Anguish and loss and grief . . . long buried and yet, somehow, never far.
Alis took a step toward her, but she stayed him with an uplifted hand.
Her ribs heaved. A terrible shivering wracked her muscles.
“What is it, Chris? Tell me.”
It took two more spasms of her lungs to get the words out.
“I was increasing, Alis. When I left Italy, I was with child.”
Alistair froze, hisbody cemented into place as immobile as the stones around him.
“Pardon?” he whispered.
Chris had covered her face with both hands, hiccupping gasps lifting her chest.
Surely, he had misheard.
She would never have kept something so vital from him.
“Chris?” he asked, voice rising along with his agitation.
She lifted her head at that, expression so anguished. “I-I was pregnant . . . with your babe.”
Alistair staggered back, the impact of her words like a horse hoof to the chest.
They both knew what had occurred between them . . . the anticipation of their marriage vows. He had loved her so much, so dearly. And they were betrothed. Handfasted.
Why are we waiting for a signature in a parish record?she had whispered to him on a sultry Tuscan evening.Can we not become husband and wife now? We have plighted our troth and handfasted one another, after all. Your ancestors married in such a way. Why can’t you and I?
He had needed no further encouragement.
Shefeltlike his wife. And he wanted her—the life that they would have together.
Their coming together—clothed only in moonlight and the hum of cicadas—had been a first for each of them. A glorious promise of the awaiting future.
Somehow, he had never once considered that their indiscretion had incurred consequences.
Perhaps because he had supposed that Chris—his beautiful, forthright Chris—would never have kept a secret of such magnitude from him.
“I didn’t realize, not until I was on a ship bound for London. My seasickness simply would not abate. And then my courses didn’t come. I d-didn’t know . . . I didn’t know what to do.”
“Me!” He pointed at his chest. “Ye return to me, lass! That is what ye should have done!”
She leaned back against the rocks of the cairn, sobs shaking her shoulders.
Pivoting, Alistair faced the entrance tunnel, hands coming up to clasp the back of his head.
His heartbeat pounded in his ears.
And yet Chris’s words still reached him, clogged with tears and heartache.
“Return to you? I was angry and hurt. It felt like a betrayal of my very self to return. And so I continued to Oxford, assuming you would write. That you would perhaps be on the boat behind mine, apologetic and remorseful. That I would receive something from you other thansilence.” The word emerged on a knife’s edge—a heartbreak of syllables.
“Ye should have written regardless.” Alistair turned back to face her.
“I know that now . . . I have been granted many,manyyears to ponder the folly of my actions.”
