Page 37 of The Valiant Knight (The Ravensmire Chronicles #2)

“I won’t be one of them. I don’t cheat, Gabriella. I promise.”

She looked up at him.

“If you do, you’ll destroy me.”

He held her.

There was no doubt her ex did that too. Well, he wasn’t her ex.

He was her present and future.

Tony reassured her.

“If he cheats, Elizabeth will send her goon squad to break his kneecaps.”

Finn stared at him.

“Her goon squad?”

They both laughed.

“Her Marines,” she said. “The big scary ones that keep her safe.”

Well, yeah.

She already threatened him with that, but that was neither here nor there.

“I won’t cheat.”

Somehow, she believed him.

“What is next?” Tony asked, getting into the whole journal thing. As a scientist, he was loving it, and he only hoped they solved this before they left.

He was dying to know what the hell went on here, and who the fourth person was in this love rectangle.

Pulling out another page, she read it for them.

And it wasn’t pretty for Ceit.

Not.

At.

All.

‘My Lord Ravensmire,

Word has come back, and the truth is now out. I have been given the news, and it is devastating. I’ll be birthing my child soon, and once I have, I have been told I am to leave Ravensmire.

Finally, I received word from you, and your steward. There are no words to describe how much your letter hurt me, and I will never forget the words in it.

So this is it.

I am to be thrown away, and even though I gave you a child, we are done.

Well, I curse you and your life.

I hope that you feel nothing but loneliness and pain as you age. I pray that when you walk these halls, you hear me weeping in agony over your choices.

I went to the local witch, and she cursed you for me. You shall know no peace, and you shall walk through the blood and bowels of the fallen until the day you die.

Your heart shall be fractured, and you will never have peace as blood haunts you. All of your heirs shall have that same curse until the end of time.

Never forget that this is your punishment for betrayal, and that I was the real lady of Ravensmire.

I was the queen here.

May your world crumble around you until this castle is nothing more than ruins, and with it go your story.

For you are a bastard, Duncan.

I curse you to never love again.

I curse you to never marry.

I curse you, and I shall forever haunt these halls.

So mote it be.

Ceit.’

Finn whistled.

So did Tony.

“Oh, well, there’s the witchcraft angle,” Tony said. “I told you. A scorned woman is a rough one. She didn’t hesitate to curse him. If he’s wandering around like they are, it sounds like everyone who was involved got cursed.”

Gabby laughed.

“The real victim in this is Elizabeth. She was given a haunted castle. It’s not bad enough she walks through blood all day, but now, she’s got a ghost war going on under her gifted roof. Those men are dead.”

Finn was amused.

Elizabeth seemed to be the type of person who said what she meant, and carried through with it too.

“We need to give them peace, and it’ll calm down. Graham said it wasn’t this bad before. They are likely stirred up from the construction.”

Oh, and one more thing.

“And that we moved Ceit. Graham said she had gone quiet. Well, she’s not now. I think we opened her grave, and we moved her into the storm. She was afraid of that spirit. She spooked out.”

Finn pointed out the obvious again.

“She didn’t seem afraid of Duncan,” he admitted.

No, she didn’t.

And as for Ciarán Begbie, she just didn’t want him around.

“If she wasn’t afraid of them, and just didn’t like Ciarán Begbie, who killed Ceit.”

Tony considered it.

“And would Duncan allow the mother of his children to be hurt? He and Ciarán were on a battlefield. Could they sneak away?”

That was a good question, and one they didn’t have answers to.

“We’ll have to figure that out,” Gabby admitted.

Then, she took out the final page.

“We’re coming to the end of our letters,” she admitted. “There have to be more here. They have to be somewhere. What if Duncan continued the journal? These pages were likely ripped out when the family split. I was thinking about Rebecca and her journal entry.”

They let her talk.

“What if the family was heading out of here, part of it, and they never expected to come back. So, the family destroyed the book, or planned on it? They scattered the pages to protect the family secret.”

Finn was curious.

“That Duncan was gay?”

She nodded.

“We know for a fact that he only had one child. Callum Granndach. His bloodline had to only come from his one and only child. Maybe the family didn’t want this part of the history revealed.”

That was a good point.

Yeah, but where?

Picking up the next one, she read it to them.

“This is the last letter we have from Ceit. Her death had to be shortly after this.”

‘My once dearest Duncan,

You have sent word that you are returning to YOUR home, Ravensmire. You have also asked that I take leave, so your new love can make this castle a home.

So I will leave, but not how you want.

Take care of our son, Callum, and one day, tell him how you were married to his mother, and laid with another. Tell him that you kicked me out of our home because of a friendship that went too far.

Had I left, I couldn’t provide the life that Callum deserved, so you shall have to do it. Bury me in the crypt because I deserve at least that. Find it in your cold, dead heart to fight your new love’s decision to place me as far from my home and son.

Until then, know that I curse your bloodline to always have to wade through the blood of the dead. To see them wherever you go in battle and life. Your house shall be cursed until the end of time. You killed me, Duncan. I just did the deed.

No longer yours in life or death,

Ceit.’

They both knew what that letter meant.

“So she did plan to kill herself?” Finn asked.

Tony got it.

“She couldn’t go home without shaming her father. She couldn’t tell him that she was divorcing Lord Granndach. The only way out, sadly, was this.”

Gabby thought about it.

“So someone beat her to it. Maybe she went up in the tower to do it, and someone took her life.”

Tony stood his ground.

“I’m telling you that she was definitely hit in the face, and then fell backward out the window.

Or was tossed. I stand by my assessment, and Christopher Leonard agrees.

I called him and showed him the scans. She was definitely killed, so maybe she planned it, and didn’t have time before someone helped her out. ”

This brought up an interesting question.

“So he’s on the battlefield, and someone came back and killed her?

” she asked. “We really need to definitively lock down that Ciarán Begbie was on the battlefield with him. For all we know, Duncan could have sent his lover there to handle it. Ceit believed that Ciarán was involved with her husband. Maybe he showed up and took care of it for the Lord—or because the Lord gave him bad news that he was going back to his wife to make up?”

Anything was possible. That was the pain of trying to solve a murder that was this long ago.

Gabby went to close the book. When she did, she saw a note from Ian, so she read it.

‘This was found in some rubble when the ceiling fell. We think it’s from Duncan’s lover. With it was some cologne and some heather.’

‘On The Battlefield

Somewhere In Scotland

Spring 1594

My knight,

I miss your body in my bed, and your arms around me. I can’t wait until we are together. I’m sorry that you’ll have to leave your wife, but my soul knows we are meant to be.

From the minute I saw you, I knew.

Our passion is endless.

When I see you across the room, my body reacts, and I can’t forget about our love making.

We’ll be together soon.

Until then, dream about me.

Forever yours,

Your Lover.’

Tony was curious.

“Okay, what if we’re wrong about the sex of Ciarán Begbie? We’re going to have to research that to make sure we’re not making hella assumptions.”

Gabby was aware.

Picking up his phone, Finn searched it. The whole thing didn’t take long.

When he found it, it cleared things up. He hated to disappoint them, but Duncan was definitely into men.

“It’s male, and Irish in origin. That’s not shocking since lots of Irish settlers came here in the sixteen hundreds. It means, and get this, ‘little dark one’ .”

She shook her head.

“I mean, if he killed her, that’s pretty dark. I just don’t know if I buy that he did. If you’re on a battlefield, fighting for your life, and your sole responsibility is to the Lord, do you leave him unprotected to sneak back here, days away? Look at the dates.”

Oh, that was a good point.

They didn’t match up, and they would have come back together.

“It sounds like they planned to return, and Duncan’s mind was made up. What if he didn’t know she was killed. It’s not like they had cellphones.”

That was very true.

And it left them in the same situation.

No.

One.

Knew.

“I wish Ceit could just tell us who killed her,” Tony said. “Would that be so difficult?”

The lights flickered.

They stared at each other.

When they went out, all they saw was the flickering of the fireplace.

“Uh, maybe I shouldn’t have gone there,” Tony said.

Gabby pointed.

“In the shadows,” she said.

Tony didn’t see anything, and neither did Finn. There was nothing in the shadows but…shadows.

Gabby took this chance.

“Did Ciarán Begbie kill you, Ceit? Was he Duncan’s lover, and did he end your life?”

Only, before she could nod, or move, the room went deathly chilly, and Ceit was rushed by another dark shadow.

That one both men saw.

“Oh, fuck,” Tony said, as Bark was up and losing his shit as he leapt off of his lap and lunged for the corner where the shadows had been.

“Did you guys see that shadow?” Tony asked. “Or am I losing it?”

Oh, no, they saw it.

Definitely.

When Bark stopped growling, she whistled, and he returned, jumping onto Tony’s lap again.

This place was hella scary.

That was for sure.

“What did you see, Gabs?” Finn asked. “You absolutely saw something.”

She had.