Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
AGNES
The castle archives had that faint musty smell of a room well sealed, and it always soothed me the moment I stepped inside.
I’d spent countless hours in this room over the years, helping Hilda catalog documents, losing myself in Loren Brae’s history.
The archives felt like a portal to another time, and if I didn’t have an actual job, I could lose myself for days at a time among the books and papers found here.
The space was exactly what it needed to be …
filled with a long wooden table, towering shelves, and narrow windows that let in just enough light.
It almost felt like a secret part of the castle, sequestered in a room at the base of a tower, and I sighed with relief when I flicked on a lamp and warm light pooled across the empty table.
“You’re certain you don’t need anything?” Hilda hovered at the door, Sir Buster vibrating in her arms, letting out little huffs of displeasure at us for interrupting his afternoon nap.
“I just shoved some scones down Agnes’s throat. We’re good for now,” Graham promised and hearing that we’d been fed, Hilda gave a brisk nod before shutting the door.
Leaving us together. Alone. In the archives.
The room felt different with Graham here.
He took up space in a way that I couldn’t quite explain.
Not just physically, though there was that too with his broad shoulders and long legs sprawled out as he settled into a chair like he planned to stay a while.
It was more than that. It was the way he filled the room with his presence, his warmth, his relentless Graham-ness.
His very nearness seemed to prickle against my skin and heat flashed through my body.
Right. I needed to focus. Clearing my throat, I marched over to where he’d dropped the boxes we’d brought with us.
“So, there’s a system,” I said, pulling out the first box of Gran’s papers. “As every good archive should have. The older documents are in the back. Anything before 1700 is in the glass cabinets. You’ll want to use gloves with any old documents.”
“Mmm, gloves.” Graham nodded and I glanced sharply up to find him smiling at me.
“What’s so funny?”
“Not funny. It’s just … you’re in your element. I never see you get so excited as you do when you’re explaining a good system.”
“An organized stack of books is the way to my heart,” I agreed.
“Is it then?” Graham very slowly pulled The Count of Monte Cristo out of his coat pocket and neatly arranged it in front of him. He fluttered his eyelashes over the top of it and despite myself, I giggled.
“You’re impossible.”
“I prefer intoxicating. Incendiary?” Graham asked and I rolled my eyes.
“Irritating also works.”
“I’ll take it.” Graham laughed. “Tell me what I’m looking for.”
I paused. I hadn’t wanted him to get involved, but now that he was here, it just made sense to have him look too. It was highly unlikely he’d stumble on something that would give away too much information, so really there was no reason not to let him join in.
“I guess just anything that mentions Wrights. If you can make a pile, I’ll go through it more deeply.”
“And this will hopefully be the answer to why you looked like death and closed your shop today?”
“Um, you’re being quite rude. I’ll have you know that it’s not my job to adhere to societal expectations of what is considered appealing to the male gaze. Particularly when I am in my own home.” I glared at him.
“Och, I’d be delighted to tell you, hell, even better, show you, just how appealing I find you, Agnes Wright, in any manner and in any place.” Graham’s eyes heated and my mouth went dry. Damn it. Why did I keep baiting him? Hadn’t he made his intentions clear?
“Typical man. Already off task,” I shot back. I desperately needed to change the subject before I let my thoughts take me down an entirely different track.
“Aye, aye, captain. Where do we start?” Where do we start?
He could be doing anything else, yet he was here. With me.
Goddess, he was distracting. He’d taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, and I couldn’t help but look at his muscular forearms and the tattoos that snaked up his arm. Etc.
Particularly that tattoo. The anemone floral book design he’d very deliberately had tattooed on the inside of his forearm, so I saw it every time he poured me a glass of wine at the pub.
Focus, Agnes.
“The Order keeps records of families connected to Loren Brae going back centuries,” I said. “If my ancestor did something significant, there should be documentation.”
“And you think she did something bad.”
“The diary suggested a betrayal. I want to know what actually happened.”
“Okay. Wright. Anything with that name, we pull?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Simple enough.” He stood and headed toward the back shelves. “I’ll start back here and we’ll meet in the middle.”
I watched him go—that easy confidence, those broad shoulders disappearing between the stacks—and tried to ignore the flutter in my heart.
This was a mistake.
But it was also the least alone I’d felt in years.
I didn’t think I’d realized, until I started to dig deeper into this curse, how let down I’d felt by my mum completely refusing to discuss my father, or later, the promise that had forced me to pull back from Graham.
How could she bury her head in the proverbial sand as if my happiness didn’t matter?
I’d gotten used to navigating my complicated emotions alone, but this?
Having help on something that mattered so deeply to me? This was nice.
And he still didn’t press me for details.
We worked in silence for a while, the only sounds the rustle of paper and the occasional murmur of one of us muttering under our breath.
I’d forgotten how comfortable Graham could be as a companion.
He didn’t fill every silence with chatter, didn’t need constant entertainment.
He just ... existed. It was incredibly soothing to be around him.
Maybe because he was surrounded by people and chatter all day long at the pub, but when we were alone, he managed to just … be.
It was maddening how attractive I found that.
“What’s a dispensation?” he called from somewhere deep in the stacks.
“A formal exemption from a rule or obligation. Usually granted by someone in authority.” I leaned back to look at him.
“And why would someone need a dispensation for”—he squinted at the page—“the keeping of an oath beyond the boundaries of the traditional territories?”
I sat up straighter. “What document is that?”
Graham emerged from the shelves holding a crumbling bundle of papers. “No idea. It’s quite faded.”
He carefully laid the document in front of me, and I leaned over.
The handwriting was faded, much too difficult to read, but some lines came through.
Dispensation granted for M. Wright so the connection might be maintained despite the scattering.
Those who fled.
The scattering.
“What does that mean?” Graham asked, reading over my shoulder. He was close enough that I could feel the heat of him, smell that cedar-and-whisky scent that always made my brain go slightly fuzzy. “What scattering?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But look, it mentions a Wright. And connection. Someone was responsible for maintaining contact with people who had left.”
“Left where? Loren Brae?”
“I have no idea.” I set the document aside to keep it outside the stack. “But we’ll keep it out for now.”
“Here’s another one.” Graham had wandered back to the shelves and returned with a leather-bound ledger. “Membership records, I think. From the 1600s.”
He set it on the table, and we bent over it together, our heads almost touching, and it once again surprised me how his nearness calmed me as much as it excited me. Forcing myself to keep my thoughts on what we were doing, I scanned the ledger.
“There.” I pointed at an entry. “Wright, M. Listed under ... I can’t read this heading. The ink’s too faded.”
“Something with book, I think.”
“Maybe.” I photographed the page with my phone, hoping better light might reveal more. “Let’s keep looking.”
We fell into a rhythm after that. Graham would pull documents from the shelves, scan them for the Wright name, and bring anything promising to the table.
I’d examine them more closely, making notes, photographing pages, trying to build a history through the fragments we found.
I made a list in my notebook, and then another list alongside it, drawing lines between what I hoped was a pattern that was emerging.
The Wright name appeared again and again. It was always connected to the Order and always seemed to carry a sense of importance about it. But the details were maddeningly vague.
“I keep finding references to Na Trì Banrigh.”
I looked up at Graham’s sound of confusion.
“The Three Queens.” I translated the Gaelic, frowning at a particularly damaged letter. “But so far there’s no explanation of what that means.”
“The Three Queens?”
“Listen to this.” I read aloud from the fragment. “‘The Keeper of Records shall serve as witness to the Clach na Fìrinn, maintaining the first light, and preserve connection with her sisters that the sacred trust might endure.’”
“Sisters?” Graham leaned over my shoulder again, and I absolutely did not notice how his chest nearly brushed my back. Okay, maybe I did. Slightly. I always just felt so small and protected when he leaned over me. “Like, actual sisters? Family?”
“Maybe? Hard to say. Look at this bit.” I pointed to the letter. “It talks about The Three Queens united and a family divided but not broken.” I shook my head. “It sounds like the Wright family split at some point. And someone—this Keeper of Records—was responsible for keeping them connected.”
“Connected to what?”
“To each other, maybe? To whatever they’d been protecting together?” I set down the letter and rubbed my eyes. “Maybe it’s these Three Queens?”