulsed anew. The haunting whisper of what if.
What if he hadn’t done what he had done?
What if they had reconciled and married?
What if hers had been the face he had awakened to every morning for the past nine years?
What was done was done. The past had passed. He knew this. And yet the intervening nine years without her had not been gentle. He had spent them full of self-recriminations and mourning the loss of the only future he had ever wanted.
Given how upright and tense she stood just inside the great room door, Chris was likely working through similar thoughts.
He studied her, now cleansed of mud and the thunderstruck numbness of his surprise.
She was older. Obviously. Faint lines bracketed her mouth and a pair of wee wrinkles sat between her eyebrows, the remnants of years spent squinting into the sun.
Her hair remained a lustrous honey-woven brown, though damp now and slicked into a chignon. Her figure was, as ever, well-proportioned—trim waist and curved bosom.
Her storm-blue eyes met his.
Where to begin? Alistair wondered. Words and sentences, nearly entire libraries of thoughts, crowded his tongue. And yet somehow . . . language failed him.
Swallowing, she looked away. Her hands twisted and clasped before her, the only sign of her agitation.
“I didn’t know,” she began, gaze coming back to his. “I didn’t realize that Lord Farnell . . .” She gestured helplessly, indicating his person and the castle as a whole. “I would never have come had I known.”
“I believe ye.” And he did. “I didn’t know either, obviously. We have both sustained a shock today. Won’t ye be seated?”
He motioned toward a red velvet settee placed perpendicular to the fireplace. If nothing, good manners should see them through the awkwardness of this conversation.
Nodding, she crossed in a rustle of wool skirts. He waited for her to pass and tensed for the scent of her perfume—gardenias with under notes of something exotic—to assault him with memory.
But none came.
Instead, he smelled the faint tang of the lavender soap Mrs. Craib made in the stillroom behind the kitchen, bubbling lye in a vat for hours before stirring in lavender oil as the soap began to thicken.
Odd.
Chris had prized that flower-scented perfume, wearing it constantly. Did it hold too many memories, then? Had she abandoned it along with himself?
With a deep breath, Alistair shook the unhelpful questions away.
The less he embroiled himself with Chris, the better.
She sat.
He sat on a chair opposite.
She looked at the flames guttering in the hearth.
He stared at her profile and then rubbed at his eyes, helpless to know where to begin.
Finally, he simply asked the question he most wished to know.
“Was he kind to ye?”
Chris jerked her eyes back to his.
“Stephen?” She named her husband.
She needed no clarification as to his meaning. Even now, after the passage of so many years, their thoughts easily traveled the same path.
“Aye.”
“He was.” She nodded, eyes going back to the fire. “He . . . saved me, I suppose you could say.”
“Did ye love him?” Alistair hated the words as soon as they left his lips. The petty jealousy of them.
Did ye love him as much as ye loved myself? he might as well have asked.
“Yes . . . after a fashion.”
After a fashion?
Alistair frowned. What did that mean?
His gaze dropped once more to her hands, clenched into fists atop the bulk of her skirts.
“Chris—”
She flinched. “Please. Refer to me as Mrs. Newton, my lord. Let us not complicate this situation further with the intimacy of personal names.”
Mrs. Newton. A woman who belonged to another man, even in his death.
The door creaked open and Mrs. Craib entered carrying a tray laden with a teapot, shortbread, neatly cut rectangles of roast beef sandwiches, and Victoria sponge dripping strawberry jam.
The housekeeper set the tray on the table before the settee, curtsied, and retreated.
“Would ye be so kind?” Alistair gestured toward the teapot.
With a nod, Chris poured for them—her elegant fingers grasping the teapot and dispensing the tea with confident verve.
Once upon a time, that phrase had nearly been her personal motto—confident verve.
It had manifested in the way she troweled away dirt from a Roman mosaic, hand sweeping boldly as if she could already sense what lay beneath.
Or in the way she skipped ahead as they strolled through the pine-forested hills behind Fiesole, walking backward to face him as she explained the difference between Etruscan and Roman pottery sherds, arms gesturing in her excitement.
Now, watching her drop a sugar cube and healthy splash of cream into his tea—remembering how he took it after all these years—
She seemed . . . thinner. Not just in her person but in spirit, too. As if the weight of living had dampened the vitality that had once shimmered like a ruby-chested hummingbird in the sun.