The housekeeper bobbed another curtsy before leaving in a rustle of wool skirts and the clink of keys on a châtelaine.
Alistair resumed his pacing.
He paused at the window, gaze automatically straying to the hillside just south of the castle. From here, he could see the standing stone circle—five stones surrounding a larger central monolith. An impressive mound sat behind the circle, keeping watch as the hill descended to the boggy fen beyond. The landscape held a sort of hierarchy...castle to standing stones to burial mound to bog.
What was the purpose of the standing stones? And what was under the turf of the mound? A burial cairn? A barrow, like those found in England? The remains of a Pictish fort?
Without Mrs. Newton, he feared he would never know.
ButknowingMrs. Newton was Chris . . .
No. It simply wouldn’t do. Alistair would prefer to spend the rest of his days staring at the mound and wondering than to endure months of Christiana Rutherford’s presence.
All that remained now was to find a polite way to send her packing.
The doorsnickedopen again at his back.
“Mrs. Stephen Newton, my lord,” his butler, Jamieson, intoned.
Chris glided through, motioned forward by the butler.
“Will ye have Mrs. Craib send up some refreshment, Jamieson?” Alistair asked.
“Of course, my lord.”
Jamieson bowed before retreating, leaving the door open as a nod to propriety.
And then . . . Alistair and Chris were alone.
Before today, he would have said that the pain of losing her had healed. That he had licked his wounds and grieved and come out the other end a revived man.
A better man, even.
But now . . . facing her again . . .
The gash of her loss pulsed anew. The haunting whisper ofwhat if.
What if he hadn’t done what he had done?
What if they had reconciled and married?
What if hers had been the face he had awakened to every morning for the past nine years?
What was done was done. The past had passed. He knew this. And yet the intervening nine years without her had not been gentle. He had spent them full of self-recriminations and mourning the loss of the only future he had ever wanted.
Given how upright and tense she stood just inside the great room door, Chris was likely working through similar thoughts.
He studied her, now cleansed of mud and the thunderstruck numbness of his surprise.
She was older. Obviously. Faint lines bracketed her mouth and a pair of wee wrinkles sat between her eyebrows, the remnants of years spent squinting into the sun.
Her hair remained a lustrous honey-woven brown, though damp now and slicked into a chignon. Her figure was, as ever, well-proportioned—trim waist and curved bosom.
Her storm-blue eyes met his.
Where to begin?Alistair wondered. Words and sentences, nearly entire libraries of thoughts, crowded his tongue. And yet somehow...language failed him.
Swallowing, she looked away. Her hands twisted and clasped before her, the only sign of her agitation.
