“North, can she be my mother too?”
“I don’t know. Let’s ask her.” The two of them turned to face Cecilia Nightingale.
Her face was careworn; there were deep lines about her eyes and mouth. There were streaks of gray in her light brown hair. Then, quite suddenly, she smiled, a smile as beautiful as her daughter’s. She looked young again and happy.
“Can she, Mother? Can you accept another daughter? I must warn you that she can occasionally get herself into devilish fixes, but she makes me laugh and she loves me.”
Cecilia said, “I cannot imagine a woman not loving you. And to hear you laugh, North—ah, once your father laughed, but it didn’t last long. Now I’m being foolish. Another daughter. It is a wonderful notion. And soon I will be a grandmother. But I must ask you, Freder—North. What is it you wish to do?”
“I want you to live here at Mount Hawke because it is your home. I want you and Marie to be a part of this family again. I want my mother back.”
Marie sat on the blanket surrounded by the three babes in front of the drawing-room fireplace. She was holding Eleanor, then tossing her very carefully into the air, cooing to her, shrieking with laughter when the baby yelled happily.
Cecilia said, “Marie adores the babes and she is so careful with them.”
“Yes, she is,” Miss Mary Patricia said as she set another stitch in a small woolen shirt for Little North. “I hadn’t believed his lordship could be happier than he was with Miss Caroline, but he is, my lady, now that you’re here. He is lit up with happiness. Mr. Tregeagle told me once that his lordship wasn’t meant for laughter and jests, that he was a Nightingale man and he was to brood and think deeply and never, never smile immoderately.”
Cecilia laughed and clapped her hands, making Marie turn quickly. “No, no, love, I was just enjoying Miss Mary Patricia’s conversation. Ah, here you are, Caroline. You’re looking very well, my dear. How do you feel?”
“Wonderful, ma’am. Did you know that our three male martinets knew you were still alive, or at least they assumed you were? Evidently North’s grandfather told them and gave them strict orders never to tell North. He was to grow up believing you were dead.”
“And a harlot and slut and goodness knows what else,” Cecilia said, the bitterness faded now, and soon it just might be gone altogether.
“True. Actually the three martinets believed you had betrayed North’s father. Goodness, you wouldn’t believe how they ran Mount Hawke.”
Miss Mary Patricia chuckled as she smoothed out Little North’s shirt on her lap. “You should have seen the look on their collective faces when three pregnant girls arrived on Mount Hawke’s doorstep the day after Miss Caroline and his lordship were married.”
“The changes you’ve wrought are astounding,” Cecilia said. “I even saw Tregeagle speaking amiably to Mrs. Mayhew. Chloe giggled in front of Polgrain. I begin to think you a miracle worker, Caroline.”
North strolled into the drawing room. He kissed his mother’s cheek, hugged his wife, and went down on his haunches next to his sister.
“So soft,” Marie said to him, never taking her eyes off the baby, then kissed Eleanor and rubbed her cheek against hers. “So soft.”
“Yes, she is.” He turned to his wife. “That’s what I tell you, Caroline. Here, let me see.” He lightly ran his fingertip over Eleanor’s cheek. “I don’t know. It’s really not the same sort of softness. Oh, and Mother, she does work miracles, but they’re only temporary ones, minor ones, really.”
“I suggest that you moderate your speech, North, else your mother just might think you a rogue and a reprobate.” But Caroline was smiling when she said it, for her mother-in-law was looking so blissfully content to be called Mother by a son she hadn’t seen in twenty years.
North said, “Just wait until she hears Marcus speak to the Duchess. That’s the Earl of Chase, Mama, and his wife. They’re coming back on the first of January, and they refuse to leave until we discover who is out to hurt Caroline.”
“At least we know it isn’t Coombe,” Caroline said. “He couldn’t have been hiding out here doing bad things and off fetching you at the same time. Mrs. Freely told me that no one believes him guilty now. Indeed, everyone is up in arms that someone local would try to make him look like a murderer. Yes, everyone admits now that it is someone in our midst, and that someone purposefully left that knife in his room in Mrs. Freely’s inn and that person was the killer.”
“It offends deeply that the villain tried to blame me,” Coombe said from the doorway where he’d been standing silently, a platter of cakes and sandwiches in his hands.
“Just don’t thank God again,” Caroline said, craning around to look at Coombe, “that someone tried to kill me, thus clearing you of suspicion.”
“It is, however, an unexpected event that can’t help but raise my lowered spirits, my lady. I might add that from reading that letter left in your bedchamber that the person is really quite insane.”
“I would agree,” North said slowly. “I hadn’t really believed the killer sane, but the letter, it showed such imbalance. Also,” he continued to his mother, “we’ve tried to remember everyone who came to Mount Hawke that day because one of those people managed to leave that note in Caroline’s dressing table. There were many people in and out. There are very few local people we can eliminate.”
“I vote for the vicar, Mr. Plumberry,” Miss Mary Patricia said. “He is a dreadful man.”
“He hasn’t the guts,” Coombe said.
“He wasn’t here either, more’s the pity,” Caroline said as she took a cucumber sandwich from Coombe.
“Goodness sake,” Miss Mary Patricia said, her sandwich in midair to her mouth. “I do believe that the Plumberry servant was here, speaking to Mr. Polgrain in the kitchen.”
“No, no,” North said. “That’s quite impossible.”
“The vicar hasn’t the guts,” Coombe said again. “ However, I will ask Mr. Polgrain about this visiting Plumberry servant. You won’t worry about it, my lord.”
“Thank you, Coombe. Do tell me what Polgrain says.”
Caroline said, “Before you do that, Coombe, tell us why you simply left without a word to fetch North’s mother.”
“I wouldn’t have felt right about saying anything,” Coombe said simply. “I didn’t know for certain that she was alive. I didn’t wish to raise his lordship’s hopes, then just to have them dashed. Thus I went off to see for myself. She was well, thank the good Lord, and there was Marie as well, all grown up and looking the spitting image of his lordship. Understand that his lordship’s grandfather told us that the little girl looked like a friend of your husband’s and thus another Nightingale wife had betrayed her husband. It was then he made us swear never to tell his lordship here that you were alive.”
“What changed your mind, Coombe?” North asked, looking up. He was seated cross-legged, now holding Eleanor on his knee.
“You were so bloody happy,” Coombe said. “As much as I wanted to despise her, to believe that she would hurt you as did all the other Nightingale wives, I ended up thinking perhaps that I’d been wrong. I said nothing of what I was going to do to either Mr. Polgrain or to Mr. Tregeagle. I just went to Surrey, to Hollywell Cottage in Chiddingfold. Thank the good Lord that Lady Chilton was there. Thank the good Lord she didn’t slam the door in my face.”
“I was only tempted to for a brief moment, Coombe. I was so surprised to see you. Actually, truth be told, I would have had to write you, North, for the money was quite low. I was giving deportment and music lessons to the local children, but still it was difficult. Then here is Mr. Coombe, standing on my doorstep, hat in hand, and looking ever so pleased with himself and scared to death at the same time.”
“When I saw Miss Marie,” Coombe said, “I knew it had all been a lie. I knew that all of us had been wickedly wrong all those twenty years. I begged her to come back to Mount Hawke with me to allow me to make things right.”
�
�You’re rehired, Coombe.” North handed Miss Mary Patricia her little daughter, rose, and stretched out his hand. “All you have to do is promise you won’t dangle any more monster masks in front of her ladyship’s window and you’ll stay here as long as you want to.”
Coombe drew himself up as high as his five feet five inches could carry him. “I must admit that was beneath my dignity.”
“Well beneath it,” Caroline said. “But I imagine it was fun if you weren’t too afraid of falling off the roof.”
“Yes, well, I suppose I was a bit nervous. Everything is different now, that is, I see different things now. It is now my quest to discover this awful creature who killed her ladyship’s aunt and those other two women, that creature who had the gall to try to blame it on me. Yes, Mr. Tregeagle and Mr. Polgrain and I have our heads together. The three of us—with perhaps a tiny bit of help from Mrs. Mayhew—will solve this mystery and all will be well again. There will be laughter at Mount Hawke and all of us will accustom ourselves to it. Perhaps we will even trade about a jest upon occasion.”
“If you and Tregeagle and Polgrain will allow her ladyship and me to be of minor assistance,” North said, “we would be most grateful. Now, give me one of those lemon seed cakes.”
37
IT WAS THE coldest night of the year, that twenty-ninth day of December, at least that’s what Caroline thought as she waited downstairs in the drawing room for North to come home, listening to the wind howl. The windows were clouded over and the wind whipping off the sea was harsh and brittle, sending naked branches slapping against the glass, each time making her jump. North and Sir Rafael Carstairs had ridden with Flash Savory to Goonbell because Flash had heard from Mrs. Freely that a man, deep in his cups, was shooting his mouth off in her taproom about stabbing faithless bitches.
Caroline shivered and moved her chair closer to the roaring fire. But it wasn’t really that she was cold from the frigid weather. Rather she was cold from the inside out, as with a fever, only this fever was made of fear and she hated it, hated it not just because she was afraid for herself, but also for North, more for North, which was silly because he was strong and smart and with Flash and Rafael. Still, none of that mattered. If only he’d let her go with them to Goonbell.
“No,” he’d said, and kissed away her arguments. “It’s cold and you’re carrying a babe. You must take care of our babe, Caroline.”
That old clock stroked eleven times, only it wasn’t ugly and raw and gravelly and hoarse-sounding anymore, not since Marcus Wyndham had found the gold armlet. Now the clock stroked deep and true. Now that the miserable thing sounded like a clock again, she thought, twisting her wedding ring about on her finger, it would probably very soon give one final stroke, gurgle, and die.
She looked over at the armlet. Just this evening she’d placed it on a bed of deep crimson velvet atop a stand that had previously held a hideous Chinese vase. Now everyone could see it and marvel at it. She thought most of the time, as she did now, that it was likely the armlet would be the only small bit of evidence that King Mark was buried here.
More than likely, she thought, with her luck and the luck of the Nightingale male ancestors, the armlet had probably been found down near Fowey, where King Mark was really buried, and some tinker had brought it here and sold it to North’s great-grandfather. If something like that were true, what a scheme that first Viscount Chilton, old Donniger Nightingale, had perpetrated on his progeny.
She sighed, leaned her head back in her chair, and closed her eyes. North had been gone for three hours. She hated waiting, she always had. She wanted to be doing, not sitting here twiddling her fingers or sighing. She wondered if Victoria Carstairs was sitting waiting for her husband. Being a woman, she thought, wasn’t that wonderful all the time, like now, when she couldn’t take charge and make her own decisions and make certain that North was all right.
She looked up when Coombe came quietly into the drawing room. He was carrying a tea tray with a beautifully polished early-eighteenth-century silver service. “From old George the First’s beginning years,” he’d told her when she’d first arrived, and it hadn’t been quite so beautifully polished then. “Aye, way back in 1722, I believe, purchased by his lordship’s great-grandfather, our first viscount.”
Caroline had hated the service from the moment of hearing that tidbit.
“It’s cold,” she said to him as he gently placed the service on a table and carried it next to her chair.
“It’s beginning to rain now. I dislike his lordship being out in such weather.”
“So do I. I should be with him. I would keep him dry. I don’t wish him to become ill.”
If Coombe thought that was rather illogical, he kept it to himself.
She sipped at her tea, then said, “Don’t go just yet, Coombe, if you don’t mind. Tell me, do you have any idea about who would have hidden the gold armlet in that old clock?”
“Not a clue, my lady. I asked both Mr. Tregeagle and Mr. Polgrain, but they are as mystified as I am, a circumstance none of us relishes.”
“If it was North’s great-grandfather, then why did he do it? Surely it would prove his theory about King Mark, at least an actual, quite tangible golden armlet with REX engraved on it would make his theory a bit more palatable. No, it makes no sense at all. It must have been inside the clock for years and years. None of the Nightingale men wrote about it, just North’s great-grandfather. I do hate mysteries.”
“Actually, my lady, there are more important things on my mind at present. I told his lordship, and now I will tell you, that the Plumberry servant was indeed here that fateful day when the vicious note was left in your bedchamber. However, to the best of Polgrain’s memory, the servant never left the kitchen. Indeed, the servant is a female sort of servant, a spinster named Ida, and enamored with Mr. Polgrain, thus causing him acute embarrassment as well as making him quite distracted.”
“In short, the female sort of Plumberry servant could have enjoyed tea in the drawing room and Polgrain wouldn’t have noticed.”
“I fear it is possible.”
“Oh, all right. As best as I can remember, the only people who didn’t visit us that day were the Carstairses.”
“Ah, but that fellow Flash Savory did. I don’t trust him, my lady. He’s too handsome, altogether too cocky, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s a theory I hadn’t thought of. I think Flash is safe, Coombe, but then again, who knows? He was here to see his lordship, and probably Miss Evelyn.”
“So the wind blows in that direction, does it?”
“The wind is always blowing. Thank God it blew his lordship to Dorchester to find me.”
“Once I would have said it was a foul wind, my lady, that blew him anywhere near you, but perhaps now, the wind that is responsible for you being here isn’t all that noxious, just a bit irregular.”
“Thank you, I think.” Caroline took a final sip of tea and rose. “I think I’ll snuggle under all those wonderful blankets Tregeagle spread on his lordship’s bed. You should retire as well, Coombe. We have no idea when his lordship will return, curse his hide.”
Coombe drew himself to his fullest height, which was still below Caroline’s eye level. “I am not carrying the Nightingale heir, my lady, thus, I will await his lordship’s return and have a brandy snifter warmed for him.”
She rather fancied a snifter of good smuggled French brandy rather than the bitter tea she’d just consumed, but she could just imagine Coombe’s reaction to a pregnant lady drinking spirits.
“Is Miss Marie feeling more the thing?”
“Aye, it’s just a little stuffy nose and a mite of a cough. Lady Cecilia, however, won’t leave her, as you know. She did tell me to bid you good night for her. I imagine she and Miss Marie both will be downstairs tomorrow.”
She was whistling as she walked up the staircase. She looked once at the empty wall space she’d cleared of one of North’s father’s paintings, the one where he’d looke
d so sour, so malevolent, he could have been the Devil’s right hand. It would one day soon hold Cecilia Nightingale’s portrait. And also a portrait of Marie, with North. Yes, it would be proof for all eternity that a Nightingale wife was faithful and loyal to her husband.
She felt exhaustion weigh her down. She felt as heavy as the statue of the god Mercury that stood in a deep niche at the head of the stairs standing on the toes of his winged feet. Each step she took became more of a chore. She shook her head and frowned at herself. The babe was making her tire more easily. She didn’t like it a bit.
She was nearly trembling with the immense fatigue when she reached the master bedchamber. Even turning the doorknob was a mighty effort. She thought about calling one of the maids to help her undress, but decided it was too late. There was a nice fire set in the bedchamber, blazing brightly, casting shadows in the dim corners of the huge room, and she managed to make herself walk to it. She stretched out her hands to warm them. She looked at her hands. They seemed to fade even as she watched them. Lighter and lighter they became, the pale blue lines beneath her flesh brightening, then they too became vague and insubstantial as her hands themselves, like the shadows flickering in the corners, or maybe it was simply the firelight that was making her hands look so very strange to her.
Something wasn’t right. She turned slowly at the very soft sound coming from behind her. She saw nothing, but she was so tired, her legs so weak, she could barely stand, much less investigate the likely mouse that was scurrying about in the far corner of the room. She took the two steps to the wing chair and clung to its back. Again, there was a soft rustling noise and it was coming closer now, just over there, next to the Chinese screen she never used because when she bathed North invariably turned up, all wicked smiles and wandering hands.
The Nightingale Legacy Page 36