Mr. Maclagan paused before taking her fingers lightly in his own, bowing over her knuckles.
His touch might have been a vise for how thoroughly it affected her.
Her hand hummed with the contact. She felt branded. Scorched. As if in that simple gesture, he had marked her for himself and himself alone.
Chrissi would later describe the moment to him as they walked the sunlit path to the top of Mount Ceceri overlooking Fiesole, hands clasped once more and swinging between them, the drone of cicadas in the air.
How she had simplyknownthat Alistair would be the gentleman to win her heart.
And even later, in the aftermath of his betrayal and their subsequent breaking, she would marvel at her initial sense of surety. At the confidence of her naive twenty-year-old self whobelieved the years between falling in love and leaving this earth would be merry ones, easily passed without heartache and trial, secure within the arc of true love.
But in the train station that first day, any thought of disaster was far from her mind. She was young and eager for her first love, her first kiss, her first...everything.
And so, as her father hailed acarozzato transport them home, she listened, rapt, as Mr. Maclagan described arriving in Pisa on a clipper ship from Edinburgh and the marvel of the railway line—opened only a year past—taking less than two hours to deposit him in the heart of Florence.
As he spoke, his eyes never left Chrissi’s face. As if, like herself, his fingertips sparked with lightning and trembled to close the space between them.
Unlike other gentlemen of her acquaintance, he wasn’t enamored with his own speaking voice. He asked questions, too, and listened intently.
“What is that church there?” he inquired as they stood waiting for thecarozza, pointing to the enormous stained-glass Gothic windows overlooking the train station.
“Santa Maria Novella,” Chrissi took great pride in informing him. After all, she had already been in Florence for several weeks. Long enough to feel native, she supposed. To show a newcomer aroundhercity. “The frescoes inside are magnificent—Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, Masaccio. There are even sculptures by Brunelleschi.”
He grinned at her confident words.
“It sounds fascinating.” Though he might as well have said,Ye sound fascinating, for how Chrissi heard the words. “Ye will have to show me yourself.”
“I should be honored,” Chrissi blushed.
On the hour-long carriage ride north to Fiesole—an ancient town perched on a hilltop overlooking Florence—Chrissi and her father described the archaeological excavations underway.
Her father, Dr. John Rutherford, was a respected professor of antiquities at Oxford, ancient Rome and Etruscan cultures being his area of specialty. His excavations in Fiesole intended to uncover the Roman and Etruscan history of the city. For example, the remains of an amphitheater peeked out from the slope descending behind the main cathedral. Her father suspected there had been Roman baths and possibly a temple on the site as well. Why, just twenty years ago, a cache of a thousand silver Romandenariihad been found there—a fortune buried but never recovered.
Her father hoped to uncover more of such riches. As the carriage curved around hills and climbed upward, the three of them excitedly discussed the possibility of finding older Etruscan grave goods—gold necklaces, carved bronze mirrors, and alabaster vases as thin as glass—artifacts similar to those found in Cerveteri or Volterra.
Just an hour after stowing his things in his room in theirpensione, Mr. Maclagan was tromping around the excavation site. Chrissi raced to join him, happily explaining how he would be assisting them.
“Papa believes in stratigraphy,” she explained, motioning to a section where they had been digging.
“Stratigraphy? Like geology?” Mr. Maclagan asked, his brown eyes bringing to mind a pot of hot chocolate—indulgent and deliciously sweet.
“Yes, exactly!” she beamed at him. “Like sediments in the earth, archeology is laid down over the years. Our job as archaeologists is to carefully peel back the layers of each era, to study a time period thoroughly before moving down to the next. That is why we will start with the Roman ruins and then carefully dig farther back in time to the Etruscans who came before.”
“So ye consider yourself an archaeologist in truth?”
“Women can be archaeologists.” Chrissi hated the defensive note in her voice.
“I do not doubt it. How did ye begin?”
“My mamma died a week before my fourth birthday,” she explained as they crawled over a toppled column, “and so it has always been just Papa and me.”
“He adopted ye as his assistant, I ken,” Mr. Maclagan replied.
“Yes, and I intend to follow in his footsteps.” Fervency thrummed through her words.
He paused to stare at her, the Tuscan sun catching in the caramel flecks of his eyes. “I can see it in ye now—Miss Christiana Rutherford, archaeologist. Though I must state the truth: I rather suspect ye might be a bit of a bonnie distraction.”
“To whom, sir?” she asked on a laugh, delight and outrage in her tone.
