Cottage by the Sea (15 page)

   But what did it matter? she thought, stumbling forward blindly. She wouldn't need shoes. She wouldn't need anything.

   They don't care about me, she cried out silently.

   
None of them care about anything but the land… the bloody land!
Even my mother. She's young. She'll marry again… she'll marry anyone
who'll make her mistress of a house. Why doesn't she marry Kit, for God's
sake? I'm nothing to her! Nothing to anybody! Not even Ennis…

   Her thoughts careened like a woman gone mad as she charged up the grassy verge that led to the headlands, now sharpened to a point by raging gales and pounding surf. At the crest a slender figure stood etched against the pewter sky. Blythe pulled up shortly and promptly stumbled on the heel of her damaged shoe. Her body thumped against the soggy ground as a sharp stone bordering the edge of the path ripped her sleeve and slashed her arm.

   "Blythe? Blythe!" a voice shouted against the wind.

   Dazed, she rolled herself into a ball, gasping with pain that surged like a broadsword through her right arm. Someone grasped her shoulder, and she screamed with anguish. It was Garrett Teague, stumbling to his knees and calling her name.

   "I won't marry him… I won't," she sobbed.

   "I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry," Garrett kept repeating. His determination to be of comfort was in violent opposition to her need to be left alone. "I tried to keep you away from them… I tried—" he said, attempting to gather her into his arms. "I'll see that no harm comes to you, Blythe, I swear it! We'll escape from here, just as soon as—"

   "Let me go!" Blythe shouted against the gusts that whipped her curled coiffure into a rat's nest. "Ennis!" she wailed. "I want Ennis!"

   Her keening cries were as potent as her intense shame, for there could be no denying that the man who had kissed her with such ferocious passion had remained silent in front of his father, forgoing the chance to claim her for his own.

   Blythe struggled to her knees, fighting Garrett's smothering embrace with all her strength. She threw herself forward against the wind. There was only a yard or two farther to reach the edge of Dodman Point. Grit and grass wedged beneath her fingernails as her hand curled around the granite cliff. "Let me go!" she screamed.
"Let me go!"

L
uke's genealogy chart swam before Blythe's eyes. She stumbled toward his desk and slumped into a wing-backed chair. Feeling dizzy, she cradled her head on her forearms on top of its tooled leather surface.

   Where the hell had she been just now?

   Twice her unwitting experiments had proved that, by merely touching the glass-covered parchment and reading aloud a particular name, she could call up, at will, past events involving specific members of the Barton-Trevelyan-Teague families.

   Surely the oddest component of these two experiences was the fact that her own observations and judgment seemed to be suspended as she became caught up in the life of her namesake. This time, much to her astonishment, she had felt like a seventeen-year-old… rebellious, half in love with Ennis Trevelyan, convinced that no one truly understood the unfolding events from her point of view. Somehow she had slipped into the skin of the original Blythe Barton, and while wearing it, she felt perfectly normal!

   And something else was totally bizarre about this latest sojourn. From the perspective of a woman born in the late twentieth century, she assessed Garrett Teague to be the kind of suitor she would find most appealing among his clan. He had dash and daring and had genuinely appeared to care about her namesake's well-being. Yet during Blythe's strange journey among Luke's eighteenth-century ancestors, Ennis, not Garrett, was the man she had kissed with abandon— the person with whom the first Blythe Barton had later committed adultery—at least according to Kit Trevelyan's heated accusations.

   Should she assume she was reliving some past life here, she wondered, or had she somehow witnessed the ultimate time travel? Either way, the experience was downright hair-raising.

   For an instant she imagined the feat of describing the bizarre phenomenon to Christopher. Would he be struck, as she certainly was, by the astounding coincidence that a woman with her own, unusual name had betrayed her husband—also named Christopher—with his brother? Surely he would be astonished to learn that there might have existed an eighteenth-century version of their unholy triangle, turned upside down?

   No, she thought grimly. Chris wouldn't be astonished at all. Rather, he'd be convinced of the necessity to have her committed to an institution for the mentally deranged.

   Blythe's glance drifted to the bookcase that had pivoted sideways to admit the apparition of Luke's ancestor into the library. Warily she rose from her chair and approached the rows of shelves where the secret door had swung open. She pushed against it. Nothing. She pushed harder. Still nothing. Then she raised her hand, prepared to run her fingers along the wood to feel for a hidden catch.

   
What am I doing?
she chastised herself.

   She was behaving as if she thought these phantoms were real!

   A hefty Bible caught Blythe's eye. Its binding was cracked, and its leather covers gouged with scuff marks. She pulled the heavy volume out of its slot and rested it on Luke's desk, scanning through its end papers. There, to her growing amazement, she confirmed that the dates chronicling the births and deaths of family members—written in a variety of colored inks—matched many of those specified on the chart.

   On a lower shelf stood a series of estate ledgers whose dates went back, year by year, to the late seventeenth century. Skimming her fingertips along the shelf, she selected one volume labeled 1789.

   "The year of Blythe and Kit's wedding… and the fall of the Bastille in France," Blythe murmured. "How appropriate." Like every other movie buff with a VCR, she'd seen Charles Dickens's
A Tale of Two Cities.

   Flipping through the ledger's pages, she saw that they were written in an elegant hand. Suddenly Blythe's breath caught in her throat. There upon the yellowed document, written in bark-brown ink, were entries detailing the names of European cities, along with notations referring to the costs of art instruction, art supplies, and lodgings.

   
Ennis's grand tour!

   Then something else caught her eye. Wedged behind the row of ledgers was a worn-looking diary written in flowing penmanship and brimming with detailed descriptions of the sights and scenes of Italy.

   Had Lucas ever seen this? Blythe wondered excitedly.

   Toward the conclusion of this daybook were passages that revealed that the journal must have been the property of Garrett Teague, his cousin Ennis's traveling companion and the original Blythe's want-to-be suitor.

   
A letter from my father confirms my fears for his health.
The musty books and dusty shelves make breathing in the
shop intolerable for him, he writes, and urges me to return.
Ennis also has received a missive from Uncle Collis that caught
up with us in Naples. In it he counseled greater frugality on
our part and discloses that Blythe is with child "at last." I
was so severely affected by the news, I absented myself for
several days from Ennis's eternal carousing. I care not for the
sights or company any longer in this hot, excessive country. I
crave Cornwall's clear air, knowing that if Blythe is at least
nearby, I can be somewhat content…

"Blythe?"

   Startled by the sound of a voice in the shadows of the library, she glanced up from the diary and discovered that her host was smiling at her from the doorway.

   "Feeling better?"

   "Ah… hello… I mean, good morning, Luke," she replied, wondering if he now considered her an utter lunatic after their previous rendezvous in this very room during the wee hours. "Absolutely better. I… ah… I hope you don't mind my browsing your bookshelves? After spotting my name on your genealogy chart last night, I thought I'd have a good look at it in the light of day."

   "Not at all," he assured her, approaching the desk. "Perhaps you'll find a clue in these old ledgers to explain the connection between our two families."

   "You've caught me out." She laughed nervously, patting the tome. "I was, in actual fact, blatantly snooping, trying to see where—or if—my Bartons fit in."

   "Please… be my guest," he said, smiling. "I haven't had the patience to wade through them page by page myself, so by all means, have at them anytime. But for now, madam," he added with mock seriousness, "your kippers await, and if you don't eat them while they're hot, Mrs. Quiller will think you don't like them and her feelings will be profoundly wounded."

   Blythe quickly closed Garrett's diary and replaced it, along with the heavy family bible, on the shelf.

   "That," she said, smiling in return, "would be intolerable."

   To her relief Lucas made no further reference to their nocturnal encounter. As they walked down the hallway toward the breakfast room, a thousand questions crowded Blythe's mind.

   The Barton-Trevelyans had produced no heirs, so what had happened to Blythe's unborn child? Had the rebellious heiress had an affair with Garrett Teague as well? Could Chris and Ellie's recent betrayal of her be some sort of cosmic payback for the amorous misdeeds of her eighteenth-century counterpart? What if the key to her own peace of mind lay in uncovering what had happened in the family's tangled past?

   
This is absurd.

   What would Luke think of her mental state if she advanced some theory about a two-hundred-year-old love triangle as the possible link between their two families?

   
Good God, he'd probably evict me!

   No, the likeliest explanation for what had transpired since her arrival was that she was experiencing some sort of psychosomatic reaction, triggered by the shocking events of Christopher's adultery and their subsequent breakup—a worldclass, genealogical version of post-traumatic stress syndrome.

   
Forget the past
, she counseled herself, and for God's sake, kee
p
your distance from that bizarre genealogy chart! Focus on the future.

   Meanwhile Luke had escorted her to a sun-splashed breakfast room painted a pale shade of blue. Its coved ceiling was decorated with molded white plasterwork shaped like clamshells and feathery scrolls.

   "A bit peckish, I hope?" Luke asked as he removed the silver hood from an exquisite Wedgwood breakfast service that had kept her food warm on the sideboard.

   "You mean hungry?" She smiled, recalling that Chris's use of that odd expression used to confuse her. "Peckish" had always sounded to her as if a person
wasn't
hungry and was merely pecking at his food. In fact, the word meant "empty."

   "Partner," she drawled in her best Wyoming twang, "at this moment I could eat half a hog and the platter it came on."

   Luke exploded with laughter.

   This Englishman liked her jokes, she marveled. Perhaps she had unfairly damned an entire nation.

   "Now, that is a
hungry
lady!" Luke replied, still chuckling. "And will you be fortified enough after this substantial repast, madam, to then proceed into Gorran Haven to secure your supplies and get the lay of the land?" he inquired with mock formality. "Mrs. Q tells me you plan to abandon us for your cottage today."

   Blythe nodded, her mouth full of delicious kippers.

   His smile faded, and his glance was suddenly filled with concern.

   "Are you sure you're completely on the mend? You won't be too… isolated at the cottage?"

   "I'll be fine," she assured him.

   They exchanged looks, and Blythe had a strangely comforting sense that this man whom she had known a mere five days felt more genuine concern for her welfare than almost anyone she could think of. Furthermore her host and Mrs. Quiller had shown her more consideration since this nightmare began than all the people she'd left behind in California—combined.

   She smiled and felt some small stirring of—what? Good cheer? Perhaps it was merely a tiny flicker of happiness after inhabiting such a dark, lonely tunnel of misery this past year.

   "I know you must think I'm an emotional basket case," she began as a startled reaction flickered across his face, "but I'm hoping that the worst is behind me. I may seem like I'm the hysterical type, but actually I'm not."

   "I don't think you're the hysterical type at all," Luke said slowly. "When one is dealt a body blow, one needs time for the bruises to heal."

   "I think that's it, exactly." She nodded. "Thank you for understanding. And thanks for everything you and Mrs. Q have done to make me feel… better. And welcome," she added softly. She took another bite of kippers and added with a smile she intended to be a bit flirtatious, "And if you think that ugly green tank of yours can make it into Gorran Haven, I'd love a lift."

During the next few weeks, whenever Blythe accepted Luke's open-ended invitation to four o'clock tea at the Hall, she scrupulously avoided the library and its Barton-TrevelyanTeague genealogy chart. Likewise, she tried hard not to stare at the stark seascapes hung on the walls of her cottage. Gradually they became merely part of the furnishings.