Page 129 of The Defiant Curse

Not a sinking boat in the abyss.

So, she told them exactly what she’d said earlier.

“She wanted me to find her heart. We talked about why I was here, and we both were looking for ourselves. She told me she lost her love, and she told me Duncan never loved her.”

Gabby ate her breakfast as she listened, and as she did, she peppered the conversation with information to get Elizabeth caught up. She was the newbie on this one, for a change.

“Well, that was true. He didn’t. He was all about his man,” she said. “In not one letter from him did we see that he was madly in love with her, or if he cared about her at all. What else?”

That’s what she thought.

Now, Elizabeth was thinking about what Ceit had said, and she told her not to trust the words.

Were the words the letters? Were they fabricated to offer some protection for the two gay men?

It was at the back of her mind for now.

At her urging, Elizabeth continued.

“We discussed the curse a little, and how she’s the only one who can break it. Trust and believe I asked how to end it so we can all have peace, and she said the only way for me to break it was to find her heart.”

Because she could, Gabby fed her husband some of her breakfast to share, and they all considered what the first step would be to do that.

No one needed a haunted castle for the holidays.

No.

One.

“Did we miss something in her grave?” Finn asked. “Because I can’t believe we didn’t solve this already. We thought we put it to bed.”

Yeah, they did, but clearly, Elizabeth showing up there set it all off again, and that was no one’s fault.

Graham was honest.

“You were there. Did you see anything?” he asked.

He shook his head.

“I think I’d notice a heart lying around. Not that it would look like that. It had been worm food a long time ago.”

Elizabeth sat back, and she was so full, she was going to explode, but everything had been delicious.

She needed that meal.

Desperately.

“I mean, maybe she meant something else. You said you guys found things in the renovation.”

They considered it.

“The only thing we found were her letters to Duncan, saying she was wrong not to love him, and she was sorry. We don’t know why she changed her mind. Duncan’s letters basically called her a shrew.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“The poor woman is married off as a teenager, her husband goes off to war, and she’s forced to have a baby in the sixteen hundreds. People died from childbirth. She had every right to be a shrew. How much more should she carry?” she asked.

At her tone, they all glanced over.