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 the waist and lifted him onto his shoulders.
At that moment Mr. Frazier reentered the room. “If you boys break anything, it’ll come out of your allowance.”
With a snort of laughter, Colin put his brother down. Their father had made them sound like children, but Colin had just turned twenty-seven, while Lanny and Pere were twenty-five and twenty-six.
“How’s Mom?” Colin asked.
“All right.” Mr. Frazier gave his eldest son a look that said this was only the beginning. When Mrs. Frazier took on a project, she became a force of nature, like a tornado that plowed across the earth, sucking up everything in its wake. And it looked like this earl of Rypton thing was going to be her next undertaking.
That was three years ago, but recently the old house in England that had belonged to the earls was put up for sale, and it took all Mr. Frazier’s ability to talk his wife out of buying it. The compromise had been for her to purchase every scrap of paper—“our history” as she called it—that had been squirreled away in the house and have it shipped home to Virginia.
When she’d returned from her solitary trip to the auction—and before the bills arrived—the family thought she’d probably bought half a dozen or so boxes full of old papers. Instead, six FedEx trucks had arrived bearing professionally crated trunks, baskets, boxes, and even suitcases packed full of crumbling old documents.
Mr. Frazier wasn’t happy when he’d had to move two vintage cars out of the guesthouse garage so it could be filled with what she’d bought. “Alea,” Mr. Frazier had said with extreme patience as he looked at the collection, “who’s going to go through all this . . . this . . . ?”
“Don’t worry, dearest, I’ve taken care of that. I called Freddy, and he and I had a good long talk about how to go about this. He came up with a truly brilliant plan.”
“Freddy?” Mr. Frazier asked, his jaw rigid. Frederick J. Townsend was the president of his wife’s university alma mater—and her old boyfriend. The man she’d almost married. “And how is ol’ Freddy?” Mr. Frazier asked, his teeth clenched.
“Excellent, as always. He’s going to send me the résumés of some young people who are qualified for the job, probably Ph.D. students. I’ll choose four or five of them to come here to be interviewed. Or do you think that’s too many? Maybe I should cut it down to three. Yes, that’s a good idea. Freddy promised that he’d send the very best the university has to offer. What do you think, dear?”
Mr. Frazier narrowed his eyes at his wife. He knew when he was being bamboozled. She was leaving out a great deal, such as the salary she’d probably already offered, and how long this person was going to be in their employ. And since she’d insisted on putting her hoard in the guesthouse garage, he had a suspicion about where this student was to live. “I think,” he said slowly, “that you and I are going to sit down and you’re going to tell me exactly what you’re up to.”
“Of course, dear,” she said, smiling. “I’d love to tell you everything.”
It was at dinner that night that the family was told of the plan to hire someone who would live in one of the guesthouses and spend two or more years reading and cataloging the material from England.
“Two years?” Pere asked in shock.
Lanny said, “Just make sure she’s female. And pretty.”
“I think the three girlfriends you have now are quite enough,” Mr. Frazier said, but Lanny just grinned.
Mrs. Frazier turned to her eldest son. “Colin, what do you think?”
The family knew that Colin kept his opinions to himself. His mother often said that her eldest son had been born independent, that he went where he wanted to when he wanted to. His father said that Colin had been given the short end of the stick. By the time he was three, he’d had two younger brothers who flamboyantly craved attention. With his father working seventy hours a week and his mother dealing with two demanding children, Colin had learned to take care of himself—and to not bother anyone with his needs and wants.
“I think,” Colin said slowly, “that the whole project will be good for you.” Shamus, the last of his mother’s five children, would leave for college next year, and their mother was going to be lonely. Only Colin lived in Edilean—and he spent so much time in town that he might as well be in another state. Someone living in the guesthouse and spewing out stories about the family’s past would probably entertain his mother. Maybe there’d be moments when she’d forget ho
w her children were scattered around the country.
But now, months later, Colin wished he’d been more involved in the whole process of letting someone stay on the family property for such a long time. He’d met two of the applicants for the job and didn’t like either of them. The young man and woman were both tall and greyhound thin, their clothes sleek and expensive. The woman looked at Lanny with eyes that seemed to flash with a neon sign of a wedding cake, and Colin had seen the man pick up a plate and look at the manufacturer’s name. So far, neither of them had so much as glanced at a book, and they’d certainly shown no interest in the dirty boxes in the guesthouse.
Colin could almost see the future. The hired one would freely wander about the place and come up with excuses of why he/she should join the family. And his mother’s generous nature would allow it. He had visions of the man moving in with them and being there twenty years from now. His mother would say, “But my children left me, so why shouldn’t I have Kirk to keep me company?”
All in all, Colin was beginning to see the whole project as a disaster.