The Nightingale Legacy

by Catherine Coulter

She poked him in the arm and he smiled down at her. “Better now? There’s nothing there that I can see, Caroline. But it’s so damned dark tonight. Maybe you ate some suspicious mushrooms that resulted in a dash of brain fever?”

  She shook her head. “No mushrooms.”

  “Ah, then it was Mrs. Freely and her commentary on everything and everyone present today.”

  She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Perhaps it was just a tree limb or something like that. I remember hearing the rustling of the trees when the wind pushed their branches against the house. It was just so unexpected and maybe I saw more than I normally would, and it scared the dickens out of me.”

  “No matter, I will still scour the area outside those windows on the morrow.”

  “North?”

  “Hmmm?” He was kissing her neck, nuzzling her head back so he could have more of her.

  “Where were you? What were you doing? I thought you were mad for me. I thought you wanted to toss up my skirts all throughout the afternoon, all during supper, all during the time you were sipping on brandy in the drawing room, even while Mrs. Freely was telling everyone that a groom shouldn’t over-imbibe on his wedding night, that it led to disastrous results.”

  “I was reading in my bedchamber, studying, actually.”

  “Reading?” She leaned back in the circle of his arms to look up at him. “Studying what? How dare you? It’s our wedding night!”

  “An instruction book with pictures.”

  She just blinked at him.

  “A book that tells a man what he’s to do with a woman. A step-by-step instruction book. I was fairly certain all this lovemaking business had something to do with my manly parts and your womanly parts, but I wanted specificity. I wanted expert advice and explanations. I didn’t want to be a clod on my wedding night.”

  She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him full on the mouth. She kept kissing him until he was kissing her back, parting her lips, running his tongue along her bottom lip, his hands going lower to cup her buttocks and lift her against him, molding her to him.

  When she was nearly breathless, she leaned back just a bit. “You know, North, I’m not at all sure you’re doing this properly. Perhaps you’d best go back and study that book more closely.”

  He stared down at her, his eyes glazed with lust, shook his head to clear it just a bit, then said, “My God, I need to study how to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Oh no, that’s really quite easy. All you have to do is touch me and kiss me.”

  “I can do that,” he said. He scooped her up in his arms, and nearly ran to her bed, paused a moment and stared at that narrow stingy mattress with its suspicious lumpy surface, then turned and did run into his own bedchamber. She wondered as he dropped her onto her back on the mattress of his bed that would easily hold six men side by side what exactly was going to happen. She felt herself flush, felt her heart speed up, felt her palms dampen. She cocked an eye toward him, watching him strip off his dressing gown. He was naked beneath it. His face was flushed and his eyes looked glazed.

  She gasped. She’d never before seen a naked man, except for Mr. Ffalkes. He’d been disgusting. But goodness, North was something she couldn’t have imagined.

  “North, you—”

  “Yes, Caroline?”

  She didn’t have time to answer because he was on her, jerking loose the ribbon tied in a bow beneath her breasts, pulling her nightgown over her head. “There,” he said, throwing the gown to the floor in a heap atop his dressing gown. “Ah, Caroline,” he said, then he was kissing her and he came down on top of her. All of him, all at once. The richness of his body, all its textures—from his flesh that was smooth and hot against her, to the crispy hair, thick and black as sin on his chest and legs, and the sheer size and heat of him, it froze her. She was engulfed by feelings she couldn’t begin to understand. He was so different from her that she simply couldn’t take it all in. There was too much of everything and it was hitting her too fast, and she gasped into his mouth, “North, do you think you could roll over on your back and not touch me?”

  Her request was so unexpected it got through to him, breaking through the frantic urgency he felt, and he reared up on his hands, stared down at her, and said, “Very well.”

  He rolled onto his back, calmly crossed his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes. “Is this what you want? Shall I be holding a lily?”

  “Oh no, please put your arms at your sides.”

  He did, only now he was watching her as she sat on her heels beside him. Her hair was wild about her shoulders, spilling over to curl around her breasts.

  “You are possibly the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said, lifted his hand to touch her breast, only to have her say, “No, please, North, keep your hands at your sides.”

  “Why?”

  She looked mildly perplexed, then said, “It was too much at once, the differences between us were just too much for me. I couldn’t take all of it in and it was frightening.”

  “I’ll get that bloody book. Surely there must be a chapter about a bride losing her hold on things just because the groom disrobes and leaps on her.”

  “Oh no, just stay there, please. I want to look at you. I want to see what you’re all about. I want to understand you before you, well, do all the things you want to do to me.”

  He laughed, his muscles so tense they were nearly cramping. He watched her study him, and her study was so thorough it took all his fortitude to lie there quietly and not fling her onto her back again.

  She touched her fingertips lightly to his chest, then very slowly, she flattened her palms over him. She was leaning over him now, her breasts loose and very nearly touching him. He arched upward so he could feel her against his chest. It nearly sent him over the edge. He forced himself back flat against the mattress, groaned, and closed his eyes.

  “You are very nice, North, just so very different from me. I like the way your hair is so very thick here on your chest, so crinkly beneath my fingers. And just look how it thins out over your stomach.” She ran her warm palm down his chest over his navel, coming to a stop only at his groin. “It’s not a thin line here,” she said, and her hand stopped cold. He heard her suck in her breath. He couldn’t help himself, he opened his eyes to look at her. She was silent, just staring down at him for a very long time, for far too long a time, he thought, and said, “Do I repulse you, Caroline? I’m not smooth and white and soft like you. Do you find all the hair and my rod and the rest of me distasteful?”

  “Rod,” she repeated, still just staring down at him. “That’s an interesting word.”

  “There are many words for it, just as there are for your womanly parts.”

  She said nothing more, merely continued looking down at him. Then she was leaning down and her mouth touched his belly. Then she lightly rubbed her cheek, back and forth, across his belly. He nearly arched off the bed. He was panting like he’d just run up the cliff at St. Agnes Head. His chest was heaving like he’d just been in the boxing ring with Gentleman Jackson himself and had lost badly.

  She immediately straightened and looked up his body—taking her time—until she met his glazed eyes. “Oh dear, I hurt you?”

  “Don’t be a fool. If you do that again, Caroline, you will be the one on your back and I won’t be able to stop. No, don’t touch me there, it’s simply too much, it drives me over the brink. Oh, all right, kiss me some more, go lower, please, perhaps even touch me with your fingers or perhaps your mouth that’s so soft and wet or—” He groaned and twisted as her fingers splayed through the thick hair at his groin until they finally closed around him. She stared down at her hands holding him. Then she smiled, giving him a sloe-eyed look, leaned over him, and touched her lips to his belly again.

  Her hair fell in a thick curtain over his belly, hiding her from him. He wanted to see her killing him, see her holding him in her hands. He raised his hand and lifted the thick hair. She turned slightly so he could s
ee her clearly. He nearly lost his hold on what little sanity he had left when she did, it was so incredibly provocative.

  “You must stop that now,” he said between his teeth. “I swear it, Caroline, I’ll spill my seed if you don’t stop. A groom spilling his seed in his bride’s hand simply isn’t done on a wedding night. I’d never be able to hold my head up again around other men. I would be cast out of the male fraternity. I would have been an inept clod on my wedding night and that I simply couldn’t bear. Please.”

  She held him between her warm palms for just a moment longer, until just the point when he knew it was all over for him, when he wanted to throw back his head and yell, then she released him.

  She stretched out on top of him, her belly against his, her breasts pressed against his chest. She held his face between her hands and looked down at him. “You’re magnificent, North. I now understand a bit more about you and how you work. Perhaps you could take over things now?”

  He laughed; it was the only thing a sane man who was on the edge of insanity could do. He didn’t move, merely raised his own hands and cupped her face between them. “You’re always a surprise, Caroline. You’re also a tease. Oh, you don’t know you’re a tease, or perhaps you do. Perhaps all women know instinctively how to drive a man mad. Come here and open your mouth to me.”

  She leaned down and his mouth was hot on hers.

  “Open your mouth. The good Lord knows I taught you how to do that the second time I saw you.”

  “Maybe it was the third time,” she said, and opened her mouth. His tongue was inside her mouth, touching her own tongue, and it was quite splendid, she thought, until she felt his big hands on her bottom, kneading her flesh, pressing her hard against his man’s sex. Then she stopped thinking. His fingers were between her thighs and he found her flesh and he was touching her, exploring, gently entering her and she was shaking now, moving against him, unable to help herself, all of her merging into him and what he was doing to her and what he was making her feel. In the next moment she was on her back and he was between her legs, pushing them apart with his hands and holding them steady and staring down at her.

  “North, please,” she said, not knowing what to do but knowing that something very wonderful and special was going to happen.

  “Just hang on, Caroline.” His voice was hoarse and deep and then his hot breath was touching her flesh and she arched upward, moaning, letting his hands lift her higher to his mouth, and soon, so very soon after that, she was crying, sobbing, twisting on the sheets, her hands fisted, hitting his shoulders, then clutching at him, wanting what was coming so badly she didn’t think she could bear it, and then suddenly, heat spread through her, drawing her inward, and melded with the heat of his mouth and she yelled.

  He held her there until he felt the complete giving of everything that was in her, and he knew that all her feeling had come to him and to herself and he wasted no more time. He came into her fully in the next instant, barred only a moment by her maidenhead, then he was through it, thrusting himself to her womb. He knew he was hurting her, that the haze of pleasure was falling away from her because of the pain of rending her maidenhead. He held himself still and pulled himself up on his elbows, a remarkable feat really, one he was pleased he’d managed to do.

  “Hello,” he said, looking down into her dazed eyes. “No, don’t move. Let yourself get used to me, then I’ll move, but not sooner, else it will hurt you some more. The book said I was to apologize abjectly at least ten times when I tore through your maidenhead. It’s your badge of innocence and it’s important to you and thus I must act appropriately sorry to be the one to rob you of it.”

  “All right,” she said. “What you’re saying is nonsense, but it’s all right. This is all very strange, North, this business about you being inside me. I mean you’re really inside me, not just your tongue in my mouth, but this part of you that’s just for me and now you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, isn’t that right?”

  He grinned painfully. “I sure the hell hope so. I can’t wait now, Caroline.” He moved and it wasn’t too bad. She clasped her arms around him and kissed him, letting his breath flow into her mouth, feeling his frenzy, his growing urgency, until he was arching up, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, and he moved and she felt his seed inside her.

  He came down over her, panting hard, to rest his face beside hers on the pillow.

  She whispered in his ear, “I don’t think you missed any steps, North.”

  22

  FOR SEVERAL MOMENTS, he didn’t know what she was talking about, his brain was too dead. He said then, “I should take my pleasure before giving you yours. Then I can twit you when you haven’t any more of a functioning brain than a gnat. No, I didn’t miss any steps. On the other hand, I could have made those steps much, much steeper and thus taken a much longer time to reach the summit. What do you think?”

  “I think,” she said, kissing his throat, “that you are entirely capable of finding us steps that are on side trails, very interesting, rarely stepped-upon steps. Surely your book didn’t cover every possibility. You’re incredible, North. You’re probably also very inventive.”

  “I am,” he said, kissed her, then rolled over, pulling her against him. “Side trails, huh? I’ll have one by tomorrow morning, all right?”

  “I’ll think about it too. I’m so glad I didn’t have to marry Owen or Bennett,” she said, then in the next moment she was asleep.

  He kissed her hair, managed to lean over far enough to snuff the candles on the table beside the bed, then closed himself about her again. He hadn’t slept with a woman in a very long time.

  He’d never before slept with a wife. And that’s what she was now, his bloody wife, and he’d given her a woman’s pleasure. That was quite nice and well done of him. The male fraternity would approve. He was a damned fine man and a generous one. He hadn’t been a clod, though it had been close.

  Side trails with lots of individual steps. He only had time to smile about it before he too was deeply asleep.

  North awoke the following morning to find himself alone. He thought of that monster’s face she’d seen in the window the night before, jerked up in bed, and yelled, “Caroline!”

  There was no answer. He turned to see the adjoining door open. He called her name again, but still no answer. He frowned and looked at the clock beside his bed. It wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning.

  Damnation, he’d wanted to wake up, then kiss her awake and love her again until she was silly with it. He tossed off the covers and stood up to stretch.

  He was in mid-stretch when the door opened and there was Tregeagle standing there, as stiff as a board, looking as horrified as a vicar in a den of iniquity.

  North frowned at him. “What the hell do you want, Tregeagle? Where is my wife?”

  “Your wife is with them, my lord, and they are here, all three of them, and it is unacceptable; it is not what we’re used to. This is the Nightingale household, a household for men only, not some sort of inn for Mary Magdalenes.”

  North blinked through this bitter speech, then grinned. “Oh, I see, our three pregnant ladies are here. Caroline is with them?”

  “Yes, my lord. She insisted that Mr. Polgrain prepare them a very generous breakfast because, she said, they had to keep their strength up. My lord, we allowed them to be present at your wedding ceremony, allowed them even to remain for the magnificent repast Mr. Polgrain prepared, but then, of course, they left to return where they belonged.” Tregeagle drew a very audible breath. “My lord, what are the three pregnant ladies doing here at Mount Hawke, at a man’s residence, at seven forty-five o’clock in the morning?”

  “Why, Tregeagle, they’re moving in. Didn’t I tell you that yesterday?”

  He thought Tregeagle would faint. He turned white, his limbs began to shake as if he were suffering from palsy. “Have Timmy the maid bring me bathwater, Tregeagle, and get a grip on yourself, man. It won’t be so bad. I think t
he three of you will enjoy hearing feminine conversation and laughter, don’t you?”

  “No, my lord.”

  North laughed and laughed. He stopped, realizing what he was doing. This laughter business was becoming more natural. It had quite sneaked up on him and now he was doing it. It made him feel quite nice, when it didn’t scare him to death.

  When North strode into the small breakfast parlor a short time later, he drew up on the threshold, and just stared. There was Caroline seated unknowingly in his high-backed chair. To her left, right, and center were her three pregnant ladies all seated at the table, chatting gaily, all seemingly in very fine spirits. Well, Caroline should be in the best spirits possible, given how very wonderful he’d been to her on their wedding night. He wondered if in the near future he would have four pregnant ladies at the breakfast table. That made him smile. Then it made him frown, for oddly, it brought odd images to his mind of two very big people who were screaming at each other, then one of those big people was sobbing and cursing, and it was long ago in the past, he did realize that, but those terrifying scenes should have been long forgotten. He knew deep down it was his parents. He hated remembering. He firmly closed the door on those memories and walked forward.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he said, nodding to each of them. “Are you enjoying your breakfast?”

  “Everything is delicious, North,” Caroline said, and grinned shamelessly at him. “Polgrain has even presented himself three times to ensure that everything meets with our collective approval. Shall I pour you some coffee?”

  He nodded and took his plate to the sideboard. He could but gawk at the lavish array of dishes presented. Polgrain had outdone himself and North wondered why. The kippers looked delicious, as did the bacon. The scrambled eggs looked fluffier than high summer clouds, the toast and muffins were golden brown, and the pots of butter and jam looked rich and creamy. Goodness, there were even nutty buns.

  He turned to see Caroline giggling beside him. “You’re wondering why everything looks so good, aren’t you? You expected dog meat and pigeon droppings.”