The Nightingale Legacy (37 page)

The three of them turned to see North standing in the kitchen door, leaning negligently against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest. “You are the most miserable worm I have ever known in my life,” he continued to Bennett in an utterly dispassionate voice. “Caroline, my dear, I trust the worm hasn’t overset your nerves?”

“Yes, he did with his yelling. I fell off the settee in the library. You see, North, I’d fallen asleep waiting for you. I ran out like a demented dervish to see Owen sitting on
Bennett’s chest in the entrance hall. He was bashing his head quite nicely against the marble. I moved Bennett here when I realized his nose was bleeding. I didn’t want him ruining that beautiful marble.”

“Very thoughtful of you,” North said, still not moving. He looked very dangerous in that moment, and Caroline shivered. It was his stillness that was so frightening, that outward calm that wouldn’t give an enemy a clue that he was ready to kill.

“I shouldn’t have stopped,” Owen said, looking at North. “He’s always going to be a problem, North. At least my father has settled things.”

“Yes, he did, didn’t he, and we never expected him to do it.”

“If your father told the truth in his letter,” Caroline said. “Mr. Ffalkes is a cunning fellow. I’m sorry, Owen, but it’s true.”

“I know from painful experience that you’re right,” Owen said. “But this time I believe him. He will marry Mrs. Tailstrop but I do think he’ll snag her pug Lucy and drop the animal in a ditch. He quite hates it, you know.”

“I’ve written to Mrs. Tailstrop,” North said. “We’ll see what she has to say.”

“I didn’t know you’d done that,” Caroline said. “That was very smart of you, North, not that it surprises me.” She sighed then, eyeing Bennett, who was suspiciously quiet, just dabbing his nose.

“What will we do with him?”

“Let me beat him to a pulp,” Owen said, and massaged his knuckles vigorously.

“We could hang him with the three male martinets,” Caroline said hopefully. “He could rot and fall to the ground with the rest of them and the apples we don’t end up picking.”

North just shook his head at them. “A nice thought, but not enough finesse, Caroline. It’s such a pity we’re certain he didn’t kill your aunt or the other two women. That, I admit, does depress me.” He paused a long moment, giving Bennett a very thorough look. Finally, he said, “Why not send him to your father, Owen?”

Owen gave a bark of laughter and Caroline grinned. “Oh goodness, he’d whip Bennett into shape, North—that or he’d kill him. What do you think, Caroline?”

“Hmmm, Bennett could work for your father, couldn’t he, Owen? Either that or North could see that he was transported to the Colonies.”

“It’s either going to Honeymead Manor or starving,” North said. “You don’t have a sou, do you, Penrose?”

Bennett, still blotting at his nose, shook his head.

“Nor do you have my strongbox.”

Again, Bennett, shuddering only slightly, shook his head.

“I don’t suppose you want to be transported?”

Bennett put his face in his hands. He was silent as the clock that had stood in the corner of the kitchen that had stopped running the moment it was brought into Mount Hawke some seventy-five years before.

“Well?”

Bennett moaned and said behind his handkerchief, “I never heard of any heiresses in the Colonies.”

“I’ve finally found our squirrelly lad,” North said to Caroline a week later when they sat across from each other at the breakfast table. It was quite early and thus they were the only ones present.

“The one who couldn’t put two words together without jumping out of his boots?”

“That’s the one. Flash tracked him down in Trevellas. He’s the son of a dairy farmer. He took Timmy the maid
there before he took me just to make sure he had the right lad. Poor Timmy the maid couldn’t imagine how he didn’t know him. It upset him terribly that he’d let me down.”

“All right, tell me. Who gave him the letter?”

“Coombe.”

She felt both relief and depression. “Oh,” she said. “Well, at least we know.”

“Would you like to be with me when I confront Coombe with this?”

“Yes, I suppose it would be best. Oh dear, North, the three of them have been so quiet lately. I’d rather hoped they’d come to grips with things.”

“Oh no, I never believed that for a moment,” North said. He rose and tossed his napkin onto the white tablecloth. “More’s the pity.”

An hour later in the library, Coombe stood before his lordship, who was sitting behind the massive mahogany desk that dominated the entire corner. Coombe saw movement from the corner of his eye and felt a spasm of anger wash through him. It was that upstart girl who’d managed to snare his innocent noble lordship, the Female Person the master still doted on. What was going on?

“I met a young boy named Johnny Trilby, a lad who stutters and who does odd errands for people who pay him well because he’s a cute little fellow and they feel sorry for him. His father approves, you see, lets him out of his chores on the dairy farm because the people pay him well and the father takes just about all of it.”

Coombe stood straighter, saying nothing, looking over North’s left shoulder.

“Young Johnny told me you paid him to give me that letter. Odd but I didn’t recognize your handwriting, Coombe, but I haven’t seen much of it, have I, since my return? And I was only sixteen when I left Mount Hawke.”

“There is a mistake, my lord,” Coombe said, his voice smooth as the bolt of crimson velvet that North had bought from a tinker near Oporto, Portugal, two years before and planned to give to Caroline at Christmas. He’d carried it around with him for so long it probably had moth holes in it. “Yes,” Coombe said, “it’s a mistake and not at all my fault. I venture to say it is all her fault, for everything has been topsy-turvy since she came here that first time, pretending she was in shock over her aunt’s death.”

Caroline said, “Your timing was excellent, Coombe, that or your luck. You had to have Johnny Trilby deliver that letter to his lordship when you knew that Dr. Treath was off to see me.”

“No, Caroline,” North said. “It wasn’t difficult at all. I fancy if we question Dr. Treath, he too will have received a message purporting to be from you, Caroline, telling him you were concerned and wanted to see him. Doubtless you also wrote in your letter that you would be pleased if he wouldn’t speak of it, to anyone, including you. Am I right, Coombe?”

Caroline said after the silence stretched on without Coombe filling it, “I’m very curious about something, Coombe. Do you really believe that all the Nightingale wives betrayed their husbands?”

“Dead sure,” Coombe said, stiff as a nail, staring still over North’s left shoulder. “Disloyal trollops, every one of them.”

“Yet you lied to North, telling him that I was meeting my lover when in truth it was all a fabrication.”

“You will betray him, it’s just a matter of time. I only wanted him to get rid of you now before you really do cuckold him and make his life a misery.”

“You want him rid of me even before I present him with an heir?”

“No, never! I—oh, dear.”

“It appears you didn’t think things through clearly, Coombe,” North said. “It appears your dislike of her ladyship and all the changes she’s brought to Mount Hawke clouded your reasoning. You mucked it up, didn’t you?”

Coombe nodded now. “Yes, I suppose I didn’t think things through, my lord. I wanted her gone from here so you could be happy again.”

North could only stare at Coombe in utter astonishment. “Happy again? When the devil was I ever happy? Before I escaped my father and his utter lunacy? As happy as I was when my grandfather was still alive and ranting and screeching around here like a lunatic, not even allowing the vicar’s wife to visit Mount Hawke, much less any person who happened to be female? As happy as I was in the army getting shot at in more battles than I care to remember? As happy as I was in my solitude, for a man alone I’ve been all my life, Coombe. Good God, man, I don’t believe I’ve ever been quite so happy in my entire bloody life as I am now. With her. With my wife. Do you understand me, Coombe, she’s my
wife.
”

“No, no, yours is not the right kind of happy, my lord, and as a Nightingale man, you know it’s only temporary. Also, we’ve all seen you laugh immoderately, exercise wit without sufficient restraint. You’ve even gone so far as to make people smile and laugh with your jests. It isn’t proper for a Nightingale man to be so at ease with other people and with himself. A Nightingale man has more unplumbed depths, more richness of soul; a Nightingale man ponders profoundly the pitfalls of life and how best to avoid them. A Nightingale man lives more years than allotted to other less thoughtful, less discerning men. Well, at least some of them do.”

Caroline stared at him. North could but shake his head.
He said now, “Coombe, I can no longer trust you. You have lied to me, you have betrayed me. You are retired from service to the Nightingales as of today. There will be a sizable pension so that you may buy a cottage and remain in the area or, if you wish, you can travel elsewhere. I suppose you provided sterling service to my father and that this is what he would do. I’m sorry, Coombe, that it had to come to this. I truly am. I had hoped you would realize that your attitudes were not only outmoded, but just plain wrong.”

“Your father wouldn’t dream of doing this to me, your grandfather either. Both of them would have believed me had I told them she would be the cause of your downfall. Neither of them would ever have trusted a female more than they trusted me or any other man in their service. Both your grandfather and your father were saints, pious thoughtful men, they—”

“Both were bloody mean-spirited bastards,” North said, and slammed his fist down on his desk. “Now, this is quite enough. I don’t think I could tolerate you accusing me of making them spin in their graves.”

“There’s also your great-grandfather, doubtless a discerning, intelligent man, who—” North took a step toward him, so furious that Coombe finally realized he would soon be dead if he didn’t shut his mouth. He managed to do just that, but he looked like he wanted to shout down the draperies. He looked pale and drawn and Caroline felt a stab of pity for him until he looked at her and she saw such fury writ on his face that she took a step back.

North said, once Coombe had left the library, “Forgive me, Caroline. Had I simply acted immediately when he lowered the monster’s head to scare you out of your wits on our wedding night, then this wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t know it was him, but I had a one-in-three chance of getting it right. Yes, I should have guessed, because he’s
the youngest of the three and thus the most agile. That roof is steep over your chamber. Too bad he didn’t fall and bash in his damned head.”

“I’m sorry too, North. I do wish it hadn’t ended like this. I didn’t want discord. I’d truly hoped they’d come to grips with things.”

“I too,” he said.

She walked to him, clasped her arms around his back, and kissed his chin. “I’m sorry about Coombe, but I’m frankly relieved that he won’t be here to cause more mischief. You are an amazing man, North. You’re compassionate, kind, funny, and the best lover in the whole of Britain.”

“I must brood sometime, Caroline, surely it’s in my black blood, else I might go mad and not ever slaver all over you again.”

“Can I brood with you?” Her hand stroked down his chest to his belly. She felt him tremble and kissed his mouth. He lurched, pulling her hard against him. “The damned door,” he said against her mouth. In a moment, he’d locked the door, then turned to look at her. “I want your legs around my waist, Caroline. I was thinking of that, picturing you with your back arched against my hands, your hair free and loose down your back. Yes, it’s what I want.”

She gave him the most radiant smile a man could dream about, and said, “All right, but I’m not quite certain how this will work.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

“You usually do unless you let me tie your wrists to the headboard and I got to do that only once.”

His breathing hitched. “Now, Caroline.”

He lifted her onto the desk, and his hands were beneath her skirt, going upward to the top of her stockings to stroke the skin of her inner thighs. “Oh goodness, that’s quite nice,” she said, then nipped his earlobe. When his fingers
touched her she nearly fell off the desk.

“Easy,” he said, freed himself, and lifted her onto him. He slid upward into her, felt her tight around him, felt her muscles clenching, and it was the finest feeling he could remember having in his life. He lifted her and she laughed, startled and excited, as he raised her legs to close around his waist.

“This is what I was thinking about,” he said against her throat as he whirled her around, going even deeper inside her. “This is exactly what I wanted.” She arched her back, pressing closer, and North thought he would go over the edge. “Hold still and that’s an order.”

She held perfectly still. “Is this all right, North?”

“No, but it will have to suffice. Jesus, Caroline, I couldn’t have imagined anything like this and I did try to.”

“This is very strange, North. You’re walking around with me and you’re inside me and it’s very nice and—”

“Caroline, please keep still, at least about what we’re doing. It drives me just as wild as you moving about.”

“Then what can I do?”

He closed his eyes as he slowly withdrew, then pushed back into her, deep, very deep, and she moaned, her back arching again. “Just be you and it’s too much,” he said, and began to kiss her wildly. He laid her back on top of his desk, her legs dangling over. “No, this isn’t the way I want it to be,” he said, then shoved her legs up, bending her knees. “Yes, that’s it.” Then he very slowly withdrew from her, lifted his hands beneath her hips and brought her to his mouth.

There was a knock on the door. “Is anything wrong, my lady?” It was Mrs. Mayhew, and she didn’t sound at all concerned.

Caroline’s eyes were nearly crossed. She could scarcely draw a breath. She stared up at her husband, smiled at him,
and said, “I am ready to expire now, North, quite ready.”