Cottage by the Sea by Ciji Ware

was, when the estate came to him."
       "Is there no record of what ultimately happened to Kit's wife?" Blythe insisted.
       "Your namesake? I've never come across any. Whatever supporting letters or diaries that may have existed have been lost or misplaced after all this time."
       "Or were destroyed…" Blythe murmured absently.
       "Possibly," Luke agreed. "My wife, Lindsay, was always struck by the mystery of how the house came into my branch. She insisted on christening our son Richard Garrett Barton Trevelyan Teague, saddling the poor lad with the same collection of surnames that I have strung after mine." He paused briefly, lost in thought. "I thought it a rather sweet attempt, really, to reunite the family—if only in name."
       "You have a son?" Blythe exclaimed, glancing over at Luke's family tree. "Oh! Of course… there he is… listed at the very bottom. You never mentioned him. How old is he?"
       Her incredulous gaze was an uncomfortable reminder that Luke had maintained a decidedly distant relationship with his only child these last two years.
       "He'll be ten soon," he replied evenly. "He's due home from school for the summer holidays in a few weeks' time."
       Blythe placed her brandy snifter on Luke's desk and prepared to return to bed.
       "It's always been amazing to me how you Brits still pack your children off to boarding school at such a tender age," she said wearily, looking as if she were fatigued to her very marrow. "It's absolutely Dickensian."
       Then she turned to face him suddenly and appeared conscience-stricken.
       "What a rude thing to say," she apologized. "Forgive me, truly. It's just that it's so different in America. I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. From the time I could toddle, I helped my dad feed our cattle with a team of horses and a sled throughout the winter… and spent the summers on horseback, chasing lost cows in the hills. I couldn't imagine being sent away from all that."
       "And your mother?" Luke asked curiously. "Did she ride too?"
       "Not after my sister was born," Blythe disclosed quietly. "She was twenty-six when she had Ellie, and died of a blood clot in the brain about five years later. So, you see…" she concluded, as if she were embarrassed to have offered such a lengthy account of her various relations, "from the time I was eleven, my grandmother, my brother, and I all competed in the local rodeo—a kind of gymkhana, I think you call it here. I loved Jackson Hole. I never wanted to leave my family—or my home."
       "So you're a genuine cowgirl," Luke laughed admiringly, tacitly accepting her apology and grateful that the conversation had veered away from the subject of his young son. "We must go riding on the moor while you're here."
       " Retired cowgirl," Blythe corrected him.
       With a small sigh she turned toward the staircase. Luke strode across the room and escorted her up the wide oaken steps. As they reached the landing, he suppressed a desire to guide her farther down the corridor on the right into his own bedroom.
        The woman's an emotional mess. You, of all people, Lucas Teague, should understand what that's like.
       Turning to his left, Luke walked her to her bedroom door. Smiling faintly, he said, "You'll be all right, will you, cousin? Not afraid of any ghosts?"
       "Wouldn't that be something?" Then she added hastily, "Our being distant cousins, I mean?"
       "Hands across the sea, and all that?" He grinned. "I think it would be splendid."
       Instead of clasping her hands to emphasize just how splendid he thought their potential kinship could be, the current owner of the threadbare Barton-Trevelyan-Teague estate politely bade her good night and quickly retraced his steps to the landing. And before his houseguest had stepped into the sanctuary of her own bedroom, the bathrobe-clad lord of the manor marched resolutely into the shadows of the opposite hallway that led to the