Cottage by the Sea (57 page)

   "It should have been about
you
." Luke retorted. "It should have been about putting your life back together without your being chained to the past."

   "And I suppose
you're
free from the burdens of the past?" she shot back.

   Somehow, she realized, Luke had fathomed on some intuitive level that the current dilemma in her life was very likely connected to the past.

If only he could guess how very far in the past
, she thought grimly.

   "Christ, Blythe!" Luke swore in a voice that reflected a lack of sleep. "Why couldn't you have just allowed the man to sort out his own troubles? I'd hoped that you wouldn't do this to yourself!"

   "You'd hoped
what?" she asked sharply. "What does it matte
r to
you
what decision I made about the damned forest?"

   "You just handed your ex-husband a million dollars—and I seriously doubt you'll ever see your half again."

   "And I suppose you had other plans for that money?"

   "That's not at all what I meant," he declared vehemently.

   "But you
do
want to dictate what I do about it," she goaded him.

   "I want you to do what's in your
interest!"
he said with exasperation. "Sometimes I wonder if you have any idea what that is… or if you even feel you're entitled to it."

   "And I suppose you know exactly what my interests are," she demanded, considering Chloe's insinuation that Luke's determination to save Barton Hall from the tax collector might, indeed, be an unspoken factor in their relationship.

   "On some levels… yes, I think I do," he countered.

   "In my experience," Blythe replied tersely, thinking of Chloe's recent "request," "people who say that they know what I should be doing usually have something they want me to do for
them
!" She jumped up from the desk chair, hands on hips, and announced, "I intend to continue to make up my own mind about the important things in my life! And by the way— I'll spare you a scene in front of your son today, but I intend Dicken and I to have our good-byes, and that's the end of it!"

   She turned to exit the stables and came face-to-face with Richard, who stood at the threshold of the office door. The little boy's mouth was opened slightly, and his eyes were filled with apprehension. As with his father, Blythe hadn't the slightest notion how long he'd been standing there. Without warning the ten-year-old ran to her side and lashed out at Luke.

   "You've hurt her feelings, and now she's leaving!" he cried. "She cares much more about me than
you
do," he added accusingly. Luke stared at his offspring, dumbfounded as his son declared tearfully, "She wants me to stay at home, and you want me to go to Shelby Hall so I won't be a bother to you. That's why you're being horrid and driving her away! I hate you—and I hate Aunt Chloe!"

   Luke's look of bewilderment soon turned to one of anger as his mouth set in a straight line. "You're being a very rude young man," he replied in a clipped tone of voice. "I assure you, my lad… Blythe and I are merely having a disagreement. Everything is perfectly all right. And, besides, I would thank you not to eavesdrop on your elders."

   "She's going away!" Richard sobbed, throwing his arms around Blythe's waist.

   "Oh, Dicken, sweetie," Blythe began, "your dad was just—"

   "You're making her go away!" he repeated.

   "Blythe is
not
leaving us, are you, Blythe?" Luke declared, a tone of desperation edging his voice. "To begin with, we're business partners now in the nursery project. It'll be all right, I tell you! You've utterly misunderstood our conversation!"

   His son raised his head and glared at his father. "You
always
say everything is all right… but you're just pretending! You said Mummy was going to be all right, and she
died
!"

   "But, Richard, I—"

   "And you said Shelby Hall would be all right, and it was horrid! The other boys made fun of me because I cried at night and—" His small face crumpled and fresh tears began to course down his cheeks. "You never even came once to see me at school," he said, his voice cracking, "even when I—" Richard halted mid sentence. Then he shouted in a tone laden with misery and accusation, "Even when you know things are horrible, you always pretend it will be all right… and it
never is
!"

   And with that, he whirled around and dashed out of the office.

   "Luke!" Blythe said urgently. "Oh, Luke, you must go to him!"

   Richard's father, however, slowly turned his back to her. He walked over to a small window and wordlessly stared into the stable yard. Then, to Blythe's utter astonishment, his shoulders began to heave.

   "Christ!" he said, his voice choked with emotion. "Why in the name of heaven can't I ever get the words right?" Blythe remained motionless near her desk. "I couldn't think what to say. I couldn't think how to tell an eight-year-old child that his mother was dying."

   "Oh, baby…" Blythe said, instantly sympathetic despite her rash of anger a few minutes previously. "Sit here…" she urged, gesturing toward her chair.

   However, Luke remained standing and gazed silently out the window. At length he said slowly, "I know full well that at times this summer, when it came to Richard, you've thought me a callous, unfeeling sod. So often I wanted to tell you what it was like when—"

   Luke's voice broke, and he covered his eyes with his right hand.

   "Tell me now," Blythe said softly.

   "Words…" he murmured, "it's so bloody hard to find the words."

   "We both speak English," she replied. "At least I sort of do," she jested halfheartedly. "Just tell me what happened between you and Richard."

   "It's very little to do with Richard, really," he began, turning to face her. "Lindsay and I discovered that she was pregnant with our second child at the same time she received the diagnosis of breast cancer."

   "Oh, my God…" Blythe whispered.

   "She had to make a choice…
We
had to make a choice," he corrected himself carefully. "Lindsay could have an abortion… take the cancer drugs… and try to save her own life. Or not take them… hope the mastectomy would stop the disease, and try to save the life of our unborn child by allowing it to grow to term." His gaze assumed a faraway look, as if the debate over the agonizing decision were being made as he spoke. Then he closed his eyes for a moment and said in a low voice laced with sorrow, "We both wanted that child so much. We didn't care if it was a boy or girl… just that our baby would be born whole… that Richard would have a brother or a sister… and that Lindsay would live to see Richard and the baby grow up."

   Luke walked over to the open door and stared out at the granite wall that enclosed the kitchen garden, awash in chilly September sunshine.

   "And so both of you had to decide, didn't you?" Blythe murmured. "Who should be granted the best chance to live?"

   "The cancer turned up again three months later. Then the doctor gave us
new
odds," Luke continued dully, closing the door left open by his departing son. "There was a reasonable chance that the drugs might put Lindsay in remission. However, if she took them, then she could not—or should not—have the baby. Without the chemotherapy there was almost no chance that she would survive for long. With the drugs, the baby would die or be horribly deformed."

   "Oh, Luke…" Blythe said, tears clogging her voice, "I'm so sorry…"

   "After I saw how the cancer started to take over, I begged her to have an abortion and seize the chance that she might get well with chemotherapy. I told her that perhaps by some miracle—we could have another child together," he said, meeting Blythe's stricken gaze, "or at least we could still hold out the hope for adoption of a second child after she went into remission."

   "Did Lindsay agree?" Blythe asked.

   "Yes… but in the end we lost all the bets," Luke disclosed in a monotone. "She had a five-month abortion, chemotherapy, and died anyway." He gazed at Blythe with a haunted expression. "The baby was a girl," he said finally. "For weeks after Lindsay's funeral I had a series of ghastly recurrent dreams in which a newborn infant was left abandoned in a desert… or dying alone in the woods… or falling off a cliff into the sea."

   Blythe's pulse quickened as she tried to suppress a sharp intake of breath.

   
The baby floating in Valerie's crystal ball!

   She had thought after her last session in Valerie's office that perhaps the unborn child represented the mysterious William to whom the eighteenth-century Blythe had dedicated Ennis Trevelyan's lonely seascapes. Now she wondered if that baby, lost in space, was a glimpse of the doomed infant in Lindsay's womb.

   "Each time the dream recurred," Luke continued, "I'd wake with a start. I'd sit bolt upright in bed with my heart pounding, trying to catch my breath in that bedroom across from Richard's. Then I'd start to blubber like a baby. After a few weeks of this I moved out of earshot of Richard's room, into the room with the Barton Bed. Even so, I was afraid I'd frighten Richard when those tides of sadness overwhelmed me." In Luke's glance she now saw undisguised despair. "Every time I laid eyes on my son, I thought of his unborn sister, and the fact that we'd lost Lindsay in the bargain," he disclosed, his voice hoarse with emotion. "After we buried her, I knew I was seriously beginning to fall apart, and if I were unstable as a single parent, that would hurt Richard even more. So despite everything my wife and I believed in, Blythe, I sent my barely eight-year-old son away to school."

   "Didn't you try to talk to someone about… the dreams? Your doctor? Even Valerie?" Blythe asked gently. "Wouldn't they have understood the terrible grief you were going through?"

   "I told no one about the dreams… or my reactions to them. I might well have, but I just kept lecturing myself, 'Get a grip, man!' After that I avoided all thoughts of babies and the sight of children—my child, to be specific. I suppose I thought it would keep my devils at bay if I kept clear of… reminders. And the plan worked. I haven't had the dream since."

   
But I have
, Blythe mused.
Or some strange version of it.

   "Oh, God, Luke," she sighed, sympathetic and exasperated in equal measure. "The way you deal with some things is so… English!"

   "Of course," he acknowledged with a bitter smile. "One year became two, and I simply became accustomed to the relief that resulted by my remaining aloof from Dicken." He cast Blythe a beleaguered gaze. "I asked Chloe to take care of everything regarding Shelby Hall."

   "Even when Dicken stuffed his roommates' underpants down the Johns in an obvious bid to get your attention?" Blythe asked evenly.

   "He told you about that?" Luke asked, and then shook his head in self-disgust.

   "Just the other day, in fact," she answered quietly.

   "Well, bastard that I am," Luke continued, "I have told myself for two solid years that I was sending Richard away and keeping my distance from him for his own good… so he wouldn't see what a weak, pathetic man his father had become."

   "Grieving for the loss of your wife and baby was not pathetic!" Blythe insisted fiercely, thinking of the raw waves of anguish that overwhelmed her without warning in the months following Grandma Barton's death. "You'd been dealt an unbearable double tragedy!"

   "And then last May you walked into my life," Luke continued as if she hadn't spoken, "and for the first time since that nightmare began, life had possibilities…life felt good again. Then Dicken ran away… and I was forced to see that—" Luke pulled up short. In a voice laden with shame and regret, he added, "The appalling truth was, for the last two years I was simply making it easier on
myself."

   This soul-searching admission once again rendered Luke unable to speak. He turned to gaze out the window for the second time.

   Meanwhile Blythe's thoughts were galloping ahead of any words she could form to comfort him. Her stomach was in increasing turmoil, and she was sorely tempted to blurt out her strong suspicion of her own pregnancy—if only to offer him something tangible in the way of solace. Just then, however, there was a knock on the door.

   "Excuse me, sir," Luke's housekeeper announced, poking her head into the room. "It's Master Richard. He's terribly upset, sir. Mrs. Acton-Scott is very angry with him, and he's locked himself in his bedroom and won't come out."

   Luke kept his back to his housekeeper and continued to stare out the window, so Blythe intervened quickly.

   "Could you be a dear, Mrs. Q, and tell Richard that Mr. Teague will come up in just a few minutes?"

   Blythe's stomach gave a lurch, either from the unpleasant sound of Chloe's name—or from another impending bout of morning sickness.

   "Of course, mum," she said, nodding. "Right away."

   Mrs. Quiller's puzzled gaze had fixed upon the broad expanse of her silent employer's back. Then she looked at Blythe, who tried to disguise her concern for Luke, as well as conceal the chaos currently reigning in her abdomen. Blythe cast her a pleading look—which Mrs. Q acknowledged with an understanding nod.

   "I'll just pass on the message," she added softly. "Sorry to disturb."