The Nightingale Legacy (Legacy 2)

“It has been a long time, sir. But now I’m home again, to stay this time.”

“Sit down, North. Tea? A brandy?”

“No, sir. Actually I’m here as the magistrate to tell you that I just found Eleanor Penrose on that outcropping ledge beneath St. Agnes Head. She’s dead, and has been for some time, at least a day, for her limbs were still rigid but were relaxing again.”

Dr. Benjamin Treath became rigid as Lot’s wife, becoming pale and paler still until his face was as white as his modest white cravat. He suddenly looked immeasurably older, all the vitality sucked out of him in that single instant, then, just as quickly, he was shaking his head. “No,” he said, “no, that can’t be right. You’ve forgotten what Eleanor looked like. No, not Eleanor. It’s some other woman who resembles her. I’m sorry for the other woman but it isn’t Eleanor, it can’t be Eleanor. Tell me you’ve made a mistake, North.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but it was Eleanor Penrose.”

But Dr. Treath was still shaking his head, violently now, his eyes darkening, his pallor more marked. “Dead, you say? No, North, you’re mistaken. I just dined with her two evenings ago. She was in fine fettle, laughing as she always does, you remember that, don’t you? We ate oysters at Scrilady Hall and the candlelight was very soft and she laughed at my stories about the Navy, particularly the one about how we stole that bag of lemons from a Dutch ship in the Caribbean near St. Thomas because our men had scurvy. No, no, North, you’re wrong, you must be wrong. I can’t let Eleanor be dead.”

Damnation, North thought. “I’m sorry, sir, truly. Yes, she’s dead.”

Benjamin Treath turned away and walked slowly to the French doors at the back of the sitting room that gave onto a small enclosed garden, flowering wildly now in middle August, roses interlaced with bougainvillea and hydrangeas, the colors vivid reds and pinks and yellows. One old sessile oak tree was so thick, its heavy leafed branches covered one entire corner of the garden, and its trunk was wrapped round and round with ivy. Blue agrion damselflies hovered over the ivy, making it appear to shimmer and shift in the lazy sunlight. North heard the croak of a bush cricket.

Dr. Treath just stood there, his shoulders rising and falling quickly, and North realized he was fighting down tears. “I’m very sorry, sir. I didn’t know you and Mrs. Penrose were close. You must come with me, sir. Also, there’s something more you must know.”

Dr. Treath turned slowly to face him. “She’s dead, you say. What else is there? Come, North, what is it?”

“I don’t think she just fell from the cliff. I think someone pushed her. I didn’t examine her or touch her except to feel for her pulse. You should do that.”

“Yes,” Dr. Treath said at last. “Yes, I’ll come. Wait, what did you say? Someone pushed her? No, that’s not possible. Everyone liked Eleanor, everyone. Oh Jesus. Yes, I’ll come.” He called out, “Bess! Come down, please. I must go out. Jack Marley is coming soon. Bess? Hurry, woman.”

Bess Treath appeared suddenly in the doorway of the sitting room, out of breath, her hand clutched to her chest. She was a tall woman, slender, with hair darker even than North’s. There was a great resemblance between brother and sister. She saw North, quickly curtsied, and said with pleasure, “My lord, you’re home. How like your papa you look, but then all Nightingale men resemble each other from father to son and so it’s always been, at least that’s what Mrs. Freely says and what her mother before her said. Oh dear, something’s wrong, isn’t it? Why are you going out, Benjie? What has happened? Someone at Mount Hawke is ill?”

Dr. Treath just looked at her, actually beyond her, gone from Perth Cottage, from his sister and North, who stood at his side. He shook his head, as if to give himself direction. “Jack Marley has a boil on his neck. See to it if you want to, if not, then tell him to come back. Be sure to use the carbolic liberally to clean him up first. He never washes his neck, you know.”

“Yes, I know, Benjie. I’ll deal with him.”

North said only, “There’s been an accident, Miss Treath. We must go now.”

“An accident? What happened? What’s wrong, Benjie?”

Dr. Treath just kept shaking his head. He pushed past his sister, head down, North following.

2

HONEYMEAD MANOR, SOUTH DOWNS

SEPTEMBER 1814

SHE WAS SHIVERING. The house was quickly becoming as damp as it was bone cold. Even her wool stockings felt damp. For the past two days it had alternately rained thick sheets of gray, then slowed a bit to mist and drizzle, but regardless, the temperature had plummeted, making everyone miserable, including the brindle house cat and Mrs. Tailstrop’s flat-nosed pug, Lucy, who wouldn’t stop her whining. Mrs. Tailstrop carried the mutt about wrapped in a wool blanket.

She shivered again. Lord, it was cold. It was either the two Honeymead resident ghosts moving about, chilling every corner they touched, or just plain cheapness on the part of Roland Ffalkes, her guardian.

No guessing on that one. The ghosts didn’t stand a chance. They were probably cold too. They’d been utterly silent since Ffalkes’s arrival three days before, not even scaring the cat so his tail fluffed out ten times its usual size. Not that they came about all that much now, only once or twice a year, making pictures shake and tumble off the walls, and sending the housemaids shrieking from the kitchen when bowls of milk tipped over unaccountably into their laps, all to remind the residents that there were things that couldn’t be explained in the South Downs Gazette.

Whenever Mr. Ffalkes visited her, he took over. It made her furious. Honeymead Manor was her parents’ house and thus now her house. It was her wood and her fireplaces, yet he told the servants not to lay fires until November. His tone suggested that they personally were somehow out to cheat him. It was a pity the ghosts never did a thing untoward whenever he was here, damn them.

“Ah,” Mrs. Tailstrop would say to her whenever she chanced to complain about it, nodding her head like a wise woman instructing a neophyte without much hope of success, not an ounce of sympathy in her voice, “it is always so with men. What they wish to have we must give them. They’re the masters of their castles. It’s their right. One must adjust, dear. You really must try to learn.”

Nonsense, Caroline always said. This was her castle, not his. Mrs. Tailstrop would just pat her hand in a way that told her quite clearly that she hadn’t a notion of the way things were, and would say, “Now, my dear child, you will learn one day, when you have a husband. If you don’t learn to properly obey, then your husband won’t be pleased with you and that, I can promise you, since I was myself once blessed with a dear husband, can be most unpleasant.”

A husband. Fat chance of that, Caroline had decided two years before on her seventeenth birthday, and she hadn’t changed her mind. Her teeth began to chatter.

She walked into the Flower Room, a room named for the immense splashes of red roses on stark white wallpaper at least sixty years old and peeling, in search of warmth and found the grate empty of fire or ashes or even raw wood, and knew that her guardian had struck even here where neighbors would have tea when they were visiting. Why was he such a cheap fellow? It was her money, wasn’t it? Why did he care how much wood she burned? Why did he always refuse to allow her to refurbish the aging settees and chairs and draperies? Why did he refuse to buy the bay mare Sir Roger had offered to sell her? Why did he permit

her to own only a rickety old gig that was on its last wheels and a sweet old mare who would have surely lost to the tortoise had there been a race? And, good Lord, the tenants. Their cottages were in sore need of repair. They needed new plows and more seed. Nothing had been done since her father had died. She felt deep guilt even though there was nothing she could do about his nipfarthing ways.