Cottage by the Sea (5 page)

not Barton Castle?"

   "That's all part of the Gold Star Tour I'll be giving you this afternoon," he said dryly. "In with you now, before you're frozen solid. Casual clothes are all we ever wear down here," he informed her, and she wondered if he thought his
très gauche
American tenant might mistakenly wear her prom dress to tea. "And may I suggest you don a jumper… or, rather, a sweater, when you come up to the house?"

   "You don't have heat?" Blythe suppressed a gasp.

   "In the family rooms, yes," Lucas Teague replied with chilly courtesy. "I'm afraid we don't heat all fifty-seven chambers anymore. However, I thought you might like to have a look at more than just the castle's sitting room during your visit this afternoon." He nodded through her open door in the direction of the cottage's interior. "There's a fire laid with driftwood kindling. It should warm you up straightaway. And there should be plenty of hot water. It's quite pleasant when one sits in the bath and gazes out the window, or at those seascapes hanging on the walls."

   Blythe looked blankly at the tanned, exceedingly attractive countenance of her urbane landlord.

   "Seascapes? I don't think I even turned on a light before I crawled into bed last night," she admitted. His description of cozily bathing by the window overlooking the Channel, surrounded by marvelous art, had the ring of someone who had indulged in such decadent pleasures.
Who with? she wondered
. Mrs. Teague, one hoped—if there were such a person.

   "Well, do have a look at them," Lucas advised briskly over his shoulder as he headed toward his dented Land Rover. "They were all painted by an eighteenth-century ancestor of mine… on the Trevelyan side. Not bad, for an amateur artist. The cottage was built for him by his brother in the

early 1790s."

   And before Blythe could shut the door against the biting wind, Lucas Teague fired up his lumbering four-wheeled vehicle and steered it up the winding track, honking his way through the cluster of sheep blocking his path.

   Blythe turned, reentered the cottage, and gazed around the room at the series of paintings depicting the very same coastline that lay directly outside her windows. The artist had ably captured the distinctive jade-green light and crystal white that can sometimes illuminate the rolling surf just before it breaks onto shore.

   Slowly she walked toward the largest painting framed above the massive fireplace. She noticed that all the seascapes had one thing in common: nary a person, nor a boat, nor even a seagull had been rendered by the artist who had pictured these lonely shores. Her studied gaze performed like a camera lens, zooming in on the thick swirls of color that this long-forgotten painter had slathered onto his canvas some two hundred years ago. Her scrutiny magnified the painting's whorls in such detail that she felt she could almost see their molecules.

   Then the sea-foam greens and jade hues began to swim before her eyes. Fighting a peculiar sense of dread, she extended her hand to touch the dried, corrugated oils so that she might somehow be grounded to the physical world and banish the light-headedness that threatened to blank her vision altogether.

   She really must never, ever drink whiskey on an empty stomach, she advised herself sternly.

   A rustling sound—or rather, the sense that there was some sort of
presence
lurking behind her—caused her to turn suddenly in place and stare at a wooden easel that she hadn't even noticed had been part of the cottage's decor. More than five feet high, it stood in a dim corner under the loft. For an instant she imagined that next to it she saw a shadowy hand holding an artist's brush saturated with green paint the color of jade. Just as quickly, she determined that there was only the stout wooden easel standing there picturesquely inside Painter's Cottage, and that, like the world evoked by the barren seascape hanging over the fireplace, she was very much alone.

I
n typical Cornish fashion the weather had changed abruptly by mid afternoon. The dark, rain-filled clouds that had greeted Blythe's arrival in the West Country quickly vanished and were replaced by benign puffs of white that drifted across a Wedgwood-blue sky.

   Blythe set out for Barton Hall dressed in jeans and an ivory cable-knit turtleneck sweater. She walked along the public footpath that skirted the cliff side meadow, glancing back briefly at the sight of Painter's Cottage perched dramatically at its edge. She could hear the surf crashing on the narrow beach below, accompanied by friendly shrieks from gulls circling overhead. Wisps of smoke drifted from the chimney, the remnants of the crackling fire she'd carefully banked before her departure. Just as Lucas Teague suggested, she had soaked for an hour in piping-hot water while surveying the spectacular coastline in naked privacy.

   A Bathtub with a View, she thought, smiling to herself as she reached the far corner of the grassy field. For the first time in months her spirits began to rise.

   She shut the gate carefully, not wishing to be responsible for the escape of any of the sheep that were her new neighbors. Cautiously she looked in both directions for vehicles driving on the left side of the road.

   "Do, please, avoid the Dead Yank syndrome, darling," Christopher had chided her on their first trip to England together. "The civilized world drives on the left."

   Resolutely she darted across the narrow road that separated the coastline properties of Barton Hall from its principal holdings. Near a brambly hedge at the entrance to the next field, an iron sign enameled white and embossed with black letters beckoned her to follow another public pathway called, appropriately enough, Hall Walk.

   She climbed gingerly over a wooden stile that consisted of four spiraling steps cleverly designed to allow humans access to the field while keeping four-legged animals from getting out on the road. A second metal sign directed her to make a right turn. Within moments she had plunged into a kind of leafy mine shaft, thick with English oak and dense underbrush, where dappled sunlight filtered through the trees that arched overhead. Enclosed in this cool, green, shadowed habitat, she suddenly had the giddy sensation that she was like the White Rabbit in the animated version of
Alice in
Wonderland,
diving into an underground lair.

   Then she halted in her tracks.

   There I go again! she thought crossly. Everything in my life can't be a potential movie scene!

   As usual, she was observing the world through a designer's eye, rather than simply living. It was an occupational hazard, she supposed. On some crucial level, however, she sensed that her habit of seeing daily events as fodder for some future film had a way of bleeding some of the joy and spontaneity out of her everyday life.

   
I'm in Cornwall! I'm not scouting locations. I'm here. It's beau
tiful… and that's enough.

   On her left, fifty yards down the path, the gnarled roots of an enormous oak had pushed up thick tentacles from the moist ground, forming a large hollow some three feet in diameter. She leaned forward to have a closer look, concluding that an Irish leprechaun or Cornish "pisky" would find this space a suitable abode. Or perhaps even the White Rabbit himself.

   Old habits were hard to break, she mused.

   Impulsively Blythe shed her indestructible dark-green Barbour jacket—another present from Chris that first trip—and placed it on the ground. Feeling like a mischievous five-year-old hiding from her nanny, she then squeezed inside the vaulted space that was blanketed with cozy moss so intensely green it seemed almost psychedelic. She had just enough room above her head to sit, legs crossed Indian style, like a happy Hobbit in a sheltering forest home.

   This is a bit much, she thought, amused by her childish antics as she strafed her fingertips along the velvet-clad roots that formed her woodland cave. In this magical forest an uplifting harmony seemed to prevail—proof of a wholeness in the natural world that seemed to soothe and assuage her wounded soul. As if to confirm this hypothesis, a plump brown rabbit leaped across the path to her right, followed by a bounding gray squirrel that appeared to be not so much its pursuer as its playmate.

   Reluctantly Blythe glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes past four. She pulled herself to her feet and dusted off her jacket. A gentle coolness enveloped her as her new walking shoes trod along the tufted emerald path that led through this enchanted wooded world of bright ferns, twisting vines, and ivy-cloaked tree trunks.

   
A thousand shades of green.

   The phrase rang in her head, and the incredible beauty of her surroundings lifted her spirits another notch. As she slowly inhaled the soft Cornish afternoon air, the thought came to her that time spent here—with her feet planted in the soil of her probable forebears, her lungs filled with gentle breezes blowing off the sea—might purify the wells of bitterness and remorse she now realized ran deep.

   As she peered ahead, her euphoria swiftly began to evaporate.

   "It's always something, isn't it?" she exclaimed aloud.

   The leafy tunnel, its shadows warmed every few feet by shafts of sage-green light, angled sharply upward. As far as Blythe could determine, there appeared to be no way to avoid climbing the steep, challenging hill that stood between her and her destination, Barton Hall.

Lucas Teague kept his head down and sank his shovel into the shrinking pile of manure. He worked at an even clip, tossing his cargo into the wheelbarrow he'd parked at the entrance to the pony stalls.

   He could only speculate what his former English tutor at Cambridge would think if he could see him mucking about like a field hand. His palms now were thickly callused— certainly not a "gentleman's hands" any longer. Half an hour earlier he had even shed his work shirt, reveling in the season's first gloriously warm day. The languorous sensation of the sun's rays beating down on his bare back made him think of the sun-drenched beach on the island of Corfu, in Greece, where he and Lindsay…

   He brought himself up short and pitched the shovel deep into the remnants of the dung heap as he heard his three remaining Cornish ponies snorting in their stalls. The necessity of becoming physically involved in the running of the estate had its good points, he reminded himself wryly. It kept him reasonably fit and his mind off the sorry state of his personal life. Furthermore he had discovered during these last years that he actually enjoyed the physical labor of chores like these quite as much as he did calculating hay yields, supervising the sheep and cattle production, and attending meetings of the local council of neighboring landowners.

   Now if only he could somehow sort out his fiscal worries and find a practical solution to getting Barton Hall back on sound financial footing in the wake of higher taxes and the great gale that had wreaked havoc throughout his estate and the entire Duchy of Cornwall. His patchwork attempts to reduce staff and depend on summer lets to keep the place afloat were clearly becoming untenable.

   Damn the Inland Revenue! he cursed silently. One simply accepted the weather.

   His thoughts drifted to his first glimpse of his new tenant, Blythe Stowe. The rent she paid for Painter's Cottage would at least improve his cash flow.

   From the very first he had been curious about the woman. After all, from the information he'd had at hand, she sounded highly intriguing, and Lord knew, he was due for a little excitement.

   However, Luke's prospects for pleasant female companionship had been severely diminished by the sight of his tenant's unruly mass of auburn hair and her tousled appearance when she stood at the door of the old cottage that morning. Nice, coltish figure, he remembered appreciatively, but he hoped to Christ she didn't turn out to be a problem. He would have sworn that the woman was suffering from a monumental hangover! If she turned out to be a bit of a boozer, that certainly would be a disappointment.

   Deep in thought, Luke gazed toward the sea. Life in the West Country was picturesque, to be sure, but that it was frightfully devoid of homegrown females of his age and stage in life was an understatement. He'd been overjoyed to be informed by telephone that morning from the businesslike Ms. Spector that her client would be staying the entire summer. His hopes had been that while the American's rents would replenish his coffers, her person might provide some pleasant company after the depressing last years he'd endured as the impecunious heir to a faltering estate.

   Suddenly he smiled at the notion of his summer tenant at Painter's Cottage making small talk during tea with the London houseguest he had invited to visit Barton Hall in a few weeks' time. This patrician family friend of long standing was nothing if not a keen observer of any female competition. Even so Chloe had been remarkably patient with him and a veritable brick when it came to dealing with certain domestic matters. Surely they both recognized that the time was upon them when they either would take their relationship to a higher level—or call it quits.

   Luke tossed his shovel aside and resolutely pushed the barrow in the direction of the walled garden where old Quiller was laboriously hoeing the few vegetable beds committed to this year's kitchen garden.