Elizabeth said nothing.
“Only, she fell backward landing on her back. Her face was smashed in.”
She lifted a brow.
“Uh, you can’t land on your back and smash your face in at the same time. That’s not a swan dive or how it works. Damage is to the side that ends downward. That’s basic forensics.”
They were aware.
That’s when Elizabeth got it.
“Oh, boy. Someone killed her.”
They both nodded.
“Yeah, and then, to make it worse, she was buriedOUTSIDEof the castle in the trees like garbage. She was shoved out of her home.”
Oh, that would make a lady angry, and Elizabeth knew it.
“So, she died, and Duncan comes back. He’s then forced to take Oison’s next daughter as his‘faux’wife to keep his lover safe. He never planned on doing that, since he’d just managed to escape a shrewish wife,” Ian said. “Only, he has no choice.”
She stopped him.
“Uh, was a dowry passed to Oison? Because that would make him a two-time winner in the get-money lotto. In my world, that’s motive.”
He laughed.
“Yeah, he was, and we thought that. He knew about Duncan no longer wanting Ceit, and he couldn’t risk being embarrassed. So him coming here and ending his daughter’s life isn’t that surprising.”
She waited.
“Continue. I’m intrigued. I love a mystery.”
He was aware, and that was why this was ironic, because she was the perfect person to be working this—if it wouldn’t freak her out.
All that woo-woo might break her.
“They live in peace, but then, Catherine, the second wife and younger sister to Ceit, is tired of playing fake wife. She falls in love with a farmer and gets the wedding annulled.”
“Oof.”
Yeah, she could say that.
“So Duncan and Ciarán are now no longer protected, so he’s laying low with his sexy bedmate. He’s raising his kid, and trying to just live his life.”
As someone whose life wasALWAYSscrutinized, she got that.
“One night, someone sneaks in through a passageway thatONLYthe loyal servants knew about—well, him and the people in the castle—and they try to kill him.”
She was invested.
“Try? So he lived?”
He nodded.
“Only, Ciarán woke when he heard the attack, and he was in bed with Duncan, since they were a couple. He put his body over Duncan’s protecting his lord and lover. He was killed.”
She gasped.
