Cottage by the Sea (41 page)

   "I'm sure you could," she replied wearily.

   "Look," he volunteered, retrieving a batch of documents from his briefcase and handing them to her, "I'm staying at some appalling little inn in Gorran Haven. I'll call you from there."

   "The Smugglers' Hotel? On Rattle Alley?" She must have driven by Ellie and Chris's lodgings on her way to see Valerie Kent.

   "That's it! Appalling."

   "It's quite nice, in fact… just rather small."

   "The baby's been whining constantly and—"

   "Please, let's not go into any of that," Blythe said quickly. "I probably won't be able to get back to you until late tomorrow—or the day after—depending on my faxing the documents to Lisa Spector, and waiting to receive her call back from her time zone to mine."

   Christopher appeared about to protest her timetable and then shrugged his shoulders. "Well, do the best you can. It's important."

   "I'm sure it is. To you."

   "Let's have dinner together tomorrow night, Blythie… or… or the day after, so you can tell me your decision. Just the two of us, of course," he added hastily, "although your sister is really anxious to see you while she's here."

   "Well, I'm not interested in seeing her," Blythe snapped, "so tell her to forget it! I'll show you the way out."

   "I'll ring you about dinner," he enthused as they passed through the front door and under the
porte cochère.

"You can't… My cottage doesn't have a phone."

   "It doesn't?" he asked, appearing amazed that the highpowered woman he had worked with so intensely for more than eleven years had completely cut herself off from the world. "What about your cell phone?"

   "The cottage is pretty much in a dead zone, thank God. It barely works in the village."

   "Well, where are you living?" he demanded with undisguised annoyance. "In a tree house?"

   "No. On a cliff. It's wonderful," she added for good measure. "I'll leave a message for you at the inn when I come up to the house tomorrow and use the landline here… that is, if I've been able to get in touch with my attorney—and if I've reached a decision."

   Christopher opened the door of the Rolls Royce a few inches and cast a glance at his pastoral surroundings.

   "Well… so far no lowlifes from the press lurking about," he laughed with another stab at his old rakish charm.

   "Not yet," she replied grimly. "However, don't be surprised if somebody from the
Gorran Gossip
asks about the dude driving the rented Rolls."

   "Have to keep up appearances, darling." Chris grinned.

   Without replying Blythe turned on her heel, reentered the castle, and restrained herself from slamming the front door.

   "He still calls you 'darling,'" said a voice from the shadows.

   "Luke!" Blythe gasped. "You startled me." She tilted her head to one side and smiled at the figure standing directly beneath a portrait of Garrett Teague painted by an artist far less skillful than Ennis Trevelyan. The plaque on the piece stated the work had been rendered in 1794, the year the bookseller assumed the stewardship of Barton Hall. "You were eavesdropping, weren't you?"

   "I just happened to walk by the open front door, wondering if the bastard had left yet."

   "Well, the bastard has—finally. I need a drink," she announced, and headed down the hallway toward the library, with Luke following along in her wake.

   "Brandy or sherry?" he asked when they had arrived in the book-lined chamber.

   "Brandy. A double."

   "What did he want?" Luke asked, his gaze glued to the crystal decanter as he poured their drinks.

   "Money. From an investment we made in Scotland years ago that I'd completely forgotten about," she replied, gratefully accepting the brandy snifter. "He wants me to sign it over to him so he can bail his picture out of bankruptcy." She gave a shaky laugh. "Can you believe it? A bunch of trees we bought in some reforestry scam is now worth more than a million bucks!"

   "Are you going to do it?" Luke asked quietly.

   "I don't know…" Blythe sighed. "I want to read the documents and show them to my lawyer."

   "It's
your
decision… not your lawyer's."

   "I know it's my decision," she said testily, "but I always run this kind of stuff by her."

   Or almost always, she thought, remembering the dressingdown she'd received from Lisa Spector for not consulting her when she and Luke signed their agreement creating Barton Hall Nurseries.

   "Why should you lift a finger to help a man who's treated you so shamefully!" Luke exclaimed, setting his glass of brandy down abruptly. "Tell him to go to bloody hell!"

   "I appreciate your sentiments," Blythe said evenly, "but it's really my decision to make."

   A muscle in Luke's jaw tightened, but he remained silent. Blythe took a sip of her brandy and played for time. Time to think. Time to sort out feelings stirred by Chris's unexpected appearance. From the moment she had set eyes on him, lounging like some pasha in Luke's sitting room, she had felt as if an unseen hand had turned up the heat on a bubbling cauldron of emotions.

   Meanwhile Luke was gazing in moody silence out the window at the setting sun. Blythe glanced up at the BartonTrevelyan-Teague family tree and searched for a safer topic of conversation.

   "Oh… guess who I saw today in Gorran Haven. Your cousin Valerie."

   "How was she?" Luke asked, and Blythe realized he was also seeking to find common ground.

   "Cheery as ever. She told me about the saga of Reverend Kent's predicting the names of the future generations of Teagues," she said casually, pointing to the center of the chart.

   "Ah… yes… the Genealogy Genie," Luke replied with barely veiled sarcasm. "All the ancients of the village will swear that their dear old grannies vowed on the Bible that this"—he gestured in the direction of the gilt-framed parchment—"was made in the late eighteenth century by the old vicar, who was imbued with extraordinary powers. They love to tell the legend of how Reverend Kent spelled out Garrett Teague's descendants for generations to come."

   "And you don't believe it?" Blythe affirmed.

   Luke shrugged and sipped his drink. "My grandmother says her grandmother insisted that the vicar of St. Goran's accurately foretold the names of those who came after Garrett, but it's preposterous, of course."

   Blythe walked closer to the chart. "But look!" she pointed out. "The calligraphy doesn't change until the year 1890. See? It's right here!"

   "Come, now, Blythe," Luke chided. "Someone in the family—perhaps late last century—probably had the chart recopied to that point in time. You know how these tales get embellished by family members as they're handed down."

   "But Valerie said—"

   "Valerie is very amusing," Luke interrupted, "and I'm extremely fond of her, but she is a bit of an eccentric, wouldn't you say? Charming, but eccentric. I tend not to rely totally on her view of things."

   Blythe didn't attempt to counter Luke's gentle ridicule of his older cousin. Instead she carefully set her glass on the silver tray and announced, "Well… as they say in Wyoming after a month-long cattle drive, 'I feel like I've been rode hard and put away wet.' I'm completely bushed. What I need is a long, hot bath and a good night's rest."

   "And time to think?" Luke said coolly. "Alone in your own bed?"

   She raised her chin an inch and met his steady glance.

   "Yes… time to think."

Blythe's face and body flushed pink and her bare skin radiated warmth as she stepped out of her bath and wrapped herself in her newly purchased terry-cloth robe. She poked around at the back of her small refrigerator and found a container of lentil soup, which she warmed in the microwave oven for dinner.

   After pouring the steaming liquid into a mug, she sat in a chair near the window, her legs curled up beneath her, and stared out over the darkened English Channel. Despite her soothing soak in the tub and the aroma of Mrs. Q's delicious soup, her stomach still was in a knot and she felt slightly nauseated—sensations she had always associated with nerveracking spells in Hollywood, not in Cornwall. Christopher Stowe suddenly turns up, and the stress and pressures she'd labored so hard to put behind her were confronting her again, full blast.

   And then there was Luke. Luke was hurt and probably a bit jealous, she mused. As a consequence, he was angry with her as well. Like any sane observer, he wondered why in the world she would even consider helping her ex-husband out of a jam, especially since the man had, in Luke's words, treated her so shamefully.

   Why
would
she consider it? she wondered. Was it a debt owed, two hundred years overdue? And due to whom?

   Her stomach gave an alarming lurch, and she wondered for a moment if all this conflict suddenly boiling up was actually making her sick. She pulled out her traveling makeup kit from the closet, rummaged around to find some Di-Gel, and popped two into her mouth.

   Yuck! She felt as if she'd suddenly been transported back to a bad day on the Paramount lot!

   Despite her firm resolve not to explore the BartonTrevelyan-Teague triangle any further without the professional guidance of Valerie Kent, her glance drifted over to the painting by Ennis Trevelyan that hung over the mantel. The bleak seascape had a kind of desolate perfection, its stark beauty saying a great deal, perhaps, about the artist's inability to people his world with warmth and human commitment.

   Blythe set her empty mug of soup on a side table and approached Ennis's work of art. Responding to some inexplicable impulse, she placed a footstool in front of the fireplace and gingerly climbed up on it.

   The painting was difficult to detach from the hook on which it rested, but eventually Blythe managed to remove it from the stone wall and lean it against the length of a standing lamp in order to have a closer look. The nearer she drew to its thick swirls of dried oil paint, the blander the colors became. Grays and creams and sage-greens blended together indistinguishably. The granite cliff Ennis had depicted jutting above Hemmick Beach could barely be differentiated from the pewter-hued water lapping at its base. She couldn't find his signature on the front, so she turned the painting around to examine the back. Then her heart skipped a beat. Scrawled in charcoal on the back of the canvas were the words "For William."

   
William?

   It was a name she'd never heard Luke mention, nor, from what she remembered of the genealogy chart, was it listed among any of the forenames of the Barton-TrevelyanTeague clans.

   Intrigued, she approached a smaller seascape hanging on a wall near the wooden easel that stood beneath the sleeping loft Luke had installed when he'd decided to rent the cottage to summer visitors. Like the painting she'd just examined—along with the larger work hanging in Luke's sitting room—this picture also depicted a lonely view of the English Channel outside her window: a study in light and dark tones on a blustering, rainy day.

   Blythe eased it down from the wall. Also scrawled on the back: "For William."

   Her eyes darted quickly about the stone chamber. On the reverse side of the painting that hung near the closet, as well as on the back of the artwork next to the entrance to the bathroom, someone's large, generous hand had also penned, "For William."

   Puzzled, Blythe restored the seascapes, one by one, to their respective places on the cottage walls. She pulled her terry-cloth robe more tightly about her shoulders to ward off a sudden chill and wondered who the person was to whom this collection of paintings had been dedicated.

   Who in the world was William? And what was he: a Barton… Trevelyan… or Teague?

Blythe awoke the next morning wondering if her good ol' Di-Gel had passed its "sell by" date and thereby lost its punch. Her stomach was still in a knot, and tea was the only possible refreshment that had any appeal. As she read through the documents concerning the sale of the Scottish forest property outside the Highland ski resort of Aviemore, she wondered worriedly if she was developing an ulcer as a result of merely setting eyes on her ex-husband again.

   As she waited for the electric kettle to boil, she heard the Land Rover honking its way across the field to her door. Young Richard Teague bounded out of the passenger side of the car, carrying a basket that Blythe suspected contained a silent peace offering from his father.

   "We've brought you some fresh scones!" Richard shouted excitedly, running toward her open front door. "They've just come out of the Aga!"

   "Did you and your dad make them?" she teased, casting a friendly wave in Luke's direction. He responded with a look of immense relief and waved back.

   "No," Richard replied seriously, "they're Mrs. Q's, but Daddy and I wrapped them up and brought them to you, didn't we, Daddy?"

   "Well, you're both very sweet." She smiled and gave his slender shoulders an affectionate hug. "I've just put the kettle on… C'mon in."

   As Blythe busied herself organizing their morning tea, Luke showed his son some of the additional drawings Blythe had made for the newly expanded herb garden. She had propped various versions of the proposed layout against Ennis Trevelyan's two-hundred-year-old easel.