Cottage by the Sea (36 page)

   "He probably didn't want to chronicle bad news," Blythe noted dryly.

   "He does say, though, that he felt terrible remorse for having wed them." The psychologist handed her visitor a cup of tea. "I don't suppose Luke told you about any of this business relating to the genealogy chart? In the diary, the vicar lists the names of Teague-family descendants far beyond his and Garrett's own life spans, into the last quarter of the nineteenth century."

   "Holy cow!" Blythe exclaimed. "You mean he really, truly
predicted
Garrett's future descendants?"

   "So it would appear. In his diary he says that his visions in the mirror foretold the identity of Garrett's succeeding heirs, right up to the year 1889, if memory serves me."

   "Luke never mentioned this," Blythe responded slowly. "But, then, I don't think Luke gives much credence to the matters we've been discussing."

   "I rather imagine you're right," Valerie chuckled. "Luke thinks the story that Reverend Kent forecast the future of Barton Hall is just so much family lore. He even suspects some great-great-uncle of mine faked the diary as part of a party prank."

   "What do you think?" asked Blythe. "Is the diary genuine? Can you tell if it was written in the eighteenth century—and not in the late nineteenth or early twentieth?"

   Valerie shrugged. "You must have a look at it yourself sometime. It appears genuine enough to me… the style of the leather binding… the type of paper… certainly the brown ink. I suppose one could have it tested to verify its age."

   "Does the diary predict all the names of Garrett's future descendants correctly?"

   "Name for name," Valerie confirmed. "The vicar claims in his diary that he simply copied everything he saw in the scrying mirror onto the genealogy chart. He apparently wanted to reassure the impecunious Garrett Teague that his line—and Barton Hall—would continue down the generations—or at least until the 1890s."

   "I noticed on the chart that Garrett Teague ultimately married," Blythe said softly.

   "About five years after he inherited the Barton-Trevelyan estate in 1794."

   "Garrett inherited Barton Hall more than two hundred years ago! Amazing…"

   "Circles within circles," Valerie commented obliquely. Then she looked across the desk intently. "Blythe… the images you've seen thus far haven't involved a certain twentieth-first century woman named Blythe Barton Stowe, have they?"

   "No… just the past."

   "Would you like to see what else we might learn if I hypnotized you today?"

   Blythe put her cup of tea on Valerie's desktop. "You mean staring into your crystal ball again?" she asked apprehensively. "But haven't we agreed that all this probably hasn't anything to do with any past life of mine? I'm just eavesdropping, somehow, on the long-forgotten lives of others—maybe my ancestors. How could past-life therapy be of any help?"

   "Perhaps we could call this psycho-genealogy therapy!" Valerie chuckled, and then she grew pensive. "It's possible that we've stumbled on a new type of treatment. One where we try to understand your present dilemmas through learning firsthand what happened to the ancestors in your bloodline. Perhaps certain events were set in motion during the first Blythe Barton's day that have echoed down through the generations to your branch of the family?"

   "If it's really my branch," Blythe reminded the psychologist doubtfully.

   "We could see if putting you under again could tell us if your experiences here in Cornwall support or refute the theory of genetic, dynastic memory."

   "I don't know…" Blythe murmured doubtfully. "I don't much like the feeling that I'm becoming some sort of paranormal guinea pig."

   Valerie remained silent, looking at her questioningly.

"Oh, what the hell…" Blythe agreed with reluctance.

   Eagerly Valerie opened a desk drawer and retrieved a dark blue velvet bag that appeared to contain something spherical. Then she placed a small brass stand decorated with a circle of three sea horses on the desktop. Their curved heads provided a cradle for the luminescent solid crystal globe, which Dr. Kent carefully withdrew from the pouch and gently placed within the perimeter.

   "There we are," Valerie said, unable to hide her enthusiasm. She smiled encouragingly. "Come, now, Blythe! Your people were adventurous enough to travel all the way out to the Wild West! Aren't you willing to give it another go?"

   Blythe inhaled deeply, then blew the air from her lungs and shrugged. "Okay… but first let's finish our tea."

A
boy of about eleven years old burst into the smoky interior of the Pope's Head Inn, a hostelry known for strong spirits and indifferent food on Plymouth's waterfront.

   "The
Mirador's
been sighted, sir!" he said excitedly to Kit Trevelyan. "Just comin' into Sutton Pool. She's lowerin' her sails, and she should be tied up on the west quay in not more'n an hour."

   Kit rewarded the young lookout with a few coins as Blythe pulled her cloak tightly around her shoulders and made a pretense of tying its neck ribbons more securely. She surveyed the other travelers lounging in the drafty, smokefilled room overlooking a narrow street near the Plymouth wharves. It seemed impossible that she and Kit should finally be awaiting the arrival of her former lover to disembark from a Spanish ship after an absence of nearly three years.

   
My former lover.

   Blythe felt a sudden sense of bitterness, a feeling she thought she had subdued long ago. By midmorning on her wedding day, her would-be rescuer, Garrett Teague, had been commanded to hastily pack his small trunk and to assume the role of unpaid traveling companion to his cousin, the gentleman-artist. By the time her marriage vows had been forced from her lips, the pair left on horseback and had been halfway to this very port, bound for France.

   There had been no way for her to dispatch a message to Garrett with the urgent news that she had been willing, in the end, to flee with him from Cornwall to America. By week's end the youthful travelers were en route to Italy on a grand tour of the Continent, and had been leisurely soaking up European culture on a journey that lasted thirty-six months.

   "Shall I ring for more sherry?" Kit inquired of Blythe politely, startling her from her reverie. "I'll wager 'twill be of no good purpose to await Ennis and Garrett in this mizzle," he added, nodding toward a small grime-encrusted window that looked out from a private room reserved for entertaining ladies with an appropriate escort. The fine mist descending on bustling Looe Street outside looked as if it might soon turn into serious rain. "If we depart in twenty minutes' time, 'twill be soon enough to greet them as they come down the gangway."

   Blythe nodded and responded in as normal a tone as she could muster. "Some more sherry would be lovely, thank you."

   "Are you sure you're warm enough?" Kit asked Blythe anxiously. "You feel well enough to go down to the quay, do you, having made the journey thus far?"

   She graced her husband with a faint smile, making a customary effort to match his considerate demeanor.

   "I'm perfectly well, thank you," she assured him.

   Much had changed, at least on the surface, since their misbegotten wedding night in 1789 and the death of their baby daughter just last autumn. Angela Trevelyan had been an infant conceived in holy wedlock, but bleak misery. The sickly child had greeted her new life without the will to survive and had expired three weeks following her birth.

   Recalling her firstborn's fleeting existence, Blythe ventured to ask, "Had you written Ennis about little Angela? Does he know that she…?"

   "I believe Father informed him you were… uh… expecting a child," he replied stiffly. "I wrote him of our shared grief at Da's passing so soon after we lost our little angel—"

   "I see." Blythe nodded. "I expect we'll have many bits of news to catch up on."

   Oddly, the death of their baby daughter had led to Kit's showing heartfelt concern for his wife's recovery and a genuine grief over the loss of the child. Blythe had found herself reconciled to the fact that, if she couldn't love her ill-favored husband, at least his wretched, interfering father had blessedly departed this life and she could at least treat Kit more kindly.

   After all, she reasoned, the pockmarks disfiguring his face and body weren't of his doing. Therefore she'd tried her utmost to accept their presence as one would a nasty gale or other force of nature. One merely strove to survive with fortitude and soldiered on.

   Following the passing of Kit's father and Blythe's shift in her own behavior, the resulting change in her husband's attitude had been astonishing. He did everything humanly possible to please his young wife. He showered her with thoughtful gifts: silk fabric from France, a stalwart Cornish pony, complete with a new sidesaddle and well-oiled leather bridle.

   Blythe had responded with a valiant show of appreciation and soon discovered that if she behaved with a minimum of courtesy, Kit refrained from his nocturnal drinking and ceased demanding his conjugal rights as often. At length the couple appeared to have reached a polite accommodation.

   There was no denying that life at Barton Hall had become infinitely more tolerable, even if it was deadly dull in the absence of Ennis and Garrett. And now with the splenetic Collis Trevelyan banished to his grave in St. Goran's churchyard, Kit and Blythe had embarked on a small building project.

   And the beauty of it all, Blythe thought, sipping her sherry as she gazed through the window in the direction of the Plymouth wharves, was that Kit thought Painter's Cottage was all his idea.

   "Ennis has secured another painting commission," her husband had disclosed one afternoon in March following the delivery of a missive from his brother, posted from Naples.

   "'Tis to be a seascape of Capri and environs for Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy in Naples. Now that I've assured Ennis I will provide him with a yearly stipend, he says he's willing to come home as soon as 'tis finished, however," Kit had continued carefully, "he insists he'll be removing to London following his return. He says he doesn't want to complicate our lives by being underfoot."

   "Ummm." Blythe nodded with apparent indifference. But her mind was racing.

   Ennis would soon be home!

   Kit, however wary of his brother's charm with the ladies in general and Blythe in particular, continued to be ignorant of the days of passion Blythe had spent with Ennis preceding her wedding. Since Ennis's departure, she had managed to subdue her longing for him like a banked fire on the hearth in the library—quiet and unobtrusive, but dangerously capable of bursting into flame in the event dry tinder was to be tossed onto the coals.

   Blythe thought of the small cache of Ennis's letters from Italy that she had hidden, for safety's sake, soon after her trusted housekeeper had delivered them to her hands. In her former lover's most recent correspondence he, too, had informed her he intended to live in London upon his return.

   "It would be best to make my home in the capital, considering all that has passed between us."

   The notion of being caged forever at Barton Hall while the only man she'd ever loved made his home permanently so far away from Cornwall was unthinkable!

   "'Tis a pity if Brother Ennis should abandon us for London," Blythe had responded casually to her husband. "Weren't you hoping he would assume some of the burden for supervising Trevelyan House?"

   "That I was," he admitted glumly.

   Mustering a look of concern for Kit's welfare, she added, "I suppose you're aware that your tenant there behaves like a pig, or so the maids tell me. Your father's study, I hear, has been used as a shooting gallery when that scoundrel's in his cups. Apparently he allowed a quarter of the hay to rot in the rain before he got around to mowing."

   "Too true." Kit had nodded unhappily. "But what possible incentive could there be for Ennis to lend us a hand? His mind is set on continuing to paint…"

   "And there's certainly no chamber at Trevelyan House that would serve as a suitable working place for an artist," Blythe had quickly agreed. "None of the rooms are large enough to accommodate his easel, nor can the canvases be positioned to allow for proper light."

   "As you say… a pity," Kit had sighed worriedly, for the hay yield on the rest of the estate had been sparse, despite his best efforts to gather it in before the seasonal downpours.

   Blythe realized full well that Kit might eventually be forced by tight financial circumstances to involve himself in smuggling—like his father before him. Such illicit endeavors were against Kit's basic inclinations, and, besides, they exposed the family to considerable risk, thanks to the increased activity of the customs men. A far preferable solution would be to have Trevelyan House run more profitably by a member of the family.

   "When Ennis lives in London, he'll miss painting on that sweep of land above Hemmick Cove, I'll wager," Blythe had ventured. "The light's ideal there, didn't he always say?"

   "Aye…" Kit replied thoughtfully.

   "'Tis a shame that there's no watchtower on the cliff, or a sheep shed… something that you could convert to a painter's hut… to offer Ennis a place of his very own in exchange for looking after Trevelyan House and those surrounding fields. He wouldn't be intruding on our lives, certainly, if he lived at his father's former home and painted down there by Hemmick Cove, would he? And on the plus side, he'd be able to relieve you of some of the heavy burdens you've had to shoulder. After all," she added with a soft pat to his sleeve, "you've granted him a generous annual stipend. Ennis stands to profit handsomely from your hard work over the years."