Remnants of Love
May 20, 1858
Dinnet, Aberdeenshire
Scotland
MRS. CHRISTIANA NEWTON had not intended to end up face down in a Highland bog.
But then she also hadn’t planned to be twenty-nine years old, a widow, and scrabbling for employment to feed herself.
Fate, she realized long ago, had reserved a great many indignities for her alone.
Chrissi attempted to push onto her knees, gloved hands groping for purchase in the dense mud.
“Och, Mrs. Newton! Dinnae move!” Fiona called down the embankment where Chrissi had slipped. “Ye might sink deeper into the bog, and it will catch ye like quicksand. Ye must stay precisely where ye are!”
Chrissi looked up at the younger woman—an innkeep’s daughter hired with meager coin to act as a guide. Her wide eyes and the horrified “O” of her lips spoke volumes as to Chrissi’s appearance.
“Are ye hurt?” Fiona continued.
Hurt? In body—no.
“’Tis only my pride that is wounded, Fiona.” Chrissi wiped mud from her eyes. Or rather attempted to do so, but as the mud was everywhere—hands, face, bonnet, dress—she merely spread it around.
The girl swallowed, looking up the path. “Dinnae fret, Mrs. Newton. I’ll fetch help and a good length of rope.” She paused. “Just...dinnae move.”
Fiona disappeared in a whirl of wool skirts.
Heaving a defeated sigh, Chrissi rested back on her heels, trying not to see the situation as a metaphor for the entirety of her life—mired in the Quagmire of Futility and Despair.
It sounded like the title of a penny dreadful.
Well . . . she felt like she waslivinga penny dreadful.
Generally, Chrissi preferrednotto be covered in rank-smelling mud and sphagnum moss, particularly right before meeting an important client—Lord Farnell, in this case.
But, as usual, excited curiosity over the archaeological remains she would be excavating had overthrown her common sense.
Eager to begin the project, she had left The Boat Inn in Aboyne in the early hours of dawn, Fiona guiding her path. Chrissi wished to survey the glen around Kinord Castle, the ancestral seat of Lord Farnell, and conduct a preliminary study of the stone circle and large mound there before meeting with Lord Farnell himself.
Upon reaching Kinord Castle, she had noted the terrain. The castle stood atop an impressive rise, the mountainous Cairngorms towering behind. The standing stones and a large mound rested below the castle on a smaller hill. And to the side ofthathill, a bog stretched across the glen—a mix of marsh and fen and swamp grass.
But as Chrissi approached the stone circle, she had spotted another solitary stone standing on an island of firmer ground in the middle of the bog. So odd, that stone, isolated from its brethren. Her feet had drifted toward it without conscious thought, heedless of the steep embankment alongside the path. A careless step on jutting rocks had sent her tumbling down the banked earth and into the bog.
The lone stone remained in her line of vision now, standing jauntily over the marsh. And if she craned her neck to the right, mud gripping her shoulders, she could see the tops of the standing stones on the hill above her—the ancient monument a silent witness to her folly.
Chrissi sighed.
A pair of magpies quarreled overhead. A fat bumblebee bobbled past, its rotund body defying physics by staying aloft. The swampy bog grass eventually gave way to heather and Scots pine in the distance. And all around her, the rolling hills and peaks of the Cairngorms loomed.
This excursionwasto have been the beginning of Hope. A true chance to reverse the winds of fortune. To gain some semblance of financial stability for her future.
As it was, Chrissi would be lucky if Lord Farnell didn’t show her the door immediately. Her stomach knotted at the thought despite being achingly empty. After all, she had chosen to spend her remaining coin on hiring Fiona rather than food. If Lord Farnell sent her packing, Chrissi would be paupered.
As an antiquarian specializing in ancient Scottish ruins, Chrissi already had to contend with male colleagues who considered her too unorthodox—translation: too female—to be a true archaeologist. However, that did not stem her attempts to continue the work she had begun with her late husband, Dr. Stephen Newton—a celebrated Oxford professor of British antiquities. Nearly thirty years her senior, Stephen had been more friend than lover, but together, they had devised new methods for documenting and understanding archaeological remains.
So when Chrissi had received a letter from Lord Farnell’s secretary requesting her assistance in excavating a series of ancient ruins, she had leapt at the chance. His lordship wishedto avail himself of her expertise and learn from her methodology, offering generous financial recompense.
