Cottage by the Sea (56 page)

   Blythe glanced around, looking for young Richard, whom she expected to see assisting the workers.

   "Good morning, Mr. Quiller," she greeted the gardener. "Have you see Dicken?"

   "I believe he's inside, mum," he replied, his features growing grave. "The wife is puttin' his belongings in order. Leaves for that school over t'Devon after lunch, I'm sorry t'say."

   "Not
today
!"

   Blythe had been so preoccupied with her own concerns that she had forgotten he was scheduled to depart so soon.

   "We'll all miss him, and that's for certain," he said, shaking his grizzled head. "At least, most of us will."

   Blythe looked up and glared at the highest tower of Barton Hall. Luke might as well have locked his son in the turret above her head as send him to Shelby Hall, she fumed. The poor kid obviously hated the place!

   
Stick to your knitting!

   Blythe longed to sit down in the kitchen for a nice cup of tea and one of Mrs. Q's freshly baked scones, but she supposed the housekeeper was still upstairs, helping Dicken pack his clothes.

   Her stomach gave an ominous growl, which she ignored. Instead she skirted past the kitchen and dining room windows, carefully avoiding looking inside. She certainly didn't feel like running into Luke and Chloe having breakfast together. She continued across the stable yard and ducked inside the refurbished stable, determined to tackle the invoices that awaited her on her desk.

   She and Luke had decided to maintain the essential character of the stone structure despite its being converted into offices, a small "schoolroom" for eager gardeners, and the point-ofsale department. Consequently the wooden horse stalls served as office dividers for Lucas, Blythe, and the small staff they intended to hire. A slate floor and lighting grid overhead, plus electric outlets and heating units installed along the base of the walls, were the principal alterations to the 250-year-old building. Valerie Kent had been kind enough to alert Luke to a gaggle of used filing cabinets that were being auctioned off in Mevagissey. Blythe herself had negotiated from the bank in Gorran Haven the purchase of several scarred but serviceable desks put up for sale during the branch's modernization. All in all, she and Luke had turned the Cornish ponies' former home into an attractive space that accommodated both the public and private uses required by the operation.

   Blythe began to tap into her calculator the prices of the supplies they had ordered and received in the last two weeks. Soon she became oblivious to the sound of hammers ringing outside, that is until she was interrupted by an unexpected visitor.

   "Oh… there you are," declared a well-modulated voice from the shadows.

   Blythe looked up, startled, and then silently groaned.

   Chloe Acton-Scott was standing at the threshold of Blythe's new office, looking as if she were about to depart for a tea date at Fortnum
&
Mason's. She had donned a royal Stuart red-tartan pleated skirt and a black cashmere turtleneck sweater with matching cardigan. Every hair in her blond chignon was in place, and even from where Blythe sat, she would bet a prize bull that the woman's lacquered nails didn't have a single chip on their blood-red surfaces.

   "Well… hello there," Blythe replied, wondering exactly to what she owed this unpleasant interruption.

   She glanced down at her jeans and suddenly wished she'd worn her nice pair of gray flannel slacks for office work. Why in God's name did this woman's mere presence make her feel like a Wyoming edition of Minnie Rag Bag? Chloe's fineboned features and sleek, patrician good looks put Richard's godmother in the category of a genuine English Rose. Staring now at her visitor's sculpted blond coiffeur, Blythe felt like Wilma the Wildflower.

   I
know, I know, Grandma! Cowboy up.

   "So sorry to disturb you," Chloe said, venturing farther into the office, "but I wonder if I could just ask you to do us a very small favor."

   "And what's that?" Blythe asked warily.

   "Luke and I thought it best if I just depart quietly with Richard directly after lunch and avoid any tearful good-byes with staff."

   "Staff," Blythe repeated. "By that do you mean the Quillers, the men hammering out there—or me?"

   "Well… everyone, in fact," Chloe said pleasantly. "I would be grateful, indeed, if you would cooperate with us on this."

   "Luke asked you to speak to me?" Blythe asked coolly.

   Chloe flicked an invisible piece of lint off her black cashmere sleeve.

   "It's what we'd prefer."

   "Really?" Blythe replied, recalling suddenly some of the battles royal she'd fought with presumptuous associate producers and ambitious secretaries in Hollywood. "Perhaps I should ask him, just to make sure you understood him correctly," she added, rising from her chair and heading for the door. She swore silently that she would deck the woman with a right to the chin if she refused to allow her to pass.

   "Mrs. Stowe!" Chloe said, holding up a hand as if she were a school crossing guard.

   "Yes, Chloe," Blythe replied, deliberately using her Christian name.

   "Perhaps I'd better cease prevaricating…"

   "Perhaps you had."

   "Lindsay Teague was my best friend," Chloe said, "I'm godmother to her son, and Luke and I are extremely fond of each other."

   "I'm aware of the accuracy of your first two statements."

   "Well…" Chloe continued uncertainly, "until you came… there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Lucas and I would eventually… ah…"

   "Have an affair?" Blythe asked sweetly.

   "Why, marry, of course! Only you Hollywood people, with your vulgar money and your—"

   "Careful, now," Blythe said, wagging a warning finger back and forth in front of the flawless skin of her visitor's face.

   "Lucas may think he's infatuated with you," Chloe retorted, her china-blue eyes narrowing, "but I guarantee you that he's convinced himself of that because he's so terribly desperate to save Barton Hall from the Inland Revenue!" She stared at Blythe with an air of triumph. A smug little smile had begun to tug at her lips.

   "Likes me for my money, you say?" Blythe replied as if she were merely inquiring about the weather. Meanwhile she wondered if they might both be telling the truth.

   "Well, surely you don't think your type would fit in with the people he and Lindsay and I associate with, do you? There's not a celebrity among us!" She laughed, as if she'd made a terribly witty remark.

   "Not even one rodeo queen?" Blythe queried in dulcet tones.

   "The point is," Chloe continued somewhat breathlessly, "that it's only a matter of time before Lucas realizes how unsuitable you are for his kind of life…"

   "And what kind of life is that, Chloe?" Blythe demanded abruptly. "Look at this place!" she exclaimed, gesturing through the open door. "I might point out the obvious fact that when I got here, this outfit was falling apart. Luke wants to put it back together again, and he's willing to dirty his hands to do it. Are
you
?"

   "Well… I—"

   "And until I came here, his
life
was falling apart, and so was Richard's!"

   "I fail to see how you could possibly know a thing about it!" Chloe retorted. "Lindsay passed away more than two years ago and—"

   "
Died
," Blythe snapped. "The poor woman died… a long, slow, agonizing battle with cancer! She left a husband and son who didn't know how to cry for her. Luke still doesn't." She glared at the intruder. "And why are you so certain you can get your hooks into him now? You never succeeded before, did you?"

   "I, get my hooks into him!" Chloe said with righteous indignation. "How dare you say that! Look at you! Climbing into a stranger's bed when you've barely put six months between you and that dreadful divorce of yours!"

   "And I suppose you and your ex-husband ended your marriage over crumpets and tea?" Blythe asserted.

   "Well, I didn't immediately throw myself at the first man who—"

   "That's not what I heard," Blythe drawled.

   "Well, the
entire world
heard every sordid detail about that disgusting husband of yours—"

   "Former husband," Blythe corrected, doing her damnedest to keep her temper in check.

   
Sometimes you just need to take the bridle off, throw the skillet
away, and let the she-wolf scream.

   
Stay out of this, Grandma!
Blythe thought grimly.

   "Well… practically everyone on the planet knows that Christopher Stowe was caught, in flagrante delicto, with your own
sister
!" Chloe declared, ignoring Blythe's interruption. "He certainly didn't have to look far for a paramour to replace you."

   "'Paramour'?" Blythe repeated, incredulous. "Now, that's really quaint." She took a step closer toward the unwelcome visitor. "Look, Chloe, dah-ling," she purred in an approximation of the woman's own plummy accent, "this is getting dangerously close to a cat fight." She fixed the intruder with a hard stare and assumed her best cowboy twang. "May I suggest you just skedaddle right outta here and let me go back to work?"

   "I don't want you upsetting my godson!" Chloe shouted, her icy control melting completely.

   "What you don't want is to have your apple cart upset!" Blythe yelled back, her patience finally having been exhausted. "You know as well as I do that as far as kids are concerned, you consider them a major nuisance—and Richard merely a means to an end, so don't dish out that fairy-godmother malarkey to
me
!"

   "Malar—what?" Chloe responded with an outraged screech. "You don't even speak the language!"

   "Just cool your jets, gal," Blythe continued. "And as for Luke, you and I will have to take our chances, won't we? Now, clear out!"

   "You're telling me to—?" she shouted.

   "This conversation is
over
," Blythe announced, pointing toward the door while keeping her eyes glued to her adversary.

   "How dare you order me to leave!"

   "That's just what I'm doin'," Blythe replied, smiling grimly and ratcheting her Wyoming drawl up a notch. Then she made an elaborate show of pounding her fist on her desk. "This here is Barton Hall Nurseries—and I own
half
."

   "Mind if I interrupt?" cut in a deep male voice.

   A moment of dead silence echoed beneath the stable's hand-hewn rafters. Then both women turned to stare at Luke, who was standing in the doorway. His handsome features were composed in an unreadable mask.

   "Jesus, Mary, and Josephina—how long have you been standing there?" Blythe demanded.

   "Quite a while," he said with a shrug, and settled his sixfoot frame against the doorjamb.

"Oh, brother!"

   "Lucas… I am extremely upset by this woman's presumptuous attitude toward you and your son—and toward Barton Hall, I may add!" Chloe declared loftily. "And if you had your wits about you, you would be too!"

   "It would be a tremendous help, Chloe, if you would go inside and check on Mrs. Q's progress with the packing," he requested calmly, advancing into the room.

   "I'd be delighted," Chloe said with a brittle smile, and flounced out of the chamber.

   "Have you a moment?" Luke inquired politely.

   Blythe sank into her desk chair. "Shoot," she answered with an air of resignation. Then she glanced up at him standing a few feet away. "Exactly when did you arrive at that door?"

   "About the time you were saying that Barton Hall and I were both falling apart."

   "Oh, God," Blythe groaned, sinking her head into her hands.

   "Did you and Christopher Stowe survive your gettogether last night? No broken crockery, I presume?"

   Blythe looked up and searched his face for some hint to Luke's state of mind. His expression revealed very little except a look of tremendous fatigue etched around his eyes.

   "It actually went much better than I expected."

   "I thought you might come by the Hall last night and tell me what you'd finally decided to do about the forest."

   "I didn't want to interrupt your little fireside supper."

   "Look, Blythe," Luke confessed, "I just said that nonsense about Chloe's ordering up dinner in front of the fire to even things a bit. I can assure you that as far as she and I are concerned—"

   "Chloe Acton-Scott is the least of my troubles right now," she declared.

   "Well, then… let's
do
talk about your decision last night. Did you sign the documents, as he asked?"

   "Yes."

   "You gave in."

   "I wouldn't describe it that way."

   "But why in the world would you turn yourself into a rescuing angel for that faithless sot after the way he behaved toward you?" Luke demanded.

   "He's a brilliant director," Blythe replied wearily. "I don't expect you to understand—but I did it partly to save his picture. The rest of my reasons are a little complicated."

   "And because you're still a little in love with the bastard?"

   "No," she replied, concluding that the concept of buying one's freedom from an ex-husband with the proceeds from a Scottish forest could not be satisfactorily explained to one's jealous lover. "I am not in love with Chris anymore, but I have discovered, much to my surprise, that I still admire his talent." She noted the look of puzzlement and distress that had invaded Luke's eyes. "Believe me, I was astonished myself to discover I felt that way. What I also realized is that it was about more than just the money."