Cottage by the Sea (29 page)

   The only sound beneath the rafters was Blythe's ragged breathing.

   "It was unforgivable," she said, barely above a whisper. "The grandstand was full of kids. What I really wanted to do was beat Otis to death for killing Matt and maim that horse so it couldn't buck anyone! But beating a horse on the neck like that… making it bleed—I should never be allowed
near
a horse—"

   "Your brother had just died… You were in shock."

   "That bronc was loco… It never should have been loaded into the chute by that fucking rodeo hand who—" She buried her face in her hands. Luke put his arm around her shoulders as wrenching sobs nearly cut her breath off. "You'll think all I ever do is cry!"

   "It was terrible to have done what you did to the horse," Luke said, rocking her in his arms, "but it
is
forgivable."

   "No!" Blythe exclaimed, pulling her head off his shoulder and meeting his gaze. "It's not! I love animals. I loved horses until that night. Now I hate them!"

   "I understand why you feel that way…" He began to soothe her like a child as he stroked her hair. "But I don't think it's horses you hate… and I have no doubt that one day you'll even grow to like my Cornish ponies a wee bit. Perhaps even ride one. They're very low to the ground, you know," he teased gently. "And mine are quite sweet-tempered."

   "You think so?" she murmured, drying her eyes with a corner of the bed sheet.

   "They adore you," he teased.

   "What do you mean, they 'adore' me?" she groused.

   "They were lonely in that big stable. They find the piggery cozy and snug, and they give you all the credit for their improved housing conditions."

   "How do you know that?" Blythe sniffed, reaching for a tissue from a box perched on the bedside table and noisily blowing her nose.

   "They tell me these things," Luke said smugly, kissing the top of her head again. "And one day they'll tell you."

   "Yeah, right."

   "Will you at least think about riding with me one day?"

   "I'll think about it."

   "Well done," he praised her, giving her shoulders a squeeze. He took her hand in his, his thumb grazing the diamond band she still wore on her ring finger. "You said you met Christopher soon after your brother died."

   "Yep," Blythe said, wondering what one did with a slightly used twenty-five-thousand-dollar anniversary ring. "I went back to UCLA that fall, agreed to help a dashing young Englishman with his student film, and signed up for a whole new life." She drew in a deep breath and turned toward him. "Oh, Luke," she sighed, putting her arms around his shoulders and pulling them both prone on the bed. "I've treated you like I was in some shrink session with your cousin Valerie. I'm sorry."

   "There's nothing to forgive," he murmured, his lips grazing her forehead. "So I take it that you've met the gypsy in the family. At the village fête?"

   "She's nice."

   "A bit 'loco,' as you put it."

   "No way!" Blythe protested. "She seems very knowledgeable about her field."

   "Since she retired, I'm afraid dear Valerie's gone a little over the top with all that paranormal claptrap. Or wasn't she wearing her red turban that day?"

   "That was just for effect," Blythe laughed. "She's actually a pretty skilled therapist, I think. She hypnotized me in her gypsy tent."

   "Ah… and did you spy anything in her crystal ball?" he teased.

   "A baby."

   "Goodness."

   "Still attached to an umbilical cord."

   "Oh."

   Luke had ceased his bantering and looked uncomfortable.

   "Which reminds me," she said self-consciously. "I think we need to talk about something. It's pretty personal. I'll probably blush."

   "Ah… the subject of babies…" he said, a muscle growing taut in his jaw. "Or is it about not producing babies?"

   "Look, Luke… maybe this was just one mad night of passion—"

   "Hardly," he interjected dryly.

   "—and we need not trouble ourselves with the subject," she continued, forcing a light tone, "but if we're actually going to be foolhardy enough to continue riding down this trail…" She hesitated, wondering at the sudden shift in Luke's mood whenever the subject of children was raised. "The problem is… I didn't come to Cornwall exactly expecting to have… a relationship. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't travel with a diaphragm, I hate IUDs, and the pill doesn't agree with my body chemistry."

   "I'm afraid I have to admit I haven't bought a box of condoms since my university days," Luke confessed.

   "Is that where you met your wife? When you were in college?"

   "Nooo… not at Cambridge," he chuckled. "I met Lindsay at Chloe's deb party."

   "Don't tell me you were Chloe's date that evening?"

   "I was indeed."

   "Jesus!" Blythe laughed. "How did Lindsay manage to keep her as a friend, if I may ask?"

   "The clever girl asked Chloe to be maid of honor at our wedding. Then she made her Godmother to Richard."

   Blythe liked the way Luke could speak affectionately of his late wife with perfect ease.

   "It must have been so hard for you and Richard to lose her," she said quietly. "But at least a part of her lives on in your son. He's such a great kid. Did you never think about having a second child?"

   She knew she was fishing in dangerous waters, and as she anticipated, Luke's answer was short.

   "We considered it."

   "But you had a vasectomy?" she blurted.

   "No. A second child was out of the question because of Lindsay's illness."

   "Oh… of course," Blythe responded, penitent. "It was a dumb question."

   He smoothly changed the subject back to the practical matter Blythe had originally raised.

   "Look, Blythe, I don't want you to worry about this contraception business. I'll purchase some condoms today when I go into the village."

   "It'll cause talk," she teased, grateful that he had apparently forgiven her for her unseemly gaffe.

   Luke leaned back and erupted with laughter. "How right you are," he said, grinning broadly, his good humor restored. "However, despite setting Gorran Haven on its ear, buying a box of condoms at the chemist's today fills me with delicious anticipation."

   "My… my, aren't we the naughty boy," Blythe said, mimicking his plummy British accent.

   He reached for one of her hands and slowly turned it over, planted a kiss on the palm, and then began to draw small, provocative circles with his tongue. With calculated deliberation he seized her forefinger and smoothed its pad from side to side across his lower lip. As an amazing current spread up her arm, he took the moistened finger into his mouth and sucked on it sensuously.

   "Whoa," she breathed, "you are debauched." Nervously she glanced sideways and caught sight of the clock sitting on the nightstand. "Oh, my God! Look at the time!" she gasped. It was nearly eight o'clock, long past the delivery time for morning tea.

   "When I get back to the Hall, I'll just tell Mrs. Q to expect you for breakfast," he replied calmly, releasing her hand.

   "You wouldn't dare," Blythe declared, pulling the bed sheet protectively around her bosom.

   "Watch me."

   With that Luke bolted out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and within moments he was steering his Land Rover back to Barton Hall.

During the following weeks Luke and Blythe struggled to maintain a sense of decorum as they supervised the building of the temporary, plastic-covered Quonset huts and inventoried plant stock they had ordered from a large nursery in Devon. In reality there was a current of excitement buzzing between them like an ungrounded wire. It vibrated often enough to be disconcerting during the performance of the most mundane tasks.

   Most nights Luke made his way to Painter's Cottage around midnight, where the two of them were plunged into a heated fog of sensuality, drenched with unreasoning desire for each other, like the unusually warm summer mists that boiled over the nearby cliffs. Shrouded from the outside world, they made love for hours inside Painter's Cottage. Yet each time Blythe couldn't escape from the demented notion that some vaguely disapproving presence was observing their consuming passion for each other.

   I'm a free woman! she thought with exasperation. Lucas Teague is a free man! What in 'tarnation is wrong here? We're consenting, unmarried adults living in the feel-good twenty-first century, for God's sake!

   To underscore this fact to herself, Blythe dispatched a letter to her father at his new address in Jackson Hole. She announced that she had embarked upon the Barton Hall Nurseries project with the owner of the venerable estate where she was living in a stone cottage by the sea, and that she had decided to stay on in Cornwall for the foreseeable future. She hesitated as she reached the end of the page and then added:

   
Much love, Blythe

   Propping herself on one elbow, she asked tentatively, "Luke… do you ever have a… sense of the chain of people who have lived before you at Barton Hall?"

   "At times," Luke acknowledged, absently threading his fingers through her hair. "It's a kind of weight… the balance of all of them against just me, fighting to keep the place intact."

   What Luke felt about the past was grounded in the present, she realized with disappointment. What he had described had no relation to the specters she had witnessed at the beginning of the summer. Nor did it allude to the sense she had that the triangle of Blythe, Ennis, and Kit still imbued the walls and comers of Barton Hall. And what about Luke's direct ancestor, Garrett Teague? Where did he fit in?

   She turned over in bed and snuggled under Luke's chin. His ancestors were long gone, buried in the ancient soil in St. Goran's churchyard. Now there was practical business to take care of, she lectured herself. Luke was real. A flesh-and-blood lover of the highest caliber. Chris and Ellie were in Kenya. She should cut out the woo-woo stuff and concentrate on getting those seven temporary potting sheds constructed.

Despite these admonishments, however, by the end of the month following their discovery of the contents inside Ennis's trunk, Blythe continued to find herself shaken to her core by the avalanche of emotions she and Luke had shared in recent weeks.

   As far as she was concerned, Lucas Teague was to lovemaking what Ennis Trevelyan had been to painting: talented, single-minded, and energetic. Much to her astonishment she had discovered that the gent in tweed clothing was at heart an unrepentant sensualist. Nearly every night he would seize her hairbrush and pull it through her unruly mass of curls until sparks crackled in the shadowy loft at Painter's Cottage. He delighted in their bathing together in the old-fashioned claw-and-ball tub that commanded a spectacular view of the Cornish coast.

   And when Luke wasn't wooing her with bunches of wild violets he'd found growing on the banks of the River Luney, he was smuggling sweet Cornish cream out of Mrs. Q's larder, which he put to bewitching use in the middle of the night.

   When it came to the sexual aspect of their relationship, a repressed Englishman Lucas Teague definitely was not. However, as far as spoken communication was concerned, Blythe discovered that he tended to refrain from full disclosure. Chloe Acton-Scott did not return to Barton Hall, nor did Luke make mention of her. The August tourists departed. By early September the elegant blonde still hadn't made an appearance.

   "Would you consider joining me in the Barton Bed one night soon?" Luke whispered with an evil grin late one afternoon while Richard was occupied with Mr. Quiller working in the walled garden. "I fear I've been spotted too many times by the local farmers driving home at dawn's light. I feel the need to mount a gallant attempt to salvage your reputation."

   "Yours must be in tatters by now, too," she laughed. "Consorting with a Yank, no less."

   "The Bawdy Bed of Barton could be fun," he said temptingly. "We can close the curtains on it and you can tie me to the headboard or something."

   "How 'bout tonight? I'm great with a lariat."

   "I take it that's some sort of rope?" he translated. "Excellent. Your cover story can be the early arrival tomorrow of all that polyurethane for the potting sheds. I'll just tell Mrs. Q you're staying to dinner and ask her to make up the blue room—that's five doors down from mine," he disclosed conspiratorially.

   "And you really think she'll be fooled?"

   "No. But Richard will."

   "I don't know if I can even find the Bawdy Bed of Barton—or the blue room, for that matter—in that mausoleum of yours," she said, laughing. "I have some vague notion the master wing is down the corridor opposite the landing at the top of the grand staircase, but after that I'm lost."