Cottage by the Sea (6 page)

   As Luke rounded the corner of the stone stables, he halted, mesmerized by the sight of first one long jeans-clad leg, and then another, extending provocatively over the wooden stile that led from the end of Hall Walk.

   The mysterious Mrs. Stowe's hair had magically been tamed and tucked beneath a dark-green baseball cap. Surprisingly, he found himself feeling deflated not to see those auburn tresses billowing about her shoulders. Her skin was smooth and clear and slightly flushed from the exertion of striding up the steep path. Her dark eyes were subdued, but as soon as she caught sight of him, she smiled and waved—both gestures conveying a sense of accomplishment for having scaled the hill to the castle grounds and successfully arriving at her destination precisely at four-thirty.

   He, on the other hand, was a bare-chested, sweatsoaked mess.

   "I'm so sorry," he shouted across the stable yard with an embarrassed grin. "The time got away from me."

   Her generous lips broke into a wide smile, as if she were amused to find him in the same disorderly state she had been in earlier that day. He noticed she wore lightweight hiking boots and an expensive-looking Irish cable-knit pullover with a high neck underneath a dark-green Barbour coat, the sensible soul. All in all, she had accoutered herself in an utterly appropriate fashion.

   "No problem," she laughed, glancing around at her surroundings with a satisfied air.

   "Hold on a tick, can you?" He waved back and parked the wheelbarrow just inside the walled kitchen garden. He quickly donned the blue cotton shirt that he'd hung on the gate and pointed toward a path across from the stables that led to the rhododendron and azalea plots. "Why not have a ten-minute stroll down that way while I have a quick shower and catch up with you," he proposed, narrowing the thirtyfoot distance that separated them. "Is that all right?"

   His houseguest gazed with shining eyes toward the roseencrusted bower that marked the entrance to the formal flower gardens.

   "Oh… please… don't worry about me," she assured him happily as she headed off with a confident, leggy stride in the direction he'd indicated. "Take your time. I'll be in heaven."

   He sensed suddenly that perhaps Blythe Stowe wasn't going to be a problem tenant after all.

"Holy cow! These
can't
be rhododendrons!" Blythe exclaimed, staring at a mass of vibrant pink blossoms that towered above her head. "These bushes are thirty feet tall! In California we're lucky if they grow as high as a neighbor's hedge."

   "In Cornwall these plants can be as large as trees," the dark-haired owner of Barton Hall explained. Blythe felt inordinately pleased to see that Lucas Teague was wearing a forest-green Barbour jacket made of the same waxed cotton as her own. "Except for the occasional hurricane, like the one we had in the nineties, the climate in these parts doesn't produce as hard a frost or as steep changes in temperature as the rest of Britain."

   He pulled a pair of garden clippers he called secateurs from the pocket of his coat and snipped off a branch studded with a generous cluster of lush pink flowers. Nearby, two Labradors—one black and one yellow—sniffed ecstatically in the underbrush.

   "Barton Hall's gardens are modest, compared to the neighboring estate," he added.

   "Caerhays Castle?" Blythe asked, remembering a large tan area stamped on Ordinance Map Number 204 that bordered Lucas Teague's "modest" three-thousand-acre holding.

   "They have fifty-five acres of gardens, compared to our twenty-five of rhododendrons, camellias, and azaleas," he replied. "Caerhays even grows magnolias, and when they open to the public, they draw garden fanatics from around the world."

   "When is that?" Blythe asked eagerly.

   "For two weeks in late March and early April. Part of a local charity event. Unfortunately, you've just missed it."

   She and her new landlord had tramped for some twenty minutes across fields and meadows dotted with trees bursting with blooms in every imaginable hue. A lush profusion of bluebells carpeted the undergrowth. To her right another giant rhododendron cloaked in vivid scarlet demanded to be admired. Next to it were equally impressive specimens in shades of rose, shell pink, mauve, snowflake-white, and saffron. In the distance she gazed in awe at the gently undulating hills that were sprinkled with other flowering trees and bushes in arresting hues of violet, salmon, and canary-yellow.

   As she and Lucas Teague continued to meander through Barton Hall's magnificent gardens, Blythe eagerly leaned forward to read the names on the small metal plaques that identified each variety: "Countess of Haddington'" she murmured, "'Surrey Heath'… 'Veryan Bay'… 'Winsome.' Look at this! 'Rebecca'!" She glanced up at her amused host. "I adored that old film… Laurence Olivier… Joan Fontaine… and remember Judith Anderson as the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers?"

   "I enjoyed the book," Lucas replied dryly. "Its author, Daphne du Maurier, lived not far from Barton Hall, you know… about ten miles northeast of here, near Fowey. Her house, Menabilly, was the setting for Manderley in that story." Again he pulled out his secateurs and snipped off a branch of the vibrant scarlet blooms. "These are hybrids. My father and grandfather spent years crossbreeding to achieve this shade. To my mind the red color's a bit tarty, but it'll brighten your cottage," he said, cheerfully ignoring Blythe's protests that her arms were already laden with his generous offerings.

   Blythe heaved a contented sigh.

   "It's mind-boggling… that's what it is," she allowed, turning in a complete circle as she inhaled the faint perfume that floated on the shafts of sunshine filtering through the vegetation above their heads. She buried her nose in the blossoms she held clutched in her hands. "My grandmother would have lost her mind here."

   Without warning a sudden, overwhelming sense of loss invaded Blythe's chest. She briefly closed her eyes and felt her lashes brush softly against the scarlet blooms. How Lucinda Barton would have reveled in this flamboyant beauty, she thought, battling a wave of sadness so piercing, she had difficulty breathing.

   "I take it your grandmother was a keen gardener?" Teague asked, gesturing with his tall walking stick in the direction of a path that led back toward Barton Hall and the tea table that awaited them.

   "A fanatic," Blythe replied, looking up from her armful of flowers. She was strangely thankful for the opportunity to speak of the woman whose kindness, pluck, and wisdom had served as beacons throughout Blythe's life. "Among other things, she ran a small nursery business on our ranch in Wyoming," Blythe explained, following alongside her tour guide. "She was one of the first in the West to specialize in cultivating Alpine wildflowers. I was inspired to get a master's degree in landscape design because of her," she continued in a slightly rueful tone.

   She thought, suddenly, of the hours she'd worked by the side of Grandma Barton, whose father, Emory Halett, had also been a rancher with a spread outside Jackson Hole. Every spring and summer of Blythe's childhood she and Lucinda had gathered a riotous bounty of blooms growing in the rolling, flower-carpeted foothills that stretched below the magnificent Grand Tetons in the Rockies. Most of their neighbors had considered her grandmother daft to be harvesting seeds so carefully from plants that every native in Wyoming considered to be weeds. However, even as a little girl, Blythe had admired the flinty old woman's dogged determination to make a success of her mail-order wildflower seed business.

   "I had understood that you were involved in the motionpicture industry," the owner of Barton Hall said as he gestured toward another bush with his stag horn staff. The lofty plant virtually dripped with purplish-blue rhododendrons. "A production designer, I think your lawyer told me. Did she get it wrong?"

   "Soon after I earned my degree, I began to design stage sets instead of landscapes." Blythe shrugged, her sudden burst of enthusiasm for the sights and smells of the enchanting garden abruptly diminishing. "One thing led to another, and eventually I ended up in the film business."

   It had been Christopher who had wheedled and cajoled her into using her drafting abilities to help him plan his first student film. Once more she stared at the garden's colorful panorama, deliberately drinking in its abundant array of colors this warm May afternoon. It felt almost as if her surroundings could provide a kind of mental medicine for what ailed her. She wondered how she could have strayed so far from her passion for growing things.

   "What exactly does a production designer do?" her host inquired.

   "She mediates between the studio executives, who want to save money, and the director, who wants to spend it," Blythe answered flatly.

   "Rather puts one in the middle, doesn't it?" he commented as he chose the left fork on the narrow path she assumed was a shortcut that led back to the house.

   "Yep. Right between the proverbial rock and a hard place."

   Again she discerned the bitter tone bubbling beneath the surface of her flippant response. The sense of peace and well-being she'd experienced during her magical wooded walk to Barton Hall had begun to dissipate. It was too fragile an antidote to have much of an effect on truly calming the emotional cauldron that had become her life.

   Her gaze drank in the sight of an azalea bush whose branches were laden with electric-pink blossoms. All this beauty had been sprouting and maturing during the very same spring that she had been awash in the grim legal machinations of her divorce as it wound its way through the courts in Los Angeles. Now that all that was behind her, it was definitely time for her to make a shift away from the negative self-absorption that had gripped her for so long. Despite the blows she had endured, other things—wondrous things— were going on in the world. If only her grandmother were still here to share the sight of this amazing garden with her.

   Blythe suppressed a small sigh and redoubled her efforts to sound cheerful for the benefit of her amiable host.

   "Production design involves supervising the building of the sets, the dressing of locations indoors and out… overseeing the costumes… basically creating the whole 'look' of the film, if you will," she explained.

   She paused to stroke the smooth heads of Derek and Beryl, who had trotted obediently beside their master each time Blythe and Lucas Teague had set off to view another section of the garden. The dogs had been named, she had learned upon inquiry, for Barton Hall's celebrated—and now retired—head gardener and his wife.

   "Movies like
Bonnie and Clyde, Titanic, Star Wars,
even
The
Queen
will be remembered for their visual impact as much as for their storyline." She cast a sidelong glance at her questioner and heaved an ironic shrug. "However, most of the time it's a sort of 'we don't get no respect' situation. The majority of the kudos go to the film's director when the movie's a box-office hit."

   "That may be so, but what you do sounds like fascinating and important work," he observed as they arrived at the circular drive leading up to the
porte cochère.

   "Only if everyone on the film agrees on what that 'look' should be," she replied, following along as he pushed against the enormous wooden front door and guided her into a foyer paved in slate.

   "Stay there, chaps," Teague directed his two dogs firmly, who gazed at him beseechingly from just outside the front door. "I expect you'll get your tea soon enough."

   Hiding a smile, Blythe turned to her right into a small chamber that was cluttered with an assortment of tweed coats with elbow patches like the dark-brown herringbone jacket that her host had worn earlier in the day. Next to them were several hooded windbreakers—anoraks, Chris had always called them—hanging on pegs. Lucas Teague, playing the obliging butler, helped her shed her Barbour and hung it next to his own larger version. The two jackets looked as if they might indulge in a friendly chat while their owners were having tea.

   Nearby, several pairs of gardening boots and thigh-high rubber waders in graduated sizes were lined up on the floor. Fishing poles and umbrellas leaned against one corner, while numerous rain hats, woolen caps, and down vests decorated a hall tree that stood in the other. Noting with pleasure the cluster of gardening gloves neatly assembled on a small wooden chest next to the wall, Blythe volunteered thoughtfully, "You know, I often wonder if I wouldn't have been better off sticking with landscape design."

   Lucas Teague arched a dark eyebrow but made no further comment as he led the way down a wide wood-paneled hallway. Beneath her feet lay a frayed Persian carpet, and above her head large, dust-laden family portraits observed their progress toward a small sitting room. Inside, a bright fire glowing on the hearth put to rest Blythe's fear that the castle would have no heat. She welcomed its warmth, thanks to the temperature in the garden having grown increasingly chilly as the afternoon sun slid behind the hills that stretched toward Land's End in the west.

   "Good afternoon, Mrs. Quiller," the lord of the manor said to his housekeeper, who stood in attendance beside a tea trolley loaded with all manner of scones, tea cakes, finger sandwiches, and shortbread.