THIRTEEN
Chrissi limped back to the castle and spent the remainder of the day weeping into her pillow.
Never had she hated herself more.
She had been too much of a coward to tell Alis nine years ago. Too hurting over his betrayal—his lack of seeing her and supporting her most cherished aspirations. And then the misery of his subsequent silence.
But he had deserved to know. And regardless of how he felt about her, he would never have abandoned his child. No. He would have rushed to her side and married her immediately.
But she hadn’t wanted their married life to begin that way, with Alistair essentially forced to marry her. To always wonder if he would have, of his own free will, returned to her.
Of course, she got her answer in time—
He did not return.
And so, in a way, it felt like absolution. That Chrissi had made the correct decision in keeping news of the child from him. After all, the only thing worse than marrying a man who viewed her as property would have been feeling that she had entrapped him.
In contrast, Stephen had chosen her, even knowing she carried another man’s child. He had nurtured her dreams and fulfilled her wish to see her research published.
And yet . . .
The horror in Alis’s gaze when he had realized what she had done. She had imagined it so many times. But the reality had been even more terrible, more awful—to witness his heart shatter, to see betrayal freeze his handsome features into stone.
Perhaps the bleak desolation of her current life was deserved. A just punishment for her actions.
Finally, puffy-eyed and weary, she hobbled over to the window.
It was done.
Alis finally knew the truth she should have confessed years past.
Would he evict her now? Cast her person and belongings out of his castle and return to his placid Miss Rollins?
Chrissi hated the sharp derision of her thoughts.
Pressing fingertips to her brow, she took in several steadying breaths.
A knock sounded on her bedchamber door.
“Come,” she called.
A maid entered, carrying dinner on a silver tray.
It felt decadent to be catered to when surely Alis simply wished her gone.
“Your dinner, Mrs. Newton.” The maid set the tray atop a small table beside the fire and bobbed a curtsy before quietly exiting.
The smell of steak and ale pie filled the air.
Only then did Chrissi see the note placed atop the cutlery, her name scrawled in Alis’s bold hand.
Scarcely breathing, she opened the foolscap, tipping it into the light.
I do not know what to say. Our conversation this afternoon has overset me in ways I cannot explain.
Had I any sense at all, I would terminate our contract for the excavation.
However, I cannot, in good conscience, deprive ye of much-needed income, or myself of long-awaited answers to the ruins on my land.
Please continue your work. I shall remain out of your sight, just as I am sure ye wish to remain out of mine.
That certainly spelled out his feelings, did it not?
He had only loved her when his were the deeds to be forgiven.
But forgiveness for herself . . .
Well, she had known, long ago, that it was likely impossible.
She wiped away another fugitive tear as she penned a reply, telling him she agreed with his terms.
Chrissi would remain to finish this excavation and give him the answers he sought. It was the least she could do. Her ankle was healed enough for her to resume work, regardless of what anyone else said. Perhaps if she hurried, she could have it done and dusted close to the summer solstice.
And then, once she had uncovered what she could, she would pack up her trowel and disappear into the ether, bothering him no more.
True to her word, Chrissi worked tirelessly.
And true to his word, she scarcely saw Alis.
Every day, she limped back and forth from the excavation site, her ankle still twinging but on the mend. She took meals in her bedchamber, consolidating her notes from the day’s labors—writings she sent to Alis.
He said nothing in reply.
Ten days after their conversation in the cairn, Chrissi was scraping the floor of a side niche when her trowel hit upon something rather extraordinary.
A few hours of excited exploration later, she sat back on her heels, surveying what she had found.
How . . . unexpected.
She tore a sheet from her notebook, scribbling a message to Alis.
No matter his anger toward her, he would find this discovery thrilling.
Alistair was in his study, reviewing estate expenditures, when his butler delivered Chris’s note.
Come down to the cairn. I have found something remarkable, unlike anything I have ever excavated. Never fear, I shall make myself scarce so you needn’t see me.
He contemplated her words for a long moment—the most she had written to him directly in over a week and a half. What had she found?
His anger over her deception had faded into a glum sorrow that hung over his mood like a dreich rain cloud.
Yes, Chris should have told him about the babe.
But having overcome the initial shock, he couldn’t help but put himself in her shoes—a girl scarcely twenty years of age, alone without her father’s protection, unmarried, and with child.
Her babe’s father had betrayed her and hadn’t bothered to write, giving every impression that he had washed his hands of her.
Chris would have known only too well the fate of women bearing a child out of wedlock.
It was more than merely shameful. Once her condition became widely known, she would have found herself rejected by Polite Society, unable to find employment or provide for herself and her child.
Her father certainly couldn’t have permitted her to remain in his home.
In order to salvage his own reputation and career, he would have had to cast her off.
What was she to have done?
Of course she had panicked and taken the first viable solution that offered both her and her unborn bairn respectability and a future—marriage to Stephen Newton.
Alistair could hardly fault her.
But now what was he to do?
Simply forgiving her and accepting her deception felt . . . difficult. Absurd, even.
But letting her exit his life once more also seemed nothing short of impossible.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes.
Snatching up his hat and coat, he made his way down to the excavation site, Chris nowhere to be seen.
A worker beckoned him forward eagerly, handing him a lantern.
Lamp in hand, Alistair crouched along the tunnel, emerging into the cairn proper. A second lantern flickered on a pole, adding illumination to the space.
The central chamber appeared untouched. But Chris had been hard at work excavating the side niches. One, in particular, had been scraped down to the same level as the main chamber.
Lifting his lamp to examine it more closely, he froze, breath catching in his ribcage.
Chris’s unexpected find lay on the floor before him.
Shaking his head in wonder, he bent forward, eyes drinking in the story before him.
Two skeletons lay side by side, knees bent, hands mingled together, heads turned to face one another. Their foreheads had likely touched when first placed into the earth.
A romantic embrace.
As sure a depiction of love as any poem ever written or vows declared.
Alistair stared at the entwined skeletons for far too long, pondering how they had come to be here together.
Had they both died at the same time, the loss of one causing the other to falter?
Or had one been unwilling to be parted even by death itself, and so had willingly joined their lover in the afterlife?
He would likely never know.
But standing there, his lamp casting long shadows on the surrounding stones, he knew one thing clearly:
Whoever they had been—husband and wife, illicit lovers—and whenever and however they had lived and died . . .
They had loved.
It was writ, despite time and decay, in their very bones.
Stated as clearly as an epitaph. Or as an immortal poem.
Two lines from Shakespeare’s sonnet, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
” drifted through his mind. Would-be suitors often recited the first line or two, but neglected the final couplet:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
And like Shakespeare in that sonnet, the skeletons before Alistair loudly declared their love. So that he, thousands of years onward, knew and understood what had passed between them.
It stole his breath and caused his own bones to tremble.
Because . . .
If he let Chris go, if he were content to watch her walk away, no one would ever know. There would be no trace of their love. No remnant. It would dissolve like sea foam, melting into the sands of Time and utterly forgotten.
And that . . .
That would be simply unbearable.
That she would be so forgotten.
That they themselves—Chris and Alis—would be forgotten.
How odd.
That the largest decisions were, in many ways, the simplest.
He loved Chris.
He couldn’t bear to let her go. To let their love pass away, uncelebrated. Unmarked.
No.
He forgave her.
Just as she had forgiven him.
The surety of it washed through him, as cleansing and life-giving as summer rain.
Together, they could find a way back to what they had once had.
He just had to take the first step.