Cottage by the Sea (34 page)

   "Oh…" Richard said in a low voice, "but at least she was really
old
."

   "That's true… but it was still very sad," she agreed quietly. "In fact, I still feel sad sometimes. I think everybody does when they lose someone they care about. You probably still feel upset about your mom," she ventured.

"I do. Especially at school."

"I can understand why."

   "I hate that school!" Richard blurted. "That's why I crammed everybody's knickers down the lavatories."

   "You did?" Blythe asked solemnly, trying her best to keep a straight face. "What happened? Did you get in Dutch?"

   "Dutch?" he asked with a quizzical look.

   "In trouble with the school?"

   "I was nearly sacked," he replied proudly.

   "Expelled? Sent home, you mean?"

   The ten-year-old nodded. "Aunt Chloe came and persuaded the headmaster to keep me…"

   "And your dad?" Blythe asked cautiously.

   "Daddy said on the telephone that I had to stay."

   "Why do you suppose he felt that way?" Blythe asked, wondering if she should be proceeding down this road.

   "He said it was good for me."

   "Perhaps it is."

   "It's horrid!" Richard countered vehemently.

   "That bad, huh?"

   "I could learn just as much at the day school in Mevagissey!" he added quickly. "We're doing fractions at Shelby Hall, and my friend Amory Bice said they are too!"

   "Really?" Blythe said. "Is that the boy who came to your birthday party? The one who invited you for a day at the beach with his family last month? He seemed like an awfully nice friend."

   Richard nodded emphatically. Then he looked across at her inquiringly. "It's nice having you here this summer. Are you going to stay?"

   It was Blythe's turn to stare at the partially completed puzzle. "Well, your dad and I have a lot of work to do to get Barton Hall Nurseries up and running," she said cautiously, looking up with a reassuring smile, "so I expect I'll be around for quite a bit longer."

   "Good," Richard declared.

   Blythe made a show of yawning and stretching her arms above her head.

   "I don't know about you, but I think I'm sleepy."

   "Me too," Richard agreed promptly. "Would you go back upstairs with me?"

   "Sure," she said, wondering how she would eventually find her way back to Luke's room without giving anything away. "Lead on, MacDuff!"

   Luke's son slipped his hand into hers and companionably walked beside her up the grand staircase, turning in to the same hallway she had traversed when exiting from the castle's master suite.

   "I'm right across from mummy and daddy's room," Richard said, as Blythe tried not to flinch. She paused on the section of carpet that ran between the bedchamber with the red velvet canopy and the room opposite.

   "No… farther down," Richard insisted, marching resolutely to the end of the hall.

   "Your parents' room is down here too?" she said softly, so as not to wake anyone.

   "Mummy didn't like the room with that big old Barton Bed back there," Richard explained in a conspiratorial whisper that matched her own. "She thought she and Daddy should have their own room, just the way they wanted it." He paused at a door on his right and turned the knob. "They made this room for me, even before I was born," he said proudly. Still clutching her hand tightly, he asked, "Will you tuck me in bed?"

"Of course."

   Inside, Blythe could see that a loving hand had decorated the boy's bedroom. Despite the chamber's grand proportions, the walls had been painted a pale blue and stenciled with a variety of animals from Beatrix Potter's
Tales of Peter Rabbit.

   Richard could see that Blythe was glancing around the room.

   "I'm too big for Peter Rabbit, but I like him. I like all the animals," he acknowledged, casting Blythe a challenging look.

   "We know about Peter Rabbit in America," she said reassuringly, "and I always loved him too, when I was a girl. I like Miss Moppet and Mrs. Ribby and all of the characters—and still do. Okay, 'pardner… into bed with you now."

   Richard climbed dutifully under the covers. Next to his bed stood a photo of a woman with a soft, rounded face, light-colored hair, and a warm smile. Lindsay Teague. Richard's mother, she guessed.

   "That's nice that you keep her right by your bed."

   Richard gazed over at the picture and heaved a sigh.

   "She's never coming back."

   "That's true. She won't ever come back," Blythe agreed gently. "I don't know about you… but when my mom died, I was a little bit angry at her. It was like she left me. I know she didn't die on purpose, but just the same, it made me mad that she went away from me."

   Richard sat abruptly up in bed. "It did?" he asked, sounding relieved.

   "Yes, it did," Blythe replied.

   "Sometimes I'm angry at her, too… for leaving," he said in a strained voice.

   Blythe lightly raffled her fingers through his caramelcolored hair.

   "She never would have left a wonderful boy like you if she could have helped it, Dicken," Blythe said urgently. "But you know, a part of her—a big part—lives on in you. Have you ever thought of that?" She pointed at the picture. "See her hair? It's a lot like yours… and look at the shape of her face. In a sense she'll always be with you. That's why it's important that you keep her picture with you, so you don't forget any of the nice things about her that you still remember." Blythe tucked the blanket into the side of the bed.

   "I do still remember her," he whispered, gazing at the photograph.

   "That's good," she praised. Then, with her thumb, she gently wiped the moisture that had slid silently down one of Richard's cheeks. "Listen, buckaroo," she murmured, "I think it's time we both get some shut-eye."

   "Those poly—polyurethane delivery chaps will be here soon, won't they?" Richard noted, pointing to his Peter Rabbit alarm clock, whose hands in the shape of carrots announced it was nearly five A.M.

   "When it's really morning, you start counting those plastic rolls if you get there first, okay?" Blythe grinned.

   "Yesss, may-yam!" Richard drawled.

   Blythe burst out laughing and quickly covered her mouth with her hand.

   "'Night, Dicken," she said softly, backing out of his room. "Sleep well."

   As she quietly shut the door to Richard's bedroom, she glanced across the hall at the room that Luke and his wife had apparently inhabited during their marriage. Blythe found that she was both relieved and rather pleased that Luke's orchestration of their romantic evening had not been a replay of one he'd already experienced with Lindsay. After padding farther down the hall, she gingerly turned the knob on the door that led into the master suite where the magnificently carved and canopied Barton Bed dominated the room.

   Blythe quickly shed her clothes and was relieved to realize she felt not one scintilla of jealousy toward Luke's first wife—and likewise had developed a very great deal of affection for Lindsay Teague's mischievous son. This night with Luke, in this extraordinary room, had been magical, and Blythe was profoundly touched that the owner of Barton Hall had wished to share it with her.

   Smiling in the dark, she mounted the two small wooden steps beside the bed and eased her body under the mountain of covers.

   "Blythe?" Lucas said sleepily, reaching for her with warm hands. "Did you find the loo all right?"

   "Mm-hmmm… and much more to the point, baby," she said, nuzzling his ear and reflecting on the events she'd witnessed that had taken place in 1789, "I found my way back."

The next morning the sound of hammers rang in syncopated rhythm as the frames for the seven temporary hothouses began to take shape. Since Blythe was reassured to see that such visible progress in their overall scheme was being made, she gladly volunteered to drive Luke's Land Rover into Gorran Haven to run an afternoon's worth of errands.

   In any event, she felt she needed some time "off the ranch." Leaving the gray towers and crenellated turrets of Barton Hall behind, she steered the car down the magnificent drive. When she reached the end of the tall column of larch trees towering overhead, she shifted gears under the arched stone entrance guarding the estate, turned left, and headed up the Gorran Haven road.

   It was a Tuesday. Valerie Kent would be in her office. Because of the previous night's events, Blythe had decided it was time to have a discussion about her visions—or whatever they were— with someone who wouldn't treat her like some Hollywood lunatic. After all, Blythe reminded herself, the English psychologist was sworn to a strict code of patient confidentiality.

   The shipwright's shop on Rattle Alley looked like a boat hospital. Sea kayaks and small sloops in various stages of repair perched on sawhorses in the stone-paved forecourt. Blythe mounted the wooden stairs attached to the side of the whitewashed building and climbed to the second story. On the wall next to a door were two weathered wooden signs that identified the location of Valerie's office and that of "Simon Vickery, M.D." She opened the door to a small foyer. On the left was a door identified as Dr. Kent's.

   "Well, what a lovely surprise!" Valerie enthused, rising from her chair behind her scuffed, leather-topped desk the instant Blythe knocked and poked her head inside the small, cramped office. "Come in! Come in! I hear such wonderful things about the progress of Barton Hall Nurseries from nearly everyone in the village. Please sit down," she urged, pointing to an overstuffed armchair that looked a hundred years old.

   "I hope I'm not interrupting—" Blythe began.

   "Not a soul has stopped by today, though I seriously doubt that the mental health of our Gorran Haven residents is that tip-top!" Valerie laughed. The stocky psychologist sat down again and folded her hands on her desk. "What can I do for you?"

   Blythe, confronted with such a direct question, suddenly wondered what possible rational explanation could be offered to describe what had been happening to her at Barton Hall—not to mention the overheated state of her love life.

   "Well… ah…" she faltered, at a loss as to how to begin this impromptu meeting.

   "You've had time to think about what you saw in the crystal ball, I presume?" Valerie asked encouragingly.

   "Well… that's not entirely the reason I came…"

   "No? How intriguing," Valerie replied, and then remained silent.

   "It's… ah… a bit more complicated," Blythe said hesitantly.

   "What is?" Valerie asked.

   "Well… it probably sounds pretty crazy, but ever since I've arrived in Cornwall, I've seen… um… not visions like the one that appeared in your crystal ball, exactly…" She paused, trying to collect her thoughts. "More like movies… or scenes from movies… scenes that happened two hundred years ago. I wondered if you could help me try to figure out what they are."

   "Scenes? Involving what?" Valerie asked quietly.

   "The first Blythe Barton."

   "Your namesake? And how have these scenes appeared to you?"

   Blythe scanned the psychologist's face to see if she appeared to be about to call the little men in the white coats. To her relief the woman seemed genuinely interested to learn more of Blythe's bizarre experiences.

   "Well… that's why I've come to see you," she continued. "I seem to be thrust into a kind of 'virtual reality' whenever I have more than a casual glance at Lucas Teague's genealogy chart. It's hanging in the library. Have you seen it?"

   "Oh, yes, indeed." Valerie nodded. "It's framed behind glass, as I recall."

   "Well…" Blythe continued. "It is a bit like that day I gazed into your crystal ball. The first time—in front of the chart, I mean—my eyes were drawn to stare at the name of Christopher Trevelyan, who lived in the late 1700s."

   "The famous 'Kit'… first and only Trevelyan to own Barton Hall by virtue of his marriage to the heiress, Blythe Barton," Valerie replied, nodding.

   "Yes, him." Blythe nodded. "I fixated on that name, I suppose, because of the coincidence that a person with the same first name as my former husband had married a woman named Blythe Barton."

   "I can certainly understand why that might have caught your eye," Valerie deadpanned. "Well, what happened?"

   "The instant my finger touched the glass covering the chart, and I inadvertently whispered aloud, 'Christopher'— whoosh! There I was in the eighteenth century, watching a kind of film about a traumatic moment in Kit and Blythe Barton's life!"

   "How absolutely extraordinary!" Valerie replied. "Tell me more. Were you in the scene as well?"

   "Well, that's the weird part," Blythe replied, her brow furrowed. "When this strange stuff was going on, I felt as if I
was
that Blythe. I experienced everything that happened from
her
point of view!"

   "And afterward?"

   "When I came out of the trance, or whatever it was, I recalled everything I'd witnessed through my own perspective… as
me
, Blythe Barton, a woman of the twenty-first century looking back on these people who lived two hundred years ago. I had empathy for all of them. I seemed to understand where each person was 'coming from,' as we say in the States. It's just bizarre!"