Cottage by the Sea (52 page)

   Or a crackbrain.

Trevelyan House was deserted as if a plague had swept through it during Garrett's absence in Plymouth. At Barton Hall he encountered a few servants huddled together in the large kitchen. A spring storm had risen up suddenly, and rain hissed on the logs as it pelted down the large chimney where meals were cooked for the castle's inhabitants.

   "Where is Mrs. Trevelyan's mother… Mrs. Barton?" he demanded.

   "She'un left for London town," one scullery maid ventured timidly. "Says she'll not stand for the master's loony tricks. Gone to her sister's, I wager. Real sickly, she looked, but I packed for her, and Charles took her trunks t'the fly over t'Bodmin Moor this mornin'."

   "And Mr. Trevelyan?" Garrett inquired uneasily.

   "Came to Trevelyan House yesterday, the gardener told me, and here at Barton Hall by supper-time, wavin' his latest decrees and such," the cook revealed. "Right mad with disappointment he couldna throw her and the babe out of Barton Hall! Searched high and low… every chamber and cupboard. Even climbed the four towers, he did, addlepated that he be. We told 'im she and Master William disappeared a week since, but he'd not believe us."

   "Accused us of pinching the silver, he did!" the scullery maid announced, red-faced with indignation. "Said he'd send whoever did it to the gallows—or for transportation," she added, shuddering.

   "Where is he now?" Garrett asked, filled with foreboding.

   "Painter's Cottage," grunted the cook. "Went down there an hour ago and h'ain't been seen since. And if I had m'wish, he'd fall off the cliff!"

The stone cottage stood forlornly at the edge of the waterlogged field. Its windows were dark, and its front door stood open to the beating wind and swirling mist. Kit was slumped in a chair in the shadowy stone chamber. His expanding paunch provided a resting place for a small piece of parchment that he clutched in his pudgy right hand. Several official-looking decrees, resplendent with their red wax seals affixed at the bottom, littered the stone floor.

   Kit's stringy, unkempt hair fell about his shoulders. The front of his linen shirt was stained, as if he had not changed it upon arriving home from London. The deep pits puncturing the skin on his face stood out in sharp relief, like some woeful desert landscape. He looked up with bloodshot eyes, a brandy bottle dangling from the other hand.

   "May I see?" Garrett asked softly. A growing sense of dread sent shock waves down his arm so that he could hardly hold the foolscap that displayed Blythe's distinctive hand.

   
May you hear my cries in the wind and the rain. May
you hear my babe's moans when the sheep miscarry and the
cattle waste away.

   
By all that's holy, Kit Trevelyan, you are rid of me and my
line… but may yours never prosper.

   
Blythe Barton of Barton Hall

"What in damnation—?" Garrett said hoarsely.

   He grabbed his stag horn walking stick, bolted out of the cottage, and raced to the cliff. He was forced to squint through needles of rain that soon turned into a heavy downpour.

   The small, overturned skiff bobbed in place, its rounded hull slick with moisture. Clearly Blythe had taken the boat into deep water and anchored it in place with a rock tied to a length of hemp that was fastened to the bow. She probably then had only to stand on the gunwales, babe in arms— perhaps her pockets filled to the brim with pebbles from the nearby beach—and leap, upending the boat as her weight pushed away from the vessel's side.

   As Garrett gazed at the churning waters of Veryan Bay, he felt a part of himself break away and drift out to sea.

   After a while he became aware of Kit's presence, standing to his right side.

   "When 'tis calm," Kit said in a strangled voice, "I shall drag the bottom of the cove and recover the Barton silver, for 'tis
mine
!"

   Garrett turned to face his cousin, who stood unsteadily at the edge of the cliff. The bookseller knew, suddenly, that he was capable of committing murder.

   "You swine!" he cursed, barely above a whisper.

   Kit cocked his head and shifted uneasily on his feet.

   "What say you…?" he mumbled with a befuddled expression clouding his haggard eyes.

   "I, of the cursed three of us, loved her best, you Trevelyan sod!" Garrett shouted to the rising wind. He turned suddenly and pushed against Kit's shoulders with the length of his walking stick clutched in both hands. The force of the blow sent his corpulent cousin reeling to the soggy ground. "I loved her… I
loved
her!"

   Garrett's words were carried on the stiff breeze for a mere instant and then came back to him full force.

   "I loved her," he repeated brokenly. "And I loved her babe. I shall never forgive you and Ennis for what you have done!"

   Slowly Kit struggled to his feet as the rain and wind howling off Dodman Point lashed at their clothes.

   "And I shall never forgive
her
for what she has done," Kit answered heavily, "for my wedded wife never… loved me… at all."

   Then the owner of the Barton-Trevelyan estate heaved a shrug and wove a meandering path toward Painter's Cottage, disappearing within the maw of its open door. Within minutes the wind and rain suddenly quieted, and an eerie calm descended on the cliff where Garrett remained, unable to think what sense he would make of his life from this moment, onwards.

   He flinched when he heard the report of a pistol from inside the cottage. However, his boots remained planted in the dewy grass as he continued to gaze out to sea. Once again his despondent glance drifted to the overturned dinghy as it swayed in the surging tide. Long after he was dead and buried in St. Goran's churchyard, the Channel's watery rhythms would ebb and flow and little skiffs would bob on the bay.

   Eventually the tall, dark-haired figure turned his back to the sea and made for the gate at the far side of the field. He strode past the stone abode without even glancing through the tall artist's window. In ten minutes' time he had retraced his steps along Hall Walk.

   Until Garrett Teague came within view of the castle's four towers rising above a thousand shades of green, it did not occur to the proprietor of the modest bookshop nestled in Rattle Alley that he—the last remaining male of his generation—was now the unchallenged master of Barton Hall.

So," Blythe exclaimed to Valerie with an amazed expression, "William was Blythe Barton and Ennis Trevelyan's out-ofwedlock son!"

   Valerie pointed to a pad she had used to scribble notes while Blythe had been under hypnosis.

   "Apparently the first Blythe Barton faked her death and that of her infant son, William, and sailed from Plymouth for America in May of 1794," the psychologist added.

   "May… in the same month I arrived at Barton Hall," Blythe interjected. "Holy cow, Valerie! This is actually getting creepy."

   "Perhaps you've found the link to your branch of the Bartons, after all," Valerie ventured as she carefully eased the crystal ball back into its velvet pouch and replaced it in the bottom drawer of her desk.

   "My
father's
name is Will!" Blythe suddenly blurted. "All this time I've been searching for a William who lived and died in Cornwall! The Will-William connection never occurred to me because my dad's always been called just plain Will." Then her face fell. "Of course, both the names William and Barton are fairly common in America. If Blythe and her son survived the voyage to Annapolis, they could have remained in the southern states. We still have no proof this is the branch that eventually migrated to Wyoming."

   "But
your
name is Blythe," Valerie insisted, "and that is rather unusual, especially coupled with 'Barton.' It seems to me that it's a reasonably good indication there's a connection here, somewhere. Plus, didn't you tell me your grandmother insisted that your parents carry on the tradition of naming the eldest daughter in the family after a famous ancestress from Cornwall? Perhaps it was also a tradition in your branch to name the eldest son William after the original Blythe's natural son?"

   "But wouldn't the eighteenth-century William's last name be Trevelyan, not Barton? After all, he was Ennis Trevelyan's son, too."

   "Back then… and even in this century as well," Valerie said thoughtfully, "children born out of wedlock usually took their mother's maiden name. It's perfectly possible Blythe's son went by the surname of Barton—especially since your namesake was proud of her Barton lineage and had washed her hands of the Trevelyans, as her supposed suicide note indicated."

   "So our branch might definitely have originated on the wrong side of the blanket." Blythe grinned lamely. "This is all pretty amazing, isn't it?"

   "The specific information you've retrieved under hypnosis is what I find amazing."

   "Maybe I should have been a screenwriter instead of a production designer. I could hypnotize myself whenever I want to cook up some fabulous film plots!"

   "But is it mere invention?" Valerie mused. "So many of the details of what you say you saw in your trance match up to actual facts I've gleaned from Reverend Kent's diary. Too many for it just to be coincidence, don't you agree?"

   "Let's just call it a 'Capital C' coincidence and leave it at that," Blythe answered uncomfortably. "I'm beginning to feel like I've become some paranormal tuning fork. You know: got a message from the past? Twang it to Blythe!"

   "So…" Valerie inquired of the younger woman who sat across the desk from her, "has our session been of any real use in trying to resolve some of the personal problems you're grappling with?"

   "Well, I'm certain about one thing," Blythe declared, rising to prepare for her departure. "Back in 1794, each of the family members blamed someone else for the tragedies that occurred. Not one of them forgave each other for the hurt he or she had inflicted. Blythe… Kit… Ennis… even Garrett—they all held on to those resentments and jealousies throughout their lives and never took responsibility for what
they brought to this littl
e drama. And as for Kit Trevelyan," she added soberly, "jealousy and resentment drove him to suicide."

   "Now, suppose the traumas that happened so long ago at Barton Hall caused some sort of genetic alteration in the cell of the survivors," Valerie postulated. "There are some theorists who believe the body stores both physical and emotional toxins for a long time… perhaps for decades. These are what might alter the cells and change the DNA of succeeding generations."

   "So if the Wyoming Bartons are, in fact, descendants of the Cornwall Barton-Trevelyans," Blythe mused, "then you're saying that Luke, Ellie, and I are supposedly carrying around a bunch of eighteenth-century emotional poisons? What a troubling idea!" she exclaimed. She glanced at her watch and grimaced. "Speaking of traumas… I've got to go back to the cottage and get ready for a dinner date—with my ex-husband."

Late that afternoon Blythe rounded the curve on the coastal path and spotted Luke's Land Rover whizzing down the road toward Painter's Cottage. Her heart gave a lurch as she watched its owner get out of the vehicle and unlatch the gate in the field. He had obviously come to pay her a call.

   When she walked through the door five minutes later, he was waiting for her inside.

   "You did a very clever vanishing act from my bedroom this morning," he said tersely. He slapped his leather driving gloves against one palm, a sure sign he was either incensed or genuinely worried about her absence.

   
Guess!

   Why did the men in her life always expect her to intuit what they were thinking? she thought with exasperation.

   "Look, Luke, I… ah…"

   "Then you refused to speak with me in the sitting room and disappeared for hours," he continued, punctuating his words with a toss of his gloves onto her dining table. "I drove by here several times to see if you'd come back, but you hadn't."

   "I-I took a long walk," she replied, doffing her Barbour coat and hanging it on a peg. She hadn't told too bold a fib. She had walked at least two miles to and from Drs. Vickery and Kent's office in the village. En route she had stopped for a bit of lunch to ward off any incipient stomach upset and then had purchased three boxes of saltine crackers, which she'd crammed into her backpack for the trip back to the cottage.

   "A six-hour walk?"

   "Luke," she intervened hastily, "I'm sorry you were running around looking for me. I suppose one day you'll have to put a phone and an answering machine in here… or at least an intercom system or something."

   Luke ignored her suggestion and said, "Your lawyer, Miss Spector, called the Hall this morning. It seems she is most anxious to speak with you." He studied his watch. "It was midnight in California when she called. It's the next morning there now. She's probably just getting to her office."