Page 180 of The Defiant Curse

He snorted.

She wasn’t wrong, but Gene was just about as competitive. It was a tie between them more times than not.

“Oh, I’ve lost many, many times against him. Trust me, I know. When you beat him, he’s hellbent on winning the next round. I’m afraid there will be a rousing game of Battleship with real guns with you two.”

Gabby was curious.

“You guys play Clue in your downtime after solving shit day in and day out?”

Ethan laughed.

“We used to. Gene is pretty much insufferable when he wins or loses. Plus, when we try to play a game, kids are all over us, and you kinda have to let them win.”

Elizabeth laughed.

The hell she did.

“Fuck them kids. You don’t have to let them win,” she joked. “Let them take my crown when they earn it. I’m not losing a game to a teenager. I’m especially not losing a game based on some ridiculous murder with a household item to one of my offspring. I have a reputation to uphold.”

Ethan roared in laughter.

“See? INSUFFERABLE. Spoken like Gene.”

Yes, yes, it was, but her daddy didn’t raise no game loser. That was for damn sure. He’d been the same way, kicking her ass in Candy Land as a child.

“Anyway,” Gabby said, amused by what Ethan had said. “What we know is that Duncan married her just to keep up an appearance that he wasn’t gay. His father, Adhamh Granndach ‘bought’ his son a stable boy as a teen, and that boy grew up to be Ciarán Begbie. They fell in love in their teens and had a love affair that lasted for YEARS.”

Ethan stirred his sauce.

“And then?” he asked, not familiar with any of this. He’d been so busy…

And now he regretted it.

This was one of their homes, and he should have had a vested interest in it. Plus, if it interested his wife, he should care about that too.

She loved solving things.

Gabby continued.

“He married Ceit. Only, she didn’t love him. She fought him tooth and nail, but her father, Oison, sold her off to him via dowry. She had no choice but to leave Ireland and come here. His father needed the money, and she was a girl.”

He didn’t like that.

He couldn’t imagine ‘selling’ off Charlie, or Willa. That horrified him to no end.

“How old was she?” he asked.

They all said it.

“Seventeen.”

Well, at least she wasn’t ten. Gross things happened back then. That was for damn sure. Charlie was a teen, and Dolly and Willa were children yet.

Gabby continued, sipping her wine.

“Duncan and Ciarán were away at war. She was pregnant, and at one point, she changed her tune regarding him. It was like the light switch went on. There are a barrage of letters between them, her saying she loved him, and him…not so much.”

Ethan was curious.