Page 1 of The Defiant Curse

Prologue

Scotland

Castle Ravensmire

That Morning

When they woke up that morning, everything was perfectly normal, and that was a good thing. As of late, things had quieted down significantly at the castle—as in the things that were going bump in the night, were no longer doing just that.

Doors weren’t slamming.

Spirits weren’t wailing.

Basically, the spooks weren’t spooking.

Oh, and both Michael and Graham were good with that, too. Never let it be said that they wanted the spirits to be running amok there.

Because they didn’t.

Luckily for them, the silence came the second they put Catherine’s child with her in the lake. By tossing the baby’s bones in and letting them sink to the bottom, the vengeful spirit calmed the hell down.

Thankfully, too.

Yeah, and for them, that was a damn good thing too.

Why?

Well, maybe because they were now newlyweds, and they were also preparing for the wedding that was happening in a few short weeks to be hosted at Ravensmire Castle.

It was going to be a big deal, too. The family would be heading there, and the most important guest would be the President of the United States.

When the media found out about that…

Oh, the castle would be in the spotlight.

For the two caretakers, now, there was too much shit to be done to leave anything to chance.

The last of the guest rooms had to be finished, the remaining castle renovations had to be done, and the last thing either man had time for was the onslaught of a haunting.

Ceit did NOT need to be Ceit-ing.

Duncan was NOT allowed to be Duncan-ing.

And the dead were not on the party’s guest list.

Only, as they would find out, everything was not as calm as one would hope. That morning, the phone would ring, and immediately, they would both know trouble was brewing.

And it was going to be BIG trouble.

Chaos was coming.

Oh, and to think that the morning started as it normally did for both Michael and Graham.

They’d made love, had coffee in bed, and then handled the menagerie of animals that were reliant on them for survival. As caretakers of the estate and keepers of the castle, they had a job to do.

Rain.

Snow.