Cottage by the Sea (63 page)

"Hurrah for our Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a pirate king, hurrah!"

   Blythe sprinted past the window and then crept toward the front door.

"Hurrah for our Pirate King!

When I sally forth to seek my prey I help myself in a royal way

I sink a few more ships, it's true Than a well-bred monarch ought to do!"

   
Thank God you refused to allow that rogue to kidnap you
to Kenya. Will you pay Dicken and me the undying honor
of marrying me?

   
I love you, and all the Blythes—past, present, and
future—

   
Ever, your Lucas

   Blythe was about to open the door and announce her presence when Luke burst forth with a
basso profundo
rendition of yet another ditty from his favorite operetta.

"Here's a first-rate opportunity
To get married with impunity
And indulge in the felicity
Of unbounded domesticity…"

   Without waiting for the second stanza, Blythe flung open the door and stood on the threshold, her hands on her hips in an attitude of mock dismay.

   "Now, just a cotton-pickin' minute here!" she declared in her best Wyoming twang. "You may be the landlord in these parts, but this here's pretty outrageous behavior!"

   "Come in here, wench, and shut the door!" Luke demanded. "The draft's becoming downright unhealthy."

   Blythe obeyed and shed her Barbour coat, hanging it on its peg on top of Luke's. Then she turned to face her brazen intruder.

   Luke was neck-deep in frothy bubbles. Beneath his shock of black hair he was gazing at her with alarming intensity. She suddenly felt self-conscious, as if she had already stripped off her clothes and were standing in front of him naked and exposed.

   "Would you be a darling and bring that chair over to the bath so you can sit down next to me?" he commanded. "I want us to have a little talk before I invite you in here."

   Wordlessly she followed his instructions.

   When she had sat down, he reached for her right hand, which was resting on her jeans-clad leg. A clump of bubbles pooled on her knee.

   "I know about the baby," he said quietly.

   "You do?" she replied with astonishment. She wondered,
How?
Didn't
patient
confidentiality
count
for
anything in Gorran Haven?

   "Lindsay looked green about the gills at the beginning of both her pregnancies," he revealed softly. "Your hasty exits the last few days gave you away… not to mention your sudden passion for saltines," he added, pointing to a platoon of identical cracker boxes lined up like soldiers on her kitchen counter. Then he propped her chin in his fingers in an attempt to force her to meet his gaze. Instead, he succeeded only in leaving a blob of bubbles along her jaw line. "It's absolutely wonderful news. I couldn't be more thrilled. You'll
have
to marry me now."

   Blythe stiffened as Chloe's pronouncements earlier that day echoed in her head.
Lucas may think he's infatuated with
you… but I guarantee that he's convinced himself of that because he's
so terribly desperate to save Barton Hall from the Inland Revenue!

   "Resigned to making an honest woman of me, are you?" she replied evenly. Her heart sank at the thought that Luke might feel obligated to marry her after the tragedy he had revealed about Lindsay's aborted child. "You Brits are such an honorable lot."

   Luke abruptly sat up in the bath, sloshing water onto the floor. "This has absolutely
nothing
to do with honor, my love," he objected, ignoring the pools of soapy liquid oozing across the floor. "I wrote most of that note asking you to marry me before—"

   "Before what?" she interrupted.

   
It's only a matter of time before he realizes how unsuitable you
are for his kind of life…

   "Before I had an interesting little session in the library with my cousin Valerie after lunch today."

   "You did?" Blythe said, her eyes widening. "And… did anything…? I mean, what happened? What did Valerie
say
?"

   "'Lucas, my dear,'" Luke mimicked his cousin's highpitched tone of voice, "'you've got to keep an
open mind
!'"

   "Oh, my God," Blythe whispered, sinking against the back of her chair. "She hypnotized you? I would have liked to see that! Well… what happened?" she demanded.

   "She most certainly did
not
hypnotize me," he corrected, "but she showed me several passages in Reverend Kent's diary. One I particularly remember predicted that, quote: 'The Children of the House of Barton shall ne'er be lost. Their path shall be lit by silver candlesticks into a land of misty waters and fertile ground.'"

   "You're not serious," she breathed. "That's from Reverend Kent's diary?"

   "Along with quite a collection of bizarre notations and predictions. What I'd like to know is what 'misty waters' can there possibly be in Jackson Hole, Wyoming?"

   "Waterfalls in spring?" Blythe guessed. Then her darkbrown eyes lit up like roman candles. "Old Faithful! The big geyser in the national park! When it shoots up, it's misty as a dusty gulch in a sandstorm and you should see the rainbows it makes!" She stared at the candlesticks as if they might suddenly shout "Boo!", and then gazed at Luke once again. "Tell me exactly what happened!" she demanded. "What did Valerie tell you?"

   "She told me those candlesticks arrived today," he replied, nodding his head in the direction of the table littered with brown paper wrappings and the two tall pieces of silverware. "Did Valerie have a look at them today?" he asked suspiciously. "Did you open the parcel in her presence?"

   "Nooo…" Blythe answered slowly, her puzzled look signaling she thought his question distinctly odd. She pointed to the pile of shredded packing materials plastered with a customs declaration and a crazy quilt of U.S. postage stamps. "I told her that the box contained the candlesticks and some other family stuff that my father sent from Wyoming when he moved out of the ranch. They've always been handed down to the eldest son—or the oldest surviving child. They're awfully heavy," she pointed out matter-of-factly, "so I thought it' d just be easier to carry them home from the village and open them here."

   "And have you studied the crest engraved on the base?" he asked soberly.

   "It's just a smudge now." She shrugged. "They're so scratched with age, you…" Her words drifted off as she scanned his face for a hint of what else Valerie might have told him—especially about the strange experiences she'd been having all summer.

   "Have a look at them with the magnifying glass I brought with me," he directed.

   Blythe rose from her chair and walked over to the table. As soon as she zeroed in on the objects in question, her hand holding the heavy brass-encased lens began to tremble.

   "Grandma Barton always called them the 'Barton candlesticks,'" she acknowledged slowly as she squinted to get a clearer look at the magnified view, "though we could never quite make out the etchings on the base." Yet coming into focus beneath Luke's high-powered glass were two badly scratched, but delicately engraved, sheaves of wheat flanking the blurry letter
B
carved in Gothic script.

   "See anything?" Luke asked, sitting absolutely still in his bubble bath.

   "Oh, Lordy Lord…" she said under her breath, "the Barton Crest… just like the one painted on your genealogy chart…" Blythe put down the magnifying glass and placed both her hands on the table for support. "What else did Valerie tell you?"she asked in a low voice, refusing to look at him.

   "Not much… She seemed to enjoy making a guessing game of it all. I was the one who mentioned you'd told me you'd seen the vision of a baby during your little tête-à-tête at the village fair. What
other
things have you seen in my dear cousin's crystal ball?" he demanded.

   "It's not just the crystal ball," Blythe replied, continuing to keep her eyes averted from Luke's penetrating gaze.

   "Oh?" was his only response.

   Blythe finally turned to face him and nearly laughed aloud at the sight of him frowning at her, awash in mounds of fragrant bubbles.

   "Look, Luke," she began, "I went to see Valerie a few times during the summer because a lot of weird things kept happening to me from the moment I arrived in Cornwall."

   "Such as?" he pressed, arching a black eyebrow.

   "Such as," she continued, her eyes glinting with mounting amusement, "There's a lot more information available through that glass-fronted genealogy chart of yours than you can imagine! In fact, I probably know a hell of a lot more about your family than
you
do!"

"Such as?" he repeated, gazing at her steadily.

   She returned to sit in the chair placed beside the bathtub. Then she extended her hand and, with the tips of her fingers, lightly smoothed his brow.

   "My darling Lucas… if you remain a
very
good buckaroo," she teased him gently, "I might let you in on a few secrets concerning this ancient pile."

   "When?"

   "Oh… from time to time."

   "And how, pray tell me, shall I earn your confidence?" he asked, his glance drifting lazily down the length of her body.

   "You already have," she said quietly.

   Lucas Teague had accepted her western origins. He'd taken her as his business partner. He wanted to marry her and be a father to their child. All she had to do now was trust that he would accept one more thing. The Barton candlesticks would, eventually, light their way.

   "Did Reverend Kent's diary say anything else noteworthy?" she asked with a casualness she didn't feel. "Valerie offered to let me read it, but I've never gotten around to it."

   "Oh, the usual claptrap about peering into the old boy's shewing stone and naming the succeeding generations."

   Luke's skepticism seemed as ingrained as ever, Blythe thought as her heart took another sudden nosedive. Then she noticed that an evil grin had begun to spread across his face.

   "Am I missing something?" she asked, and realized that she had been holding her breath.

   "There was nothing much more in the diary," he replied nonchalantly. "However, I showed Valerie a note I'd found in something else—the 1794 Barton Hall inventory. I had pulled it off the shelf to prove something to her."

"Which was?"

   "That the 1794 inventory recorded the fact that several pieces of family silver, plus a pair of silver candlesticks with ornate scrolls and the Barton crest, went missing that year. Foolish me." Luke nodded ruefully. "I thought the entry noting that the engraved candlesticks had been lost or stolen sometime in the eighteenth century proved your candlesticks
couldn't
have been from Barton Hall. I see now, thanks to my grandfather's old magnifying glass, that there might be some room for discussion on that point."

   "Holy cow and Christmas!" Blythe moaned, and sank back against the back of the wooden chair. "It all fits."

   "Might you know something about how
my
family silverware happens to be in your possession?" he asked with mock severity.

   "What do you mean
your
family silver, Mr. Teague?" she replied tartly. "Whose last name is Barton around here?"

   "Touché," Then he cocked his head to one side and asked, "But what do you mean by 'it all fits'? Valerie said the same thing to me."

   "Well… now, lookee here." Blythe grinned, resorting to a special-edition version of Grandma Barton at her saltiest. "This here tale's a mighty long story."

   "I'm listening," Luke replied patiently.

   Blythe narrowed her eyes mischievously. "I just reckon one day I might tell you some interesting details I picked up from that genealogy chart of yours. That is, if you promise to listen
very
carefully," she announced with a veiled warning.

   "Well," Luke countered with mock solemnity, "I promise—at the very least—to hear you out."

   "Even if there's no 'rational' explanation for what I swear to you I've seen?"

   "As Valerie says, I must do my best to keep an open mind," he said solemnly, and then flashed an unreadable grin.

   "Promise me you won't think I'm completely crazy?" Blythe asked suddenly, abandoning her teasing tone as her gaze probed his for any serious signs of derision.

   "At first… this afternoon… I-I very much thought one of us might be," he admitted with a wry look. Then he grew somber. "But soaking in the bath here… in this cottage… surrounded by Ennis Trevelyan's paintings… seeing the crest on those candlesticks. I've had time to think," he continued, gazing at her with disconcerting intensity. "To be quite honest, I can't quite believe this business about the Barton silver isn't some strange sort of wild coincidence. But maybe it isn't. Whatever it is… it's certainly captured my attention." Smiling gravely, he grazed his thumb along her ring finger. "All I know for absolute fact is that after two hundred years the mistress of Barton Hall has returned to her home."