Page 182 of The Defiant Curse

Uh, that couldn’t be.

“WHY would he do that? She was his protection. She was his cover and Ciarán’s. That doesn’t make sense unless something happened to cause it. In my dream, she said not to trust the words. I don’t trust anything, as a normal practice without verifying it. Any cop will tell you that people lie.”

Finn agreed.

“Like rugs. All of the time.”

Elizabeth glanced over at him.

“So, she’s hot and heavy in the letters about her love, and then she changes her mind? Why? Was it a ploy? Was it a cover? Or did something happen? Because I vaguely remember someone saying, maybe Ian, that his letters were ambivalent toward her. Something about the letters isn’t sitting right with me. My brain is flagging it. What is it?”

Finn was staring at her, and as the two investigators in the room, they were sharing a moment.

“Wait. She’s right,” Finn finally admitted. “It didn’t occur to me before, but he was never all about her, but she did a one-eighty a couple of times. There had to be a reason he was willing to toss his protection away and go it alone. Gay was a dirty word back then for the church.”

Yes, yes, it was.

Elizabeth kept going.

“If she was his cover, even if she found out about him having a guy on the side, HE kicked her out. She didn’t want to leave because her man was all about dick. That doesn’t fit.”

Gabby considered it.

“But the letters from her were Ceit gushing over him at some point.”

Yeah, well, words weren’t always the truth.

She pointed out the facts.

“She told me not to trust the words. There’s got to be more that you don’t have, because there’s no way she didn’t know from the start that he was into the dudes—one specific one. A wife knows.”

Gabby shared.

“She was wary of his lover at one point. She didn’t want him in the castle. Maybe she found out then?”

Elizabeth didn’t think so.

“It still feels off to me.”

Ethan agreed.

“When I was in denial about my feelings about Gene, when he came back, she knew.”

“Of course, I did. How could I not? My radar was going off, and the letters are a little too much pretending that she wasn’t aware. That screams ploy. That screams…something. Maybe a threat like she’d reveal the truth?”

No one spoke.

Elizabeth continued.

“There has to be a reason he booted her if they were both mutually getting something out of it,” she said. “He’s getting an heir, a cover, and she’s out of daddy’s weird control?”

She had a point.

“Now, suddenly, he’s on a battlefield, getting laid with his man regardless, and he wants the woman who is holding up the charade to leave? That would risk Ciarán, and if he loved him as much as you all say, that’s not going to happen. I’d swallow a lot to protect my family.”

Ethan agreed.

Yes, yes, she would.