Cottage by the Sea (38 page)

   "I suppose he could have me hung on a nearby tree, if he wished," Ennis snapped. "Haven't you gotten it through your stubborn head, yet, Blythe? Christopher Trevelyan is the master of our worlds! You are his property and I am now merely a cuckolding rogue, no longer entitled to my brother's largesse… an outlaw on my father's land. An outcast second son among what passes for society around here. What bloody fool nonsense it all is!" he said with disgust. "I'll be glad to see the last of all of you!"

   "Ennis!" Blythe exclaimed, shaken to be included among those he appeared to despise most. "But what about…?" She was too mortified by his tirade to finish her question.

   "What about us, you were about to say?" He laughed mirthlessly. "What about our supposed summer idyll in Painter's Cottage? Pray, don't make me ill with protestations of love! I don't think I could stomach it!"

   He slammed shut a drawer and began to rummage in the armoire that stood against a nearby wall.

   "But I did love you!" she protested hotly. "I always did… you know that! I even wrote you of my… longings for you in the letters I dispatched to Italy—"

   "You preferred me to my pockmarked brother," he interrupted curtly, not even deigning to look at her, "A judgment with which I certainly concur. However, shall we be brutally honest with each other at last, my dear? We have merely served as diversions for one another in this backwater, and that is about the extent of it."

   "That's not true!" Blythe protested.

   "Well, 'tis true for me," he said bluntly.

   "But your letters to me swore—?"

   "It amused me to describe my travels to you." He shrugged. "I assumed you'd save the letters and I thought one day I might publish a book to enhance my lot as a painter. 'An English Artist Abroad,'" he added, sketching the outlines of the imagined volume in the air. "I suppose I expressed some mild endearments out of a twinge or two of guilt… and so you'd tuck those missives away safely, until I might have need of them."

   Blythe stared at him, dumbfounded. He had asked to read the letters only a fortnight ago and then had failed to return them.

   "So you never held any affection for me at all?" she concluded dully.

   "Not true," he replied with a sardonic glance. "I very much liked your performance in the feathers."

   "I suppose it 'amused' you," she said slowly. "Much like your writing to me about the sights in Italy."

   "It stimulated me," he said, eyeing her critically. "And it kept me from abusing myself between visits to the trollops in the Via Veneto."

   "Why are you being so wretched to me?" Blythe asked in a low voice.

   "I? Being wretched to you, you ignorant chit!" he said between clenched teeth. "And what do you suppose my life will likely be from here on out?" he demanded, slamming the cupboard door. "I am to leave with only the money I have now in my pocket," he said, taking a threatening step toward her. "I may not have a horse on which to ride to Plymouth. My line of credit has been withdrawn. I may not even retrieve my brushes and paints from the cottage!" He stared at her coldly, adding, "And the worst of it is that I will be prevented from doing what I was born to do—which is paint, not to serve some pompous captain on a ship."

   "Kit can't mean to be so cruel," she cried. "I shall bring your palette and brushes to you!"

   "And you shall be apprehended by the guards he has posted in the field behind the stone hedges, you simpleton! Because of you," Ennis shouted, losing all semblance of control, "I am to have nothing of my patrimony! Get out of my sight!"

   "But those are Kit's decrees, not mine!" she cried, stung by his invective. "Why not direct your venom at him?"

   "Because if I do," Ennis said in a low, menacing voice, "he will have me shot… and then where shall I be? At least this way I have the satisfaction of venting my spleen, and I may yet remain breathing—and perhaps find some means to make my way for a while in the Royal Navy."

   "And, pray, have you not a care what will happen to me?" Blythe asked brokenly, her hand on the latch. "I am with child. I carry your babe, Ennis!"

   "If, in fact, you do, you scheming wench," he said in clipped tones that signified he considered this a shopworn ploy, "I assure you, it means absolutely nothing to me."

   And in the very marrow of her bones, Blythe knew this to be true.

In the end, due to Garrett's persuasion, Kit sent one of the men from the estate to Plymouth with Ennis's brushes, paints, and wooden artist's palette wrapped in a length of canvas. Blythe learned from backstairs gossip delivered by the scullery maid who brought her food each day to the cottage that the master's brother had got himself a berth on a navy frigate whose duty it was to patrol the English Channel looking out for marauding French ships.

   "Oh, those Frenchies are bad 'uns, to be sure!" Mary Ann exclaimed as she poured a small pail of something resembling soup into the kettle that hung on an iron bar over Blythe's hearth. "I heard Master say their armies have invaded the Low Countries, now that they've chopped off the heads of their king and queen. They'll be on our coast next, 'tis what we all fear," she said, peering nervously out the window that faced the sea.

   A sharp November wind, pregnant with rain and sleet, rattled all the windows and brought drafts whistling through the tiniest chinks in Painter's Cottage.

   Kit had sent word that Blythe was not to light any candles at night to draw attention to the location of an estate ripe for attack. Occasionally when hungry French seamen on patrol saw a chance to wade ashore in Cornwall, they stole whatever stores they could lay their hands on and retreated like streaks of lightning back to their ships.

   By early February, eight months pregnant and perpetually chilled to the bone, Blythe had reached her limit. But when she ventured inside the library at Barton Hall, all she got for her troubles was a husband who slashed his brother's portrait to shreds and threatened her with the point of his sword.

   "Go ahead," Blythe shouted back at Kit, whose disheveled appearance and wild eyes had driven her past caring that he might run her through with the weapon he was brandishing. "Have
murder
on your conscience as well!"

   "And what pricks
your
conscience, you bloated harlot?" Kit said derisively. He allowed his sword to fall to his side while he reached with his other hand for a half-empty bottle of contraband brandy, taking a pull. "Anything at all?"

   Blythe inched around the desk in order to put the piece of furniture between her and her ranting spouse. Her fingers brushed against the handle of the top drawer. Perhaps Kit still kept his pistols there, she thought suddenly. Her husband took another drink, tilting his head back and allowing her enough time to slide out the drawer and curl her fingers around one of the guns. By the time Kit replaced the bottle on the table, she had leveled the unwieldy weapon and cocked the hammer. A matching pistol remained in the drawer. She seized it with her other hand, letting it dangle heavily by her side.

   "I shall thank you not to call me disgusting names," she said grimly. "And furthermore, I no longer intend to freeze to death in that hovel by the sea. I shall have the baby… our baby, as far as the world knows… in Barton Hall in the bloody Barton Bed, like every other Barton who ever saw the light of day!"

   "You shall not remain under my roof!" Kit shouted, lifting his sword and pointing it at her heart. "I forbid it, slut!"

   "'Tis
my
roof, you thieving scoundrel!" Blythe shrieked, taking aim with the pistol.

   "Stop it, you two!" demanded a voice from the opposite side of the library.

   Garrett Teague, white-faced, stood framed in the doorway. Simultaneously Blythe and Kit turned to stare. "By all that's holy, you both sound as if you're eight years old and arguing over a turn at draughts!"

   Kit lowered his arm and once again allowed the sword to thump against his thigh.

   Meanwhile the pistol in Blythe's hand began to tremble as a lightning bolt of pain, sharp as the point of her husband's weapon, slashed through her midsection.

   "Ohhh!" she gasped, leaning heavily against the desk.

   "Blythe!" Garrett said urgently. "What's wrong? You've gone white as a ghost."

   The two pistol barrels fell with a thud upon the desktop, yet Blythe held on to the weapons for dear life.

   "Oh… God! Ohhh…" She stared with terror-stricken eyes at the man who had served as her perpetual rescuer and friend, despite her transgressions. "Help me…" she moaned as a gush of bloody water pooled at her feet. "Dear God, help me! The babe! 'Twill come on fast now!"

   Garrett moved across the room in a few short strides. "Tell Mistress Tinney to fetch the midwife," he ordered Kit as if he, not his cousin, were the lord of the manor. He scooped Blythe's unwieldy form into his arms.

   "The by-blow's not due till March or April," Kit rejoined in a hectoring tone. "I'll not have the chit—"

   "Oh, bloody hell, Kit Trevelyan!" Garrett shouted. "All this shrying's brought on the babe early, you dolt! Do as I say!"

   "I'm master here," Kit said stubbornly, his eyes riveted on the look of abject anguish contorting his wife's features. "Take her to the cottage. She'll have her bastard there!"

   "Then at least tell someone to send for the midwife, blast you!" Garrett said furiously, and shouldered his way out the door with Blythe moaning in his arms.

Blythe had few memories of being transported back to Painter's Cottage, except for a faint recollection that she continued to clutch the two pistols in a death grip against her chest as Garrett carried her down Hall Walk in the rain. Nor did she clearly recall the moment her baby was born. She was, however, acutely aware that she was buried in a cave of pain. It was a cavern whose walls were alive with flames that burned so fiercely, she thought at times that she had died in childbirth and had woken up in hell.

   She dimly remembered Garrett sponging the sweat off her brow, and forcing her to drink sips of water from time to time. He seemed to disappear for long periods, and then he returned to the head of the bed, exhorting her in words she barely heard. She felt him tie her ankles to the bottom bedposts. Someone kept screaming, and then the searing knife of pain that was tearing at her belly suddenly abated. A strange silence fell inside the stone cottage. Then the screaming began anew, this time the high wails of a hungry child. And when Garrett held the babe next to her face to show it was alive, he was weeping with relief and triumph, and his arms were covered in blood. Her blood. Garrett Teague had served as midwife and sole witness to her private agony.

   No help had been summoned.

   The next morning she awoke to see Garrett's face swimming before her eyes. Slowly her vision cleared and she smiled.

   "You needn't play the bookseller any longer," she whispered, accepting a sip of water from a cup Garrett held to her parched lips. "I shall propose you for the post of village midwife… although I doubt Kit will allow it."

   Amazingly enough, the following day her estranged husband suddenly appeared at the cottage door. Reluctantly Garrett had left her side to run all the way in a miserable downpour to Gorran Haven. There he hoped to hire a lass from the village to come look after her as she convalesced.

   Blythe had been dozing when Kit shut the door against the howling storm outside. She opened her eyes to the sight of his pockmarked face staring down at her.

   "So you both live, I see," he said, gazing with hostile curiosity at her matted hair and haggard face. He shifted his glance to the sleeping baby crooked in her arm.

   "Pray, begone," she murmured listlessly.

   "I waited behind the gate until I saw Garrett depart. I won't brook his interference with—"

   "Begone, I said!" she demanded with an infusion of strength prompted by her fresh recollection that he had refused to send for the midwife. "Garrett saved my life, when you only wished me dead! What you've done is unforgivable!"

   "And what of you!" he rejoined. "Few husbands could muster much forgiveness after seeing you, as I have all winter, ripe with my brother's child. It has made me… not myself," he said thickly.

   "I nearly died!" she exclaimed. "You know full well, 'twas murder you had in your heart, though what magistrate in these parts would have come to my aid, I wonder?"

   "Can't you understand?" Kit mumbled, running an agitated hand through his unkempt hair. "It has driven me quite mad, all this." He glanced down at the newborn, and his features hardened. "The fruit of your lust for my brother mocks me, even in its innocence."

   "Oh, a pox on you, and I mean that most sincerely," she spat contemptuously, "for if you cannot bear the sight of this child… I assuredly cannot bear the sight of you!"

   The last thing Blythe expected to see was Christopher Trevelyan's eyes suddenly fill with tears. He turned away and appeared to gaze at the forlorn seascape that hung over the rough stone fireplace. Slowly his eyes drifted around the dimly lit cottage, taking stock, she supposed, of the other paintings she had hung on the walls since Ennis had left. The pictures soothed her, somehow, although perhaps they served as salt in Kit's wounds. If they did, it mattered not one whit anymore, she thought savagely.

   "Well, then," he said coldly, turning toward the bed where she lay upon the straw-filled mattress. He appeared to have regained some measure of composure and now spoke in a dull monotone. "I suppose, therefore, I must inform you that I shall be leaving for London as soon as the storm abates."