Cottage by the Sea (21 page)

   "He's a plain 'mister,' and besides, I was the one who proposed this thing to Lucas, not the other way around," Blythe retorted heatedly. "And I've set it up so that I have to approve every expenditure."

   "In your state of mind, that's what concerns me," Lisa shot back. Then she added, "Be honest, Blythe. You haven't gone squishy over this Lord of the Manor guy, have you? Are you sure that you're not just on the proverbial rebound?"

   "Don't be ridiculous!" Blythe replied testily. Lisa was treating her as if she were a half-wit. "This is just a business deal," she said coldly. "A very good business deal, I think. I merely called you to let you know what I'd decided to do."

   "Well… if somewhere down the road you wind up kneedeep in shit, find yourself another phone booth on the moor somewhere and give me a call. I'll do what I can to get you out of it."

   "I don't want to get out of it," Blythe protested. "Why do people in Los Angeles assume the world is out to rob them blind?"

   "Because it is," Lisa pronounced. Then she picked up her previous theme. "If the deal with this Teague character blows up in your face, I'll just say that the stress of your divorce impaired your judgment… or that you didn't understand British law, or that—"

   "I don't want to get out of it!" Blythe repeated sharply. "And, in fact, I'm due at Barton Hall right now. We're cleaning out the loft above the pony stalls today,"

   "Just you? Or is the other CEO wielding a broom as well?" Lisa retorted sarcastically.

   "Drop me a note with the names of a couple of solicitors in London who specialize in business law as soon as you can, will you?" Blythe asked, ignoring her lawyer's derisive comment. "And make sure you charge me for your time."

   "Will do," Lisa said curtly. She was obviously a woman who didn't appreciate her advice being ignored.

   "Thanks," Blythe answered. "Well… I'll let you go. You probably want to turn in pretty soon. Isn't it amazing?" she added, trying to sign off with a show that she hadn't taken Lisa's crustiness personally. "You're about to go to bed and I'm about to have breakfast… at a darling little place called Toasties. Cheerio," she joked in a deliberate "jolly-hockeysticks" tone of voice.

   She quickly hung up the receiver and took a deep breath, leaning against the inside of the telephone booth. The conversation with Lisa had made her feel as if she'd done something extremely naughty and had been unfairly chastised by higher authority.

   But what if Lisa was right?

   Blythe knew—in the part of her character that was not the dreamy artist—that many of the objections her lawyer had raised were perfectly sensible. She wondered, having heard them articulated in the cold light of day, if she had, in fact, gotten herself in way over her head.

   Blythe heaved open the heavy red metal door and was blasted in the face by the stiff breeze swooping off the bay. Was she truly ready to cut all of her ties to Hollywood in exchange for at least three years in a place she hardly knew, a "backwater," as Lisa so delicately put it, populated by people whose customs and language she didn't fully understand? Had she actually given serious thought to becoming an expatriate?

   And where was her relationship with her new partner heading? Perhaps she had been blatantly fooling herself. Perhaps she'd been hoping, unconsciously, that in one easy business negotiation she and this attractive widower would fall madly in love, magically filling the hole in her heart left by the breakup with Christopher.

   God knew she could use a bit of an ego boost. The state of her sexual relationship with her husband the year before their divorce should have been a major clue that something disastrous was brewing. Truth to tell, she had been too exhausted and Chris had been too busy for much lovemaking last year, what with her trips to visit Grandma Barton in Wyoming, not to mention coping with a brutal production schedule. And then, of course, during the last months of their marriage, Chris and Ellie had been—

   
Don't go there, Blythe
…said a warning voice in her head.

   And what
about
Luke? she wondered, forcing her thoughts to tackle another troubling aspect of her decision to go into business with a man she had to admit—in the cold light of day—she found extremely attractive. What about Miss Chloe Acton-Scott's permanent claim on the yellow room in the castle's guest quarters? Blythe suddenly wondered if any secret doors linked Luke's room to the Yellow Room. Obviously Richard's godmother had filled some sort of void since Luke's wife had died. The question was, how big a void?

   
Jesus, Blythe!

   It was nearly two years since Luke's wife, Lindsay, had died. He might very well have been ready for love, or even a pleasant roll in the hay, but despite her liking for the guy, Blythe certainly wasn't ready for much beyond a friendly hug, she reckoned, given the fragile emotional state she'd been experiencing these last months.

   
Gal, you've gone and fried your bacon mighty crisp, seems to
me…
Grandma Barton's voice rang in her head.

   Unsettled by these musings, along with her recent exchange with her cynical attorney, Blythe discovered that she had walked two hundred yards beyond Toasties. She had also lost her appetite and made an abrupt decision to keep trudging on ahead.

   As she climbed over the stile that led to the public footpath en route to Barton Hall, the leaden skies overhead began to spit rain. She pulled the Barbour's hood tightly around her chin and tried to ignore the foul weather, concentrating, instead, on the chores facing her this day.

   And then a comforting thought occurred to her.

   If she found herself out of her depth with Barton Hall Nurseries-—or even in her relationship with Luke—she'd simply pull the plug. She'd seen Christopher initiate "damage control" many a time, and she could do it too—if she had to.

   "I'll just back out of the deal and blow this pop-stand," she said aloud.

   Blythe bent forward, braving the rising wind. She wondered where in remote Cornwall a person could purchase hundreds of yards of polyurethane. Grateful for the diversion, she mentally began to design the inexpensive hothouses she planned to erect until they were sure the business would succeed and the partnership could afford to build permanent structures made of wood and glass.

   However, in one corner of her mind she chewed on the fact that, undeniably, she and Luke were confronted with a daunting number of decisions and concerns. And lurking behind everything was the matter of secret bookcases and uninvited eighteenth-century ancestors materializing in and around the estate when least expected. It was a situation best left unexplored, yet it always lingered on the edge of Blythe's thoughts.

Fortunately as soon as Blythe walked into the stable yard at Barton Hall, her worries faded into the background and the day flew by in a blur of activity and hard physical labor.

   One warm July day, not long after the conversation with Lisa Spector, Luke climbed the ladder to the stable loft looking for Blythe.

   "I am pleased to announce that the ponies are delighted with their cozy new quarters in the piggery behind the walled garden," he said with a flourish, as if he were the town crier. "They said to thank you for liberating them from this stone hovel."

   But Blythe didn't respond with her usual good cheer. She was sitting on an old leather trunk, staring fixedly at the wall opposite.

   "The self-portrait of Ennis Trevelyan…" she said in a low voice, and pointed at a dust-laden canvas defiled by vicious gashes that disfigured the handsome face of Luke's longdeceased ancestor.

   "Ah… so that's where it's got to," Luke replied, drawing near to have a closer look at the damaged painting that leaned against a stone wall blanketed with cobwebs.

   "Do you have a flashlight on that rig you're wearing?" Blythe asked quietly, referring to his leather carpenter's belt full of pouches and straps for carrying a small storehouse of tools.

   "A torch, you mean?" he replied. "Yes… here," he added, handing it to her.

   Blythe shone the light on the vandalized portrait. One slash of the attacker's blade had savaged Ennis's face from eye to ear. Another had cut his throat as brutally as a professional assassin.

   "If, in fact, your ancestor Christopher Trevelyan did this, he obviously was very angry," she said in a subdued tone of voice.

   "Well, as far as we know, brother Ennis wasn't murdered by Kit," Luke assured her. He gestured toward the painting. "This fracas was probably just the result of two drunken siblings squabbling."

   Blythe's memory flashed to her glimpse of the standing figure that had materialized briefly on the cliff of Ennis's seascape that hung in Luke's sitting room. The person who had appeared suddenly in that painting had been staring down disconsolately at a capsized dinghy that bobbed forlornly in the cove. Who had been in that boat? Blythe wondered. And why was the boat floating upside down in the water? Had someone been killed in an accident? Or had a murder been made to
look
like an accident?

   The dark-haired young man had been leaning on a stag horn walking stick that was identical to one currently stored in the castle's mudroom—that is, when the distinctive staff was not in use by Garrett Teague's descendant, whose own head was crowned with a similar blue-black mane. Had Luke's forebear somehow been involved in the quarrel between the Trevelyan brothers?

   
Don't start!
she told herself fiercely, and purged the image from her mind.

   "Blythe? Are you all right?" Luke asked. He retrieved the lighted flashlight that was dangling uselessly against the pant leg of her jeans. "Not spooked by shredded ancestral portraits or long-forgotten family quarrels, are you?"

   "Well, that picture is a bit creepy, don't you think?" she replied, trying to laugh.

   "It certainly is," Luke agreed cheerfully. He seized the painting by its dusty gilt frame. "Look at it this way. If our venture goes at all successfully this year, I intend to send it up to Christie's in London and see about having poor Ennis here restored to his former roguish glory. Meanwhile, I'll clean it off and store it in the pantry cupboard in the Hall."

   "Good," she replied, relieved to have the damaged portrait out of her sight. "Where's Richard this morning?"

   "Helping Mrs. Q pack our picnic. It's too glorious a day to spend all of it in this dusty loft. Luncheon will be served today at Hemmick Beach, m'lady—if that meets your approval?"

   "Right on, Loretta!" she laughed. "But we have to get back by two o'clock. The roof men are coming to give us their estimate."

   "Then I'd better be sure the wine's been packed," he responded grimly, and backed down the ladder. "I hope to be completely numb when they tell us their bill of quality."

   "You mean how much they'll charge? Their price?" she asked in one of her frequent attempts to confirm they both were speaking the same language.

   Luke nodded and then paused halfway down the steps. "Oh, and, Blythe… guess what I found at the back of the big tool shed this morning? James Barton's drawings for the expansion of the Hall in the late 1780s. There's a sketch of another secret room behind a bookcase in the library. Come… quickly, before we go. Let's have a look to see if it's still there."

Blythe hesitated near the library door as Luke and Richard, consulting a roll of drawings now yellowed with age, surveyed the bookcases from every angle.

   "Now, let's see…" Luke murmured, "which case could it be?"

   "What about this one, Daddy?" Richard ventured, using a less formal address for his father while pointing to the bookcase nearest the corner. "See that square? On the drawing it looks as if the secret room is—"

   "You're right, son," Luke interrupted. "It looks as if it might come out right about…"

   Blythe realized she was holding her breath as Luke's fingers probed behind the carved molding that fronted the shelves. A click resounded in the room, but the bookcase didn't move.

   "Perhaps if you just push inward with your shoulder on the left side of the bookcase," she suggested quietly. "The hinges are probably rusty."

   Luke took her advice, with young Richard following suit. The bookcase retreated inward an inch while making a loud splintering sound.

   "Something moved!" Richard said excitedly.

   "All right, son… let's try again. One, two, three…"

   And just as Blythe knew it would, the bookcase pivoted to the side, exposing a black, gaping hole beyond. The door's movement also resulted in a flurry of scurrying sounds that were probably produced by rodents who had found a home in Barton Hall's eighteenth-century smuggler's lair.

   Luke whipped out his torch and shone it inside.

   "Good heavens!" he exclaimed.

   "What, Daddy?" Richard piped.

   Blythe inched forward into the library chamber. "Brandy barrels?" she called.

   "Stacked to the ceiling," came Luke's muffled reply. "This stuff's either poison or worth a fortune!" She heard a knocking sound. Then, "Oh, blast!"

   "What's the matter?" Blythe said, crossing to the bookcase and peering inside.