Heartwishes Read Free

beautiful child. Last week I wrote the story and put it where it will be safe. I hope that all the Fraziers read it and find out what their relative by marriage did to the Aldredge family. I hope that someday that woman’s descendants lose that estate. They do not deserve it! I must go now. My old, aching joints don’t let me write for long.
    With love, Tamsen.
    “Wow,” Gemma said aloud. She’d already stumbled on a mystery and a romance. She glanced at her watch, told herself she had plenty of time before lunch, then stretched out on her stomach and began to read in earnest.

2
    C OLIN F RAZIER WAS frowning. He had at least fifty things he needed to do today, but here he was, driving out to the guesthouse to pick up one of his mother’s students. The other two were already in the main house, chatting so amiably to his mother that they sounded like long-lost relatives. The young woman, Isla, kept saying that everything was “exquisite,” while the man had tried to buddy up to Colin’s brother Lanny by talking about cars. Since Lanny had rebuilt his first transmission when he was eight, it was evident that the job seeker, Kirk, knew nothing about anything with wheels.
    As for Colin’s youngest brother Shamus, he stood to one side and moved a coin around on his fingers. Their parents had forbidden Shamus, who was the artist in the family, to draw anything for fear that he’d come up with some outrageous caricature of the visiting students and embarrass his parents—or actually, just their mother. Their father tended to laugh at whatever Shamus drew.
    Everything had started about three years ago when Mrs. Frazier found out that the last earl of Rypton, her husband’s very distant relative, had died without issue, so the title was being retired. What she wondered was if the title could be revived, which would mean that her husband could possibly be the earl and she the countess.
    On the night she’d posed this question, the family was at home in the living room, and her three youngest sons had gone into riots of laughter. Shamus, still in high school, grabbed his sketchbook and made an unflattering caricature of their mother wearing a crown.
    As they say, she was not amused.
    Alea Frazier put her chin up and left the room.
    “Now you’ve done it,” her husband said. “I’ll be in the doghouse for weeks. Lanny! Wipe that smirk off your face and start planning your apology.” He glared at his youngest. “And you, young man, with your drawing . . .” He trailed off, as though the punishment he had in mind was too dire to speak of.
    With a great sigh, Mr. Frazier heaved himself up out of his favorite chair to go in search of his wife. He paused in the doorway. “This is something that means a lot to your mother, so I want no more making fun of her. If she wants to be a lady, then she can damned well be one. Got it?”
    After he left, it was a full two minutes before the three youngest boys were laughing again.
    Lanny, the third eldest, turned to Colin, the oldest, because his big brother wasn’t laughing. “Come on, lighten up. Don’t you think this is hilarious?”
    Colin raised an eyebrow. “What I want to know is what our dear mother plans to do in her quest to find out if Dad can be an earl.”
    Peregrine, Pere for short and the second eldest, said, “Think she’ll make Dad buy her a castle?”
    “With a moat?” Lanny asked.
    Pere acted like he had a sword in his hand and attacked Lanny. “Will we brothers become sworn enemies and fight each other to become the next earl?”
    Shamus was sketching his brothers’ mock sword fight and didn’t look up as he said, “Colin will get the title next. You two will have to kill him to get it.”
    At that, Pere and Lanny, their arms extended as they held imaginary swords, turned toward their brother, who was sitting at the end of the long couch. “That’ll be easy,” Lanny said and made a lunge.
    In the next second, Colin was up. He grabbed Lanny about