She had left a note, at least. A terse missive that he could still recall word for word nine years on:
I am too angry and wounded in my soul to be with you at present. I am returning to Oxford for a while. I shall write when I feel able to speak without screaming. You, of course, may write me at will. May I recommend you begin with groveling apologies?
Her eyes dropped to thebapon the tray, her finger touching its crusty exterior.
“You never wrote,” she whispered. “I waited and hoped—”
“I should have. I was twenty-one years old, clod-headed, and an arrogant arse. That is the only justification I can offer.”
She nodded. “I should have written, too. I planned on it, but then...”
“Your father was angry.”
“Yes. He was. So very angry over your actions.”
“A few weeks after ye left, he tossed me out on my ear. He prevented the publication of your article in Rome and told me that I would never work in archeology again.”
Dr. Rutherford had been true to his word. All doors into antiquarian work had been shut to Alistair. Surely Dr. Newton, Chris’s husband, had played a part in that as well, Alistair now realized.
“Papa told me as much.”
“I ran into your father two years later in London. He roundly informed me that ye had married well and were the happier for it.”
Chris nodded again, her eyes still downcast. “Stephen helped me heal. Not from the article, per se, but from loss.” A pause. “From the loss ofyou.”
Silence hung for a long moment, neither of them moving or speaking.
Alistair stared at her profile—the sloping curve of her pert nose, the plump roundness of her lips, the stubborn jut of her chin.
So close.
He had come so close to losing her forever yesterday. The sight of her pale and half-buried under rubble would haunt him to the grave.
It rushed through him then—emotions and memories of their shared past...
The sound of her helpless giggles as he mimed antics from his days at St Andrews.
Chris reaching for him, tugging his mouth down to her hungry lips.
Her whispered words in the dusk of a Tuscan evening, fireflies winking in his peripheral vision—I shall love you forever, Alistair Maclagan.
Her love might have faded, but his . . .
No.
He loved her.
It was truly that simple.
She awakened him and made him see how dreary and Chris-less his life had been.
Once, he had permitted wounded pride to stem his apologies.
Never again.
This time he would fight for her. For them.
Without thinking, he reached for her slim hand resting on the counterpane.
