The Nightingale Legacy (Legacy 2)

“No, not as yet,” the Duchess said, but gave Caroline a small salute with her teacup. The earl looked as if he would demand to know the bit of specificity, but the Duchess continued quickly, “Ah, but you’re having problems here, aren’t you?” She set down her teacup, a particularly graceful gesture that made Caroline feel intense envy for a moment. The Duchess was, she thought, the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen. As for the earl, he and North looked like they’d been friends for years, at ease with each other, mocking each other with that familiar insulting humor that gentlemen seemed to enjoy so very much. They were both large men, athletic, confident, and to Caroline’s fond eye, North was by far the more magnificent specimen. As for the earl, the Duchess did seem to find him satisfactory.

“Yes,” North said. “Caroline fainted four days ago and scared all the sin out of me. I told her if she ever did it again I would strangle her.”

“I agreed with him,” Caroline said. “It was humiliating to be such a weak ninny.”

“Why did you faint?” the Duchess asked.

“Ah, well you may ask,” North said. He paused, as if uncertain, then said slowly, “We are having our share of problems, but there’s something more important. Caroline is going to have a baby.”

“Goodness,” the Duchess said, “that’s wonderful. You’re entitled to faint at least once when you’re pregnant, Caroline. Congratulations to both of you. Marcus is ever endeavoring to bring me up to the mark again, so to speak. And no, North, don’t feel guilty about speaking of the child in front of me.” She continued to Caroline, “I had a miscarriage a while ago, but I’m fine now. As I said, Marcus is a man of determination.”

“I try my damnedest,” Marcus said, interrupting his wife, rubbing his hand distractedly through his hair—an act, Caroline thought, an excellent act—“yes, I try daily to impregnate her, except when we’re traveling, of course. The Duchess adores the huge carriage; it makes her positively lecherous with the way it sways and jostles about, and she won’t leave me alone. After our first day of travel, I am forced to ride outside the carriage to regain my strength and my balance. It’s odd though, I find that I scarce even think about a babe when I’m loving her, she—”

“That’s quite enough, Marcus,” the Duchess said, all smooth and serene and composed as a matron of six decades. “You’re embarrassing me. I know you enjoy doing it and you do it very well, as I’ve told you many times, but you will hold back your wit or it will go badly for you later when I have you alone.”

Caroline giggled—she couldn’t help it—for the huge dark man who was the Earl of Chase was grinning at his wife like a gambler with a marked card and a winning hand. He was even rubbing those hands of his vigorously together. He said to Caroline, “I know you can’t imagine her doing anything except sitting there with a delicate teacup in her dainty white hands. Yes, you look at her and see this calm creature who scarce ever hoists her voice above her hemline, who raises an eyebrow just the veriest bit and has all the servants scurrying about madly to make her happy, and yet she screamed at me, threw a Spanish saddle at me, knocked me unconscious with a bridle, beat me with her riding boot, and—”

“Marcus,” the Duchess said, not so quietly this time, not so calmly or serenely, “you will hold your tongue, at least until I get to know Caroline better. You are certainly giving her a very strange opinion of me.”

North shook his head and set down his brandy snifter. “Caroline, my dear, you will become used to Marcus soon enough. As for the Duchess, I have found her as good a friend as Marcus, though not as outrageous, which, naturally, is proper, since she is a lady and not a half-wit randy goat.”

“Must I accept all three?” Marcus said, and punched North’s shoulder.

“All right, if it pleases you, just leave the randy.”

“What do you think, Duchess?” the earl said to his wife.

“Goat isn’t quite the animal I would have selected, but it isn’t bad. It tells me that North knows you quite well.”

Caroline said, “Well, I think North is a god. Since Marcus is his best friend, then we must elevate him above a goat. How about to a panther?”

“Rather he’s the devil,” the earl said, “and I’d have to become his familiar, according to your logic, Caroline.”

“A man who’s devilish sounds rather romantic,” the Duchess said. “What is this, Caroline? No devil here. You believe North is a god?”

Caroline smiled up at her husband, every shred of feeling she had for him clear in her eyes. “He is the very best of men and I am the luckiest woman alive to have found him in that out-of-the-way inn in Dorchester.”

“That is properly nauseating,” the earl said. “I would rather hear more about the trouble you two are having than be an unwilling witness to this romantic drivel.”

“He’s r

ight,” North said. “Now, Caroline, I have told Marcus just a bit of our problems.”

“You told him about my aunt and Coombe?”

North nodded. “I owe him my life, Caroline, thus I can trust him. Also, he has a fine mind—as devious as the Devil’s or the Devil’s familiar’s—and perhaps he can see something we haven’t. As for the Duchess, her mind is as sharp as a razor’s edge.”

Caroline nodded slowly. North saw the haunted look in her eyes and pulled her against him. He kissed her hair. “We will get through this,” he said. “We will.”

Caroline had a cold and she felt miserable. Her throat hurt, she was sweating like a stoat one minute and shivering the next, and every bone in her body pulled and ached. North poured one of Polgrain’s remedies down her throat and then ordered her to rest. The Duchess was allowed to visit her as long as she kept her distance.

“I’m sorry you’re ill, Caroline. I suppose it’s the violent shift of weather, at least that’s what Marcus told me. He said if I got ill he would beat me. I told him I would beat him as well if he came down with even one sneeze, and he just grinned at me in that wonderfully obnoxious way of his and told me he was never ill. He was too superior, you see. He’s a sweetheart, my husband.”

Caroline, less groggy now and feeling a bit more human since choking down Polgrain’s vile-tasting potion, said, “I like your husband. He could be superior, Duchess, it’s possible since he’s North’s best friend. But North is perfect and that’s the truth of it.”

The Duchess smiled, her fingers gently pleating and unpleating the folds in her soft burgundy wool gown. “I heard North mention something to Marcus about his male ancestors believing that King Mark was buried here and not in Fowey, with untold riches, naturally. And what of Tristan and Isolde, the lovers who betrayed him? Is it true you have a journal of sorts?”

And so Caroline told her of the Nightingale men and their two legacies—one that cursed the heir with a faithless wife, and the other a tale of King Mark’s treasure, buried with him in the sixth century and mistakenly believed to be far from here on the south coast of Cornwall, but that wasn’t true, for he was buried here, on Nightingale land, probably in one of those hillocks or barrows, and there were so many of them. Who could ever find the right one?