Cottage by the Sea Read Online Free
Author: Ciji Ware
the field to do breaking stories, and to whom Chris had been talking on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. "Isn't it true that you're walking away from this marriage with a financial settlement in the seven figures?"
Blythe swallowed hard and blindly began to back toward her car.
"Oh, for God's sake, you creep!" Lisa shouted. Then she flung open the left rear passenger door and practically shoved Blythe into the backseat. "Get in! Get in!"
Soon the phalanx of reporters had surrounded the sedan. Tungsten lights mounted on top of the television news cameras harshly illuminated the car's leather interior. Lisa, elbowing the disheveled radio reporter aside, rapped sharply on the chauffeur's window until the glass glided open.
"Just move forward, driver!" the tight-lipped attorney commanded. "They'll get out of the way if they see you mean business." Then, lowering her head, she whispered into the man's left ear, "Take her directly to LAX. British Airways."
***
Some twenty-one hours later, Blythe felt like a hapless extra in The Longest Day. She groggily roused herself to attention in the backseat of the hired Volvo as the driver sped across an arched stone bridge spanning the River Tamar into Cornwall proper. The trip had followed hard on the heels of air traffic delays on two continents and a numbing twelve-hour plane ride to London's Heathrow. Now the car's engine was slowing audibly as the vehicle labored down increasingly tortuous one-track roads that featured a few "lay-bys" here and there to solve the problem of face-to-face confrontations with approaching automobiles.
Each succeeding turn led to a narrower lane that was flanked on both sides by stone hedges. These six-foot-high "fences" were clad top to bottom in a wild profusion of lush greenery and hedgerow trees, which, at this late hour, rendered them gloomy and forbidding.
"You can't see a bloody thing!" Blythe muttered darkly, hopeful that her use of the British epithet, so favored by her former husband, would elicit a response from her hired driver, who had performed his services in silence the entire journey down from London.
There was no reply forthcoming as the car suddenly glided under a stone arch attached to a turreted gatekeeper's cottage. A discreet sign posted near the open gate announced Barton Hall–Private Residence.
In the lingering twilight that foretold of the coming summer months, Blythe and her taciturn chauffeur drove nearly a mile down a leafy green tunnel bordered by sixtyfoot larches whose top branches mingled overhead. The column of trees eventually let out on a circular gravel drive that led to the stone steps of a small-scaled castle. The crenellated round towers on each of the imposing structure's four corners looked to Blythe as if Richard Burton might suddenly materialize in tunic and hose bellowing, "Camelot!" The fairy tale gray stone edifice boldly poked its parapets above a low-lying mist that boiled up from a narrow valley, bisected by a modest river burbling on Blythe's right. Lush green grass dotted with a profusion of bluebells and pink campion carpeted the banks of the meandering stream. The colorful sprinkling of flowers outlined the River Luney's path in the dusk as it flowed down to and across a narrow strip of beach and ultimately disappeared into the brooding waters of the English Channel.
Having stared for hours, semi-comatose, at her copy of the ordinance survey map "Landranger Number 204—Truro, Falmouth, and Surrounding Area," Blythe determined that a grass-clad crescent called Dodman Point embraced the left side of the cove. In the distance on her right, the shadowy outline of mighty Nare Head must surely be the landmass that jutted its lava-laced cliffs into the sea.
Blythe gazed out her window at the only objects moving on the rural Cornish landscape—picturesque clusters of sheep, along with Highland cattle whose broad heads were crowned
Blythe swallowed hard and blindly began to back toward her car.
"Oh, for God's sake, you creep!" Lisa shouted. Then she flung open the left rear passenger door and practically shoved Blythe into the backseat. "Get in! Get in!"
Soon the phalanx of reporters had surrounded the sedan. Tungsten lights mounted on top of the television news cameras harshly illuminated the car's leather interior. Lisa, elbowing the disheveled radio reporter aside, rapped sharply on the chauffeur's window until the glass glided open.
"Just move forward, driver!" the tight-lipped attorney commanded. "They'll get out of the way if they see you mean business." Then, lowering her head, she whispered into the man's left ear, "Take her directly to LAX. British Airways."
***
Some twenty-one hours later, Blythe felt like a hapless extra in The Longest Day. She groggily roused herself to attention in the backseat of the hired Volvo as the driver sped across an arched stone bridge spanning the River Tamar into Cornwall proper. The trip had followed hard on the heels of air traffic delays on two continents and a numbing twelve-hour plane ride to London's Heathrow. Now the car's engine was slowing audibly as the vehicle labored down increasingly tortuous one-track roads that featured a few "lay-bys" here and there to solve the problem of face-to-face confrontations with approaching automobiles.
Each succeeding turn led to a narrower lane that was flanked on both sides by stone hedges. These six-foot-high "fences" were clad top to bottom in a wild profusion of lush greenery and hedgerow trees, which, at this late hour, rendered them gloomy and forbidding.
"You can't see a bloody thing!" Blythe muttered darkly, hopeful that her use of the British epithet, so favored by her former husband, would elicit a response from her hired driver, who had performed his services in silence the entire journey down from London.
There was no reply forthcoming as the car suddenly glided under a stone arch attached to a turreted gatekeeper's cottage. A discreet sign posted near the open gate announced Barton Hall–Private Residence.
In the lingering twilight that foretold of the coming summer months, Blythe and her taciturn chauffeur drove nearly a mile down a leafy green tunnel bordered by sixtyfoot larches whose top branches mingled overhead. The column of trees eventually let out on a circular gravel drive that led to the stone steps of a small-scaled castle. The crenellated round towers on each of the imposing structure's four corners looked to Blythe as if Richard Burton might suddenly materialize in tunic and hose bellowing, "Camelot!" The fairy tale gray stone edifice boldly poked its parapets above a low-lying mist that boiled up from a narrow valley, bisected by a modest river burbling on Blythe's right. Lush green grass dotted with a profusion of bluebells and pink campion carpeted the banks of the meandering stream. The colorful sprinkling of flowers outlined the River Luney's path in the dusk as it flowed down to and across a narrow strip of beach and ultimately disappeared into the brooding waters of the English Channel.
Having stared for hours, semi-comatose, at her copy of the ordinance survey map "Landranger Number 204—Truro, Falmouth, and Surrounding Area," Blythe determined that a grass-clad crescent called Dodman Point embraced the left side of the cove. In the distance on her right, the shadowy outline of mighty Nare Head must surely be the landmass that jutted its lava-laced cliffs into the sea.
Blythe gazed out her window at the only objects moving on the rural Cornish landscape—picturesque clusters of sheep, along with Highland cattle whose broad heads were crowned
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