Cottage by the Sea (37 page)

   An "essentially decent man," Ennis had once called Christopher Trevelyan, and although her husband's face and body did indeed repulse her, Blythe could count on the fact that Kit was at least that: a decent fellow.

   Thus it had been child's play to persuade her husband that by doing his brother a good turn, he did himself one in the bargain. Following the conversation regarding Ennis's impending return to England, Kit soon dispatched workmen to the cliff overlooking the small cove situated to the west of Hemmick Beach. They swiftly measured the edge of the field and laid the foundation for a stone cottage especially designed as an artist's retreat. To Blythe's quiet delight the snug little building was speedily constructed, complete with an extravagant two-story window facing the Channel. It was ideal for a painter who specialized in seascapes. She had ordered a brass daybed installed and directed the local joiner to build a tall wooden easel, which she had positioned in the corner of the completed cottage the day before they'd departed for Plymouth.

   "Blythe?" Kit's voice interrupted her musings. "The lad says the ship's been made fast at the wharf. Shall we go?"

   She smiled, set down her glass of sherry, and took her husband's arm. Together they would persuade the prodigal brother to return to his home.

A fire on the hearth in Painter's Cottage crackled cheerfully, warming a cast-iron kettle full of savory stew.

   Despite a wash of clear blue sky filling the floor-to-ceiling artist's window that faced the brass daybed, a brisk breeze blowing across Veryan Bay churned the waves below to a white froth. Rooks and gulls wheeled overhead in the chill September air, screeching greetings back and forth above the slate roof and granite walls of Ennis Trevelyan's new abode.

   Blythe stretched her arms above her head and sighed contentedly. Then she rolled onto her side and planted a soft kiss on Ennis's naked upper arm. The painter's easel stood in the center of the room, abandoned by the artist for whom it had been built. Blythe gazed at the image of her face staring back at her from the canvas that Ennis had declared completed the previous afternoon. Then she laughed aloud.

   "What?" Ennis said sleepily.

   "You've rendered me as the proper wife of a proper Cornish landowner," she replied, laughing again. "And here we are."

   She turned back to him, nuzzling her lips against his arm, and then playfully licking his smooth skin, tasting the saltiness of dried sweat.

   "A proper wife? An impetuous feline, I'd say," he replied. "Look closely, and I think you'll see I've captured that quality around your eyes."

   Blythe gently chafed her forefinger along his handsome profile and said softly, "Now that you've done my portrait, I'll have no more excuses to come here. I believe I shall have to sneak through the tunnel below us in the dead of night like some desperate smuggler and pop up through that door when you least expect me." She referred, of course, to the square opening carved into the cottage's slate floor. It was sealed by a hinged portal and disguised with removable stones and a large rag rug.

   Directly beneath their bed a storage room had been incorporated into the cottage, which led to a passage that had been burrowed thirty feet into the cliff. The newly dug tunnel connected with a deep, naturally formed cave that opened onto the beach. The hidden chamber had yet to be used, but Kit had ordered it constructed when he'd built Painter's Cottage—-just in case there might one day be a need to store additional contraband. As he'd reminded her often enough, he'd do everything he could to avoid "taking up the trade, but honest money is powerfully scarce this year."

   "Well, my wily saucebox," Ennis said languidly as he seized her wandering hand and brought it to his lips, "you'd best curb your lust, or at least disguise your visits here. However you may think you've bamboozled Kit into believing these sittings are purely innocent, I'm certain he disapproves of my having painted you."

   "Well… you've done
his
portrait!" she argued.

   "Ah… but he's lord of the manor. 'Tis only fitting in his eyes."

   Blythe rose to lean on one elbow and stared searchingly into Ennis's face. In three years' time a web of fine lines had been etched around his enigmatic blue eyes, granting him a world-weary look. Was it the product of new maturity, or of an excess of dissipation?

   "Please, let's not speak of Kit," she said in a low voice, warding off a vision of the joy that would light her husband's eyes when she told him she was with child once again.

   "He's gone into Gorran Haven for the day. 'Twas the only reason I dared come again, now that the portrait's finished."

   Then Blythe shifted her weight, hovering above Ennis. Slowly, seductively, she brushed the tips of her breasts against his chest. If only she could summon from this man an open admission of the same desperate longing that she felt for him. Surely he wanted more from her than mere lust. Surely? A kind of despairing desire seized her as she lowered her frame on top of his.

   "However you may deny it, Ennis," she whispered, "you'd like me to steal into your bed in the dark, wouldn't you? You'd like me to touch you like this… wouldn't you…?"

   She closed her eyes and willed him to kiss her. Silently she prayed he would respond to her with a show of passion. She pressed her pelvis provocatively against his own.

   "Blythe… you witch," Ennis murmured, amusement tingeing his voice. "You've such an appetite, minx." He seized her earlobe and nibbled it. "Well… so have I."

   The bed linen slid to the floor as Ennis rolled her beneath him and kneed her legs apart. She was conscious only of a deep, empty place at her very core. A longing to be filled, to be surrounded and pierced, enveloped and invaded by him, to be—

   The door to the cottage thudded heavily against the wall. A cold breeze, as sharp as a shard of glass, rushed in, and for one wretched moment, Blythe thought she had been tossed into the frigid bay.

   "Get…
off
… my…
wife
!" a voice thundered.

   Reeling with shock, Blythe wondered fleetingly if Collis Trevelyan had risen from the dead.

   "You sod!" the voice shouted. "You shameless, thieving cocksman! She is my
wife
! I am her
husband
! What kind of monsters are you?"

   Less than a minute later, the two brothers were facing each other, toe to toe, on the edge of the cliff. Ennis had hastily donned a pair of breeches and a wool coat and stood motionless and silent as he accepted his brother's wellwarranted denunciation.

   For her part, Blythe remained inside the cottage, the bed linen draped carelessly around her shoulders. Deaf and dumb, she stared at the drama unfolding in front of the window, unable to hear what they were saying—or, rather, what her husband was demanding with clenched fists.

   To her shock, Garrett Teague stood a little to one side of the pair, a rolled-up parchment clutched in one hand. Perhaps he and Kit had come down to the cottage to confer with Ennis about a plan to improve and expand the bookshop in Gorran Haven in which Kit had taken an interest since his cousin's return from Italy.

   A strange trembling in Blythe's limbs began to seize her, a force she couldn't seem to contain, regardless how many gulps of air she sucked into her lungs.

   
Oh, my God… oh, my God
…
oh, my God.

   But she was certain that no God would take pity on her now—or ever. Only
she
could see to her own survival.

   Ennis held up both hands in front of his chest in a gesture of defeat and supplication. Kit raised his right hand, only to have his wrist grabbed by Garrett. The Trevelyan brothers' cousin began to shout as well, his head swiveling back and forth as he addressed each of them in turn. The three men, who had been rivals and intimates since their births, continued to argue at the top of their lungs as the wind blew even more fiercely off the bay.

   Suddenly Kit and Ennis both allowed their arms to fall to their sides, signaling an abrupt anticlimax to this emotional firestorm. Then Kit stalked off across the field in the direction of Barton Hall, while Ennis headed down the path that led to Hemmick Beach. Blythe watched in disbelief as Garrett strode toward the cottage's front door.

   "You'll need to get dressed now," he said in a dull monotone as he came across the threshold, leaving the door ajar. "Kit wishes you to remain here, for the moment. He's asked you to sleep here tonight."

   "And Ennis?" she whispered.

   "Jesu, Blythe!" Garrett exploded, his controlled demeanor shattering. "Can you never get it through your head? The man simply considers you a tasty piece of flesh… a pleasing prick-pocket—"

   "How dare you!" Blythe shouted, jumping to her feet beside the daybed and clutching the bedclothes to her chest.

   Garrett stared stonily at her disheveled state.

   "How dare
you!
How dare you betray in this tawdry fashion those who truly care for you!"

   "And who is that?" Blythe inquired furiously. "I was merely handed over from one man to the next. From father to son. Caring had no part of the transaction. Even
you
preferred playing the role of dandy to a fop, rather than to help me escape to America, as you promised!"

   "You are blind, and you are willful," Garrett pronounced wearily. "And I fear, now, it may very well be too late for you to make amends to your husband."

   "Make amends!" Blythe protested shrilly. "Why can no one see 'tis I who have been wronged as well?"

   "That is so," Garrett agreed quietly. "But you have deeply wounded Kit—and me. And for having wounded Kit, I fear you will pay a very high price."

   "What?" she asked defiantly.

   "Ennis leaves Trevelyan House tonight."

   "For London?" Blythe asked fearfully.

   "For Plymouth."

   "Why Plymouth?" she asked with a look of foreboding. "Where will he go?"

   "I don't know. If he's fortunate, perhaps he can join the Royal Navy and fight the damnable French, who threaten invasion, we hear. At any rate, Kit has cut him off without a farthing. Permanently."

   "And what shall the king of Cornwall do to me?" she asked sarcastically.

   "He shall ignore you, I should wager. At least for a while."

   "Nay, he can't ignore me for long."

   "And why is that?" Garrett asked with a look of surprise.

   "I'm to have his child."

   "You'll brazen this out to the finish, won't you?" Garrett sighed, slowly shaking his head. "What makes you think he'll believe the babe is his?"

   "Never fear," she replied tersely. "Within the month he shall have good reason to think 'tis his own flesh and blood."

   "But that would be impossible, my lady wife," a voice interrupted from the cottage's half-open door.

   Blythe and Garrett, startled by the sudden intrusion, turned to stare at the master of the Barton-Trevelyan estate. Kit took a step farther into the room and shut the door behind him.

   "As you well know," he addressed Blythe in a voice laced with bitter sarcasm, "you were loath, for some reason, to lie with me since my dear brother returned from abroad." He took another step closer to his wife and gazed at her with contempt. "I came back just now, idiot that I am, to try to make peace. To try, as Garrett earlier begged me to do, to find some way to live with you in harmony. If not as man and wife… then as companions."

   His eyes narrowed, and he looked as if he might strangle her on the spot.

   "But it appears that we are long past the point where you can woo me to your bed and then play me for a fool!" In a lightning move he slapped her cheek hard and with unforgiving zeal.

   "You devious slut! At this very moment you are filled to overflowing with my brother's seed," he continued, his tone laden with disgust, "and you would dare to try to convince me you'd have me in your bed just so that in a month or two's time—the child in your belly is my own? Have you no feelings for anyone but yourself?"

   "And have you no care for anything but your precious lands and your possessions and which of your brothers is the better cocksman?" she jeered back, rubbing her smarting cheek with one hand.

   Kit turned to address Garrett as if Blythe were no longer in the cottage.

   "She shall live in this cursed place until the babe is born."

   "And then?" Blythe shouted. "I am Blythe Barton! You know in your soul that Barton Hall belongs to me! The curse I bestow on
you
this day shall be forever on your head for what you and your damnable father have done!"

The Trevelyan House chimneys jutted above the burgundycolored leaves of the copper beech that had guarded its entrance for two hundred years. But nary a wisp of smoke belched from the brick stacks, and the house looked utterly deserted.

   Ennis's servants had deserted as well, Blythe discovered, as she stealthily made her way up the back stairs leading from the butler's pantry. Kit had ordered the entire staff to vacate the premises until further notice. No one was to lift a hand to assist the younger brother's departure from the land of his birth.

   "But he can't do this!" Blythe insisted, pacing before the cold hearth in the bedroom where Collis Trevelyan had once ruled supreme.

   She had never seen the second-floor chamber's gloomy dark paneling before, nor the heavy, hulking furniture that surely dated back to the Jacobean era. She ceased her agitated tour of the threadbare carpet and turned to confront Ennis, who was in the process of stuffing a saddlebag with a change of linen and a few other necessities for his impending journey. Suddenly she recalled his traveling trunk stored in the loft above the pony stables. Kit had even refused his brother access to his own property!