“Maybe he came back and that’s what threw my uncle’s plans off. That I was able to sneak up on him is not something anyone else has been able to do.”
“So where is Tristan?” Gemma demanded as she picked up the gun off the counter.
“I don’t know where Tris is,” Jean said as she sank down to the floor. “He was going to kill me,” she said, looking at her uncle.
Gemma’s main concern was Tris, but at the same time she didn’t dare leave Jean and her uncle unguarded. She reached into her pocket for her phone. Her texts had finally gone through. With joy, she saw that there were two texts to her, one from Roy saying that Colin was on his way, and another one from Joce saying the police were coming.
Jean started talking. “He heard about the paintings that had been found in Edilean, and he knew I had a connection here. He was broke, so he came here to see what he could find out, if there was something worth stealing here. If he found nothing here he probably meant to get money from me. He’s good at getting into bank accounts and emptying them. I just wanted him gone.”
“Would he have killed you?” Gemma asked. She was nervous and wanted to look for Tristan, but she couldn’t turn her back on those two.
Jean’s voice was quiet. “You know that little trick with his hands that Colin does?”
Gemma wasn’t sure what she meant, but then realized that Jean was talking about sex. The thought of sharing the man she loved with another woman made her hand tighten on the gun she held at her side.
“That’s all right,” Jean said. “You don’t have to tell me. I taught Colin to do that. You know who taught me?” She looked at her uncle on the floor. “Him. When I was ten years old.”
Gemma gasped.
“Colin doesn’t know it, but before I changed it, my middle name was Willow. Uncle Adrian liked to rob houses with ten-year-olds in the family, and he’d leave behind a sprig of willow wrapped in a pink ribbon. He thought of it as a joke.”
“Yet you spent time with him while you were in law school.”
“Yeah,” Jean said with a sneer. “I thought I was protecting Mom and me. And I thought he didn’t know how much I hated him.”
“Why did he start robbing here in Edilean?” Gemma asked. “He must have known that there’s nothing here to meet his standards.”
“Well . . .” Jean said.
When she didn’t look at Gemma, she understood. “You committed the robberies here, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Jean said. “I think maybe he was going to leave town, but then he heard of that damned Heartwishes Stone, so he stayed and began to watch you and Tris. He was convinced that you two had found the Stone and that’s what you were being so secretive about. I thought that if I did some robberies using his old MO, it might draw the Feds here and that they might scare him into leaving. But he knew what I was doing and why—and he was amused. They were so very amateurish, the kind of thing he did when he was a teenager.”
Gemma was disgusted by this whole story. “I guess he had a buyer.”
“Several,” Jean said. “If my uncle had sold that Stone, no one in the world named Frazier would have been safe.”
They heard gravel flying outside as a car skidded to a halt. “That’s Colin,” Gemma said.
Jean looked at her, her eyes pleading. “Look, I know the robberies were wrong, but I didn’t know what else to do. I was losing everything. On that first night at the dinner I cooked, I saw how much Colin wanted you. And I guessed that his mother had planned it all. She can be a conniving snake.”
Gemma started to protest, but she knew that Jean was at last telling the truth.
“Please,” Jean said. “I’m putting my life is in your hands. If you tell Colin what I did . . .”
Gemma looked at the man on the floor. He was beginning to stir. No one had been hurt in the break-ins. “Will evidence be found against him at the robbery sites?”
“On the last one, I left hair and a fingerprint.” Gravel was crunching; Colin was running toward them.
This was a decision Gemma couldn’t make quickly. She needed to think about it. “How did you find the ring in the bedpost?”
Jean gave a derogatory little snort. “The bed was homemade. The post was screwed on crooked. He taught me to first look for the obvious.”
Colin threw open the door. His arm was around Tris, whose face was drained of color, and he was holding onto his left arm, which looked like it was broken.
Gemma wanted to hug both men and cry in relief, but at that moment a strong wave of nausea went through her, and she put her hand over her mouth.
Tris, in spite of the obvious pain he was in, grinned at her. “It must be seven.” He stepped away from Colin, who was looking at Gemma in fear.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he grabbed her by the shoulders.
Gemma’s answer was to throw up on his shoes.
Colin erupted in anger. “I’ll kill you for hurting her,” he bellowed as he leaped toward Jean’s uncle, who was pulling himself upright.
“Colin, no!” Tris yelled. “It’s your kid who’s making her sick.” Colin had the man by the front of his shirt, his fist drawn back to hit him, but when Tris’s words reached his mind, he dropped the man to the floor.
“Gemma?” he asked, looking at her.
She was fighting more nausea.
“Get her to the sink,” Tris yelled. “It’s your turn to hold her head.”
Outside was the sound of sirens. The police had arrived.
“That you felt you had to keep this secret from me . . .” Colin said as he held Gemma to him. Behind them, the police and Roy were handcuffing Jean’s uncle Adrian. “I can never apologize to you enough.”
“It’s all right now,” Gemma said.
He ran his hand along her cheek. “No, it’s not. I thought you and Tris—”
“I know.” She knew she should admit to her jealousy of Jean, but now was not the time. It felt too good to be held by him, to be reassured.
“I won’t be jealous again,” Colin said. “And I promise that I’ll spend my life making it up to you.”
“I’d like that,” she said as he kissed her.
“I love you, Gemma. I will love you forever.”
“And I love you,” she said, then laughed when he insisted on carrying her to the car.
28
OKAY?” COLIN ASKED Gemma for the thousandth time. It was the morning after Jean’s uncle had been arrested, and Gemma was on the couch in the guesthouse, a quilt over her legs.
All she could do was smile at the way Mr. and Mrs. Frazier and even Shamus were hovering over her. Mrs. Frazier had wanted Gemma put to bed in their best guest suite, but Colin had said their house—his and Gemma’s—was better for her.
“I’m not ill, I’m just pregnant,” Gemma had said.
Those words had made Mrs. Frazier burst into tears—again.
In the end, they’d compromised. Gemma was to spend the next three days in the Frazier house, looked after by Mrs. Frazier, then she’d move into Colin’s house for good.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” Colin asked as he looked down at her with a mixture of pride and wonder.
“Yes,” Gemma said. “Please go and take care of the case. And find out about Tristan. I want to know how he is and what happened to him.”
Roy stepped into the room, her phone in her hand. “I can answer that. Dr. Tris was halfway to the airport when he realized he didn’t have his phone, so he went back to get it. He surprised Jean’s uncle as he was searching Tris’s house.”
Gemma looked at Colin, and he took her hand as he nodded. She was right; Adrian had been looking for the Heartwishes Stone.
“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 bumpkin, 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 attitude, 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. “Nobody 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 assumed 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 c
ould 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-class, 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 assisted 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.