SIX
Chris had left.
Alistair stared at the trunk sitting just inside the door of her bedchamber, neatly bundled and ready for the carter’s wagon.
The upstairs maid had alerted him to the fact—Mrs. Newton had ordered her effects packed and then, while Alistair was still blethering with Miss Rollins and her mother, had slipped out the front door.
Running away without a word of goodbye. Just as she had in Fiesole all those years ago.
It astonished him that it hurt . . . her leaving.
He scrubbed a tired hand down his face.
Wouldn’t it be best to simply let her go? They had destroyed each other, he and Chris.
In truth, her death would have been easier to overcome than her abandonment. Ironic, perhaps, but accurate, nonetheless. Because in death, she would have remained his.
Instead, he had spent the intervening years imagining her married to another—loving him, sharing a life with him.
Another man reveling in the crackling spark of her wit, enjoying the touch of her soft hands, the husky whisper of her voice in his ear.
Another man giving her the renown and academic credit that Alistair had not provided.
And now, after so many years, he had come to peace with it all. There was Miss Rollins with her bright smiles and easy manner—never demanding, never pushing. Willing to be content with what he could share of himself and not insist upon more.
Not like Chris.
No. Chris had wanted to know everything—his hopes, dreams, the very dregs of his soul. And in his naive foolishness, he had let her in, eager to splay his heart at her feet. Heady with the euphoria of being so known.
It had made the crush of his failures and her subsequent rejection all the more devastating.
And yet now, he stared helplessly at her packed trunk sitting isolated between the foot of the bed and the hearth.
The spare starkness of it—three battered leather straps reaching across the lid to brass clasps, one of which dangled broken—dents and scratches testifying to the drubbing that life had delivered.
Somehow, he knew the trunk contained her entire world—every treasured book and notebook, every presentable skirt and bodice.
The image of her too-thin wrist surfaced.
Nine years ago, brokenhearted and angry, he had let her go.
But now, he simply . . . couldn’t. Not like this.
His feet pivoted for the stairs before any conscious thought surfaced.
Alistair had thought to find Chris trudging on foot down the rutted road, attempting to reach Dinnet before everything was shut tight for the evening.
But as he crossed the road, he caught the flash of skirts whipping from behind the central monolith in the stone circle below the castle.
He found Chris there, her shoulder blades pressed to the ancient granite slab, shawl tucked tight to her chest, eyes staring out over the bog and the lone stone standing in the middle.
As the solstice was only four weeks away, the sun still hung in the sky, bathing the marsh grass and rolling hills beyond in golden light.
Hearing him approach, she startled and swiped at her eyes with the corner of her shawl, fingers shaking.
Not saying a word, he dug into his pocket and extended a white handkerchief to her.
With a hiccup, Chris took it, dabbing the tears off her cheeks.
She had always been an elegant crier; he would give her that. Her eyes did not become red-rimmed, nor did her skin turn splotchy. She rarely made noise. Instead, the tears flowed soundlessly before she wiped them away.
Alistair rested his shoulders beside her own, content to dwell in silence with her and listen to a pair of cuckoos quarrel in the bushes.
The ever-restless wind soon wrapped Chris’s skirts around his knees and whipped the ends of her bonnet ribbons across his chest.
He heard her swallow.
“Thank you,” she whispered, twisting the handkerchief around her fingers.
“There is nothing to thank.”
More silence.
“She seems lovely.”
No need to clarify who Chris meant.
“Aye. I haven’t officially declared my intentions, but Miss Rollins is truly a bonnie lass.”
Chris nodded, the wind-reddened tip of her pert nose peeking out from the brim of her bonnet.
How odd.
Alistair had spent the entire afternoon with Miss Rollins, and yet he could not recall a single thing they had discussed or even the color of Miss Rollins’s gown.
But he easily remembered every detail, every word spoken, with Chris.
“Are ye leaving?” he continued.
She ran her fingertips over his initials embroidered in a corner of the handkerchief.
“I do not see how I could stay, Alis.”
“Alis, am I now? Not my lord?”
“That is the problem.” She finally lifted her gaze to his, a storm gathered in her gray-blue eyes. “I realized that I cannot pretend you are anything but Alis to me. It is why staying is too difficult—reliving everything from Florence while watching you woo Miss Rollins.”
“Aye.” He heartily agreed with her.
Swallowing again, she wiped her cheeks with a frustrated growl.
“I meant to leave. But then I remembered that stone out in the bog there.” She pointed to the rock standing tall on a wee island of firmer ground. “And it hurt . . . to leave without knowing if it was deliberately put there. And if so, its purpose.”
“Ah. Curiosity always did get the better of ye.”
“It did.”
“’Tis what makes ye such an excellent archaeologist—ye aren’t content to let something be until ye have sussed out an answer.”
She gave a hiccupping sigh. “Do not c-compliment me, Alis. Not at this juncture.”
My heart cannot take more bruising, she didn’t add. But Alistair heard the words anyway.
His own heart panged in sympathy.
“Ye might need to let this mystery be, Chris. The bog makes reaching the stone treacherous. Best to wait until July when the sun has dried out the marsh somewhat. Besides, it’s likely just a gowk stane.” He pointed to where it stood above the bog.
“Gowk stane?”
“Aye. A cuckoo stone, to translate it from Scots. There are many here in Aberdeenshire.”
Interest peeked out from her gaze. “They are marked somehow, then?”
“Nae. There is no logical reason why they are called gowk stanes. Some are marked or carved. Others are simply natural boulders. But if a community deems a rock to be a gowk stane, then it becomes one.”
“That seems . . . arbitrary.” Chris frowned.
He shrugged. “The gowk stanes are believed to be gateways between this world and the underworld—the place that cuckoo birds retreat in winter and emerge come spring.”
“Ah. A visual reminder of rebirth.”
“Aye.”
Her eyes skimmed the landscape. “Spring comes so late this far north. It’s nearly June, and yet the trees are only now budding. It was summer in Sussex when I boarded the train.”
“True. But give it two weeks, Chris. The heather will turn green with new growth and gorse will paint the hills in lemon-yellow flowers.”
“The very color of hope.”
Alistair hated the wistfulness in her tone.
“Has hope been in such short supply, then?”
She shrugged, eyes dropping back to his handkerchief still wound around her fingers.
“I haven’t—” she began, chest heaving again. “I h-haven’t the funds to leave.”
He had suspected as much, but it still sent a bolt of anger lancing through him.
“I am sorrier than I can say that your husband and father left ye nothing. That was a right damnable thing to do.”
“It was.”
“The funds from this excavation are important to ye.”
“They are, but I was also excited for the work. To conduct an exploration of this magnitude is every archaeologist’s dream.”
He grunted. “Ye should have been born a man, Chris. Ye would have taken the world by storm.”
The words were true enough, though Alistair would forever be grateful she was a lusciously curved woman.
“I would have,” she sniffed, dabbing at her eyes once more. “I still might.”
Helpless admiration swelled at her indomitable spirit. “There is the Chris I know.”
Even as he spoke, the very air changed around him. An energy vibrated along his muscles as if a long-dead part of him was slowly awakening.
A sensation he had only ever felt in Chris’s presence.
And in that moment, he knew.
He had to convince her to stay. He couldn’t send her back to Aunt Eunice’s rackety garret. To live with hunger and hopelessness.
“If I double the amount I proposed to pay ye, then would ye stay?” he asked. John McIntosh—his steward, or factor, in Scottish parlance—would surely berate him for the expense, but Alistair knew he could afford the funds.
Chris froze, the handkerchief half-raised to her face.
Her gaze skewered him.
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. For yourself. For me.”
They stared at one another as wind rippled the grass around them.
She still has that shard of gold in her right iris, he thought. A wee hint that her soul was lightning struck.
“It isn’t pity if that is what ye be thinking,” he continued.
She laughed, a sharp crack of sound. “I would hardly care, even if it were pity. Pride is the privilege of those with full stomachs and more than a handful of gowns to their name.”
Alistair hated the reality her words implied.
“Double, you say?” She looked sideways at him.
“Aye.”
“If I did decide to stay, how would you see this proceeding?” She motioned to the space between them. “I cannot think that the two of us working in close quarters would be advisable.”
True, that.
How did he see this proceeding?
“We could work in shifts?” he offered tentatively, his mind scrambling to find solutions. “Ye could take the mornings and then leave me notes for the afternoon? I understand your methodology and know how to wield a trowel.”
“Do you still refuse to sharpen your trowel?” she asked conversationally.
“I see no need to hone mine to a knife’s edge, as well ye know, Chris.”
“Amateur.” She shook her head.
He couldn’t stop a grin. “Not all of us wish to attack an excavation site with the precision of a surgical scalpel.”
“Again. Amateur.”
A beat of silence.
“So we wouldn’t speak with one another?” she asked.
“Well . . . only when polite circumstances demand it.” His gaze slid out over the landscape, puffy white sheep grazing in the distance. “Would ye prefer we interact more closely?”
“No.” To the point. Pragmatic.
He spread his hands as if to say, Precisely.
“Heaven knows I could use your illustration skills,” she said finally. “Are they still up to snuff?”
“They are. Better, even.” He had never stopped drawing over the years.
“Well . . . I suppose we could give such an arrangement a go.”
Alistair nodded in agreement.
This would be a disaster.
She dabbed at her cheeks one last time before handing back his handkerchief.
“This is going to be a disaster,” she said, unerringly echoing his thoughts.
“Aye, most likely.”
She glanced at him. “I give us a week.”
“Confident of ye. I would have thought no more than three days.”
Even hours on, Alistair could still hear the treacle-sweet echo of her choked laugh.