“Caroline,” he said finally, “why do you think my mother’s portrait wasn’t even painted when she was newly married to my father?” He closed his eyes a moment. “No, you don’t have to ponder on that because I know. My grandfather was still alive when my father married my mother. She was allowed to come here to Mount Hawke only once, my father wrote in that damned diary. My grandfather kicked her out. After she birthed me, she, like the other Nightingale wives, cuckolded my father and he tossed her out on her ear. He told me again and again that she was a whore and I was to forget her. He told me she died and she deserved to die. I remember it more clearly now, just as I also remember their screaming at each other. I was very small, but I remember their being so big and so loud and I hated it and then suddenly she was gone forever. I don’t remember living at Mount Hawke until after that day. But it was a miserable place and I hated it and wanted my mother. It didn’t matter when my grandfather finally died, because my father had become just like him, maybe worse.”
“I’m so sorry, North.” She put her arms around him and held him tightly against her. “But things are different now; we will make them different. I’m so sorry.”
“Why were you with Dr. Treath at that oak copse?”
She looked at him straightly, not blinking, not moving, and said calmly, “The note some idiot sent you to tell you I was meeting my lover—do you believe it, North?”
“No.”
“You are not your father or your grandfather or your great-grandfather, nor am I any of those poor wretched Nightingale wives.”
“I know.”
“Dr. Treath said he’d wanted to speak to me alone and thus he followed me when I rode from Mount Hawke. He said he wanted to tell me about Nora Pelforth, that she had been his very good friend after my aunt Eleanor was killed, that he didn’t understand any of this and he hated it. But foremost, he didn’t want me to get the wrong idea if I heard he’d known Nora Pelforth from anyone else. He didn’t want me to believe he was fickle and hadn’t truly loved my aunt. He was distressed, North. I tried to comfort him, tried to assure him I quite understood, and he kissed me on the cheek and said he only wished that I could have become his stepniece.”
“Thank you, Caroline, for telling me.”
“I would have before, but I forgot all about everything when you began kissing me. You have great power over my mind, North Nightingale. Ah, that was lovely with you, in the copse, with those skinny slivers of sunlight coming through the oak leaves. I felt the heat of the sun on my face when you were over me. There could be nothing more wonderful than that.”
He shook, but managed to say in a calm enough voice, “Yes, it was lovely. I remember the heat of the sun on my back. What did he show you?”
She looked up at him a moment, studying him closely, he knew, wondering why he was asking her, knowing it was distrust bred deep into him, yet accepting it, not getting angry with him, for he would change and he prayed she was right.
She said simply, “It was a letter that Nora Pelforth had written to him after my aunt’s death. In it she wrote that she knew how much he had loved my aunt and how very sorry she was. Would you like me to show it to you, North?”
He nodded and said, “No.”
“Thank you for that, I think. Dr. Treath never gave it to me so I would have to ask him for it, and that would be a bit embarrassing. Ah, well, at least half of you believes me.” She paused a moment, her fingers lightly stroking his upper arms, kneading him, and he knew it was unconscious on her part; she simply enjoyed touchi
ng him, having the physical contact with him.
She said, “North, I’m so sorry about your mother. Perhaps one of the three male martinets can tell you more about her.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could feel his pain, a pain from long ago that was vague now, but still there deep inside him. She placed her hand on his arm. “North, you said you remembered coming back here to Mount Hawke after that last horrible fight between your parents, when your mother left. Where were you living?”
He blinked, looked hungrily up at his grandmother’s portrait, and said slowly, “I don’t know, Caroline. I wasn’t living here, thus it must have been at another property my father owned, another property that I now own.”
“How many do you own?”
“There are three. A hunting box in the Cotswolds, near Lower Slaughter, a house on the Steyne in Brighton, and a country manor house in Yorkshire, near Northallerton.” He paused a moment, then said, “Good God, I forgot all about that house when I was in Yorkshire just a month and a half ago.”
“Why were you there?”
“I was visiting a very good army friend of mine, the Earl of Chase, and his new bride. You would like both Marcus and the Duchess.”
“Duchess?”
“Yes, that is what Marcus named her when she was nine years old. She was his uncle’s bastard.”
“Goodness, North, I want to hear more about this.”
“All right. Perhaps this winter when we’re hunched close to the fireplace to keep warm, I’ll tell you about their Wyndham legacy and all that happened.”
Her eyes lit up and he kissed her quickly. “No, Caroline, later. I don’t want to be rushed in the telling. Let me tell you about the houses. I haven’t been to any of them in years and I just don’t remember if I was raised those first five years in one of them.”
“So you must have lived with your mother and father—when he wasn’t back here at Mount Hawke being poisoned by your grandfather—in one of these houses. That seems the most likely, North.”
“It’s possible. I shall write to my man of business in London and ask him to give me a full accounting. It’s something I must do in any case. He could tell me when my father and mother lived in one of those houses.”