Read Windswept for Free Online

house. These absolutely charming rooms are filled with graceful furniture and marble fireplaces. James and Emily were well known for their generous hospitality and entertained numerous dignitaries and notable persons here.
    Another set of double doors from the front parlor brings you into the dining room, which can also be reached from the entrance hall. It overlooks the back garden and is within easy access of the kitchen.
    When I first walked into the parlors and dining room, I could feel the love and comradeship James and Emily had known in their lives. The rooms welcome visitors and put them instantly at ease. Emily decorated them in warm colors and placed the furniture in comfortable arrangements that practically beg you to tarry a while and enjoy the company.
    Emily, bless her soul, had exquisite taste when it came to the house, but she was not interested in flower gardens, and what few exist are in some disarray from James’s neglect. The vegetable plots and orchards could also use some attention. Thanks to my mother’s tutelage, I am an avid gardener and look forward to establishing my own mark on the grounds with new gardens and some greenhouses. I see no reason why we cannot enjoy the variety of fruits and vegetables available in the larger cities. How much better they will taste knowing we raised them ourselves!
    But back to my description of the house. Behind the second parlor is the master bedroom with a massive mahogany bedstead and equally massive armoire. A one-story addition to the house, reached either from the bedroom or through a door from the side gallery, holds Edgar’s small study.
    My husband (Oh! How using that term still thrills me!) is already talking about adding on to the house, on the other side of the entry hall, most probably a larger bedroom for us and a music room. I would love to have a piano again.
    I certainly could not ask for a better, more commodious, more welcoming house in which to begin our life together. The furniture is elegant, but comfortable, and the colors on the walls and in the draperies and upholstery are bright, but soothing. Indeed, it’s so much more than many newlyweds have. There is ample room for, dare I hope, a family, and I look forward to growing old with Edgar in this house.
    No, it’s more than a house, it’s a home. Our home.
    James and Emily left us a wonderful heritage. I only hope we will prove worthy of it.
    ***
     
    Present Day
    Saturday, May 5
     
    Late Saturday afternoon, Barrett drove her Honda down winding Memorial Drive. Posh neighborhoods lay to her right and left, she knew, but they were hidden by the thick woods and bushes, not to mention the high fences, lining the road.
    “Be cool, be cool. It will be good news or he wouldn’t have called you,” she said out loud in the hopes she could calm herself down. “He wouldn’t want to reject you in person. He’s hard, but he’s not cruel.”
    She hoped, she prayed. Maybe she’d just jumped too fast to the conclusion of doom like her brothers always accused her of doing. What exactly had he said during their conversation on the phone?
    Davis had called just at the end of the birthday party for the eight-year-old daughter of Barrett’s best friend since the seventh grade, with whom she was staying. She had extricated herself from the jumble of presents, wrapping paper, cake, and shrieking little girls and taken her cell phone into another room.
    “I have a proposition for you relating to the Windswept papers, Dr. Browning,” he had stated, his deep drawling voice making her heart race. She’d practically hyperventilated when he asked, “Would it be possible for you to come out to my house to talk about it?”
    He’d told her he was on a tight schedule and to come right away, so she hadn’t stopped to change from her jeans. As she turned off Memorial and onto residential streets and looked at the large houses around her, she began to hope she hadn’t made a mistake by not putting on more