Cottage by the Sea (61 page)

W
ith each gulp of air Blythe found the act of breathing increasingly difficult. For hours now she had labored to inhale the humid summer's air into her lungs and longed for the oblivion of a dreamless sleep. The stifling temperatures mantling the Tidewater region of Maryland this sultry June day had relentlessly invaded her sickroom. The heat had grown more intense by several suffocating degrees as it rose to the top of Antrim Hall, transforming the narrow space allocated to her into an oven nearly as sweltering as the plantation's cookhouse. Yet Blythe was shivering with cold.

   "Mama," her twenty-nine-year-old son said softly, "you're likely to die of asphyxiation with all those blankets piled on top of you like that."

   She felt a cool compress touch her forehead, and then each cheek as William gently applied a cotton rag dipped in a diluted solution of witch hazel.

   Then, with great effort, she fluttered open her eyes and tried to smile.

   "I rather expect I'll die, regardless," she whispered hoarsely, "and I'd like to depart this world without my teeth chattering."

   "Shh… don't try to talk," he chided her gently as he raised

a tumbler of tepid water to her lips, "just sip this. You've a touch of ague, is all. I only wish you weren't exiled to this devil's hellhole in the attic!"

   She attempted to focus her gaze on her lanky, handsome son, who had to stoop in order to enter the spare quarters allotted to Antrim Hall's longtime housekeeper. At length she summoned a reassuring smile to her lips but could only maintain it for a few seconds as she patted William's ministering hand.

   Blythe's son was a Barton, through and through, which gave her immeasurable satisfaction. Tall, with dark hair like her own, he was lean of limb, hot-tempered when provoked, yet born with a generous heart. William had been her constant blessing, a child who had compensated for the many disappointments that had plagued her life.

   And, as he sat carefully on the edge of her narrow bedstead, she knew the time had come to tell him the truth.

   "And where is that scalawag brother of yours?" she rasped, her throat raw and painful due to the infection that had taken hold of her body three days earlier.

   She never referred to Maxwell Fraser as William's stepbrother. From the time they were small lads, they had been raised together, and when William was six, they had become siblings following the marriage of their parents in 1799.

   "Max has gone into Annapolis," William revealed. "He's to meet with an agent of General Ashley's about the expedition."

   "Ah… your great adventure," Blythe murmured. "I'm sorry to be the reason you stayed home from the appointment."

   The boys had excitedly shown her the advertisement for "enterprising young men" placed by W. H. Ashley, a fur trader and politician from St. Louis, Missouri, and his partner, Andrew Henry. Both men had manufactured gunpowder and made fortunes during the War of 1812, the conflict with Britain in which Max's father, Thomas Fraser—who was also Blythe's second husband—had been severely wounded.

   The Missouri bigwigs—Ashley and Henry—hoped to undertake a fur-trading expedition to the upper Missouri River. They also intended to forge a trail deep into the new American West along the paths first discovered by the explorers Lewis and Clark.

   "Max will tell us whether Ashley's man is a trickster or not," William said reassuringly, "and then we'll decide whether St. Louis shall be our next destination."

   Blythe knew with a strange certainty that, however Maxwell's interview went with General Ashley's man this day, she would never see America's "jump off" metropolis, as St. Louis was coming to be known.

   She succumbed to a fit of coughing, as if her body were confirming what her heart already knew… that she was, indeed, dying.

   "William," she said with difficulty when she was able to speak again, "please open the bottom drawer of the cupboard and fetch the large velvet pouch you'll find there."

   Casting her an indulgent look, her son promptly did as he was bid.

   "There's no need to tell me about the candlesticks again," he teased. "I know you wish them to be mine—and they will be one day… but not for many years."

   "Give them to me!" she commanded sharply, and then struggled with a second paroxysm of coughing.

   "Take care, Mama," William cautioned, "they're heavy." He gingerly set the pouch next to her on the bed and took a seat near her knees.

   Blythe inched her hand into the soft confines of the velvet bag, feeling for the dueling pistol she kept there, along with the Barton silver candlesticks.

   "This shall go with you wherever your life's journey should lead," she said, straining for breath.

   "Don't turn morbid now, Mama, just because you've reached your fiftieth year," he cautioned, and then smiled in an obvious attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

   Ignoring his jest, she placed the ivory-handled weapon in her son's large, callused palm. "This pistol saved my life many a time before Thomas and I met—and a few times since."

   A sudden, intense memory overcame her—of a kindhearted man with silvery-red hair who had occasionally frequented Reynold's Tavern on West Street in Annapolis so long ago. Thomas Fraser had long treated her with courtesy before they had struck up a conversation about young William. Thomas, twenty-five years her senior, had often indulged in chats with the little boy, who passed the time playing quietly in the sawdust beneath one of the tavern's tables while his mother tended customers.

   On that fortunate day the large, well-built Scotsman, then in his early fifties and a widower, disclosed that he was serving as estate factor for his brother-in-law, Beven O'Brien, at Antrim Hall, a few miles northwest of the city.

   Thomas's son, Maxwell Fraser, had been a motherless child for eight years by the time Blythe encountered his father and was offered the position of housekeeper on the wheat plantation. Fortunately Max and William had become fast friends after climbing the willow tree by the stream that ran beside poor Arabella O'Brien Fraser's grave. The two boys and their parents soon recognized that they had been lonely for too long.

   Blythe's meandering reminiscences were interrupted by a soft knock on her door. The black housemaid carrying a cup of broth looked startled as she caught sight of the pistol cradled in William's hand.

   "Mistuh O'Brien's still sleepin'," she whispered, "and Miss Mercy's wid the babies. Cook says she'll send up supper in a bit." She eyed the white man she'd always assumed was a peaceable sort. "You fixin' to use that?" she demanded, arching an ebony eyebrow in the direction of William and his weapon.

   "No," he assured her in a hushed tone as the housemaid tiptoed out of the room. "Thank you for bringing the soup, Sally."

   
O'Brien's still sleepin'.

   Sleeping off his latest drinking binge, presumably, Blythe thought sourly.

   She would have considered her life supremely blessed as Thomas Fraser's second wife and titular chatelaine of the plantation—if it hadn't been for Beven O'Brien.

   The owner of Antrim Hall was forever shouting for her to bring him another bottle of port, or trying to break the lock on the bedroom door of every beleaguered housemaid in his employ. For years Blythe and Thomas had held out hope that he would simply drink himself to death, and that O'Brien's nephew and Thomas's son by Arabella, Maxwell Fraser, would inherit the prosperous wheat plantation that Thomas had run so conscientiously in his first wife's interest all these years.

   However, it was certain now that Maxwell would not inherit Antrim Hall, after all, nor would his stepbrother, William Barton, serve as factor.

   The ague that crept into the Tidewater this spring had raged through poor Thomas's weakened seventy-four-year-old body. Blythe had buried him beside Arabella, gauging that there would be just enough room for her own casket on his other side when the time came.

   And now, she knew, it wouldn't be long before both their sons, bearing her coffin on their shoulders, would make that short journey from Antrim Hall's stately white portico to the plot beneath the willow tree.

   "Here, Mama, let me help you," William said as Blythe struggled to retrieve one of the ornate silver candlesticks from the pouch.

   Her son stood it on its broad base upon the lumpy mattress. Blythe's fingers curled around the crests etched into the candlestick's silver surface and found herself reflecting on how the best-laid plans so often go astray.

   Before Thomas had been in the ground a week, Beven O'Brien had already hired her husband's replacement, she reflected bitterly, a disreputable drinking companion named Obadiah Layton, whose sister, Mercy Layton, had been clever enough to produce a strapping set of twin sons at Easter, a scant five months after her wedding day. Beven had never sobered up after the christening. He had simply given his disenfranchised nephew Max and his extended family a month to find other employment and living quarters.

   Just as they were about to vacate the premises, Blythe, too, had been felled by a wicked fever and banished to this attic hellhole, so as not to endanger the newborn sons—and new heirs to Antrim Hall.

   Recalling the unfortunate series of events that had led to her family's perilous situation, Blythe struggled to raise her head from the pillow.

   "You must put the candlesticks in a vault in St. Louis as soon as you arrive," she whispered fiercely. "I want you to promise me you will never sell them, whether fortune blesses or curses you. Promise me, William!"

   "I promise," he said slowly, and she realized she was wise to have extracted this pledge.

   "Do not use them to fund your journey," she warned, "or for any such purpose. They came from Barton Hall… where you came from."

   "I know, Mama," William said patiently.

   "But there is something important that you
don't
know," she countered with as much strength as she could muster. She momentarily closed her eyes and contemplated how difficult it would be to shed an enduring family fiction. "Your father did, indeed, die at sea, but not on the voyage to America," she said, focusing her gaze on her beloved son. "
My
name was Barton, not his. The man who gave you life was Ennis Trevelyan. He was killed fighting in the Royal Navy against the French off the coast of Calais—and I was not married to him," she added matter-of-factly.

   William stared at her, dumbfounded. She was well aware that the story of his mother's tragic widowhood had been the foundation of his young life. Her son and Max had long marveled at how many common struggles they and their parents had endured. William thought his birth father had also been named William Barton, a man of means from Cornwall who had been swindled out of his inheritance by a neighboring family named Trevelyan and had boldly chosen to make his way to the land of opportunity. At least that was what Blythe had always told him. Now she had no time for face-saving invention.

   "I am in my right mind, if that's what you're wondering," Blythe said, swallowing with great difficulty.

   William stared at her, and Blythe knew that she had read his startled expression correctly. He needed to be convinced that the fever had not made her daft.

   "Well, then, why did you lie?" William asked in a low, reproachful voice.

   "Because I would rather have been a tavern maid than a whore," she replied. "Those were the only two occupations open to a woman in my situation."

   "And this other man… What did you say my father's name was?" William demanded gruffly. "Who was he? A seaman who drifted into your life? Was Barton Hall your fantasy as well?"

   "No!" she declared hoarsely. "You may choose to call me strumpet, but I was the mistress of Barton Hall! My family had owned those three thousand acres in Cornwall since the Conqueror! I was in love with your father at the time you were—"

   "Then why didn't you marry him?" William asked accusingly.

   "I was already married," she said, barely above a whisper.

   "To whom?"

   "Your father's brother," she disclosed. "Christopher Trevelyan of Trevelyan House… the property next to Barton Hall. The eldest son of that cursed place."

   "Jesu…" was all William said.

   "The younger son, Ennis Trevelyan, was an artist… and a fine one," Blythe said. "I'll wager that his works still hang in the Hall and at Painter's Cottage. I couldn't transport the pictures, but the paintings belong to you. I inscribed your name on all of them," she added, wondering if her words were making any sense to her bewildered son. "I had always wanted to marry Ennis, but my wretched guardian forced me to marry the eldest son to keep both estates intact."

   "And then you fled, disgraced by my birth," William said dully.

   "I chose to leave in ninety-four," she replied, "because there was no other future for me after your father died at sea."

   There was nothing to be gained by telling him about her feelings for Garrett Teague. She herself had come to fathom their depth when it was far too late. And now Garrett was married and a father as well.

   Several years after Blythe's voyage to Maryland aboard the
Argus,
a Cornish friend of her maid's, Mary Ann, later emigrated to Annapolis with word that the overbearing master of Barton Hall and Trevelyan House had taken his own life with a dueling pistol. Much to the delight and astonishment of the villagers in Mevagissey and Gorran Haven, the bookseller Garrett Teague had inherited Barton Hall, lock, stock, and smuggler's hidey-holes.