Cottage by the Sea (60 page)

   "I have something to show
you
," he said, walking over to one of the bookshelves where the yearly ledgers chronicling life at Barton Hall were kept. He withdrew the volume stamped 1794. "This is one of the few old ledgers I've ever perused. It's from the year my ancestor Garrett Teague inherited the place, and I was curious to see the resources the poor chap had been bequeathed." He flipped through several pages, looking for a specific entry. "Ah… here we are." He returned to his chair and sat down. Then he pointed to a line written in brown ink halfway down the page. "I only remember reading this because it was part of an inventory that detailed the contents of the house at the time of Kit Trevelyan's death. Look… it says, 'Silver Candlesticks with scroll motif and Barton crest—lost or stolen.'"

   "Do you recognize the hand that wrote that inventory?" Valerie demanded.

   "It's Garrett's," Luke replied. "I'm certain of it, because I've read some of his other correspondence. There weren't any Barton candlesticks in 1794 when Kit died and Blythe Barton disappeared, or died, or whatever happened to her. Garrett obviously felt he couldn't afford to replace such luxuries. The silver ones we use in the dining room are very modest, as you know."

   "Your Teague ancestor may not have known the entire story of what eventually happened to the first Blythe Barton, to the candlesticks, or when, exactly, they disappeared from Barton Hall!" Valerie countered quickly. The psychologist appeared to be about to enlighten him further but then pursed her lips and remained silent.

   "But, see…" Luke insisted, "the inventory lists a number of other items of family silver that had gone missing over the years." He looked over at Valerie and concluded soberly, "I do not doubt you in the least, Valerie, when you say Blythe's father sent her some family silver by post. But I'm afraid your candlestick theory is not going to be able to prove whatever you and Blythe think you saw in your crystal ball."

   "You are a stubborn man," Valerie replied, looking crestfallen, "but I must respect my vow of confidentiality, so I cannot enlighten you any further on the subject… other than this—which Blythe has given me permission to do. Since she's been in Cornwall, she has gained some unusual information concerning our mutual ancestors. Only she can decide whether to risk telling you about it, or about the way in which she acquired her insights. And if she does tell you about her experiences, only you can decide whether or not to believe her."

   Luke's cousin slipped Reverend Kent's diary into her voluminous handbag and stood up, obviously ready to make her departure.

   "Look, Valerie," Luke said quickly, escorting his cousin toward the closed library door, "I do appreciate your providing Blythe a sounding board, in light of all she's been through… and thank you for taking an interest in Dicken's and my welfare. It was very kind of you to have dropped by."

   "Thank you for lunch," she replied crisply. "I'm glad to see that Dicken looks fit, despite his recent ordeal." She paused, her hand on the doorknob. "All I'm urging you to do is to keep an open mind, Lucas. There are aspects of the mind and memory—which some people know intuitively— that will one day be proved by science!"

   "Yes, Valerie," Luke said patiently.

   "Think about the mystery of what happened to the first Blythe Barton," she urged, ignoring his slightly patronizing smile, "and keep in mind the strange circumstances surrounding the way in which the Teagues inherited this castle. 'The Children of the House of Barton shall ne'er be lost,'" she quoted Reverend Kent once again, pointing to her handbag. "'The silver candlesticks shall light the way.'" Then she drew herself up and pronounced with a dramatic flourish, "Just consider how all the pieces fit!"

   However, Luke merely heaved a sigh of amused exasperation. "You Kents have always been a meddlesome lot," he said affectionately. "Safe trip home, Valerie, my love."

The bathwater had grown tepid during the forty-five minutes Blythe had been luxuriating in the antique porcelain tub. She silently blessed the unknown sybaritic soul who had installed it on its claw-and-ball legs behind a tapestry screen in the corner of her living room. Moist tendrils of hair clung to her neck as she leaned back and gazed dreamily through the window at the surging waters of the English Channel.

   
A Bathtub with a View.

   What a lot had happened in her life, she thought, since the first time she had taken her landlord's advice and slipped into the tub's relaxing depths. She reveled in the pleasure of doing absolutely nothing but soaking up the spectacular scenery as the fragrant water soothed her skin.

   Her eyes drifted to the dining table positioned in the middle of the cottage. On it still stood the pair of tarnished silver candlesticks so prized by Grandma Barton. Surrounding them were a few other small pieces of family silver and the shredded remnants of the packaging her father had improvised, studded with a panoply of postage stamps and labeled "Antique—Older than 100 Years—NO DUTY!"

   As she gazed at the odd assortment collected on the nearby table, a flood of memories from her childhood at the Double Bar B engulfed her. The candlesticks had witnessed unnumbered dinners and occasions where toasts had been raised in times of family celebration. Blythe had lit long white tapers to illuminate the log bedroom where Lucinda Barton had lain in peace at last. Later she'd transferred the scratched and scarred beauties to the chimney mantel in the living room during the reception that followed her grandmother's funeral when the mourners had returned to the ranch for refreshments.

   Galvanized by such morbid thoughts, as well as the bathwater's chilly temperature, Blythe climbed out of the oval tub and toweled herself dry. She marveled that her stomach was flat as ever. In fact, its ordinary appearance seemed in direct contradiction to the secret life that she had confirmed today was taking hold inside.

   Next, she donned a clean pair of blue jeans and slipped on a bra, conscious that her breasts, at least, were beginning to show signs of her pregnancy. They felt tender to the touch and had acquired a strange voluptuousness. As the air stippled her skin, her nipples also became hard, and she felt a velvety rush of warmth radiating through her pelvis. Her thoughts drifted to images of Luke, and she wished that he were with her at this moment, holding her against his body and kissing her senseless.

   Luke.

   She suddenly felt a sense of urgency grip her as she searched for the rest of her clothes. With shaking fingers she swiftly pulled her ivory cable-knit sweater over her head, zipped up her jeans, and donned her Wellingtons. She made a grab for her jacket and dashed out the door.

   Blythe strode purposefully across the field with her back to the sea, reminded of the first day she had taken Hall Walk up to the castle commanding the hill. That spring afternoon had been in mid-May, and her surroundings, as she had set out from Painter's Cottage, had been glowing in a thousand shades of green: undulating emerald fields, iridescent foliage that clung to the English oaks and larches, and the dense black-green underbrush that flanked the leafy tunnel leading through the woods toward Barton Hall itself.

   As on that day when her heart had been so sore, the sun this September afternoon had begun to sink toward the western horizon. Its magical rays cast sage-gray shafts of light sparkling with motes of dust that filtered down through the ancient trees and lacy ferns lining her path.

   She approached the now familiar giant oak whose gnarled roots pushed up fat tentacles from the moist ground to form a natural cave some three feet in diameter. She suddenly envisioned the child she was carrying in her womb sitting in that vaulted space playing "tea party" or "pirates" beneath its moss-clad roots. She allowed herself to indulge in the momentary fantasy that a son or daughter of hers might one day embrace these twisting vines and this ivy-cloaked wood as its enchanted playground—and birthright.

   Suddenly Blythe began to walk faster, not slowing down even when the path slanted steeply upward toward the summit on whose crest perched the turreted castle. Her breathing became labored and her heart pounded with exertion, but still she didn't slacken her pace. As she broke into a run, she formed sentences in her mind and saw herself hurtling into Luke's arms, babbling incoherently the wonderful, astonishing, incredible news that they had made a baby together.

   She was gasping with relief when she finally emerged from the wood and scrambled over the wooden stile. However, as soon as she came within view of the stone wall that led to the former pony stable, she halted in her tracks, dismayed as she surveyed the scene.

   The stable yard, as well as the field next to it, was deserted. The seven hothouses in their various stages of construction were devoid of workers, as was the stable itself. Both the Land Rover and the Quillers' Ford Fiesta were nowhere in evidence. Neither was Chloe's blue Jaguar.

   She glanced at her watch. It was half past four. Obviously the construction crew had gone home, as the days were much shorter now, and by six o'clock an inky darkness descended over the coast. But where was everyone else?

   Blythe concluded with a sinking heart that young Richard had been banished to Shelby Hall for another year and the rest of Barton Hall's inhabitants had gone on about their business.

   In a daze she entered the deserted castle through the kitchen door and sank onto a chair near Mrs. Quiller's long worktable. A dull weight of misery settled in her chest as the silence of the Hall became increasingly oppressive. It felt to Blythe as if suddenly, all the unhappiness endured by its former inhabitants had penetrated the very walls and reverberated on some level, like a high-pitched whistle only dogs could hear.

   Earlier in the day, after she had recovered from her latest bout of morning sickness, she had climbed the grand staircase to seek out Richard in order to say her good-byes. The door had been closed, and behind it she had heard the muffled sounds of Luke's deep voice and Dicken's youthful chatter. She had tiptoed back down the hall and had then set out for the village to keep her appointment with Dr. Vickery. Fool that she was, she had been convinced that after Luke's emotional catharsis, he would never exile the boy for another year.

   Apparently he had.

   Blythe suddenly experienced a rush of protectiveness toward the fate of the baby she carried, so primal in its fierceness that she found herself holding on to the edge of the kitchen table with an iron grip. After several long minutes she rose from her chair and wandered down the carpeted hallway past the sitting room where she had first joined Luke for that memorable tea four months earlier. She stood in the high-ceilinged reception hall gazing up at the portrait of Kit Trevelyan, along with that of the first Blythe Barton. She searched their expressions but could find in their opaque eyes no answers to her own dilemma.

   Did she want her child enmeshed forever in the legacy of Barton Hall? she wondered. She glanced around at the other portraits of male Bartons, Trevelyans, and Teagues whose life stories she didn't know as intimately as she'd come to understand those of Kit, Ennis, and Garrett. The women who had either loved or hated these men over the centuries had been—by virtue of their gender—at their husbands' mercy.

   As Blythe had learned to her regret, marriage, even in the twenty-first century, was still a legal contract, with binding obligations and responsibilities weighted, more often than not, in favor of the man of the house.

   Suddenly Blythe thought of William Barton, the natural son of her courageous, reckless, often misguided namesake. She shifted her gaze back to the portrait of his mother, captured in oil by her lover, Ennis, who had depicted her with faintly feline eyes and abundant dark tresses. If Blythe Barton—ex-Stowe—didn't ultimately marry Lucas Teague, then her baby, like the offspring of the original Blythe Barton, would be called bastard—with the suffering for a child that label might entail.

   Blythe suddenly felt an urgent need to know what had happened to her namesake's out-of-wedlock son—and what the future might hold for this tiny human, created by Luke and her, whom she already dearly loved.

   Had Blythe Barton Trevelyan's infant survived the torturous journey across the Atlantic? she wondered. Did he and his mother make Annapolis, Maryland, their home? And most important, had his illegitimacy scarred and twisted his life?

   What had been the fate of William Barton?

The library was full of shadows when Blythe paused at the threshold in the growing dusk. However, she didn't bother to flip on the desk lamp as she entered the chamber flanked with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The lingering light filtering through the tall casement windows illuminated the genealogy chart amply enough for Blythe to locate a particular date. It was the record of her namesake's death.

   "One… last… time," she murmured in a whispered promise to herself.

   As she placed her fingertips lightly against the glass shielding Blythe Barton Trevelyan's name, and began to inhale slow, even breaths. She wondered if the notation "d." on Reverend Randolph Kent's parchment, followed by the year "1794"—plus an enigmatic question mark written beside it—could tell her anything about the destiny of Blythe Barton's only son.