Cottage by the Sea (48 page)

   "None too worse for wear, are ya, lad?" said John, one of two stretcher-bearers. "But you'll not be tryin' this again, will you, now?" he added with a wink as he tucked the blanket more tightly around his charge.

   "No, sir," Richard said in a small voice.

   "Right Cornish, though, isn't he?" the other stretcherbearer chortled. "Came through it all like an old Free Trader, hidin' from the customs men! Got a bit of the ol' smuggler's spirit in you, my lad, and that's a fact!"

   Within minutes Blythe sat at the wheel of the Land Rover and prepared to put the vehicle in gear. Luke was in the back, with young Richard stretched out along the seat. The boy remained bundled head to foot in the borrowed blanket.

   "I'll ring you tomorrow to see how you've all settled yourselves," Valerie announced through the car window. "Constable Seaton'll give me a lift back to the village. Get some sleep, now, will all of you?"

   Within the hour Richard had been bathed and tucked into his bed, not by the conscientious Mrs. Quiller, but by his father. Meanwhile Blythe had raided the pantry of saltines to quiet her queasy stomach, and hoped for the best as she mounted the grand staircase to bid Richard good night, as promised. Her attempts to stave off the now familiar twinges of discomfort she was feeling in her midsection had not been entirely successful. She was so tired, she felt like lying down on the nearest rug.

   "Sleep well, buckaroo," she called softly from the door to Richard's bedroom. "Take your time about showing up for work tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I think we should all take the day off."

   "Are you going?" Richard cried, sitting up in his bed with alarm. "Couldn't you stay with me until I fall asleep?"

   Blythe was embarrassed by his request and looked to Luke for guidance. His careful lack of expression revealed that his son's preference for Blythe's ministrations had cut him to the quick. However, he merely stepped aside, allowing Blythe to sit on the side of the boy's bed. She gently stroked the lad's brown hair, so similar in shade to that of the woman whose picture stood on Richard's bedside table.

   "I'm very sorry I caused everyone so much trouble," the youngster said sleepily.

   "I'm very sorry you've had such a scary time," she answered. "And I'm very glad you came through it all right. Do you promise never to be quite such a daredevil again?" she whispered in his ear, then brushed her lips lightly against his cheek.

   "I promise…" he whispered in return and, in an instant, was fast asleep.

   "Blythe…?" Luke murmured. "We need to talk."

   "Luke, I can't," she replied as an alarming jolt of nausea suddenly invaded her stomach. "I can't keep my eyes open."

   "I-I feel I must explain why I sent Dicken away to school… why I decided two years ago that—"

   "Look, I am about to drop in my tracks," Blythe interrupted in a tight voice. "And I'm afraid I'm just not up to debating child-rearing philosophies at the moment."

   "Please! Hear me out!" Luke said urgently. "Let's just have a brandy downstairs."

   To Blythe the thought of such libations was suddenly revolting. Before Luke's astonished glance she dashed past him into Richard's bathroom and abruptly shut the door.

   A few minutes later, nearly blind with fatigue and white as a sheet, she emerged. She avoided meeting Luke's eyes.

   "Blythe… were you ill just now?" he demanded.

   "I think the last twenty-four hours would make anyone ill," she said weakly. "I'll be all right. Just let me get out of these wet clothes and go to sleep," she whispered urgently over her shoulder as she exited Richard's bedroom. "I think this scare with Dicken tonight brought back a lot of bad memories about my brother, Matt," she temporized when they had reached the hallway.

   "I'm utterly exhausted myself," Luke agreed with a defeated shrug. They walked along in silence down the carpeted corridor in the opposite direction from Richard's room. At the end of the hallway Luke offered, "I suppose we'd best try to get some sleep during what's left of the night."

   For an awkward moment they hesitated outside Luke's room.

   "Look," Blythe said as a mantle of misery closed in around her, "I'll sleep in one of the guest rooms."

   Luke gave her a strange look and shook his head. "Don't be idiotic. My room's just here."

   "I'd go back to the cottage," she added stubbornly, her pride wounded, "but I honestly don't think, at this point, I can walk or drive."

   "Blythe, you're being silly," he snapped, his own strain and fatigue overtaking his customary courtesy.

   Nearly catatonic by now, Blythe allowed him to lead her into his bedchamber with its enormous four-poster looming against the rose-colored wall. She barely remembered his stripping her of her wet clothing, or his joining her inside his white-tiled shower. As if she were dreaming, she felt the soothing hot water cascade down her body. A few minutes later she kept her eyes closed as he toweled her dry with a large terry bath sheet and slipped her arms into his cashmere dressing gown.

   "In with you," he said, pulling back the red velvet coverlet on the gigantic Barton Bed. The next thing she knew, the bed linen was pulled under her chin. An instant later she was fast asleep.

Barely two hours after Blythe had fallen into Luke's bed, she was insensible to the sound of the door to the master suite opening. Nor did she hear a female voice saying coquettishly from the threshold, "Darling… it's seven-thirty. I practically had to wrestle Mrs. Q to the kitchen floor so I could bring us our morning tea—and an apology," the woman purred as she closed the door behind her. "I was such a bad girl last night, wasn't I? I don't even remember finding my way to my room—can you imagine? I fear I had just a teensy bit too much to drink at the club," she admitted, making her way across the Persian carpet toward the gigantic four-poster. "So I thought, before you and that ambitious Mrs. Stowe were up to your ears in potting soil or something, I'd come here to tell you in person how sorry I was that I—"

   Blythe had been roused from her semi-comatose state by Chloe's ongoing patter. Then one of the woman's manicured hands parted the heavy velvet curtains of the Barton Bed. Blythe was fully awakened by the sound of a tea tray being set down on the bedside table with a loud thump, followed the nerve-jangling clattering of stacked chinaware. Chloe ActonScott's final comment—before the young Englishwoman angrily slammed the bedroom door—received Blythe's full, wide-awake attention.

   "Bloody hell!" Chloe screeched. "Damn you, Lucas Teague! I can't believe you've allowed that
wretched
American woman in your bed!"

   Blythe pulled herself to a sitting position, parted the bed curtains herself, and stared at the reverberating expanse of the bedroom's oak-paneled door slamming shut. Luke rolled over in his sleep—roused by the disturbance, but not fully awakened by it—and then buried his head, facedown, into his pillow.

   Blythe had utterly forgotten Richard's godmother had been visiting Barton Hall! The woman must have been drunk as a coot not to have been awakened by the commotion engendered by the search-and-rescue squad invading the castle's kitchen in the middle of the night. Imagine the effect on Chloe's hangover having discovered someone else occupying the Bawdy Bed of Barton!

   She swung her legs over the side of the bed and poured herself a much-needed cup of tea. The second time the cups and saucers rattled on their tray roused Luke more thoroughly than even the outraged exclamations of Chloe Acton-Scott.

   "Blythe?" Luke said in a voice that sounded as if it came from the depths of a gravel pit.

   "Yes," she replied evenly.

   "What was that Mrs. Q said just now?"

   "Mrs. Quiller said nothing."

   He rolled over and declared to her cashmere-clad back, "She said something. I heard her… I just couldn't make it out," he added sleepily.

   "Your tea was delivered to your bedside just now by Richard's godmother."

   "What!" Luke exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in bed. "You must be joking."

   "Chloe brought two cups… see?" Blythe said sweetly, handing him the one she'd poured for herself and immediately serving herself another. "She appeared to know Mrs. Q's morning routine of bring you two your tea to perfection."

   "Blythe… you're being silly."

   "That's the second time in twenty-four hours you've called me that," Blythe said in a calm voice that did not match the tumult of emotion churning inside her. "I don't much like it."

   Luke remained silent as Blythe took her first sip of tea. She continued to stare across the velvet-clad expanse in front of her. Luke's implied denial of intimacy with Chloe Acton-Scott was reminiscent of all-too-familiar conversations she'd had in the past.

   
So much for any romantic notions about Luke's celibacy since his
wife died—or his fidelity, for that matter.

   Suddenly she felt like an utter fool.

   Long before she had discovered her husband making love to her sister in his director's trailer, Blythe had occasionally suspected Christopher of cheating on her when he'd been traveling to scout locations or meet with actors up for parts in his films. Whenever she summoned the courage to confront him with various pieces of blatant evidence, he had more than once looked her boldly in the eye and denied the facts with an air of injured innocence, adding that she really must see a therapist about her unreasoning jealousy.

   She took another sip from her china cup and then abruptly set it on the bedside tray.

   "I think I'll have a nice hot bath, if you don't mind," she said pleasantly. "I don't think I've got the chill out of my bones yet."

   And without giving Luke a backward glance, she grabbed her clothes off the chair, slipped into the bathroom, locked the door, and turned on the tap. Meanwhile she dressed in the jeans and sweater she'd worn the previous night. Her trousers were stiff as boards, and her turtleneck was a bit clammy, but as soon as she had made herself presentable, she shut off the water without bathing and unplugged the drain. Then she made her escape out a side door that led to Luke's dressing room, and through another that led to the hallway.

   She reached Mrs. Q's kitchen just in time to catch sight of Chloe stalking toward her Jaguar.

   "She's certainly getting an early start," Blythe commented, nodding through the steam-streaked kitchen window. Then she poured herself a second cup of tea from the pot nesting under the quilted cotton cozy. "Off to London?"

   "Not that she had the courtesy to tell me," Mrs. Q retorted with uncharacteristic pique. The previous night's strain had even taken its toll on the indomitable Margery Quiller.

   The housekeeper scrutinized the departing guest through the window. "She hasn't got her overnight bag with her," she added glumly. "She'll be back."

   "Arm-wrestled you to get Luke's tea tray, did she?" Blythe sympathized.

   "Oh, Lord!" the housekeeper groaned, and sat down on the nearest chair. "You saw her?"

   "Sure did." Blythe smiled grimly. "She nearly brained me in bed with the cups and saucers." She saw no point in pretending that she and Luke were merely business partners when she figured the Quillers had known for weeks their employer spent many a night at Painter's Cottage. If nothing else, the noisy Land Rover gave him away.

   "Oh, Lord!" Mrs. Q repeated, as the older woman obviously envisioned the scene that must have recently transpired in the upstairs bedchamber. She shook her gray head. "I did m'very best to dissuade her from—oh, Lord!"

   "Don't feel bad. I watched every episode of
Upstairs
Downstairs
," Blythe said with a stab at humor, "so I understand your dilemma completely."

   "I've known all along that woman would like nothing better than to be the next Mrs. Teague," Mrs. Q declared ruefully, "but she be never up to that sort of thing afore."

   "Perhaps she never had to… before I arrived on the scene," Blythe said carefully.

   "Oh… no, believe me—"

   "Oh, Jesus!" Blythe interrupted, pointing out the kitchen window at the sight of a Rolls-Royce emerging from the column of larch trees and heading toward the
porte cochère.
"I'm surprised Chloe and The Great One didn't have a head-on crash halfway up the drive!"

   Mrs. Quiller and Blythe were mesmerized by the sight of Christopher Stowe bringing his imposing chariot to a halt. Within seconds he unfolded his tall, nattily attired frame from his car and strode toward the large oak front door. The housekeeper shook her head in bewilderment as the British director picked up the heavy doorknocker and began to pound it authoritatively against its brass plate.

   "St. Goran preserve us!" the housekeeper pleaded, and turned to gaze at Blythe questioningly. "What will you be wantin' me to say to him?"

   "I'll deal with this," Blythe responded wearily, and headed down the dark corridor toward the castellated front entrance.

   "Well, good morning!" Chris declared with forced cheer as Blythe opened the door a few inches. "First off, I stopped by at your cottage this morning—rather early, I might add. Since you were nowhere to be seen and your unmade bed proved to be empty, I used my brilliant powers of deduction and came over here."

   "You went inside my cottage and had yourself a thorough look-see, did you?" Blythe demanded.