The never-ending pang of what might have been.
And the hollow terror of having to face the chasm of his loss yet again.
CONVINCING CHRIS TO stay was a mistake.
Alis knew this shortly after he walked away that first day, leaving her to assess the site.
His initial thought had been to view the excavations inScotland as a bookend to their summer in Italy—the Highlands and their relationship as chilly and barren as Florence had been warm and indulgent and welcoming. A final curtain before Chris exited his life for good.
But even hours after that first meeting, a humming buzz still vibrated along his skin. A sense of...what? Anticipation? Excitement?
He could hardly say. But it was a sensation he remembered well from their time together.
Chris, as ever, ignited a fire within his breast. An energy. A desire to reach for more—to learn and know andbecome.
And try as he might, he simply could not ignore her...this will-o-wisp come to haunt the halls of his memory.
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.
