Chapter 42
Heather—Present Day
H eather woke before the kettle did.
Gray light sifted through the cottage curtains, thin as gauze, laying a pale ribbon across the quilt.
Byrdie’s bell gave a soft, interrogative jingle from the foot of the bed; a heartbeat later, the cat hopped up, turned twice, and installed herself against Heather’s hip with the authority of a duchess reclaiming a throne.
Outside, something thudded—measured, clean. An axe into seasoned wood.
She slid from the quilt, careful not to disturb Byrdie, and padded barefoot to the window.
The mist hung low over the yard, silvering everything it touched.
Flynn stood bare-headed in it, sleeves pushed to his elbows, splitting logs by the shed.
The swing of the axe was pure rhythm—lift, twist, drop, crack.
Steam curled from his shoulders where the damp met body heat; his shirt clung in a way that made her stomach do something ridiculous.
It wasn’t even fair; he moved like every woman’s intrusive thought had finally unionized.
He paused to rub his shoulder, still tender after Kerr’s mistreatment, then braced a new log with one boot, muscles shifting under worn cotton as he lined up the next strike.
The motion was unhurried and confident. Every part of him—his breath, his balance, the calm precision in his movements—looked like someone who could rebuild the world with his hands and make it look easy.
Heather’s palm found the windowpane without thinking, fingers leaving faint prints on the cool glass. She shouldn’t be staring. But God, the quiet strength of him, the way he moved like the morning itself belonged to him, was hypnotic.
Somewhere between the swing and the crack, she caught herself wondering what it might feel like to be the thing he split in two—and instantly concluded she needed a cold shower and a new hobby.
When he lifted the axe again, light caught the curve of his jaw, the bead of sweat sliding down his neck, and she thought:
No wonder the house feels safe when he’s in it.
He looked up suddenly, as if he’d felt her watching. Their eyes met through the thin blur of mist. Flynn’s mouth curved, slow and knowing, and he tipped his chin toward the door in silent invitation.
Her pulse fluttered. She turned from the window and grabbed the first thing within reach: one of his sweatshirts draped over a chair.
It smelled like soap and woodsmoke and the kind of warmth that felt earned.
She pulled it over her head, the hem brushing her bare thighs, and padded into the kitchen to start the kettle.
By the time the water hissed to a boil, she heard the door open behind her. The sound of boots on the threshold, the low scrape of him shaking off the chill.
“Caught you starin’,” he said, voice still rough from the cold.
Heather didn’t turn, just poured the tea and said, “You were hard to miss.”
Flynn’s warm laughter rumbled through the small room. “Flatterer.”
She finally faced him. His hair was damp, his skin flushed from the wind. He looked devastatingly alive—strong, safe, solid. And when his eyes trailed down to where her bare legs disappeared beneath his sweatshirt, his breath hitched, barely audible.
He crossed the space between them in two slow steps. The air between them thickened. His fingers brushed the edge of the sweatshirt’s hem where it hung just past her rear end, tracing lightly.
“Looks better on you,” he murmured.
“Now who’s the flatterer?” she chuckled, though her voice came out softer than she meant.
He leaned in, his mouth beside her ear. “Aye. Ye caught me.”
Holy shit.
The kettle clicked off, startling them both. She laughed quietly, the sound trembling somewhere between relief and want.
Flynn reached around her to pour the water, his chest brushing her back. His heat and scent wrapped around her, making it hard to remember why she’d gotten up in the first place.
She took her cup and stepped aside before she did something she couldn’t take back—like pull him closer just to see if he’d kiss her before breakfast.
“Tea first,” she managed. “Then you can charm me into trouble.”
He grinned, lifting his own cup. “Lass, I was born for trouble.”
Heather set the kettle on and opened Fiona’s diary while the cottage was still all hush and ticking.
The leather had drunk in the night air and smelled faintly of smoke and something medicinal: old ink, perhaps, or old time.
She turned to the back half, where she’d stopped the night before, and traced the neat, tight script that had become almost a tangible voice in her head.
The thistle endures…
Her eyes kept snagging on a page whose lower corner had gone a shade darker, as if some thumb had lingered there a hundred times. The ink looked faded to the point of vanishing in places—not scraped away, but thinned with precision.
Steam started to mutter as she slid the diary closer to the kettle and held the page to the warmth, careful, as if coaxing a shy thing into the open.
Letters breathed up out of the paper.
Not new words—old ones lifting through. In the outer margin, where she’d thought the page was blank, a paler hand had left a ghost of a note.
Heather fished a soft pencil from Flynn’s drawer and, with the lightest touch, skimmed the graphite sideways over the margin. The raised strokes caught and filled.
…beneath the hearts that guard our flame.
Her own pulse jumped. “Oh,” she whispered to the quiet room. “Fiona, you brilliant woman.”
“Should I be jealous of that wee book, or the kettle?”
“Both,” Heather said, grinning despite herself. She turned the page for him to see. “Look—there’s a note I missed last night. The steam lifted it. ‘Beneath the hearts that guard our flame.’ The hearts, plural. ”
Flynn leaned, shoulder brushing her back, and squinted. “Aye, that’s the same hand as the rest. And you’ll note that there’s no mention of the word hearth. Subtle as sin.”
“She’s protecting it even in the clue.” Heather’s chest felt hot and empty at once. “We were right, Flynn. It’s not just anywhere in the kitchen. It’s beneath those entwined hearts.”
He kissed her hair, a quick, grounding press. “We can have a proper look today. Slow-like. No sense in invitin’ a curse by goin’ at it hungry.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Since when are you superstitious?”
“Since you moved in and started talkin’ to ghosts.” He tugged her gently away from the counter. “Sit, lass. Tea first.”
They ate buttered toast and jam standing up, with Byrdie weaving officiously between their ankles to audit crumbs. By the second cup, the cottage had warmed; Heather’s bruise was a shadow under concealer rather than a proclamation.
Still, when a car eased past on the lane and the kettle chattered against its ring at the same time, her spine went taut.
Flynn noticed. “Just old Mr. Fraser’s Land Rover,” he said quietly. “Goes past every morning at half-eight, rain or shine.”
She nodded, cheeks heating. “I know. I just… keep listening for bad things.”
“That’s alright, lass.” He brushed her knuckles with his thumb. “I wouldn’t bring you back here if I didn’t think it was a safe place to be.”
They packed like they were heading out for a picnic and an exorcism: thermos, torch, gloves, pry bar, tea towels, the diary slipped into Heather’s bag and wrapped in her scarf. Flynn clicked Byrdie’s carrier closed.
“She’s coming?” Heather asked.
“Och, no. The queen stays to reign,” he said, releasing Byrdie again. “Claire’ll throttle me if I turn your cat into a site cat. She can mind the cottage.”
Byrdie flicked her tail and threw herself onto the hearth rug as if to say she had always planned to.
The drive to Glenoran was all washed stone and winter grass, the sky a high pewter bowl.
Heather kept a palm over the diary in her lap as if something might reach through the glove box to take it.
Flynn hummed a tune under his breath, one she recognized from the inn—an old air with a lift to it. It steadied her.
The house looked as though it had spent the night remembering itself. The boards Flynn had nailed over the broken pane sat snug; the front step had shed last night’s gloss of rain for a dull, naked damp. Eleanor’s note sat under the latch in a little ziplock, held down by a stone:
— Popped by at first light. Quiet. Call if you need anythin’. Tea in the tin. — E.
“Saint Eleanor,” Heather murmured.
“Aye,” Flynn agreed. “Guardian angel with bleach and judgment.”
Inside, the light fell long and clean through the eastern windows. They kept their boots on and went straight to the kitchen.
The carved thistles looked almost coy in this light—petals, spines, the occasional entwined hearts that nestled so naturally into the pattern you might miss them even when you knew to look.
Heather ran her fingers over the one she’d found at dawn, the two small hearts braided into the bloom; a secret looped through a national emblem.
“Plural,” she murmured. “There might be more than one pair. Or… we need the right one.”
Flynn knelt and laid the pry bar on the flagstone, not to use, just to have.
He traced a seam with his fingertip where two stones kissed.
“These aren’t mortared as tight as the others.
” He looked up. “But if we start pryin’ and Henderson’s got some wee goblin watchin’ the lane, she’ll have our heads before we say boo. ”
Heather’s phone vibrated in her pocket: a single email chime that sounded indecently loud. She fished it out.
From: Dr. Flora Henderson
Subject: Checking in on Glenoran’s condition
Her throat clicked. She opened it.
Dear Ms. Campbell,