Chapter 12 #2
“Like actual royal queens?” Graham pondered and I just shrugged. I was tired from a long night of paging through boxes of books. “I keep hitting walls and I can’t quite make sense of it yet.”
Graham reached out and rubbed my shoulders, digging into my neck, and I almost purred at his touch. It took everything in my power not to dissolve into a puddle at his feet.
“Show me the walls.”
“What?” I could not think straight with his hands on my shoulders.
“As in show me the problems. The things that don’t connect. Maybe there’s a pattern that I can help find.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. I gathered the documents I’d flagged and spread them across the table.
“Okay. Here is a list of Order members from 1746, with one entry scratched out so hard the paper tore. Here is a bundle of correspondence that references earlier letters that aren’t in the collection, well, at least not that we’ve found yet.
And here”—I pulled over a family tree Graham had found earlier—“is a whole section cut out. See?”
Graham studied the documents, his brow furrowed. “Aye. It’s not been ripped, has it? So, this date ... 1748. And the scratched-out entry is from 1746. That’s the same decade.”
“The decade I keep finding nothing from, 1745 to 1755, is almost completely blank.” My senses were tingling, and I knew we were close. Something had happened then.
“So whatever happened, it happened then. And someone went through afterward and removed the evidence.”
“Or someone removed it to hide what happened.” I stared at the mutilated family tree. “What if the Wright family split apart in the 1740s? What if some of them left Loren Brae and the others stayed?”
“Why would they split?”
“I don’t know. But look.” I pointed at the fragmented family tree. “The branch that was cut out, it’s dated right around 1746. The same year as the scratched-out Order member. The same decade all the records disappear from.”
“Something happened in the 1740s that made the family scatter,” Graham said slowly. “And whoever stayed behind tried to erase the people who left.”
“Or tried to protect them by erasing their trail.” I was thinking out loud now, the pieces starting to form a shape. “If you wanted to hide where someone had gone, you’d remove any record of them or any connection that could be traced.”
“But why keep the references to those who fled at all? Why not erase everything?”
“Because the connection mattered. Whoever stayed—whoever this Keeper was—their job was to maintain contact with the ones who left. They couldn’t erase that completely without erasing their own purpose.”
Graham was quiet for a moment. “The Three Queens.”
“What?”
“The Three Queens united. What if that’s the three branches of the family? Would that make sense?”
I stared at the documents, my mind racing.
The Wrights had split in the 1740s—that much seemed clear.
Some had stayed with the Order, some had fled, and possibly a third group had gone somewhere else entirely.
And the person responsible for keeping them all connected had been called the Keeper of Records.
Or something like that. Maybe it was just how they referred to the person. Maybe it wasn’t even an actual title.
“Let’s dig more into the 1700s,” I said. “See if we can find what actually happened.”
“On it,” Graham said, striding to a shelf.
“The Three Queens,” I muttered to myself, trying to think back through what kind of significance that might have.
“Jackpot,” Graham said, pulling out a stack of leather-bound volumes. “1700 to 1750 or so.”
He carried them back to the table, and we dove in.
The earlier 1700s records were in fairly good condition. The ink was still dark and the paper remained intact. I found the Wright name almost immediately.
“Here. M. Wright, daughter of A. Wright, to be trained in the traditional arts as befitting her station.” I flipped to the next page. “M. Wright has shown great aptitude for the record keeping and oath designation.”
“So we’re looking for a bookkeeper,” Graham said, glancing up at me. “I mean, that tracks for your family, no?”
“Aye, I suppose it does.” I kept reading, my excitement building. “Graham, I think the Wrights had a specific role. Not just members of the Order, but specialists in something. Record-keeping, witnessing, some kind of—”
I stopped.
“Some kind of what?” Graham prompted.
But I couldn’t answer. Because I’d found it.
A formal list of Order members and their positions dated 1715. The names were arranged in neat columns, each with a title beside it.
Knight: Margaret MacAlpine
Healer: Fiona Grant
Bookkeeper: Màiri Wright
Bookkeeper.
The word seemed to pulse on the page.
“Agnes?” Graham’s voice came from somewhere far away. “You’ve gone pale. What is it?”
“I...” I couldn’t form sentences. My brain was too busy exploding.
Bookkeeper. The Wrights had been Bookkeepers. As in … an official position in the Order of Caledonia, with a title and everything.
Of course they had.
But I couldn’t tell Graham. Not yet.
I still needed to process what that meant for me, but I was too tired and too on edge to react to this news just yet.
“Just a reference I need to follow up on,” I managed. “Can you check if there are any more membership lists from this era?”
He gave me a long look—he knew I was holding something back—but he didn’t push. Just nodded and returned to the cabinet.
The moment his back was turned, I photographed the page and kept reading, my hands trembling.
More lists. More family. Bookkeeper: Ailsa Mells. Bookkeeper: Isobel Wright.
Isobel.
And she was the last.
From 1745 and on the Bookkeeper position was blank.
Just ... empty.
What had happened between 1742 and 1745?
“I found more lists,” Graham said, returning with another stack. “And some correspondence that mentions—Agnes, are you okay? You look a bit panicked.”
“I’m fine.” I closed the ledger, perhaps too quickly. “Just tired. It’s a lot of information to process.”
He set down the new documents and studied my face with an intensity that made me want to squirm. “You found something.”
“I found a lot of somethings. That’s the nature of research.”
“Don’t start with me, Agnes. It’s clearly something you don’t want to tell me.”
Damn him for knowing me so well.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” I said carefully. “It’s that I need to understand it first. There’s no point sharing half a puzzle.”
“Seems like half a puzzle is better than no puzzle.”
“That’s not how puzzles work.”
“Agnes.” He stepped closer, and suddenly the table between us felt like no barrier at all. “Are you worried that something your ancestor did was a bad thing? That I’ll judge you for it? How could I? It would have no bearing on who you are as a person.”
My throat tightened. “But it might.”
“And it might not.” He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. A warm tingle of electricity ran up my arm at his touch. “I’ve known you since we were kids. I know who you are. And whoever your ancestors were, whatever they did, that’s not you.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to lean into that certainty of his that always soothed me.
But he didn’t know. He didn’t know about Gran’s warning, and about why I’d really ended things. He didn’t know that loving me might kill him.
And now I was learning that my family hadn’t just been cursed. We’d held something important—been responsible for keeping the scattered Wright branches connected, it seemed—and somewhere along the line, that had been destroyed too.
“Graham,” I said, and my voice came out rough. “I need more time to sort through all this and to understand what it means.”
“All right, lass.” He squeezed my hand. “Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.”
I closed my eyes. He was just so sure of himself.
He didn’t know what he was promising.
I pulled my hand away and stood. “I should keep looking for more information.”
Graham nodded, but he didn’t move.
“You know,” he finally said, “for someone who values honesty as much as you do, you’re remarkably good at keeping secrets.”
His words hit me, making my gut churn. The shite part about it was that he wasn’t wrong.
“I know,” I said, swallowing past a lump in my throat. “I’m working on it.”
“Work faster.” But he smiled when he said it which took the sting out just a touch. “Come on. Let’s see what else these dusty old papers have to tell us.”
We returned to the research, but the air between us had shifted. It felt like, in some small way, we were a team and I realized just how much I craved that connection with him.
Every time his fingers brushed mine, my insides warmed.
He’d glance at me, every once in a while, with that considering look in his eye that made me want to blurt out everything and so he could shoulder this burden with me.
But I couldn’t.
I knew Graham.
He’d ignore the curse completely and not care that he was in danger, if it meant he got to be with me. And I loved him too much to put him in that position.
So here we were.
Shaking my head, I flipped a page. I found more references to the Bookkeeper role—fragments that described the witness to all covenants and the keeper of truths both written and sworn.
One document mentioned the Bookkeeper’s sacred duty to maintain the bridge between those who stayed and those who scattered.
Another referenced a family divided but bound.
But every promising lead dead-ended in nothing.
Frankly, as someone who valued organization and neat lists? It was freaking infuriating.
“It’s like trying to read a book with every other chapter ripped out,” I muttered in frustration.
“What time is it?” Graham asked, stretching in a way that made his jumper ride up and reveal a strip of stomach that made me swallow thickly.
I checked my phone. “Almost six. You should probably head to the pub soon.”
“Probably.” He didn’t move. “But I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
“I’ve been alone in archives before. It’s my natural habitat.”