Heartwishes

"Tris said the man escaped out a window and Tris went after him," Roy said.

"He should have stayed where he was and called me," Colin said.

Roy continued. "Tris knows that, but he was afraid the man would go to Mrs. Wingate"s house, so that"s why he chased him. The creep hid in the bushes and hit Tris with something. We don"t know what it was, but we think it was a golf club. Dr. Tris said he thought the man was aiming at his head but Tris heard him and turned. The blow hit his left arm."

"How bad is it?" Gemma asked.

"Broken but not too badly. He"ll be in a cast for a few weeks. His parents flew in from Sarasota, and his dad will take over Tris"s practice for a while."

"What about Jean?" Mrs. Frazier asked. "How is she dealing with all this?"

Gemma couldn"t help holding her breath. Had they found out that it was Jean who committed the robberies in Edilean? Gemma looked up at Colin. She knew that he"d spent the night questioning Jean, but there hadn"t been a chance for him to tell her what he"d found out.

Colin spoke first. "She heard that Tris was going out of town, so she thought maybe her uncle would try to search the house. Seems the man had been spying on Tris for a while. He was hiding in the bushes when Gemma first threw up."

Colin looked at her, his hand squeezing hers in a renewal of his promises. Never again would she have to keep secrets from him.

He looked back at the others. "When Jean got there, she didn"t see Tristan. By that time, he was unconscious and halfway down a hill and the uncle was back in the house. Jean didn"t know that her uncle had already texted Gemma on Tris"s phone to go there. Jean had a gun and she caught him off guard. She used surgical tape to tie him up."

Colin paused. "Jean tried to call me, but Tris"s Internet service had been knocked out by the storm. If Gemma had shown up, thinking Tris needed her, the man probably would have made her give him the Stone, then killed her."

He had to take a few breaths before going on. "But Gemma very wisely didn"t pull into the driveway but came around the side. By that time, Jean had arrived and taped her uncle to a chair. Unfortunately, the man was good at escaping any bondage. If Gemma hadn"t attacked-which she shouldn"t have done, by the way-he would have murdered his niece."

"All for a Stone that grants wishes," Mrs. Frazier said in disgust.

Everyone in the room looked at her. Now that her deepest wish had been granted, she could afford to be disdainful.

"Where is the thing, anyway?" Mr. Frazier asked. "I"d like to see it."

Gemma started to speak, but Colin interrupted her.

"That"s between Gemma and Tristan," Colin said. "I"ve not seen it and don"t plan to see it. I know it was hidden in Tristan"s house for many years, so ownership of it goes to him. And when I talk to him I think he"ll agree to give the guardianship of it to Gemma. If she wants to stay in Edilean, that is."

Mr. Frazier put his hand on his son"s shoulder, and looked at the others in the room. "What do you say that we give these lovebirds some time alone?" He didn"t wait for an answer but herded everyone out of the guesthouse.

When they were alone, Gemma threw the quilt off her legs and stood up. "I don"t know about you, but I"m starving."

She turned toward the kitchen but Colin didn"t follow her. When she looked back, he was on one knee and he had what was unmistakably a ring box in his hand.

Slowly, she walked back to him.

"Will you marry me?" he asked as he held out the little blue velvet box. She opened it to see a ring that had to be a family heirloom, three diamonds in a slightly worn basket setting.

"I thought you might like something old better than new," he said softly.

"I love it," she said as she took the box, then held it out to him.

He removed the ring, tossed the box on the couch, and slipped the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly. "Your mother told me your size."

"My mother?" She was astonished.

"I thought I should make myself known to her, so I called and asked her permission."

Gemma sat down on the couch. "Did you tell her about-" She glanced down at her stomach.

"When I called her, I didn"t know about that."

She was sitting, he was still on one knee. "When did you do this?"

"Right after we met in the sandwich shop. As you told my brother, I was miserable." His eyes brightened. "You bought the baby clothes for our child, didn"t you?"

"Yes." She held his face in her hands and kissed him. "I want to hear more, but your child is making me so hungry your ears are beginning to look appetizing." She stood up.

"Gemma?" he said, his voice sounding urgent. "You haven"t answered my question."

"What question?"

He raised his eyebrows, then glanced at his awkward position.

"Oh!" she said, laughing. "You poor baby. Your knees must be killing you. Yes, I"ll marry you. Yes and yes and yes."

"Great," Colin said. "Now help me up."

She put her arms out to him, but he didn"t need help. He pulled her down to the couch. Slowly and with all the emotions they felt in their hearts, they touched and held each other. Their kisses were different, for their doubts and fears were gone, and all they could see was the future.

Unseen by human eyes, the Heartwishes Stone blinked. It had given two more wishes. Gemma belonged to a place and people, and Colin had found True Love.

Epilogue.

GEMMA DIDN"T GET around to repairing Shamus"s art box for weeks. By that time Jean"s uncle had been extradited to Romania, where he was to go through the first of several trials. Quite a few countries wanted to question him.

Gemma told Colin the truth about the Edilean robberies and she pleaded on Jean"s behalf. Gemma said that Jean had endured enough because of her uncle and she didn"t deserve prison and disbarment. Colin had agreed with her, but he said the law was the law.

In the end, the FBI solved the dilemma. They arrived two days after the arrest of Adrian Caldwell, and they pushed Colin aside as though he were a country b.u.mpkin, too dumb to know what he had. Gemma smiled as she watched Colin stand back and let the federal agents tell him, with their superior att.i.tude, that only someone of Caldwell"s caliber could have pulled off burglaries like the ones that had happened in Edilean.

"No wonder, sheriff, that you couldn"t figure out who done it," they said, smirks on their city faces. "n.o.body local could do something like this. Too bad you missed the hair and fingerprint the first time around. They tie into some big jobs, and they"ll put Caldwell behind bars for the rest of his life."

Colin just smiled at them in good nature and invited them to do all their Christmas shopping in Edilean. They clapped him on the back and said they would.

Only Gemma saw Colin talking to Jean in such a ferocious way that she felt sorry for the woman. But later, Jean looked over Colin"s big shoulder and mouthed "thank you" to Gemma.

After all the excitement, it was a while before everyone"s lives settled down again. When Mrs. Frazier started asking Gemma what color she wanted for her bridesmaids, she and Colin eloped. They had a simple, private ceremony and moved into his house all in one weekend. They were two very happy people.

It was during the move that Gemma saw Shamus"s art box and sat down to fix it. He had been Gemma"s only attendant at the wedding, and she owed him for holding her bouquet while she and Colin exchanged rings. She"d a.s.sumed the papers were Shamus"s drawings, but when she started to pull them out and saw the brittleness and the yellow that only age could create, her heart nearly stopped.

Slowly, carefully, she pulled the papers out of the bottom of the box. The first thing she saw was a name and a date. Tamsen Frazier Byan 1895.

Gemma collapsed into a chair and began to read.

12 February 1895 My story begins when my honorary aunt and uncle, Cay and Alex McDowell, were going to spend the summer of 1834 in England buying horses. They were planning to rent a house, but my mother wrote my father"s oldest brother, Ewan, who was the earl of Rypton, and suddenly, all doors were opened and invitations were extended. I wish I could say it was done out of family loyalty, but it wasn"t. Uncle Ewan"s greedy, base born-but rich-wife hated us Americans so much she refused to use the Frazier name. But she knew that Aunt Cay"s daughter had recently married Grayson Armitage, heir to one of the richest fortunes in America, and that"s why Aunt Cay was invited to stay with them.

At home in Edilean, the invitation caused a flurry of activity. Since Uncle Alex would be traveling all over the British Isles to find the horses he so loved, Aunt Cay would be alone. The truth was, that was fine with her, for she loved her art almost as much as she cared for her family. If she had pen and paper and something to look at, she was happy.

But I, twenty-four years old and recently jilted, thought I was the most unhappy person on earth, so I set about to persuade her that I had to go with her. I shamelessly used the fact that Ewan was my uncle. That he was an earl and that his wife had refused to allow his working-cla.s.s, American relatives into her house made no matter to me. All that was in my mind was to show the world-i.e., Edilean, Virginia-that I had better things to do than care that the man I"d been sure I was going to marry had chosen another to be his bride.

I can"t remember how I came to invite a companion to go with me. I think it was Cay"s doing. Perhaps she feared being saddled with a melancholy young woman who might need to be entertained, so she encouraged me to take a friend.

Whatever the cause, it was four of us who set off that spring of 1834. It was Cay and Alex, long married but as much in love as ever-when I saw them holding hands, I burst into tears-and Winnie and me.

Louisa Winifred Aldredge was my cousin and we had grown up together. Her father and brother were the town doctors-the third and fourth generation of Aldredge doctors in Edilean-and Winnie knew a great deal about medicine. She"d a.s.sisted her father since she was a girl. How she used to disgust us, her friends, when she"d come to our delicate tea parties with blood on her petticoat. Some of the girls would nearly faint with her vivid descriptions of surgeries and even amputations.

What we all liked about Winnie was that she was so very practical. Whenever we girls did something we shouldn"t have-usually because we were dared by one of those outrageous Welsch girls-it was Winnie who calmed us down and helped us figure out what was the right thing to do.

I chose Winnie from among my many friends to go to England because she didn"t feel sorry for me at having been discarded by a man I truly loved. Winnie was just matter-of-fact about the humiliation I"d been subjected to. She said, "Robert Allandale is no better than what comes out of the back end of a horse." She said it only once, didn"t dwell on it, didn"t elaborate, but that was enough. I knew how she felt and she wasn"t going to change her mind. Winifred Aldredge was as solid as I was-in those days-flighty.

By the time we set sail for England, I had recovered enough that I could wave good-bye to our friends who came to see us off. Weeks later, when we reached Southampton, my head was full of the fact that my uncle had two sons who were of marriageable age. The oldest one, Julian, was to become an earl. Wouldn"t returning with him on my arm make Robert Allandale green with envy!

I think I need to confess that it was I who stole the Heartwishes Stone. Even though I was only eight when he died, I was the child who knew the most about my grandfather Shamus of when he lived in Scotland. On cold winter evenings I would sit on his lap as he told me his old stories. My favorites were about the Heartwishes Stone. He told me how a witch had made it out of grat.i.tude for a young, strong Frazier who had saved the lives of several people. Grandpa Shamus said that the Stone gave each person in the family a wish that would come true if it came from his or her heart.

He told me how his father, Ursted, had wasted his wish. When Ursted was a young man, all he"d wanted, what he"d craved, was to marry the beautiful Mary McTern, daughter of the laird of the clan. Ursted thought that such a marriage would give him power in the clan, and would make others see him as important. He was sick of his family being considered as little more than pack mules. "Haul this, Frazier," people would say. "Move this rock." With his l.u.s.t for respectability in his mind, Ursted took the Stone out of its lead case and made his wish.

It must have come from his heart because the next day he found Mary McTern out alone and he took her by force. I don"t like to think what that poor girl went through. All the Fraziers are large and unnaturally strong. Mary knew that to tell her father what had been done to her would cause a war within the clan, so she kept the secret to herself. When she missed her monthly time, she went to her father and told him that she was in love with Ursted Frazier and wanted to marry him. The entire clan was horrified. Sweet, beautiful, educated Mary to give her life to the loud, ignorant, violent-tempered Ursted Frazier? It was said that the wailing of her mother could be heard a mile away.

But Mary knew that the truth would cause people"s deaths, so at sixteen, she married the twenty-two-year-old Ursted Frazier. Afterward, when the man was still laughed at, still considered to have no wisdom, he took his anger out on his wife. She hid her bruises as best she could and told her parents she was happy with her lot. She was a good breeder and produced eight big, healthy sons. When they were old enough, Ursted took his anger out on them as well as on his wife.

One by one, their mother told her four oldest sons about the Stone and they made wishes from their hearts. They were simple young men and all they wanted was to get away from their father and to get a good job somewhere far away. And that"s just what they did. But when Shamus, my grandfather, reached an age where he too could have left, he didn"t. He stayed behind to care for-and protect-his mother and his three youngest brothers.

One night his drunken father didn"t come home. Grandpa Shamus never told me the details of what happened, and I"ve never wanted to imagine what could have occurred that night. But the result was that Shamus, his mother, and the three youngest boys were at last left in peace. However, their profligate father had left behind nothing but debts, and a house that was barely fit for habitation. The family was so poor that I don"t know how they survived.

Grandpa Shamus said that to his mind, what was worse than the poverty, was that his entire family was the object of ridicule. His main enemy was his cousin, Angus McTern, who was to become the laird of the clan. As boys, they fought often and the clan always took Angus"s side. When the clan"s property was gambled away, Shamus said he rejoiced that Angus"s future of power and wealth had been taken from him. But the clansmen still looked to young Angus to be their leader-and they still laughed in derision at the Fraziers. "Big enough to be an ox, but not the sense of one," he heard a man say when he was a boy.

My grandpa said he "got the man back," but he wouldn"t tell me what he did.

It wasn"t until a young English woman named Edilean Talbot came to live in the McTern castle that Shamus decided to make use of the Heartwishes Stone. As he held the Stone in his hand, he said that he wished for gold and a lot of it.

His mother, Mary, had seen that the Stone had a perverse way of making wishes come true, but also of making them go wrong. She"d had years of misery to think about her late husband"s wish, and she didn"t want that for her boys. She didn"t know if she was enough of a Frazier to be granted a request, but she tried to counterbalance Shamus"s unplanned wish. She took the Stone from him and said that she hoped he got the gold, but that she also wanted him to have a better life. By that, she meant for him to have love. That none of her sons had wished for love hurt her more than her husband"s beatings had. None of her sons had ever seen True Love, had certainly never felt it, and she very much wanted them to have it.

Grandpa Shamus used to laugh when he told the rest of his story, how he"d come to America and ended up rescuing Angus McTern from certain death. "It was a day for rejoicing," he said. I knew he meant that he celebrated at his cousin"s humiliation.

I loved to hear of his courtship with Grandma Pru. He said she came to the old McTern castle looking for Edilean"s uncle, and when Shamus saw her, he loved her from the first moment. "She was riding a horse big enough to pull a loaded wagon," he used to recall with eyes misted over with love. "And when she slid down, she was nearly as tall as me."

I"d heard Grandma Pru tell the same story, but she was more pragmatic. She said that the first time she saw Shamus Frazier, she wanted to throw him into the hay and have her way with him. "I was so very tired of girlish men!" Whenever I heard this story, I marveled that the two of them had found each other. She was the daughter of an earl, while he was little better than a stable lad. My grandmother was a large woman, not fat, but tall and big-boned. And even in youth, her face had not been pretty. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," she used to say, laughing, then slap her husband on the back so hard that, had he been a lesser man, he would have fallen.

By the time I was seven, my grandparents were very old, but Grandpa Shamus said he wasn"t going to leave the earth until after his cousin Angus died. Angus"s wife Edilean died in 1817, and after that, Angus didn"t want to stay on earth. He died the following year. Grandpa Shamus used to say that he"d be filled with joy when Angus was gone-"my old enemy" as he called him-but he wasn"t. After Angus died, Shamus deteriorated fast, and when Grandma Pru died, Grandpa Shamus lived only three more months. "Everyone is gone now," he told me as I held his hand as he lay in what turned out to be his death bed. "Enemies, friends, family, they"re all gone now. I think I"ll go and see them. I would like to play a trick or two on old Angus and see him get angry!" he said, laughing. He died three days later. Just went to sleep and never woke up again. My mother told me that he was smiling when they found him. My father, Colin, said that he was with Prudence so he must be very happy. "They weren"t much without the other."

On the afternoon my grandfather died, I was the one who asked after the Heartwishes Stone, as he had always kept it in the box with the family Bible. My father had told me the story was just a myth, but then he"d never cared much for the old stories. He was a man who lived in the day, and his great pa.s.sion was anything with wheels. His company built wagons and carriages that were the finest in the country. President Madison even ordered one from him. (My father laughed because he"d had to make the seats higher so that when people saw him they"d think the tiny man was taller.) "May I have the Heartwishes Stone to remember Grandpa by?" I asked and he mumbled something that could have been yes. I had learned that if I asked my father something while he was under duress, he"d say yes just to get rid of me. On the other hand, my mother had a keen eye and ear, and she always knew what I was up to, so I didn"t mention the Stone to her. It was my hope that my father would fail to mention it to my mother. I wasn"t so fortunate as to achieve that goal. She saw that it was missing and knew that I had taken it. She took it from me, and it wasn"t until I was an adult that I found the little lead case in the bottom of her bureau. (The lead kept its magic contained. Let it out and the Stone started blinking as it did its work.) The second time, I didn"t ask permission of anyone but took the Stone, held it in my hand, and wished with all my might that Robert Allandale would love me.

I guess the wish wasn"t from my heart because Robert still betrayed me. He found a woman whose father had died and left her with three houses. When my parents died, I was to inherit a tidy sum, but until then I was at the mercy of their generosity, and Robert knew that.

The legend about the Stone was that it granted only one request to each Frazier, and if the one about Robert had failed, that meant I was still owed a wish. With that in mind, I hid the Stone in a portmanteau I was taking to England. When my mother saw that the Stone was missing she knew I was the one who took it. My brother was as uninterested in it as my father was. May the Lord forgive me, but I swore to her that I had not removed it and didn"t know who had. Since that was the day Robert was getting married, I figured the Lord might overlook my blatant lie.

I took that Heartwishes Stone to England with me, meaning to use it so that I would return with a man on my arm. But it was Winnie who needed the Heartwishes, not me.

She and the beautiful Julian fell deeply in love and wanted to marry. But his stepmother, that sn.o.bbish woman who hated all her husband"s American relatives, couldn"t bear the idea of Julian inheriting. She so very much wanted her fat, ugly son, Clive, to have everything.

I never told Winnie, but I saw Julian"s stepmother watching them out the window. He and Winnie were laughing together. Even though they weren"t touching or doing anything untoward, it was easy to tell that they were in love. I was the only one who knew that they were planning to elope the next day. Something about the way the woman looked at them frightened me. That night I took the Heartwishes Stone out of its lead case and wished with all my might that Julian and Winnie could be together forever.

I had no idea that when I made that wish, Julian was already dead.

The next day, when Winnie was told that Julian"s body had been found, she was stoic. She didn"t cry. Only those of us who loved her knew the pain that was inside her.

The tears were all shed by his stepmother. I never believed that Julian"s fall from the roof was an accident. When his odious stepmother cried so hard she had to be helped into the church at the funeral, I sneered at her tears. I told Aunt Cay that I thought the woman had murdered Julian.

Aunt Cay said nothing to that but I think she agreed with me. We left England soon after that, and on the voyage home, Winnie found out that she was carrying Julian"s child. That was when her tears came-tears of joy and happiness.

To me, Winnie"s news was proof of the truth of the Heartwishes Stone. It had done its best to fulfill the wish, but I have always wondered if Julian would have lived if only I"d made my wish sooner.

I didn"t tell Winnie of the wish, for she would have scoffed at it and told me how babies were made. Besides, I didn"t want to take away from her happiness.

She wanted to run and tell Aunt Cay and Uncle Alex right away. As we ran through the ship to their cabin, I was afraid of the wrath of the older folks, but there was none. There were no lectures about the sin of fornication. In fact, they looked at each other with twinkling eyes, as though they knew about youthful pa.s.sion.

Still, I worried about Winnie"s parents" reaction. She agreed to let Uncle Alex talk to them first. Whatever he said worked because there was only happiness surrounding Winnie"s news. Her parents arranged that the church records would say the boy, named Patrick Julian Aldredge, was born to her brother and his wife. Legitimacy would keep the child from being ridiculed.

Winnie used her inheritance from her grandparents to build a lovely little house out of town beside a lake, and there she raised her child. She was never officially certified as a doctor, but she learned enough from her father and grandfather that she had a thriving practice.

Young Patrick grew up to be as handsome as his father and became the town"s doctor.

As for Winnie, she never got over her loss of the man she loved; she never married. Aunt Cay carved a little portrait of Julian and put it above the fireplace in the house that Winnie built for herself and Julian"s son. Uncle Alex figured out an ingenious way to make a code to open the picture. Behind it we hid the Heartwishes Stone, and I hope its secret is never found out. As it turned out, I did not need any magical wishes to find a man who would love me and who I could love in return. My life has been good. However, I do not mean to be maudlin, but even after all these many years, I miss Winnie every day of my life.

BOOKS BY JUDE DEVERAUX.

The Velvet Promise The Invitation Highland Velvet Remembrance Velvet Song The Heiress Velvet Angel Legend Sweetbriar An Angel for Emily Counterfeit Lady The Blessing Lost Lady High Tide River Lady Temptation Twin of Fire The Summerhouse Twin of Ice The Mulberry Tree Temptress Forever . . .

The Raider Wild Orchids The Princess Forever and Always The Awakening Always The Maiden First Impressions The Taming Carolina Isle The Conquest Someone to Love A Knight in Shining Armor Secrets Holly Return to Summerhouse Wishes Lavender Morning Mountain Laurel Days of Gold The d.u.c.h.ess Scarlet Nights Eternity The Scent of Jasmine Sweet Liar