Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GRAHAM
Icouldn’t decide between sweet or savory, so I brought both. Cranberry orange or cheese scallion, both were solid scone choices, in my humble opinion, and I was certain she’d be pleased with either.
Not pleased with me showing up when she’d told me not to come today. Och, no, I was well aware she’d be fussing at me for doing so. But I hoped the scones would soften the fact that I was blatantly ignoring her text telling me not to stop by.
Annoying Agnes was practically my favorite pastime by now, after all. If it meant I got to spend more time with her, watching her being flushed and flustered every time I leaned too close, then by all means, I would continue my pursuit.
Standing outside Bonnie Books for the second day in a row, I peered through the window and warning bells immediately sounded. Agnes wasn’t behind the counter today. The shop seemed to be empty, the lights dim, and the closed sign was still hanging in the window even though it was well past noon.
That was unusual.
Agnes never kept the shop closed during business hours. Even when she’d come down with the flu a few years back, she’d had a local girl pop in and run things for a few days for her.
I tried the door and was surprised to find it locked.
Was this because of me? Was she literally locking me out?
Worry niggled in my stomach. Was I pushing her too hard?
Stepping over her boundaries? I didn’t want to make her feel unsafe or upset with me, but this went well past just some lovesick man mooning after a woman.
I was her friend first, and I knew that something was wrong that she wasn’t telling me.
Frowning, I walked to the entrance that led to her flat. The door was unlocked—which was also unlike her—and I climbed the narrow stairs with a growing sense of unease.
“Agnes?” I called out, knocking on her door. “It’s Graham. I brought scones.”
No answer.
“Agnes, if you don’t open this door in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to assume you’ve been murdered and break it down.”
A long pause. And then I sighed in relief when I heard movement in the flat, and then the door swung open. My eyebrows hit my hairline.
As much as I hated to say it, she looked terrible.
Her hair was piled in a short messy tail sticking out at an odd angle from her head, with curls falling down every which way. She was buried in an ancient hoodie, and dark circles smudged her beautiful eyes.
“Och, Agnes. Are you unwell then? Do you need me to run to the pharmacy for you?” I asked, convinced she must have taken ill.
“No, I’m just …” Agnes shook her head and glanced behind her. I looked over her head to see absolute carnage behind her.
The kitchen table was buried. Papers covered every inch of the surface—old letters, photographs, books, and pages of Agnes’s own handwriting covered in notes and questions and connecting arrows.
More papers were spread across the counter, the chairs, even parts of the floor.
It looked like a research project had exploded.
I instantly thought of the meme of the lad from the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia standing by a white board with little red lines connecting evidence and a crazed look on his face.
“What the hell is all this?” I pushed past Agnes, ignoring her mewl of distress. “Are you planning a war, Agnes?”
Agnes closed the door behind me, her expression shifting from exhausted to wary. “Nothing. Just some family history I’ve been looking into.”
“This isn’t nothing.” I set the scones on the one clear corner of the counter and picked up one of the notebooks. It was Agnes’s handwriting and a neat list of questions. Who was she? What did she do? Castle records? Check archives.
“Graham, give that to me.” Agnes marched over and snatched the notebook out of my hand. I crossed my arms over my chest, giving Agnes a long look.
“What’s this about then?”
“Just … something with an ancestor. It’s not important.”
“Look at this mess.” I swept out my hand. “And you didn’t even open the shop today. You say it’s not important?”
Agnes tugged on her left earlobe, and I narrowed in on it.
“See? You’re lying.”
“Damn it, Graham. Why must you be so pushy?” Agnes glowered at me, looking like an enraged sprite, her brow furrowing.
I wanted to scoop her up and carry her to bed and kiss her until all the wires in that magnificent brain of hers crossed and she became so flustered that the only thing left she could tell me was the truth.
“It’s family stuff. It would bore you to tears, I’m sure of it.”
“You’ve been up all night researching boring old history?”
“I got curious about something my grandmother mentioned, and I went down a rabbit hole.” She gathered more papers, stacking them haphazardly. “You know how I get.”
I did know. Agnes could lose entire weekends to research if something caught her interest. I’d once watched her spend six hours tracking down the origin of a book because she needed to know if it had really belonged to a minor Scottish poet.
But this felt different. It wasn’t hyper fixation borne out of curiosity or something fun.
Her shoulders were stiff, and her expression guarded.
The fact that she’d closed the shop—her shop, her baby, her pride and joy—to sit in her flat surrounded by papers like some kind of beautiful, sleep-deprived conspiracy theorist meant this was serious.
“Agnes.”
“What?”
“Look at me.”
She didn’t.
“Agnes.”
Finally, reluctantly, she lifted her gaze.
“It’s me, Agnes. Bloody hell, woman. Just tell me what’s really going on?”
“I did tell you. It’s a family history project. Nothing more.” Her gaze darted away from mine, and I took a deep breath, ignoring the need to throttle this stubborn woman that I loved more than life itself.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.” She turned away, busying herself with straightening the papers into neater piles. “I appreciate the scones, Graham. Really. But I’ve got a lot of work to do, and I need to—”
“Need to what? Close your shop and barricade yourself in your flat until you find whatever it is you’re looking for?”
“I’m not barricading.”
“True enough as you forgot to lock your door downstairs.”
“Did I?” Agnes glanced to the door in surprise and then shrugged. “That’s not wholly uncommon. You know how small towns are.”
I took a breath, forcing myself to stay calm. Pushing Agnes only made her dig in deeper. I knew that. I’d learned it the hard way over years of watching her retreat every time I got too close.
“Right,” I said, gentling my voice. “You don’t want to tell me what this is about. Fine. I can’t make you. But at least let me help.”
“You can’t help with this.” Agnes’s tone put me off. I tilted my head at her in question.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s ...” She pressed her lips together, frustration flickering across her face. “It’s complicated. It’s family stuff, and there might be Order stuff tangled up in it, and I need to figure it out on my own.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“And you’re always right about everything, are you?”
“Aye, about this, I am.”
Bloody hell, but she was infuriating. I pinched my nose and took a deep breath, considering my options. It seemed I needed to continue to be patient with her.
Turning, I picked up the kettle and filled it with water at the sink, while Agnes made another sound of distress behind me.
“What are you doing?” Agnes asked in the same tone as if I’d just offered a baby cocaine.
“Making tea. I hear it pairs well with scones.”
“Graham—”
“And then you’re going to eat one of those scones, and drink a cup of tea, and we’re going to get this sorted.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask if you were hungry. I said you’re going to eat.”
Agnes glared at me. I smiled pleasantly back.
“You’re infuriating,” she said.
“So I’ve been told. Sit down.”
For a moment, I thought she might actually throw me out. She had that look—the stubborn set of her jaw, the spark of defiance in her eyes. Agnes Wright didn’t like being told what to do. It was one of the things I loved about her, even when it drove me absolutely mad.
But then something shifted.
“Fine,” she muttered, sinking into a chair not covered with papers. “But only because I’m too tired to argue.”
“I’ll take it.”
I made the tea in silence, offering her a moment to collect herself. Found mugs and milk and sugar, laid out the scones on a plate, brought everything over to a tiny clear space on the corner of the table.
“Eat,” I said, pointing at the plate of scones. Leaning over, I cleared the chair next to her and sat, wanting to ask a thousand questions, but deciding silence was the better tool in this situation.
She took a bite. Then another. Some of the tension seemed to ease from her face as she looked down at the scone in her hand.
“Why are these so damn good?”
“Probably because you forgot to eat,” I said, reaching over and breaking a bit off one. “But also, because the bakery makes killer scones.”
“Aye, they do at that.” Agnes busied herself with mixing milk into her tea, and I sat and waited, knowing she’d come around eventually. She might be the rock, but I was the stream running around her, time and patience smoothing her edges.
“I found something,” she finally said, quietly, not looking at me. “In my grandmother’s things. An old diary.”
“Okay.”
“It mentioned records at the castle. And, I guess, some things about my family that I don’t know.” She was picking at the scone now, crumbling pieces onto the plate. “I need to look through the archives to see if there’s anything that can help me understand.”
“Understand what?”
A long pause. I could see her weighing how much to tell me, deciding what to share and what to keep hidden. A car door slammed outside, and another, and voices carried up from the street.
“It seems my family might have a … complicated … history with Loren Brae,” she said finally. “There are things my family never explained. Things I’m only now realizing I should have asked about years ago.”