Chapter Nineteen #2
“I can’t wait until he sees the goats. I’m going to bust his ass so hard, he’ll be cranky. I just can’t help myself.”
Oh, well, they were all pretty sure Ivan was going to return the favor since she played reindeer games again and slipped away.
Call it a hunch.
They had idle chitchat for a little while, keeping it non-personal because of a stranger in the room. When she finished her coffee, she glanced over.
“Okay, witchy-poo. Hit me with it. What’s going on?” she asked.
The woman laughed.
“You’re very likable, despite what people say about you, Mrs. Blackhawk.”
She shrugged.
“I like to push buttons, and I think you do, too, or you wouldn’t be here at this castle in the morning. Now, what does the woo-woo want? Because I have a busy day ahead of me.”
She didn’t, but that was neither here nor there.
Sarah went there.
“You’re on the right track, and I’m to answer any questions you have regarding the child’s real father.”
No one said a word.
Because if she wasn’t legit, she wouldn’t have pulled that from the air.
Elizabeth took another cup of coffee from Michael and sipped it.
“Okay, well, who’s the baby daddy? You tell me. After all, you didn’t show up here for coffee, right?”
She laughed.
“I actually don’t mind a good cup of coffee with a new friend,” she said, pointing at Gabby.
Yeah, well, Elizabeth was curious.
What she wanted was resolution.
As the lights flickered, Elizabeth pointed up.
“You’re annoying the dead. Just say what you need to say, so we can move on.”
“You need to take a trip to Ireland. You need to go back to where it all began.”
Gabby was saying nothing.
Why?
Because she’d been researching the name ‘Cathal Connaught’, and she knew where he was buried. She knew where it all began, just like Sarah stated. They just didn’t know if he was Callum’s biological father.
“So, Ireland. Cool. Why?” she asked, knowing, but she wasn’t letting on that she did.
Sarah was to the point.
“As I was scrying last night, I saw the green landscape and a small cemetery. There was a wrought-iron gate and a headstone. The name on it was Cathal Connaught.”
Elizabeth glanced over at Finn, and he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“I’ll call her.”
Oh, and by her, he meant his sister. There were only so many people who knew the name on the back of that necklace, and he needed to find out if his sister had said anything to anyone.
If she did, he was going to kick her ass.
That would be why he didn’t tell anyone shit when it came to Elizabeth Blackhawk or this castle.
Unfortunately for him, Sarah was one of Maisie’s friends. She went to her all of the time for a card reading.
When he slipped away, Sarah sighed.
“No one told me the name,” she stated. “I can see it as clear as day on the tombstone. He died in the sixteen hundreds.”
Elizabeth wasn’t arguing.
She was verifying.
“Of what?”
Sarah was listening to the spirits, and all around them, the lights flickered, and they heard it.
Crying.
“Oh, she’s upset,” Sarah said. “She lost her love to war. He died fighting for Ireland against the crown. The ground is bloody from battle.”
Elizabeth was taking it in.
“What else?”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and steadied herself. All around her, there were voices, and she was looking for one particular one.
“She wanted to be with Cathal. He was her true love, but his father wouldn’t let him marry her. Oison’s lordship was below their family standards. As a Connaught, he needed to marry at his status. They were rich. The Darraghs were not.”
Everyone listened.
“But they laid together and made a life. Before she could tell him, she was dragged to Scotland to be a wife. She came here pregnant, and afraid for Cathal’s life.”
Well, she’d pretty much nailed that. Elizabeth had assumed as much. There was no way Duncan laid with a woman, so to speak. He was all about his man-at-arms.
When Finn came back into the room, he shook his head.
“I just spoke to Catherine. She hasn’t told anyone about the necklace.”
Sarah laughed.
Honestly, she wasn’t shocked the woman was verifying. The spirits told her all about this woman and how she was important.
And dangerous.
All around her, she felt death, like she wore it like a cloak. It clung to her, and not only because she fought it.
She reaped it.
“Ceit’s heart, the necklace, never belonged to Duncan or her father. It was a family heirloom for the Connaught. As a promise that he’d find her and marry her when he got back from battle. That’s why he gave it to her. Ceit was seventeen, and he was twenty-seven.”
Well, that wasn’t something anyone should be proud of, but back then, things were different.
Clearly.
“So, the child was Cathal’s?”
She nodded.
“Ceit is saying there is proof.”
Oh, well, Elizabeth was hell on proof. That made her world go around. Granted, this woman was damn accurate.
And scary.
“Where is it?”
Before she could say a word, they heard a horrible crash. Everyone jumped and looked around to see what it was. It sounded like it was right next to them.
“Oh, Jesus,” Graham stated. “Why did that sound like something just fell?”
Because it likely had.
Getting up, they headed down the hall, and toward where the dust was flowing out into the hall.
The ballroom.
“Oh, boy,” Michael said, waving the dust away.
When they went in, there was a mess.
The whole facade of the fireplace had fallen off and was lying across the floor in a pile of destroyed stone.
“Well, shit. That had just been inspected and found to be fine,” Graham admitted.
Clearly, whoever passed it hadn’t seen this coming.
The two gargoyles that had been on the fireplace had fallen off, taking all the stone with them.
The floor was toasted, and the stone…yeah, that was going to have to be repaired.
AGAIN.
Moving forward, Sarah pointed.
“In the one statuette,” she said. “Look inside. Ceit hid it there.”
Elizabeth lifted a brow.
“They’re solid stone,” she said, picking one up, to see that it was NOT solid stone. Instead, there was a little burlap sack. Sticking her fingers in it, they heard more crying all around them.
Oh, boy.
“It’s the proof you need.”
That was all Sarah said.
As Elizabeth gingerly pulled the paper out, she opened it, and the whole time, it was disintegrating in her hands.
If they were lucky, they’d get one shot at this.
“Gabs, I need you to take a picture when I open it. We’ll have to use tech to see what it says. This paper is so brittle. I want to preserve what it says.”
She grabbed her phone from her back pocket, and when Elizabeth opened the paper, she snapped a picture of it. As soon as she did, it began chipping apart and falling through her fingers like little fragments of paper snow.
“I hope you got that,” Elizabeth said.
Yeah, her too.
Pulling up the picture, she saw the words, and they were semi-legible.
But not in English.
Gabby knew what she needed to do. She had software on her phone that the FBI used, and she’d access that.
“Give me a second, and I’ll get a translation and re-pixelation of the photo.”
That worked for her.
As they did, the men began cleaning up the fireplace facade, sweeping up the debris.
They had it in neat piles.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Graham stated. “I’m going to have to get Callen to authorize repairs again. This facade was marble. It was expensive.”
Ethan stopped him.
“Just do it. I own a portion of the castle, too, and I’m telling you to put it back the way it was. Get the gargoyles repaired. Put them back like Callen wanted. He won’t care about the money, and neither will Chris. No one got hurt. That was the bottom line. Oh, and get it done by the wedding.”
Yeah, that was paramount.
The party was going to be in here.
“I have something,” Gabby said, as the software produced a translation of the letter before it was destroyed.
Handing her phone to Elizabeth, she read it.
‘My sister,
He has been brought home from war. Cathal did not make it.
I’m sorry to be sending you this. Maybe it was meant to be.
You can now live your life there and pass the baby off as Duncan’s.
I will visit his grave and put flowers on it for you.
Plant that field of heather in his memory.
You need to get rid of his lover for your own good.
I’m sorry.
Catherine.’
And there it was.
“We were right. Duncan wasn’t the father.
He wasn’t the one who got Ceit pregnant.
She came here with a child, and Duncan had to have known.
It also explains why she wrote in the journal that she wanted his lover removed from the castle.
That’s likely what was the last straw for Duncan.
If she said that to him, it would have pushed him to make her leave. ”
Yeah, that absolutely would do it. He’d been giving her a safe place, and she was turning against that safety. Everyone there would have told her to leave.
Ethan considered it.
“That would likely be why Duncan sent her home. Too many people knew at that point from her running her mouth. Catherine knew, and you mentioned that she likely pointed Oison at his daughter. Plus, add to that, Duncan’s lover was OFF limits. That was his soulmate.”
She nodded.
“That’s sad. All of their lives were tied together, but none of them were connected.”
There were sobs all around them.
Sarah was to the point.
“You need to bring her home. She needs to be where he is. She’s saying Duncan is with his true love, and she won’t rest until she is.”
Well, that is doable.
“Gabby, get me the location of the cemetery.”
The woman nodded, but Elizabeth didn’t miss that she looked sad.
“I know you’re disappointed,” Elizabeth stated. “Not all stories have a happy ending, Gabs. Putting her back with the love of her life is just going to have to do it. We can’t go back in time and change things. Back then, life wasn’t as cut and dry.”
She was aware.