Owen said, “I say, North, did you discover anything more about Mrs. Pelforth?”
He stilled, the laughter gone momentarily from his face. He turned to Owen and said, “Nothing of import. Bennett was drinking at Mrs. Freely’s inn, damn and blast. I’ll tell you the rest of it later, though there’s little to tell.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Caroline said.
“Later,” North said. “I don’t wish to upset anyone before dinner, or after it, as a matter of fact.”
26
MISS MARY PATRICIA said, “Please, my lord, our ears are quite capable of taking in talk of this dreadful business. Indeed.” She paused for a long, dramatic moment. “Indeed, my lord, Evelyn just might know something.”
Over a magnificent serving dish of potted venison, which North praised to the heavens, Owen said, “The men in the villages are all up in arms. They say that everything was peaceful and quiet here until—” His voice fell into an abyss.
“It’s quite all right,” North said. “I found Caroline’s aunt’s body at St. Agnes Head. I am the stranger. I don’t blame them for talking.”
“Yes,” Evelyn said quickly, “but that other lady who was killed. My lord, you were nowhere in the vicinity, and it was hoped that that toad Bennett Penrose was.”
“However do you know that, Evelyn?” North said.
Evelyn blushed. It was fascinating, and Caroline could but stare at her. She finally said, “It was Mr. Savory who told me, my lord. A smart fellow he is and ever so nice. He told me he was assisting you in your investigations. He said you were ever such a smart gentleman.”
He did, did he? North thought. He’d told Flash everything was confidential. He gave Evelyn a long look, saw the pitfalls for Flash, and gave it up. Even with her belly protruding, she was a remarkably fine-looking girl. Oh well, it was done.
“I’m sorry to tell you, Evelyn, but the toad Bennett wasn’t here then either. It’s a pity.”
“There was something else, my lord,” Evelyn added.
“Yes?”
“I know that Dr. Treath was a close friend of Mrs. Pelforth.”
“Yes, I know that as well,” North said. “When we found her washed up on the beach, Dr. Treath was very upset. He told me she had been very kind to him after your aunt was killed, Caroline. He was distraught.”
Caroline’s mind raced ahead and she opened her mouth to say something, saw North shake his head, and went back to the delicious buttered peas on her plate.
Owen, oblivious of any pitfalls at all, said, “I say, Dr. Treath was fond of your aunt, Caroline, and then he was fond of Nora Pelforth. Do you think perhaps he’s mad, North? That he likes to jolly up to women and then kill them?”
“No,” North said. “That’s ridiculous. Eat your dinner, Owen. You’re frightening Alice.”
Owen immediately turned to her and patted her hand as if he were her uncle or her father confessor.
But Caroline was thinking: Did Dr. Treath know the woman who was killed some three years ago? What was her name? Oh yes, Elizabeth Godolphin.
North looked up to see Tregeagle, Coombe, and Polgrain all standing in the doorway. “Yes?” he said.
Tregeagle cleared his throat and said, “Er, my lord, we were just attending to what the Young Female was saying. We are telling all those buffoons that to believe you culpable of anything at all untoward is ridiculous.”
“I thank you,” North said. “Have you perhaps other duties that need your attention?”
“There are always duties in a dwelling this large, my lord. In addition, with so very many people now in residence, the duties have multiplied alarmingly.”
Caroline said, “Shall I have Mrs. Mayhew—”
“Not at all,” Coombe said quickly. “We will contrive. We always have, even under the most desperate and strained circumstances.”
“My admiration for the three of you constantly assumes even more amazing proportions,” North said. “Oh, Polgrain, the round of beef is excellent. The dumplings are tasty, as is the turtle soup.”
“Since you are pleased, my lord, it is enough.”
North merely nodded, caught his wife’s eye, and smiled widely at his chef. “Actually, it seems that everything her ladyship requests is quite to my liking, Polgrain.”
“One will assume, then, that the result is what we should prefer, my lord.”
To everyone’s surprise, Alice said, “I think the oxtail soup be, er, is very good, Mr. Polgrain.”
A spasm crossed Polgrain’s face. He said, looking directly at the rather ugly epergne in the middle of the table, “It is the maturity of the cloves that makes the difference. His lordship isn’t fond of oxtail soup.”
If anyone thought it odd to be discussing the dishes on the large table with the trio of male servants all lined up in a row, as stiff as Blücher’s Prussian soldiers, no one remarked upon it until much later that evening, when Caroline eased off North’s chest, up onto her elbows, saying, “I love the taste of you more than anything Polgrain could prepare.”
“Is it the maturity of my flesh?”
She smiled as she kissed his shoulder, his throat, his chin, and finally his mouth. “A dash of salt overlaying the taste of damp exerted man,” she said, and kissed him again. “Ah, North, are you already asleep?”
“Yes,” he said, and pulled her down into his arms. “This business about talking after lovemaking, Caroline, it’s difficult. You nearly kill me with your enthusiasm and then you want me to discuss philosophy with you.”
“No, I just want to know where you went this afternoon. Was it about Mrs. Pelforth? And why didn’t you tell me about Dr. Treath knowing her? Why didn’t you tell me that our locals are wondering if you’re some sort of madman?”
“No, it wasn’t about Mrs. Pelforth. I went to see Timmy the maid’s father.”
She reared up, staring down at him, her thick hair dropping like a curtain on either side of his face. It was dark and erotic, the feel of her hair. “Why did you do that?”
“So Timmy wouldn’t accidentally kill the drunken bugger.”
“But I told you I’d teach him, work with him—”
“His father had just struck Timmy’s mother when I walked into their cottage in Goonbell. I pulled him off her, dragged him by the scruff of his neck outside, and you won’t believe this—Timmy’s mother was running after me, shouting not to hurt her husband, all the while wiping the blood off her mouth. The three little girls were yelling their heads off.
“I told her to go back into the cottage and I sounded as mean as I could. Then I had a talk with Jeb Peckly.”
“Peckly. Timmy the maid Peckly? That’s quite an ugly name, North. Well, what happened? What did he say?”
“Not much of anything until I had his full attention.” He unconsciously rubbed his knuckles.
She was smiling down at him as if he were the lord of the world. He’d never had someone look at him like that. He was suddenly embarrassed and mumbled, “I just made sure he understood what would happen if he ever hit anyone again. The thing was, Caroline, if old Jeb was really drunk and he went after them and Timmy got out that pistol, it would make his father go right over the edge. Someone could easily get killed. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Oh, North, you’re wonderful. There can’t be another man as wonderful as you are in the whole of Cornwall or even the whole of Britain. I am the luckiest woman. Goodness, I love you so much.” She was kissing him, laughing, stroking his shoulders and arms, the palm of her hand then on his belly, caressing him, and not a moment later, he came into her, moaning deeply into her mouth as she took him even deeper.
Then he stopped cold. He was balanced above her on his hands, panting like one of his old hounds, Cardaloo, after he’d run across Tyburth Moor. “What did you say?”
“I said you’re wonderful, more than wonderful. Actually, you’re quite the grandest man—”
“Then what?”
“I said ‘goodness.
’ I don’t remember anything else.”
He realized then that she was afraid to tell him she loved him again because it would be like being the dangling white handkerchief in front of the enemy. No, no, surely he wasn’t the enemy. Perhaps she’d just forgotten, or hadn’t meant it. He took her mouth, tasting her, nipping her lower lip, all the while feeling the pleasure begin to flood through him. He pulled back, his back arching, his throat working madly, and he knew she was looking at him when his release hit him, holding him there for an endless moment of the most exquisite pleasure he’d ever felt in his life. She whispered into his neck again that she loved him. Then she whispered, “I love to see you in the throes of your release, North. It excites me and pleases me.”
She drew him down on top of her, her hands stroking over his back as she lightly kissed his shoulders and arms. He fell asleep before he came out of her and that feeling was the sweetest he’d ever known in his life.
Caroline tried to be philosophical, she truly did. All right, so she’d blurted it right out there and all he’d ever said to her was that she was a good sort and he liked her. Actually she’d told him twice that she loved him. It was all right.
There was nothing wrong with being a good sort. It was quite nice to be liked by the man she adored more than any other human being in the world. Surely a good sort was a fine thing to be for the next month or so, perhaps even for the next year or so.
She couldn’t help it that she wanted to sing and dance and shout to the world that North Nightingale was a hero, that dour, dark, menacing—and all those odd things he’d believed himself to be—were nonsense. He was a hero and he was hers and she would do anything for him. It was that simple and that final. Caroline kissed his shoulder and he reared up just a bit, stared down at her with vague satisfied eyes. “That was very satisfactory,” he said, leaned his head down, kissed her mouth, then rolled off her. She drew the covers over them, spooned herself against his back, and smiled into the darkness.
She wasn’t smiling the following morning. Evelyn woke her up just after dawn. Alice was sick. She was vomiting in her chamber pot, her hair hanging in wet skinny ropes around her pale face.
She sent Timmy the maid for Dr. Treath.
She went back to her bedchamber and quickly dressed. When she returned to Alice’s room, North was holding Alice, wiping her face with a wet cloth. She was shuddering with the force of the spasms racking her thin body. Caroline wondered if Alice even realized that a man was holding her.
Bess Treath was on her brother’s heels as she always seemed to be. She shooed them all away as her brother examined Alice. Evelyn was standing in the shadows wringing her hands. “My poor baby, I heard her crying, then she cried out. When I got to her, she was vomiting, looking like death. My poor little Alice.”
Owen came running into the bedchamber. “My God, what’s going on here? Alice is sick? Oh no! I just knew something was wrong, I just knew it. When I saw Dr. Treath coming out of his house, I knew he was coming here.”
North wondered what Owen had been doing in Goonbell, but now wasn’t the time to ask.
Even Bess Treath didn’t try to make Owen move away when Dr. Treath pulled up her nightgown and pressed on her child-swollen belly. Owen never even looked away from her face; he simply held her hand and whispered to her, telling her it would be all right, that she wasn’t to worry, that he was here.
North said to Caroline, “This is very interesting.”
“Yes,” she said. “I hadn’t realized. I pray she’ll be all right.”
Dr. Treath told Caroline and North some time later downstairs in the drawing room that he didn’t believe she would miscarry the babe, which was his biggest concern.
Bess Treath said, “I don’t know, Benjie. Perhaps it would be better for her. She’s only a child herself and whatever will happen to her?”
Caroline smiled even though she wondered what kind of person Bess Treath thought she was. “Alice will be just fine, Miss Treath. Surely you never thought that my aunt Eleanor or I would turn her out after she birthed the babe? No, there will be no problem. Tell me what to do, Dr. Treath.”
Alice was asleep within moments of drinking the draught Dr. Treath had prepared for her. Caroline and North looked into her bedchamber before returning to their own, to see Owen sitting beside her on the bed, holding her small thin hand. Owen was lightly stroking his thumb over her fingers.
He looked up at them. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll take care of her. Dr. Treath thought it was something she ate, perhaps the oxtail soup.”
“No one else ate very much of it,” North said. “It sounds like the culprit. Perhaps the mushrooms.”
Caroline yawned widely. “I’m sorry, but I’m just so tired. It seems we don’t ever have any quiet moments around here.”
“Oh yes, Caroline,” Owen said, “Mrs. Mayhew, Chloe, and Molly all came by. Mrs. Mayhew had more suggestions on Alice’s care than I can even remember. She’s very forceful. Sort of like my father.”
“Yes,” Caroline said, yawning again, but smiling with great satisfaction at the same time, “isn’t she ever?”
Sunlight flooded into the bedchamber when North came into her slowly and gently, all the while kissing her. She shuddered and moaned into his mouth when she reached her release.
“I like to see a smile on a woman’s mouth when she’s nearly asleep,” he said, and pulled her tightly against him.
“Tell me I’m a good sort again, North.”
He stared at her a moment, kissed her closed eyes, then her nose and her mouth. “You’re one of the best sorts, Caroline,” he said, then sighed softly when her hand stroked down his back. “All this badness, Caroline, we’ll get through it.”
“I know,” she said, kissed him, and pressed her cheek against his shoulder.
27
IT WAS VERY strange, the note he’d received that was right now crumpled in his breeches pocket, written by an unknown hand, given to Timmy the maid when he was out at the stables giving sugar to North’s bay gelding, Treetop. “ ’Twere a young duffer with squirrelly talk,” Timmy the maid had said, but he hadn’t recognized him, which was odd because Timmy the maid knew everybody, or so he’d thought. What was squirrelly talk? North had asked. And Timmy the maid had said, “The little nit couldn’t speak more than two words together without stammering hisself near out o’ ’is boots.”
North click-clicked Treetop toward the northeastern end of his property where the land softened and the gentle rolling hills were still green with lingering summer. There were about half a dozen of the hillocks, and learned men had said that beneath some of the hillocks, or barrows, as they called them, were tombs from long, long ago, even long before the Romans had lived here, even long before the Celts had swarmed over Cornwall. He remembered reading about Silbury Hill, a huge mound everyone had known was a burial mound, possibly hiding treasure. It had been the Duke of Northumberland who had launched a force of Cornish tin miners late in the last century to sink a shaft from top to bottom of the mound. They hadn’t found anything, more’s the pity, and most had stopped even remarking on the odd hills, so obviously placed there by man’s hand and not God’s.
Every once in a while villagers found strange things near these hills: pottery shards that looked to be older than the land itself, though on some of the pieces there were still spots of bright color, small bits of iron and steel that looked to be from long-ago weapons. And another mound would be dug into. Not long before, a mound had turned up a long, narrow burial chamber holding ancient skeletons, some pottery pieces, but nothing of value. He’d heard that in other parts of England, finding Roman coins and even Celt weapons was no great wonder.
Had King Mark been buried here, beneath one of those soft rolling hills? Had the gold armlet his great-grandfather claimed to have found come from near here? He sincerely doubted it.
He pulled Treetop to a halt atop one of the hills and looked around him. He forgot all about archaeology, forgot abo
ut King Mark and his lust-besotted nephew Tristan who’d betrayed him with the beautiful, treacherous Isolde.
The note said she would be meeting her lover close by to the northeastern boundary. Well, he was here. He looked toward the dense copse of oak trees older than the Druids, who had hung enemies in cages from the branches and then proceeded to roast them alive.
Where was she? It was a hoax, he had known that, he knew that, but still, he did expect to see Caroline here somewhere. Where was her mare, Regina?
When he saw her mare and another horse, a gelding, tethered behind a thick stand of trees, he felt his heart begin to pound, slow, heavy strokes. Her lover? Dear God, it was nonsense, that was all, just someone wanting to do them ill, probably one of his male martinets.
He wouldn’t spy on his wife of three weeks, it was absurd. Caroline adored him. She loved him, she’d told him that whenever she’d crested her pleasure, kissing him, telling him over and over how much she loved him. He’d found that he wanted to hear those words from her, that he wallowed in the pleasure those simple words brought him.
But how could she come to love him in such a short time? Surely love didn’t work with such dispatch. Was it just a woman’s release that brought such words from her mouth, lust fulfilled and thus it was love?
North shook his head. He kicked Treetop in his muscled sides but he didn’t gallop forward, announcing his arrival. No, he kept Treetop to a slow canter until he could see her and the man.
It was Benjamin Treath and he was standing close to Caroline, something in his outstretched hand. Ah, he was showing her something, nothing more, nothing less.
This was no clandestine tryst. But what was he showing her? And why here? She wasn’t like all those former Nightingale wives who had betrayed their husbands, wives who had been faithful to the Nightingale men until they’d birthed the heir, then fallen into a whore’s ways and birthed bastards, or were kicked out like North’s mother was, and died. No, Caroline was loyal—to him and to no one else. He would wager everything he owned, all that he valued within himself, that she was loyal to him, only to him… yes, only to him.
The Nightingale Legacy Page 26