The Nightingale Legacy

by Catherine Coulter

  “How did you do it?”

  “I told Coombe to tell Polgrain that if the breakfast wasn’t worthy of a viscount’s establishment, I would have the three pregnant ladies come help him in his kitchen because, obviously, he didn’t know how to cook properly. I thought Coombe would smash me over the head with that hideous Chinese vase in the drawing room, but he contained himself.”

  “He is a man with self-control, thank God.”

  Suddenly, she lowered her eyes to the scrambled eggs. She scuffed the toe of her slipper against the edge of the Aubusson carpet.

  He snaffled the biggest nutty bun on the well-polished silver tray, looking all the while at her from the corner of his eye, and said in a voice he hoped was seductive enough to melt the butter on his nutty bun, “I missed you this morning. I had definite very interesting plans for the use of your fair person when I woke up. There is so much of you that hasn’t yet received a fair amount of my attention.” He sighed deeply. “You shouldn’t have left me. According to the book I was studying last night, Caroline, it simply isn’t the done thing to leave your new spouse before he wakes up. It makes him feel inadequate, you see, as if he must have failed to please you on the wedding night, and thus you’ve left him alone to question his technique endlessly and wonder just how badly he performed.”

  Her head had snapped up and her mouth was open by the time he came to a polished halt.

  “You’re making that up, North Nightingale!”

  “Not a bit of it. Have you eaten, Caroline?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Now, I must help my ladies move into their bedchambers. Oh dear, I sat in your chair. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” She was hauling away her plate and silverware, and he was just laughing at her, standing there, his plate in his hand, laughing.

  “Hush,” she said over her shoulder. “You’re giving our guests a very poor opinion of me.”

  “Oh no, Miss Caroline,” Alice said. “I couldn’t have imagined a lady enjoying herself with a gentleman.”

  That was a stopper, but just for a moment. Miss Mary Patricia patted Alice’s hand, and Caroline said briskly, “Now, let me show you to your rooms. They’re really quite nice.”

  North called out to her, “It also said in my book that to leave the new spouse immediately after breakfast also puts him in danger of serious self-doubt.”

  She refused to let him dangle her about any longer, even though he did it splendidly. How could he ever have believed he was dour and dark and brooding? She moved closer to him, out of hearing of Miss Mary Patricia, Alice, and Evelyn. “Oh, I asked Tregeagle about the monster’s face in my window last night. I looked him straight in the eye and put it to him.”

  “Ah.”

  “He didn’t twitch a muscle, but still, he’s had many years to perfect a show of innocence.”

  “Tell you what, let me check around and then I’ll put it to Polgrain and Coombe.”

  “Good luck,” she said in a gloomy voice. “They’re very good, North, very good indeed.”

  “But you’ve thrown them, Caroline.”

  She cocked her head to one side.

  “Aren’t there now four ladies living at Mount Hawke?”

  She gave him a wicked grin. “What will they say when the female maids arrive?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t look forward to hearing it.”

  Two hours later, North was sitting in a huge wing chair in the library, Caroline on his lap, more or less, and he was playing with her toes. One silk stocking was lying discarded on her chest. “If you were in a more amenable position I could nibble on your toes. I’ll bet they taste like lavender.”

  “I told Timmy the maid to pour lavender in my bathwater. He stood there and stared at me and then grinned this big toothy grin and poured out enough to bathe an elephant. You saw the bottle, didn’t you?”

  “It was nearly empty.” He lowered her foot to his lap and examined it. “It looks as if your foot has healed all right. I was scared of that damned blister. You must be careful. I knew a boy in the army whose boots were too tight and he got a blister. He didn’t pay any attention to it and not five days later he was dead.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she said. She’d been lolling over his right arm. Now she raised her hand to cup the side of his face. She loved to touch him, loved the feel of him, the myriad rich textures of him, the sheer differentness of him. He smiled at her. “I’ve got your left stocking off. I suppose it’s time for me to pull down the right one. Then, I suppose, I should continue upward and finish the job, but slowly this time, very, very slowly.”

  She grabbed his face between her two hands and jerked him down to her, kissing him and not letting him up. When finally she did release him, he wasn’t in any hurry to raise his head. “North,” she said against his mouth. “Can you stop just a moment? I’ve an awful cramp in my leg. Perhaps you could rub it?”

  He looked at how he’d twisted her about in his lap so he could get a better hold on her. “Sorry,” he said, and began to massage her leg.

  “The other one, but that feels good too. Up higher, North.”

  “Higher? You are a damned tease, Caroline Nightingale. Hmm, that doesn’t sound bad, does it? Perhaps a wife isn’t such a bad thing, particularly if her name fits so very nicely with her husband’s.”

  “Higher, North.”

  His breathing hitched. “Is the cramp gone?”

  “No, it’s worse. It’s even higher now, North. Oh dear, the dreadful pain of it.”

  He gave it up, slipped his hand beneath her skirt, and took the more direct route straight up to her bare thigh. “Ah,” he said, kissing her nose. “There, Caroline? That nasty cramp that’s nearly doubling you over in agony?”

  She was staring up at him, her expression delightfully befuddled. She swallowed. “That’s fine for a while.”

  “Let’s just see.” In the next moment, he was touching her woman’s flesh, and she jumped. “North, perhaps that is too high, perhaps that isn’t proper in the middle of the day, perhaps I was feeling too adventuresome and perhaps a bit too wicked, and now I’m admitting to cowardice—”

  “It’s two hours after breakfast, Caroline, and I’m in a bad way. If you were sensible, you would be in a bad way too. However, according to my book, after such a strenuous wedding night that wasn’t really all that strenuous at all, I have quite a bit of catching up to do with you. I’m to be exquisitely attentive, not let you out of my sight for an instant, praise your eyebrows, and kiss you behind your knees and follow the trail of my fingers.”

  He cupped his hand over her and she just stared at him, unable to think of a thing to say, just staring at his mouth, wanting him to kiss her, and he finally gave her a crooked grin, leaned his head down, and—

  “Yoo-hoo? My lord? Are you in the library, my lord? Perhaps you are beneath the desk over there in the corner searching for a bit of something? My lord?”

  “Don’t move even a toe, don’t make a sound,” North said into her mouth.

  “My lord? Perhaps you are over there standing behind the curtains, but I don’t see your boots. Ah, perhaps just here, right in front of me, seated in that very big wing chair that was surely too large for your great-grandfather who was, it is said, a man who did not extend himself very well vertically.”

  North eased his hand from beneath her skirt, smoothed down her clothes, gave her one last kiss, and said loudly, “Tregeagle, I am going to stand up now and set my bride beside me. Then I’m going to walk right up to you and smack you in your damned presumptuous mouth.”

  North was only three feet from Tregeagle, his arm already up, when his housekeeper said in the reproachful voice of a mother whose child has misbehaved, “My lord, I do not bother you apurpose.”

  “Ha!”

  “My lord, please don’t strike me just yet. Please lower your arm for just a moment. I am an old man, barely able to stand upright without assistance. Surely you are too much the gentleman to strike me, an ancient being who’s also
your housekeeper since well before you were born?”

  “What the hell do you want, Tregeagle? Make it fast, my fist is fairly twitching to stroke your jaw.”

  “My lord, Mr. Bennett Penrose is here to see you.”

  “I see. Why don’t you go tell him to wait. Say, for a good two hours?”

  “He, er, is very offensive, my lord. He yelled at me. Actually yelled, demanded that I should bring down the little sluts. I told him the females were upstairs and that he could fetch them if he wished to—”

  “That isn’t at all amusing, Tregeagle,” Caroline said, coming up to stand by North.

  “Very well, miss, er, madam, I did not tell him where they were nor did I tell him he could fetch them himself. I am here to fetch you, my lord, so that you may deal with the young man. He isn’t a very proper young man.”

  “No, he’s a bloody sod,” North said. “It would make more sense if he were Ffalkes’s son and not poor Owen. Very well, I’ll see him now. I’ll come out. You stay here, Caroline. No need to put your stockings back on… . Oh, you’re still here, Tregeagle? Listening at full ear, are you? No, don’t bother to answer.”

  Caroline planted her bare feet right in front of him. She wagged her finger in front of his nose. “Oh no you won’t, North Nightingale. I am part of this and you won’t lock me out by calling it some sort of man thing.”

  “Very well, Tregeagle. Show him in here.”

  “Yes, my lord, but I would prefer that you saw him in private. His language is deteriorating rapidly. I don’t think that a female sort of person should have to listen—”

  “Show him in, Tregeagle,” Caroline said in a very loud voice. “This minute.”

  “Yes,” he said, stiffer than a broomstick, and took himself from the library. He said over his shoulder, “Bare feet, it just isn’t done, not in a gentleman’s library, not in a gentleman’s library at Mount Hawke.”

  “Go away, Tregeagle,” North said.

  North sighed. He was still feeling as randy as a goat with a new boot to chew, his fingers were still warm from her flesh, but now, given that Bennett Penrose was just on the verge of breaking up his peace entirely, his randiness was growing more distant by the moment. It just wasn’t bloody fair.

  “Caroline, your hair is a fright. Go straighten it. When are the new female staff arriving here?”

  “After luncheon. They are all approved by Mrs. Trebaw, North.”

  “Does she also think they’ll survive my three brave lads?”

  “She didn’t venture an opinion on that.”

  Scant minutes later, Bennett Penrose, looking like a male angel, strode into the library, primed for battle.

  23

  “WHAT THE HELL are you doing here, Penrose?”

  “I’m not happy,” he yelled. “You, Caroline, you take away my pregnant pigeons—don’t you recall that Aunt Eleanor made us both trustees of them?—and then that miserable man, Owen’s father, Roland Ffalkes, stays the night, and we play whist. He’s a rank cheater, do you hear? Rank! He took my last guinea, my very last one. He kept pouring me brandy, which was very good but it muddled my wits, and I wouldn’t have drunk all that much if I had been the one deciding. And this morning he gives me this superior grin and tells me I should never drink when I gamble. Damned officious old man! He’s gone now, but he’s got all my money.”

  “Thank God,” Caroline said. “I hope he went back to Honeymead Manor.”

  “Why are you thanking God, Caroline? You connived with him, didn’t you? You told him to make me drink brandy and gamble recklessly.”

  “That’s quite enough, Penrose,” North said now, his voice very calm, very quiet, and it terrified Caroline to her bare toes. This was a voice she never wanted to hear directed at her. This was the dark, vicious, probably very dangerous North Nightingale.

  “But—”

  “No, be quiet. Now you will listen to me. The pregnant ladies are here at Mount Hawke because you can’t be trusted not to try to rape them at Scrilady Hall. Yes, I know about your attempted rape of Alice, she being all of fourteen years old, which makes you something lower than a slug.”

  “She’ll be fifteen shortly and that’s a bloody lie. Why did you lie to him, Caroline? The little slut wanted me, she rubbed against me, she did everything but come out and beg me to come take her. I didn’t really want to because she’s got this brat in her belly, but at least I would be safe from having her accuse me of being the father. Damnation, I’m not a slug. And even though she isn’t quite yet fifteen, she looks at least fifteen, maybe even sixteen.”

  “Bennett,” Caroline said, her hand resting lightly on North’s sleeve, “listen to me and listen very closely. I will pay you five thousand pounds to renounce your trusteeship of the pregnant ladies, those here now and any in the future. You will also renounce your residence at Scrilady Hall. In short, you will renounce everything, leave Cornwall, and stay gone. Remember, you wanted me to lend you five thousand pounds and you claimed you’d pay it back with interest. Very well, the money’s yours, but in return, there’s no payback to me and you renounce all your partnerships with me.”

  “Five thousand pounds?”

  North was merely looking on now, as if he were an interested onlooker, but Caroline, knowing him better than she thought it possible to know another human being in such a short time, saw the tug of amusement on his mouth. It was there, she was sure of it. She couldn’t let him down. She wouldn’t.

  “Yes, five thousand pounds. Mr. Brogan can be fetched to draw up the papers for you to sign.”

  “Ten thousand pounds, Caroline, not a guinea less. Surely my half is worth twice that amount, even more. You’re just trying to take advantage of me because you made Mr. Ffalkes cheat me and pour brandy down my throat.”

  North said, giving his fingernails a study, never looking up, “Let me kill him, Caroline. He’s surely not worth anything close to ten thousand pounds. Yes, I’ll kill him. It will be quick and clean, and we won’t have to see his bloody face again. I can bury him underneath one of the apple trees. I don’t think anyone will care, do you?”

  Bennett gulped and said quickly, “All right, seven thousand.”

  It went back and forth, in the most civilized fashion, until they both agreed to six thousand three hundred pounds.

  “It’s not enough to get an heiress,” Bennett said.

  “Perhaps not,” North said, flicking an invisible speck off his sleeve, “but it’s enough—if you use your brain and don’t gamble—to live quite nicely for a very long time. Let me make it even more simple, Penrose. It will allow you to eat. Without it, you would starve, because I can’t imagine a single soul who would give you any money or any free food.”

  “That’s right,” Caroline said, and walked to the library doors. “Besides, you told me five thousand would be enough. What’s the matter, Bennett? Are you getting less charming by the minute? You don’t think you’ll succeed anymore?”

  “No, naturally I’ll succeed. It’s just that I like knowing that I am still half-owner in everything here in Cornwall. It would make me sound more important, more steady to my future father-in-law, if I could claim residence at Scrilady Hall. By God, your feet are bare,” Bennett said in a choked voice. “Good God, your feet have nothing on them.”

  “Penrose,” North said in that soft voice, “Caroline has very nice feet. I enjoy looking at them.”

  She just shook her head and opened the library doors.

  Tregeagle and Coombe were standing there, staring. Neither of them appeared at all embarrassed that they’d been caught eavesdropping.

  “I didn’t hear you, miss,” Coombe said. “Ah, your feet are bare, just as I happened to hear Mr. Penrose say quite loudly. It isn’t fitting. Now.” He looked toward North. “My lord, what do you want us to do?”

  Caroline cleared her throat. “I want you to have Mr. Brogan fetched here immediately, Coombe.”

  “My lord?”

  “Do as her ladyship asks, Coombe,
” North said.

  “I’m not certain I want to do this,” Bennett said. “I’d be giving up everything forever.”

  North just turned and looked at him. He said nothing, just looked at him. Caroline saw that his hands weren’t even fisted at his sides. He looked utterly calm and relaxed. She knew he was quite ready to smash Bennett. She hoped Bennett would give him provocation. She would like to see the greedy little bastard flat on his back on the library floor. But Bennett, with an animal’s cunning, kept quiet. North took his arm and led him from the library. “You may sit in the hall, Penrose, and keep your mouth shut.”

  He came back into the library, shutting the door. Then he was examining it carefully. Caroline said, “What are you doing, North?”

  “I’m wondering if there is still a key about to lock this door.”

  “We could put a chair back under the knob.”

  “No, I want a nice clean key. One that turns, one that couldn’t be opened by Tregeagle or Coombe, even by Polgrain if he chances to wander out of his kitchen.”

  Caroline walked to the far windows that gave onto the east side of Mount Hawke. The slope was very steep here, with strewn rocks dotting the slope all the way to the bottom where a narrow length of stream ran. He said from behind her, “Now all we need is a visit from Roland Ffalkes, demanding the rest of your fortune, or here with a gun to shoot me and force you to marry him.”

  “I am getting gray hairs from all this,” Caroline said, turning to face him. “Just look, North, right here over my right eye, a gray hair.”

  “Good God,” he said. “It appears you’ve lied to me. I thought you were young and winsome when, in fact, you appear to have aged overnight, lying to me, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a crone in virgin wrappings.”

  She stared up at him. “You know, North, that was quite funny. You’re a witty man, and when you laugh you truly seem to be enjoying yourself and life. So where is this dark brooding hero I expected to marry? You are the one who misrepresented himself. You told me you were a man who would give me somber looks, never speak, and act endlessly mysterious. You haven’t walked your hounds even once to the moor.”