Page 183 of The Defiant Curse

“Something definitely went sideways for him to risk that safety net,” Ethan stated. “She had to do something or say something. Maybe there was an incident.”

Gabby didn’t know the answer to that.

None of them did.

Elizabeth was curious.

“Also, does no one see how weird it is for all of those letters that she wrote him to be back here? He was off in war, and he carried them back when he was in love with a man?”

Gabby gasped.

Oh, and Elizabeth wasn’t done.

“Did it occur to anyone that the letters were written to stay here, in case the church came in? What if she didn’t send them to him?”

Finn stared at her.

That’s when he got what she was saying.

“LASS! They were in a journal and ripped out!” he said, seeing what she said. “A JOURNAL!”

Elizabeth went there.

“Then how did a letter she sent via however it supposedly got to Duncan on the field of battle get there if it was in a journal and ripped out later? When I write a letter, it’s on a piece of paper free from anything—not in a book. A diary is a book. A letter is a letter. What if they were ripped out at one point, not to destroy the journal, and hide the truth, but to make it more believable that those letters had been sent?”

That hung there.

Well, damn.

Gabby saw what she was saying.

“And with what she told you…‘don’t trust the words’. We all just assumed that he wanted the nest tit-free,” she stated. “None of us realized the part about the letters being written IN a book. They were never sent to him.”

Elizabeth glanced over at Finn.

“Inspector, what’s the first rule of Investigation Club?” she asked.

He laughed.

“After not talking about Investigation Club? Don’t assume. Get facts to back you up. Oh, and if it looks off and smells off, it’s off.”

That.

It.

Was.

She put her fork down that she was flipping the chicken cutlets with.

“I’m willing to bet without seeing any of the letters, that anything she ‘sent’ was her way of staging that cover. Did he send letters back?”

Gabby considered it.

“Not to her. We saw letters from Duncan to Ciarán and from him to Duncan. They weren’t torn from the book.”

Elizabeth pointed.

“So, his letters…did he talk about his love for Ceit?” she asked, backtracking.