“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 else, 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.
