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 appearsto 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 morealivein 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 of energy in brilliance and beauty.
