Cottage by the Sea (39 page)

   "Excellent," she replied, glancing at the underweight baby wedged in the crook of her left arm. Would her milk be sufficient to boost this scrap of human flesh to a decent size? she wondered. Perhaps she should have urged Garrett to seek a wet nurse from the village, as well.

   "I shall be petitioning the House of Lords for a divorce," Kit announced, jutting his unshaven chin in the air. "I shall charge you with adultery, of course. Thus this bastard child shall not inherit."

   Despite her weakened condition, Blythe felt white-hot anger flood her veins. She struggled to sit up in bed, prompting the fragile infant to mew in protest at being jostled. Blythe slowly moved her right hand under the bedclothes and felt for the pistol she had begged Garrett to put under her pillow before he departed for Gorran Haven. Steeling herself, she grasped it and raised it to the level of Kit's forehead ten feet away.

   "You shall do no such thing," she announced with all the courage she could muster. "For unless I have your promise that you will not hold me and the Barton-Trevelyans up to public ridicule, I shall simply pull this trigger," she added icily. "Whatever the authorities choose to do with me afterward… the fact remains that Ennis shall inherit if I shoot you this instant. And if I don't, you must guarantee that one day, either through you or through your unmarried brother—my flesh and blood shall be heir to Barton Hall."

   Kit's gaze was riveted on the pistol aimed at his head.

   Blythe leaned toward him and was gratified to see her estranged husband swallow nervously.

   "And Trevelyan House?" he demanded harshly.

   "What you do about Trevelyan House is no concern of mine. Live in it and prosper by its fields, if you so wish. Bequeath it to the village idiot, for all I care. Just give me your sacred word of honor as a gentleman that my son will inherit Barton Hall… or I shall shoot you in the heart," she added, lowering the pistol to the level of his chest.

   Kit merely stared at her, a look of pure hatred expressing the thoughts he apparently could not articulate.

   Meanwhile Blythe released her hold on the baby and painfully eased her legs to the side of the mattress. She grasped the bedpost with her left hand and, in a single motion, pulled herself upright. The ivory-handled pistol weighed heavily in her right hand, and her arm ached. She must get closer to him, she thought in sudden panic, so she wouldn't miss her shot.

   "What say you, then, to my proposal, husband mine?" she asked in a low voice. "I shall count to three, and then I must have your answer."

   Kit remained mute. Blythe took several steps closer to her target.

   "One… two…"

   "
Three!
" announced Dr. Valerie Kent loudly. "Blythe Barton Stowe, I wish you to wake up now. There's a good girl. How do you feel, my dear?"

   A telephone rang shrilly in the office next door as Blythe sat bolt upright in the lumpy upholstered chair. To regain her bearings, she glanced around the psychologist's tiny consulting room above Rattle Alley and laughed weakly.

   "Why, Valerie Kent," she said accusingly, "for all your enthusiasm about 'searching for past truth,' you're a bit of a chicken!"

   "Just call me a Cornish game hen," Valerie chuckled wryly. Then her face grew sober. "When I saw how agitated you were becoming, I thought it best to bring you back."

   "But we didn't find out—" Blythe began to protest.

   "I think we should be a bit careful, since what we're exploring is rather new to us both."

   Rather new indeed, Blythe thought ruefully.

   And rather old.

B
lythe wheeled Luke's Land Rover down the shadowy corridor of tall larch trees tinged with fall color, and around the final curve of Barton Hall's stately drive.

   Just ahead, parked in regal splendor under the granite
porte cochère,
was a cream-colored Rolls-Royce Corniche. The classic car's elegant curved fenders and pristine chrome bumpers were bathed in the golden glow of the afternoon sun.

   "Shh-it!" she muttered. "Visitors!"

   Blythe was in no mood to greet company. She was bonetired from her foray into the bizarre world she had dared to reveal to Valerie Kent that afternoon. All she wanted was to sink quietly into a scalding-hot bath and absorb the scenery outside her cottage window.

   Well at least the unexpected caller wasn't Chloe ActonScott, she mused, savoring the pleasurable fact that the woman's blue Jaguar still had not made a return appearance at the estate.

   Blythe pulled around to the rear of the castle and directed one of the workmen to begin unloading the back of the car. The first of seven temporary hothouses had been completely framed in her absence and now awaited its plastic shell. The foundations for the other six had been laid out and would be constructed over the next few days. Young Richard was working beside Mr. Quiller as the older man designated the appropriate number of polyurethane rolls for each of the structures that would soon take form in the field beyond the walled garden.

   The ten-year-old had on the pair of cowboy boots she'd had air-expressed from Corral West Ranch Wear in Jackson as a belated birthday present. As soon as Blythe braked the Land Rover to a halt, the boy dashed up to the driver's side of the car.

   "See how much was done today?" he cried enthusiastically.

   "Fantastic!" she agreed with more energy than she felt. "Your father looks as if he's got company," she noted as she climbed out of the vehicle. "When you see him, Dicken, would you just say I've gone home to Painter's Cottage and I'll catch up with you all early tomorrow? All the items he ordered are stowed in the back of the car."

   "He asked me to tell you as soon as you came back to please go up to the house, straightaway," Richard piped.

   "But I look a mess!" she protested. "Just tell him I'm a wreck and in need of a bath."

   "Mr. Teague said it was important," Mr. Quiller intervened, approaching the car.

   "Really?" she said, wondering what it could be. "Well… all right," she agreed reluctantly, and headed for the castle's back entrance.

   Perhaps the visitor with the Rolls-Royce was a relative whom Luke wished her to meet, although he'd told her recently that he had few close remaining relations. He had revealed late one night that, as was the case with Blythe's mother, Janet, his father had died of a heart condition when Luke had been in his last year at university. A few years afterward his mother had gone to live with her daughter and son-in-law in Canada. Perhaps the owner of the museum-quality wheels gracing the gravel drive belonged to one of his intriguing distant cousins just down for a brief sojourn from London.

   Blythe entered through the back hall that led to the kitchen, reassuring herself that field representatives from the Inland Revenue didn't typically make their rounds in Rolls-Royces.

   Mrs. Quiller was nowhere to be seen inside the large rectangular room bristling with an Aga stove and hanging pots. However, the kettle was steaming quietly on the hob, and tins of cookies and cakes sat open on the long wooden table, indicating that the housekeeper was in the throes of putting together an impromptu but elegant tea party.

   Blythe paused in the scullery to wash her hands and brush the hair back from her face. She dug in her purse for her lipstick and made a minimum of repairs to her face. Then she made her way to the sitting room, resisting the impulse to appear suddenly via the secret door that led from the pantry.

   When she arrived at the threshold via the carpeted hallway, she halted abruptly, her feet rooted to the floor.

   "There you are!" exclaimed an unwelcome ghost from her past. "Our host, who's been decent enough to ply me with tea and scones, promised you'd return eventually, but I began to think you'd given us the slip."

   Christopher Stowe lounged gracefully on the chintz love seat, sipping from a gold-rimmed teacup and acting for all the world as if he took tea at Barton Hall every day at four o'clock. His tweed sport jacket and gabardine slacks were perfectly coordinated in subtle shades of brown and tan, and his open-collared shirt was of a rich cream color, similar in hue to the Rolls parked outside. His dark-blond hair—shorn of its pony-tail—was neatly trimmed and blown dry in a careful style that effectively disguised the onslaught of irreversible male-pattern baldness. The taut, unblemished skin sheathing his regular features had softened since she had seen him last. Where she had remembered him sleek and dashing and incorrigibly exotic, he now appeared puffy around the eyes, giving him the aspect of a Golden Boy gone slightly to seed.

   Even so the man she had been married to for eleven years appeared every inch the well-heeled British film director who currently resided in Hollywood: Savile Row meets Rodeo Drive. Except he didn't have the manners to rise from his seat to greet her. Instead he remained where he was and accepted a plate laden with Mrs. Quiller's finest delicacies, which she handed him along with a linen napkin.

   For her part, Blythe was dumbfounded at discovering that the last man on earth she wished to see was cozily sipping tea in her lover's sitting room. She shifted her gaze to Luke, and back to her former husband, wondering if she'd wandered onto the wrong movie set.

   "Why are you here?" she demanded bluntly. To hell with mincing, oh-so-English social niceties, she thought. Why should she cut Chris any slack?

   
Just rope 'im and run 'im outta here!

   "Would you like to sit down first?" Chris inquired with elaborate politeness.

   "No, I would not like to sit down," she retorted. "I would like to know what you are doing here!"

   Chris's demeanor lost some of its laid-back polish, and he shifted in his seat. Mrs. Q backed swiftly out of the room and disappeared through the magic door, while Luke shot Blythe a look of concern.

   Suddenly Blythe had an overwhelming urge to seize the fire poker standing to the right of the hearth and employ it to chase Christopher Stowe out of Barton Hall and to deliver a lethal thwack to the fender of his elegant Rolls-Royce in the process.

   "I am here, my dear Blythe, because there is need for a business discussion between us."

   "Call my lawyer," Blythe replied curtly.

   "Oh, but I have. That's how I found you in this godforsaken outpost." He took another sip of tea, affecting a nonchalance Blythe speculated he didn't feel, although the son of a bitch was doing a much better job of acting cool than she was.

   "Lisa Spector told you where I was?" she demanded indignantly.

   "No, not exactly. She merely said you were out of the country and couldn't be reached. As you are no linguist, I knew that if you were going to leave America for any length of time, you'd probably come to England. I checked several of our old haunts, and then I thought, 'By Jove! I'll just bet she finally took the time to go down to Cornwall, ancestorhunting'… and, wonder of wonders, here you are!"

   "A woman rang up here, asking for you after you'd left for Gorran Haven," Luke intervened. "I'm sorry… I thought it might be—"

   "Someone in the village probably told him I was your summer let," Blythe sighed. "You're in the phone book. In fact, my travel agent couldn't believe it when she first called here." Then she turned to face Chris. "What woman called here to find me?"

   "Look, Blythe… is there somewhere we can talk?"

   Luke abruptly stood up. "Let me allow you two some privacy," he offered smoothly. "I'll just go have a word with the men out back."

   And before Blythe could protest, he strode out of the room, closing the door behind him.

   
The English are goddamn unbelievable! Impeccable manners,
even on the brink of World War III!

   Blythe and her former spouse gazed warily at each other across the sitting room for a long moment.

   "Why don't you sit down?" Christopher repeated. Blythe complied, choosing the wing chair Luke had just vacated. It still radiated from his body's warmth. This comforted her somehow. "You're looking well, Blythe," her former husband offered for openers.

   "Just tell me why you've come," Blythe demanded grimly. "Tell me why you've barged in here, unannounced—"

   "The tabloids have no idea I'm here—" he began.

   "Oh, Jesus! That's right!" she groaned. Then she glared at him. "If the Fleet Street ghouls have followed you down here and reveal where I am, I swear, Chris, I'll—"

   "No one even knows I've left Kenya," he interrupted. "Ellie and I chartered a plane and flew out of there at three in the morning."

   "Ellie is here?" Blythe said slowly. "In Cornwall?"

   Suddenly she felt as if she were being assaulted in slow motion. Was there no place on the planet where her husband and her sister couldn't violate her life?

   "Well, I couldn't exactly leave Ellie and the baby in the jungles of Africa, could I?" Chris said in an exasperated tone of voice.

   "The baby?" Blythe echoed.

   "Yes," Chris replied shortly. "A girl."

   "Ellie delivered her baby in Africa?" Blythe asked, astonished.

   "There is a perfectly adequate hospital in Nairobi, founded by the British," he retorted tersely. Then he added, "We named her Janet. After your mother."