reminds me of when my father and I used to eat trout for breakfast in cow camp in the Rockies when I was a child."
"Cow camp, mum?" Mrs. Q asked with a puzzled smile.
"In the summer in Wyoming, we moved our herd up to the foothills onto the summer range so we could use the lower range to grow and harvest our hay for winter. We'd catch our breakfast in the icy creeks feeding the Snake River." She threw aside her bed linen and reached for her dressing gown, flung carelessly across the bottom of the bed. "Which reminds me that I've lazed around a lot lately," she noted wryly. "I am definitely on the mend, so it's about time I had breakfast downstairs and let you get on with your usual duties."
"Ah… 'tis no trouble, either way, so suit yerself, but you must show me where Wyoming be in the atlas, if you would, miss." Mrs. Quiller laughed in her easy manner that always seemed to erase any awkwardness between them. After all, the woman probably watched CNN, right along with her employer. "Mr. Teague was tellin' me you rode horses there as a girl, despite your bein' from Hollywood and all. Must be your Cornish roots, he says."
So Lucas Teague was already up this morning and had presumably had a friendly chat about her with his housekeeper in the early hours. Blythe recalled, suddenly, that she'd revealed a hint of her "cowgirl" past to Luke last night in the library, so that part of the evening's events was true, at least. But what of her host's rampaging ancestor—the one sporting the wickedly sharp sword? She fervently hoped that that peculiar phenomenon, experienced in the dead of night, might simply be an untoward reaction to the terrible stress of her ordeal in faraway California.
Deciding that this conclusion was as likely an explanation as any, Blythe smiled warmly at Luke's housekeeper.
"My Cornish roots tell me I've been a terrible layabout," she said with sudden decisiveness. "It's time I moved back into my own cottage and left you in peace."
Obviously pleased to see that her "patient" was much improved, Mrs. Quiller departed downstairs to prepare the kippers while Blythe bathed and dressed in the jeans and turtleneck sweater she'd worn to tea at Barton Hall nearly a week earlier.
As she descended the broad staircase en route to locating the breakfast room, her gaze was irresistibly drawn toward the library door. It stood open. On Luke's desk sat the Waterford crystal brandy decanter and two glasses—one empty, and one that remained a quarter full, just as Blythe had left it four or five hours earlier.
Bright May sunlight shone through the casement windows, bathing the rows of books and mahogany paneling in a rich, warm glow. The enormous genealogy chart was also illuminated by shafts of light, and its swirling black calligraphy and colorfully gilded family crests were dazzling.
Drawn magnetically into the room, Blythe gingerly approached the framed parchment. Like the biblical Lot's wife who had been unable to resist glancing back at the wicked city of Sodom, she extended her hand and cautiously traced the delicate lettering that spelled "Blythe Barton b.
1772 m. 1789 d. 1794 (?)."
The placement of a question mark apparently denoted that her namesake's date of death was uncertain. As Luke had mentioned—family lore had it that the eighteenth-century heiress had "disappeared."
As if conducting an experiment, Blythe rested her forefinger lightly on the glass that protected the genealogy chart itself. Then she whispered aloud her own name. Immediately she felt the same strange force as before beginning to pull at her, almost as if she were hurtling down a steep incline on a roller-coaster ride that was traveling at a hundred miles an hour.
" No !" Blythe reacted sharply, her outburst filling the bookfilled chamber. Frantically she pushed a second time against her name etched on the chart beneath the glass covering, and to her
"Cow camp, mum?" Mrs. Q asked with a puzzled smile.
"In the summer in Wyoming, we moved our herd up to the foothills onto the summer range so we could use the lower range to grow and harvest our hay for winter. We'd catch our breakfast in the icy creeks feeding the Snake River." She threw aside her bed linen and reached for her dressing gown, flung carelessly across the bottom of the bed. "Which reminds me that I've lazed around a lot lately," she noted wryly. "I am definitely on the mend, so it's about time I had breakfast downstairs and let you get on with your usual duties."
"Ah… 'tis no trouble, either way, so suit yerself, but you must show me where Wyoming be in the atlas, if you would, miss." Mrs. Quiller laughed in her easy manner that always seemed to erase any awkwardness between them. After all, the woman probably watched CNN, right along with her employer. "Mr. Teague was tellin' me you rode horses there as a girl, despite your bein' from Hollywood and all. Must be your Cornish roots, he says."
So Lucas Teague was already up this morning and had presumably had a friendly chat about her with his housekeeper in the early hours. Blythe recalled, suddenly, that she'd revealed a hint of her "cowgirl" past to Luke last night in the library, so that part of the evening's events was true, at least. But what of her host's rampaging ancestor—the one sporting the wickedly sharp sword? She fervently hoped that that peculiar phenomenon, experienced in the dead of night, might simply be an untoward reaction to the terrible stress of her ordeal in faraway California.
Deciding that this conclusion was as likely an explanation as any, Blythe smiled warmly at Luke's housekeeper.
"My Cornish roots tell me I've been a terrible layabout," she said with sudden decisiveness. "It's time I moved back into my own cottage and left you in peace."
Obviously pleased to see that her "patient" was much improved, Mrs. Quiller departed downstairs to prepare the kippers while Blythe bathed and dressed in the jeans and turtleneck sweater she'd worn to tea at Barton Hall nearly a week earlier.
As she descended the broad staircase en route to locating the breakfast room, her gaze was irresistibly drawn toward the library door. It stood open. On Luke's desk sat the Waterford crystal brandy decanter and two glasses—one empty, and one that remained a quarter full, just as Blythe had left it four or five hours earlier.
Bright May sunlight shone through the casement windows, bathing the rows of books and mahogany paneling in a rich, warm glow. The enormous genealogy chart was also illuminated by shafts of light, and its swirling black calligraphy and colorfully gilded family crests were dazzling.
Drawn magnetically into the room, Blythe gingerly approached the framed parchment. Like the biblical Lot's wife who had been unable to resist glancing back at the wicked city of Sodom, she extended her hand and cautiously traced the delicate lettering that spelled "Blythe Barton b.
1772 m. 1789 d. 1794 (?)."
The placement of a question mark apparently denoted that her namesake's date of death was uncertain. As Luke had mentioned—family lore had it that the eighteenth-century heiress had "disappeared."
As if conducting an experiment, Blythe rested her forefinger lightly on the glass that protected the genealogy chart itself. Then she whispered aloud her own name. Immediately she felt the same strange force as before beginning to pull at her, almost as if she were hurtling down a steep incline on a roller-coaster ride that was traveling at a hundred miles an hour.
" No !" Blythe reacted sharply, her outburst filling the bookfilled chamber. Frantically she pushed a second time against her name etched on the chart beneath the glass covering, and to her
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