“Mais oui, princesse.” His grin was swift and boyish, and entirely charming. “You sound surprised.”
“I am!” she admitted. “I mean—I’ve read about it—the mysterious field of stones. But I never paid much attention to where it was. I certainly never imagined visiting it.” Her eyes flicked toward him. “You’ve been before.”
He gave a nonchalant shrug. “Every English boy must visit, no? —with mis camarades.”
“Ah yes. Your infamous four friends.” Still holding his hand, she gave a few little skips, excitement bubbling in her chest. “What a perfect secret.”
Seeing the configuration on the horizon, her pace quickened. Mr. Dog trotted alongside them with increasing enthusiasm, sniffing tufts of grass and inspecting rocks and pebbles like an archaeologist in his own right.
As the structure came into sharper view, Ambrosia’s chest rose with wonder. The stones—impossibly large, precisely arranged—were even more magnificent than she’d imagined.
“The tall ones are sarsens,” Dash murmured beside her. “The smaller, the bluestones. Très ancien.”
She felt his hand squeeze hers, and when she turned, he was watching the site with a look of quiet reverence.
“They say it’s magical,” she whispered. “Aligned with the stars. Some give it religious meaning.”
“Or maybe it’s just a tribute to the stubbornness of man,” he said with a wry twist of his lips. “Men displacing nature—from one spot to another. C’est absurde. But no one really knows, do they?”
“Perhaps that’s the point.” She stepped beneath one of the outer lintels, running her fingertips along the rough-hewn surface. “They wanted us to wonder. To never be certain.”
“But one does not build something like this”—he lifted his hand to rest flat against one of the sarsens— “without purpose. There must be an inner drive, no? Something to hold onto when your back aches and your hands bleed. Otherwise…” He shook his head. “You stop.”
Something was driving him.
What drove her? The simple desire to go on?
For a long moment, they stood in silence, surrounded by the quiet hush of wind and stone. Ambrosia felt the strangeness of time pressing in—centuries of mystery carved into rock, survivors of fire and frost. She couldn’t help but see a reflection of mankind: layered, misunderstood, determined. Beautiful and broken at once.
“Thank you,” she said at last, turning to him. “For bringing me here.”
His gaze found hers. “C’est mon plaisir.”
It felt like more than just politeness. She saw it in the way his eyes lingered, in the soft furrow between his brows—as though he too felt the moment slipping away.
Voices drifted toward them, footsteps crunching on gravel. A group of visitors approached from the path, and with them came the end of the illusion—that only the two of them existed.
Dash gave a rueful shrug and tugged her a little closer. “I’m happy to see that look in your eyes. There’s a wonder about you… It ought to be encouraged.” He turned and dropped one hand on her shoulder, staring at her lips in a way that made her believe he might be meaning to kiss her again.
She would not stop him if he did.
She tilted her chin, parted her lips, but just as she was about to close her eyes, the voices suddenly became much louder, bouncing off of the stones as they meandered into the circle.
The moment slipped away.
Dash let his hand fall and leaned back against one of the towering stones, while Ambrosia released a sigh she hardly bothered to conceal. Foolish of her, really—had they not agreed there would be no repetition of that? He had brought her here only to share something wondrous, to give her a memory worth keeping. That was all. They were friends now. Nothing more.
She stared at the rocks around her.
Why were they brought here? Why were they lined up so perfectly?
Why had Dash Beckman come along when he did?
“This is a great example of all we don’t know, about those that came before us, about the world, about ourselves.” She stared straight ahead as she spoke.
“Ambrosia.” He seemed as though he was going to make some sort of apology.
“It’s the perfect reflection of how I feel about my future.”
