The Duke's Husband - Mychael Black by Mychael Black & Shayne Carmichael

Author:Mychael Black & Shayne Carmichael [Black, Mychael & Carmichael, Shayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-01-08T23:44:03+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dev left Jay at the house while he headed into the nearby town. The white picket fence glory had long ago faded. At about the same time Dev's grandfather had left the old homestead, the town had suffered a reversal in its fortunes. Most of the houses that lined the main street and other thoroughfares were long deserted and boarded up.

There were still signs of life within Elk's Run, and what was left seemed to be an historical society of sorts. Everybody knew everybody and the small grocery store was the local hangout of choice. Stopping at the town hall, Dev parked the car along the curb, then went inside. Stilling at the desk, he waited to get the attention of the clerk. When she looked over at him, he smiled at her. "Hi, I'm Devon Brooks. I was wondering where I could get some information about the old Brooks house on Blue Way."

"So you're the one who moved into that old place. Nice to meet you.

I'm Gracie Simmons, a cousin of sorts."

Since Dev hadn't realized any of his relatives still lived in the town, her pronouncement caught him by surprise. "Oh, wow, I didn't even think of that."

"My great-grandmother married your great-grandfather's youngest brother. It's all tangled in there somewhere." Laughing, she held out her hand to him.

Taking her hand, he shook it with a grin. "I just moved in, and I'm trying to get a background on the history of the place and the family." "You're in luck, Devon. We've got pretty good records here. And my mother has a family chart. It's fairly current and goes back to Isaiah Brooks. He was the original owner of Brooks Manor and commissioned the construction in 1825. Until 1960, the Brooks family pretty much ran the entire town. After that, a series of fires and problems almost leveled Elk's Run. There's only about a thousand people left still living here and quite a few of them are related to us in one way or another."

"You just told me a hell of a lot more than I already knew, Gracie.

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THE DUKE'S HUSBAND

My dad didn't know much about the family history. I was hoping there would still be some records here in town."

Motioning for him to follow her, she stepped around the old fashioned wood counter. "Our records are in really good order, mostly because of my family. Mother, Grandmother, and Great-Grandmother have run the archives for years. I took over for Mom about five years ago. Took a lot work indexing everything, but I managed."

Dev followed her into another room then up a short staircase.

Heading down a long corridor, Gracie entered one of the rooms and flicked on the light. The small office contained two computers. "If you want to research at home, most of the records are in our database on the computer."

Settling at one of the computers, Gracie brought up the town's website. "Births, death, property, whatever you might need to know is right here, and the links are alphabetized.

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