SEVEN #2
Days on, he would find himself standing before the window in the great hall, watching her skirts billow in the never-ending Scottish wind as she drove stakes into the ground, sighted lines, and scribbled in her field notebook.
Sometimes her bonnet would hang from its strings down her back, forgotten in her eagerness to examine some artifact one of his men had uncovered.
In that moment, he would feel it keenly—the tug of her light and intellect. The spell of her classical beauty. And he would hunger to explore the earth with her.
Her field notes—dispatches that should have been dry and matter-of-fact—held the essence of her inquisitive voice.
Success! Today we uncovered a series of ascending stones, stretching toward the top of the mound.
Every instinct screams that this must be the long-sought channel leading to the cairn entrance.
My mind cannot help but ponder the last people to see these stones.
Who were they? Some weary medieval traveler, perhaps, who broke his cup, leaving sherds for us to find?
Or a Viking raider, intent on pillage? My mind spins with imagined scenes.
Alistair felt tossed into the past, reliving Chris’s excitement, her enthusiasm for archeology.
Her teasing notes were even worse:
I reached a limit today, if you must know—I sharpened your pathetically dull trowel. It practically begged me for help, the poor thing. I could no longer endure to remain a silent bystander to its abuse.
Her pithy tone left him laughing.
Alistair knew he needed to keep his distance, both physically and emotionally.
Certainly, he needed to avoid being alone with her.
Even the briefest exchange felt indulgent.
Like the lemon bonbons his grandmother used to give him—a sweet he could not help but devour in one gluttonous afternoon and still pine for more.
Chris had made it clear she did not forgive his past actions.
Yet, when she asked to show him something in person, he abandoned plans to call upon Miss Rollins and rushed to the excavation site instead.
“My lord!” she cried, waving her hand in greeting from a hole that swallowed her to her shoulders.
They were mindful, the two of them, not to use Christian names around others. No need to set tongues wagging.
But she was pure Chris as he approached, eyes gleaming and expression animated.
“Come!” she beckoned. “You must see. I think we have found the beginnings of an entrance tunnel!”
Approaching, he crouched to examine what she had uncovered.
Were she anyone other than Chris, he would have jumped down in the hole with her.
But he thankfully still retained a shred of self-preservation.
“What have ye found, Mrs. Newton?”
“Look at this line of stones here.” She drew her trowel down the wall, indicating a straight-cut edge. “These stones have been finished similar to the ones at Clava outside Inverness. This must be where the entrance begins.”
Turning, she beamed up at him, the wind burnishing her cheeks rosy pink.
Alistair had to remind himself to breathe. That he wasn’t at liberty to lean in, slide his hand around the nape of her neck, tug her onto tiptoe, and capture her mouth with his.
“Oh! And let me show you this. Here. Assist me.” She reached her hand upward, indicating for him to pull her out of the hole. Several workmen stepped forward to help, but Alistair waved them off.
Chris, as ever, was no shrinking flower. Grasping his hand, she braced a boot against the wall of the hole, dirt sloughing off as the soil had yet to be stabilized.
He pulled her up. But upon reaching the top, she did not let go of his hand.
No, instead she tightened her grip.
“You must see!” She tugged him toward the standing stones. Alistair followed her willingly, a helpless grin on his face.
How could he have forgotten the infectious nature of Chris’s joy?
Arriving at the stones, she took his shoulders and pushed him against the center stone, positioning herself beside him—the two of them standing just as they had on the day he persuaded her to stay on at Kinord Castle.
“Look!” She pointed excitedly toward the hole where she had uncovered evidence of the tunnel.
“The entrance appears to line up precisely with this central stone. I am an idiot not to have thought of this sooner—that the standing stones might have been aligned to, and used in conjunction with, the chambered cairn or earthen house or whatever is under that mound. That the sites are linked.”
“Like . . . ceremonially?”
The large stone at their back amplified his voice, making the timbre richer, deeper.
It felt like a microcosm of moments spent with Chris—life simply became more alive in her presence. Birdsong swelled, the sky grew bluer, flowers held their petals longer. Perhaps even past civilizations gathered in the wind, singing.
“Yes!” Her arms waved in excitement, sending the scent of lavender soap and sunlight swirling around his head.
Alistair nearly closed his eyes at the onslaught.
Chris, of course, prattled on, oblivious to his olfactory crisis.
“Perhaps they held funeral rites here amongst the stones before escorting the dead to their final rest within the chambered tomb. Or perhaps it was a bacchanalian celebration, with bonfires lit to pagan gods amid the stones and goods left as offerings within the cairn. Who can say?”
Or perhaps, Alistair mused to himself, the cairn held the bones of formerly sound-minded men pining for women whose hearts they had broken.
It seemed a fitting punishment.
“That is astonishing,” he said. Though given how she blushed, he might simply have said what he meant: You are astonishing.
And she was. Bubbling with ideas, leaping from bright thought to thought.
No wonder he had fallen so madly in love with her all those years ago.
Turning toward her, he leaned a shoulder into the stone. “So, what now?”
“That is an excellent question.” She ticked off on her fingers. “We need to shore up the sides of the hole. Write down measurements of everything and ensure every find is carefully cataloged. I would also adore a preliminary sketch of the stones we have uncovered.”
“Permit me to do that.”
“Excellent.”
They talked more, ideas and theories flitting between them—firefly sparks of spirit flashing back and forth.
He left her to the work an hour later.
But thoughts of Chris would not leave him be.
They continued to dance a merry jig in his mind, taunting and teasing him.
The crisp sense of her observations, the draw of her spirit, always moving, infusing the very marrow of life.
With her rich brown hair and lovely periwinkle eyes, she called to mind wisteria in full bloom.
The sheer exuberance of the vine, blossoms hanging in purple-blue clumps over rock walls and woody tendrils climbing up gables as though desperate to expend every last drop energy in brilliance and beauty.
That, in essence, was Chris.
He happened to be watching out the great hall window the next morning when she opened his sketchbook to the illustrations he had created the previous afternoon.
Holding the illustrations in one hand, she touched her fingertips to the drawing.
Alistair felt the touch as surely as if she had skimmed her hand across the back of his neck.
As if sensing his gaze, she whirled her head, eyes lifting to his.
Grinning wildly, she waved at him and then hugged the sketchbook to her chest, simultaneously communicating her gratitude and approval of his drawings.
He raised a hand in reply, his heartbeat tingling in his palms.
Alistair had thought his love for her dead.
Instead, he feared that he had merely buried it deep.
And like her excavation, day by day, she unearthed a wee bit more of the adoration that had once flowered in his own chest.
Was it even possible to return to what they had once had . . . to regain trust and harmony? Or would his sins forever stand between them?
And, most importantly, did he wish to try to make amends for his folly?
He continued to see Miss Rollins, and though he appreciated her sweet nature and gentle ways, he recognized the simplicity of his feelings for her. There were no depths to be explored there. No mounds to excavate or promises of hidden treasures.
Being with Miss Rollins felt akin to a stroll through Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh on a fine day—pleasant, easy, enjoyable.
Nothing like the heady joy of chasing Chris through an olive orchard in Fiesole, her helpless giggles drawing him onward. Or the euphoria of catching her about the waist and turning her to him, her arms reaching to pull his head down for a scorching kiss.
Granted, it was hardly fair to make such a comparison.
He was not the carefree youth he had been at age twenty-one, starry-eyed and believing in the power of love. Trusting that he and Chris would transcend every problem, every issue that might arrive.
And yet . . .
The memory of that love would not let him be.
A spark remained between Chris and himself. An ember slowly glowing back to life.
Three days later, he sat in his study pondering that ember, contemplating the wisdom of fanning the spark of their attraction into something more.
The room hung with afternoon light, the tall case clock in the corner ticking away the seconds.
A pounding of boots on the stairs preceded McIntosh bursting into the room in a whirl of overcoat and fresh Highland air.
“I am so sorry to disturb ye, my lord,” the man said breathlessly, “but ye best come quickly.”
Alarmed, Alistair rounded his desk. “Whatever is the matter?”
“’Tis Mrs. Newton.”
“Mrs. Newton!” A clanging bell sounded in Alistair’s mind.
“Aye. There has been an accident at the excavation site.”