Chapter Eight
E mma frowned. An old friend? What exactly did that mean? He’d been an angel for centuries. How old could she be?
The woman, who was definitely not an angel, was waving to a sailboat doing maneuvers offshore on the sprawling lake, catching the wind in its sails.
It reminded her of a boat her father had owned for a few years that he’d sailed on the ocean.
She’d been on it many times, and the sight brought a rush of memory and emotion.
This boat was pristine looking, made of wood.
From here, Emma could make out a man and a young girl who was helping with the rigging.
Connor was watching the boat, too, smiling at the sight.
The woman in the Adirondack chair jumped to her feet, shocked and happy to see Connor, who had materialized before her.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite Scotsman,” she said, striding toward him.
“Elspeth,” he said, reaching out to hug her. “And who’s this wee bairn?” He peeked behind the blanket in her arms. A small perfect little face appeared and scrunched in a yawn. A tuft of wispy blonde hair covered the crown of her head.
“This is Anika Noel, our little girl. Sam’s and mine. Molly’s, too, of course.” She blushed as she spoke.
“I hadn’t heard. She’s…well, she’s bonnie, Elle. Meal do naidheachd. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” she said, beaming. “We couldn’t be happier.”
Elspeth. Elle. She had the look about her of a woman who was perfectly herself, right with her world.
Happy. Emma remembered then hearing about her, twice now.
Connor had told her that she’d been one of them—a guardian—before she’d quit to be with the man she’d fallen in love with, Sam Wynter, who was apparently the one steering that boat out on the lake.
Curious, Emma wanted a better look at the man who’d changed an angel’s mind.
But if she ever got to tell anyone she’d been with two Celestial beings (one fallen) chatting away a few hundred miles from the bed she lay in, surely no one would believe her. She wasn’t sure if she believed it herself.
“I suppose this is what Henry meant when he said you had something for me? This little surprise?” Connor said to Elle about the baby.
“Well, she was a surprise, but not the one I meant Henry to mention to you. But first, are you going to introduce me to your lovely friend? Or will you make me do that myself?”
Emma said, “You can see me? But I thought—” She sent a confused look at Connor, who nodded at her. Reaching out a hand to Elspeth before remembering her own limitations, she said, “I’m Emma.”
“She’s…in-betweener,” Connor explained with a look brimming with subtext.
“Yes,” Elspeth said with a smile. “Very nice to meet you, Emma.”
“Same. It’s…so beautiful here. And she’s adorable, little Anika.”
“Thanks. And we do love it here. That’s Sam out on the boat and our daughter, Molly. Now that Sam has finished building that thing, you can’t keep them out of it. But I’m kind of glad I stayed ashore today. I had a feeling I might see you soon.”
“Did ye, now?”
“Come, sit down. We have a lot to discuss.”
They sat in the Adirondack chairs positioned around a fire pit. It was too warm for a fire, but the fragrance drifting from the cold ashes in the pit reminded Emma of campfires as a child with s’mores and roasted hot dogs. All such simple human pleasures. She wondered if she’d ever have them again.
And babies.
Gazing at Anika, who had started to fuss, it struck her that even a fallen angel could have a baby. Yet that blessing had also eluded Emma herself in this life. Maybe now it was truly too late.
Elle found a pacifier and pressed it against the baby’s perfect, heart-shaped mouth. Anika stopped fussing and settled back to sleep.
“I hear big things are about to happen for you, Connor, At least, that’s the rumor.”
“Y’are surprisingly well informed for a reformed Celestial.”
“I do have my connections,” she replied with a grin. “Henry, for one. He always keeps a finger on the pulse of things.”
“More like an ear to the ground. But aye, it seems I’m going t’ make the Council after all. After I’m finished here.”
He said, as if I’m not sitting right beside him. Emma sank down a little in her chair.
“Congratulations to you!” Elspeth squeezed his hand. “That’s wonderful. It’s what you’ve always wanted. Right?”
He flicked an unreadable look at Emma. “Aye. It is.”
Emma kept quiet, but her head spun with questions she knew she had no business asking. When exactly would he be finished here? When she, what, gave up the ghost? Bit the bullet? Kicked the bucket? Or when she returned to her real life and left this incomprehensible substitute for a life behind?
“So, you’ve come because Henry sent you? Or for some other reason?” Elle asked, rubbing her baby’s back, a motion that seemed as natural to her as breathing.
“Your news first,” Connor said.
She shifted the sleeping baby to her other shoulder. “Okay, but…” She glanced at Emma questioningly.
“’Tis all right,” he assured her. “Say what you will.”
From her diaper bag, she pulled a book—small tome that looked quite old. “I’ve kept it with me, hoping I’d see you one day soon.” She handed it to him. “You know Iris.”
He nodded.
“Her life here for the last forty years was as a librarian. Anything you wanted to find, she could find it. Out of curiosity one day, I asked her to go looking for you.”
“Me?” A frown pulled at Connor’s brow.
“Well, your history. I’m a little nosy that way.”
“And?”
“She came across this little book. It was published in the mid-eighteen hundreds by a man named Ezra Bean, who was enthralled with the Scottish patriarchy and what happened to it after the Battle of Culloden.”
“Culloden was long before my time.”
“I know. That was interesting, but not as interesting as the chapter about your family.”
“ My family?” he said with a humorless chuckle. “You mean that pit of traitorous vipers, don’t you?”
“Your brother, no doubt. But in his research, Mr. Bean came across some diary entries that hadn’t seen the light of day for over fifty years.”
“A diary? Whose?”
“Apparently,” she said, glancing at Emma, “it belonged to Violet.”
The color left Connor’s handsome face, and his jaw went rigid.
“Apparently,” Emma put in, “I am Violet. If such things are to be believed.”
Elspeth’s expression softened. “I know. I heard that, too, from Marguerite.”
Connor shot to his feet. “Oh, for the love of—Does everyone know my business but me?”
Emma stared at the book with the strangest feeling tugging at her. Her words, written two hundred odd years before, by her alter ego. But this validated everything he had told her about the woman he’d once loved, the one who’d broken his heart.
“You should read it,” Elspeth told him. “This one section anyway. Though Bean has a nineteenth-century take on everything she said, I think those entries were meant for you.”
“I don’t want to read it,” he told her.
“Well, I want to read it,” Emma piped in. “After all, I wrote it. Isn’t that the going theory?”
Connor sent her a grouchy side-eye. “And how, exactly, will that work, Emma? Shall I turn the pages for you? Hold the book at eye level for ye so ye can take in all the juicy scandal of it? So ye can read all your love letters to your devil of a husband?”
“That’s hardly fair,” Emma argued. “You can’t be mad at me because I’m trying to sort out what you clearly don’t want to.”
“She has a point,” Elspeth agreed, lowering the babe to cradle her in one arm.
He scowled at her. “Oh, aye. You, too?”
She pushed the book in his direction. “Just read the excerpt, Connor. I think you’ll find it enlightening. At the very least clarifying.”
“What?” he asked. “ Now? ”
“Not the whole book. I marked the pages,” Elspeth encouraged.
Reluctantly, he took the small book, staring down at it as if it might contain one of those vipers he’d mentioned. “Fine. But it won’t change a thing.”
Elspeth smiled sweetly at him but kept her thoughts to herself.
Scanning the yard with a scowl, he headed down to the dock on the water to read in private.
Elspeth turned to Emma. “I should apologize for him, but I won’t. He can be cranky, but his heart is good. He’s one of my favorites.”
Yes, that she understood. He was hers as well. Emma had settled her gaze on him already, watching the way he moved—with duke-ish confidence—as he stalked off to the water, oozing sexy power without even trying. He must have been something in life. She would really have liked to have seen that.
Heat climbed, unbidden, through her, as it did so often when she was near him or watching him or thinking of him.
Was it specifically against the universe’s rules to covet an angel?
To imagine that powerful body of his entwined with hers?
To picture him holding her, touching her, kissing her without all the baggage he carried around in his soul?
And how foolish was she to imagine such things? With an angel, whose aspirations were for some otherworldly position she couldn’t even fathom. Superbly foolish, that’s what.
“He’s not without his charm,” Emma managed to say. “I do have a theory about Violet, though. One he doesn’t share. I’m not sure whatever that book says will make any difference in how he feels about her. Or me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Elspeth said cryptically. “You could be wrong.”
She exhaled a laugh. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I must admit, I can see now why Connor has been so obsessed with Violet all these centuries. I hear you’re the spitting image of her. You’re quite stunning, you know.”
Surprised at her words, Emma said, “That’s very kind of you to say.” She lifted her one bare foot up and wiggled her toes. “Despite the fact that I’ve come to visit a perfect stranger half-shoeless?”
“Despite that fact,” Elspeth agreed, laughing. “I know you must be feeling a bit—very—torn right now, being so displaced. I hope Connor’s been of some comfort to you.”
Emma turned to him. “Yes. He has. Mostly against his will. But yes.”