Cottage by the Sea (50 page)

   "Oh… so you accept my proposal," Blythe said softly, allowing the ivory-handled pistol to fall to her side. "You shall not proclaim me harlot to the world. And William here shall be adopted as your heir, is that agreed?"

   "If I do this, you must understand one thing," Kit replied dully. "I shall have nothing more to do with him… or with you."

   "Are you, or are you not, accepting my proposal?" Blythe demanded with renewed irritation.

   "I shall see to the legalities," he mumbled, his expression glazed with bitterness. Kit's gaze returned to the infant lying on the bed. "And, pray, why have you not called him Ennis and made my shame complete? I've not heard the name William among the Bartons or Trevelyans."

   "'Tis in honor of William Shakespeare," Blythe announced without further explanation. "I've loved the sonnets since I was a young girl."

   Kit merely cast a sour look and she very much doubted that Kit could tolerate the additional affront of learning that she had read every one of the Bard's love poems during Ennis's long painting sojourn in Italy. She'd often included some of her favorite lines in her illicit letters to him. She scanned her husband's furrowed, discontented brow and demanded crisply, "Is it also agreed between us, then, that I shall reside in Barton Hall and determine its policies? Half the gain of it shall be yours, if you wish," she added as an afterthought, hoping to mollify his pride so that they might forge some sort of truce.

   "Trevelyan House remains solely mine," Kit insisted with the first show of resolve he had mustered since the moment his wife had threatened him with her pistol.

   "Agreed. However," Blythe intervened swiftly, "everything of Ennis's shall be put in my charge. His paintings, his books, his personal effects. You shall not be troubled with a single possession that belonged to your brother. I shall keep everything safe until his return."

   "You are a hard, willful woman, Blythe Barton," Kit said in a low voice. "You leave a man hardly a shred of dignity."

   "I grant you no honor because you don't possess a manly mien," she replied coldly, regretting that she had yielded him anything of Barton Hall. "You would leave a woman to die. Not to put too fine a point on it, you are no gentleman."

   "I told you before," he said, staring into the glowing coals near his feet, "this… this tangled coil has made me not myself. You and Ennis have driven me to it."

   "'Tis at your father's door all this is to be laid."

   "He is dead. I am alive… and I must live each day without a wife or heir."

   "We shall be happily ensconced next door," she said sardonically. "And if you are very kind, we might eventually reach a companionable accommodation."

   "And when Ennis returns?" Kit demanded. He turned his head to meet her gaze, his eyes alight with accusation.

   "Ennis is an artist," Blythe said curtly. "I have learned, to my sorrow, that one cannot expect such men to observe society's strictures." She glanced at her portrait, which still stood on the wooden easel in a shadowy corner under the eaves. "Whatever you or I may wish of him, he invariably does as he pleases. I have no future to plot with your brother." She glanced down at the baby, who now stared at her from the bed with a look of wideeyed innocence. "But let
both Trevelyan brothers know this,
" she declared with sudden vehemence. "My son shall inherit my lands and whatever painted legacy his father creates."

   And with that she replaced the pistol, along with its twin, in the bedside table's drawer. Then she slowly and painfully made her way to the easel, every muscle and sinew in her body still aching from the ordeal of childbirth. She seized a piece of charcoal from the easel's wooden lip and scrawled "For William" on the back of an unframed seascape that leaned against the base of the stone wall.

   "Whether Ennis intends to or not," she said with a gleam of triumph in her eye, "he, too, shall leave William a patrimony."

Some months following Blythe's harsh words with her estranged husband in Painter's Cottage, she found herself squinting at the portrait Ennis had painted of her that now was hung in the paneled entry of Barton Hall.

   "There!" she said, admiring the newly framed work that Garrett had mounted on the wall beneath that of her father, James.

   "How regal," her mother, Rosamund, pronounced with a hint of her former sarcasm. However, the thirty-eightyear-old woman had a death's-head quality to her appearance these days, a persistent wasting away of her flesh that foretold an early demise.

   Rosamund Barton had returned to reside in Barton Hall immediately upon receiving word at her sister's in London that Blythe had, amazingly enough, regained legal control of the family's estate.

   As for her bastard grandson who played quietly on the carpet in the reception hall, the widow Barton was more than willing to participate in the fiction of his legitimate birth. Kit had not yet kept his word and completed the documentation necessary to adopt young William as his legal heir. However, he insisted that it was only a matter of time until he would receive the proper papers from the Court of Chancery in London, and then return them with the necessary signatures—including that of Ennis Trevelyan.

   Meanwhile, Kit had moved into Trevelyan House, as he had reluctantly agreed to do. The owner of the property adjacent to Barton Hall appeared increasingly silent and withdrawn each time Blythe encountered him. Christopher Trevelyan had continued to lose his hair and gain in girth. His pockmarked cheeks were now as depressed as his spirits, giving his face a deeply discontented look, while his body grew as plump as a well-fed partridge.

   Occasionally Blythe's estranged husband would exhibit a flash of temper, reminiscent of his late father's thunderous fulminations, but his anger was most likely to erupt when dealing with a hapless groom or misbehaving horse. Kit appeared careful not to antagonize his wife.

   At the same time, he made no effort to please her. He sometimes gave the impression of being a man caught in a hellish limbo, dead to feeling, frozen in action, waiting, watching, scanning the Channel as if some sign relating to his future would one day appear on the horizon.

   Blythe had become accustomed to Kit's dark moods and silences. She refrained from goading him during his infrequent visits and pledged to herself to behave pleasantly, so long as he maintained a courteous manner toward her.

   Blythe pulled her meandering thoughts from musings about the strange relationship with her husband and turned to address Garrett, who had been standing quietly in the reception hall, hammer in hand.

   "What say you?" Blythe teased as young William pulled himself to his feet by grasping her voluminous skirts. "Has Ennis succeeded in this portrait making me look like a devoted Cornish wife—or a fishwife?"

   "He has rendered you a sly puss, with slanted eyes and a calculating gaze," he pronounced candidly. "I believe you could pass for Cleopatra in a Shakespeare play."

   "Excellent!" Blythe laughed. "Now if I only knew the complete works of the Bard as well as you, my friendly bookseller, I might take that as a compliment."

   Garrett Teague had proved a friend, indeed. His dark good looks had intensified in the last year, and at times Blythe even considered taking the man as a lover. However, she was loath to abandon their easy companionship, or complicate his life by serving him up as fodder for the village gossip mill. Lord knew, those crones in Gorran Haven and Mevagissey had tittle-tattle enough to chew on, considering the odd residential arrangements that the two branches of the BartonTrevelyan clan had designed for themselves.

   To date, Garrett had never married, nor seemed inclined to tie the knot with any of the local wenches who pursued Blythe's handsome cousin by marriage. And there were moments when she even wondered what joys her life might have held if she had taken him up on his first proposal that they run away to America. Once she was forced into her marriage to Kit, Garrett had never again spoken of his obvious devotion to her. Instead he seemed to unleash his pent-up affections on her son—the child, spawned by Ennis, that he had ushered into the world with his own bare hands.

   Shaking herself from memories of that harrowing night she announced to Garrett, "You have earned yourself a brandy. In fact, we all have."

   Just then they heard sounds of horse's hooves pounding the turf along the winding drive that led to the entrance of the Hall.

   "Good heavens!" Rosamund exclaimed, peering out one of the narrow windows that flanked the front door. "'Tis Kit! His steed is lathered to its neck! That man never did have it in him to treat horseflesh decently."

   Garrett and Blythe exchanged glances. Something momentous must have happened for the dour, phlegmatic landowner to expend such energy racing to the door of Barton Hall at breakneck speed. Had the marauding French invaded their shores, as so many feared they would?

   Blythe bid the liveried footman open the door. Kit stomped in, breathless. He stood in the foyer and gazed at each of them in turn, his eyes resting, at length, on his wife.

   "'Tis over," he panted, with an odd gleam of triumph in his eyes. "'Tis finally finished." He extracted a piece of parchment from his coat pocket and waved it in his estranged wife's direction. Then he inhaled deeply, as if to steady himself, and announced, "Ennis has died at sea. Shot by a French musket in a close exchange of ship to ship off the coast of Calais."

   Kit's gaze sought each of them in turn, as if he were relishing their shocked reactions, one by one. His roving glance ultimately rested on Blythe, whose lips were parted slightly in an expression more of shock than of dismay. Kit turned to address Garrett.

   "His captain says in this missive that the body may be claimed at Plymouth in May when the ship puts into port," he disclosed, pointing a plump forefinger at the official notice of his brother's demise. "It says here they've managed to seal him in a lead-lined coffin of the type they keep in reserve aboard ship for fatally wounded officers. Fortunately he won't stink too badly." Kit laughed mirthlessly.

   "Kit… don't!" Garrett protested.

   "Don't what?" he asked belligerently. "Don't sound pleased? Grateful? Relieved? Overjoyed?" He shot an indignant glance at his wife. "Well, I am! I am overjoyed! For now, my dear, you shall get the treatment from me you've deserved all along!"

   "Kit… why not sit down?" Rosamund offered soothingly, perhaps hoping that a glass of brandy might assuage her son-in-law's unseemly display.

   Christopher, however, was not to be diverted.

   "As long as Ennis was alive," he said for his wife's benefit, "you and that bastard babe had me caught in your damnable web… but now I shall alter my will as I please," he proclaimed with a maniacal gleam in his eye. "Even if you wanted to kill me, now that your lover is dead, 'twould be of no use to you or your by-blow here," he added harshly, gesturing toward the wide-eyed toddler who clung to Blythe's skirts, "for I no longer have a brother to inherit, nor am I forced to uphold that the little bastard is mine." His gaze narrowed as he crudely pinched Blythe's left breast with his fingertips. "With Ennis dead and I now exposing your perfidy to the world, what court would not deem you an adulteress, my dear?" he hissed between clenched teeth. "Everyone in Cornwall knows our sorry story," he continued, shouting now, "that I have not tasted these fruits since the day Ennis returned to Barton Hall!"

   Blythe angrily swatted away Kit's marauding hand and merely stared at her husband. She was astonished to see the change that had come over him. His eyes were alight with determination. His shoulders were thrust back, and he had an air of demonic purpose.

   
Ennis is dead.

   She hardly knew how she felt. Ennis's parting words had been so cruel that they had severed her from all her girlish fantasies. Blythe had long accepted the truth that the selfcentered artist who she naively thought might save her from the fate that her father and guardian had designed for her would never have taken her to wife.

   She glanced from her portrait to the painting Ennis had also done of Kit. Shifting her gaze to her ranting husband, she realized that he looked nothing like the artist's flattering rendering of a young landlord in 1792, newly married and the owner of all he surveyed.

   "Kit…" she murmured, hoping to calm his fevered raging by a show of gentle supplication. "There is no need for either of us to try to wound each other anymore. Ennis is gone forever," she added quietly. "I'm sorry he won't paint again… but my heart is dead to his—"

   
"Your
heart! What of
my
heart?" Kit demanded. "What of my
life,
which you and my brother destroyed!" He turned and faced Garrett. "I refuse to claim the carcass of a brother who betrayed me! I refuse to keep a wife in silver and silk who never has been wife to me!" He turned back to Blythe, and she suddenly saw the ultimate damage wrought by Collis Trevelyan. Kit now looked and sounded exactly like his long-dead sire.

   "I shall ride this night for London!" he announced with a bitterness that was palpable. "Ennis is
dead,"
he repeated shrilly. "And I
live,
if only to divorce you and marry again! At last I need not be chained henceforth to him, nor to you, you wicked slut! I will plow my fields and make them fertile. I will find a wench and make her my legal wife and give her my seed for nights on end until I have a
son
!"