Free The Shadow and the Night: Glenncailty Castle, Book 3 by Lila Dubois Page A

that was just rude.
    “Is everyone able to see?” Melissa turned on the projector and an image of the ransacked nursery flashed up onto one of the most shadowed of the bare white walls.
    “It’s fine, thank you,” Seamus said.
    “Here you are.” She passed around packets of papers. Tristan put his down on the empty chair beside him. Elizabeth didn’t take one.
    “First of all, I’d like to thank Mr. O’Muircheartaigh for inviting me to do the examination. It was an interesting mix of anthropology and archaeology, which I don’t often get to work with anymore. Secondly, I’d like to thank Séan and Sorcha for passing on the documents and information they found. I included copies of the relevant pages in your packets.”
    Melissa picked up a pair of glasses from the table and slipped them on. Tristan sucked in a breath. Desire flooded him, so acute that he had to cross his legs to keep his cock under control. She was adorable and seriously fuckable with her glasses on. Apparently he had a fetish for women in glasses—or at least this woman in glasses.  
    “What I’d like to do is take you through the reconstructed timeline, then address the remains that I examined. Mr. O’Muircheartaigh, since we weren’t able to meet before this, I wasn’t able to add any family history elements as they relate to you in particular.”
    “That’s not what I’m concerned about.”
    Melissa’s eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her glasses. “Perhaps after this I could do a model of your face to check for skull point similarities.”
    “Perhaps not, but thank you.” There was a hint of amusement in Seamus’ voice.
    “Very well.” Melissa tapped the computer and the image of a yellowed book, open to show faded text, appeared.
    “The most easily identified remains are the children. Traditionally, this is not the case, but Sorcha and Séan’s discovery of these parish and school records allow us to make an educated guess as to their identity and from there extrapolate something about who the adult female’s remains were.
    “I did some additional research, and in 1850 Lord Richard was Viscount Dover. His younger son John held the title of the Lord of Glenncailty. In 1865, both the Viscount and his heir die and John, who seems to have been spending most of his time in Ireland, inherits.”
    Another click and another slide—this one a list of names.
    “In 1866, it appears that some portion of Glenncailty’s residents rose up against their English landlord. Though this area of the country was not in the center of the Fenian rising, this small-scale revolt was probably spurred by that. The result is listed here—these are the names of those who were killed during the uprising.
    “One family in particular seems to have been the focus of the violence—the Mac Gearailts. There were three brothers: Thomas, who was 18; Ronan, who was 20; and Carrig, who was 24 at the time of his death. Carrig was married and had children—his wife, Carroll, and two male juveniles named Ruari and Orin, who were six and four, are also listed among the deceased. Now what’s interesting is, if you look at the list, there’s a third boy—age eleven years—under Carroll’s name, but unlike the others, there’s no last name, and, more tellingly, his first name is Charles.”
    Tristan sat forward, caught up in the mystery she was slowly unraveling. Melissa was a gifted storyteller, her voice reflecting her puzzlement, interest and sadness.
    “We can also find Charles-with-no-last-name in the school records. In those same records there are two other boys with no last names. Henry, who was last listed as nine years old, and George, who was five.
    “Once again, with thanks to Sorcha and Séan for putting the idea forward, we can see this in one of two ways. The first, and most likely, is that these boy’s surnames were deliberately left off because they were the illegitimate offspring of the Lord of Glenncailty. Before John inherited, it