The Nightingale Legacy (Legacy 2)

Who was Griffin? What was the letter doing stuffed down into one of the sawed-off, pineapple-carved bedposts?

She smoothed the paper over her hand and dashed downstairs to the taproom. She was breathing hard and Mrs. Freely said, “My goodness, child, whatever do you have there?”

“You’ll not believe it, Mrs. Freely. I found it hidden in one of the bedposts. Just look, it’s rather amazing, and this, I fancy, is the beginning of the Nightingale legacy of betrayal.”

Mrs. Freely ushered her into the kitchen and the two of them spread the paper on the kitchen table.

“Ah, Griffin,” Mrs. Freely said. “My granny told me about him.”

Caroline found herself again marveling at the tenacity of the Cornish memory. If she asked, doubtless Mrs. Freely could easily discover Griffin’s middle name. “Who was he?”

“A wild rogue, from what is still said around these parts, a handsome young man too, with scarce a worry on his shoulders, and too much money from his pa. He seduced more ladies than old Casanova himself. This letter makes it seem like he was the one who cuckolded his lordship’s great-grandfather. You know, if I remember aright, he didn’t stay around here, left, he did, and never came back to Cornwall. He probably went to London to seduce his way through those ladies of the ton. So he left her to face her husband and then she died. Interesting, isn’t it, but I don’t know why that old letter would be stuck down in a bedpost.”

“Where did the bed come from?”

“Ah,” Mrs. Freely said. “That I can find out, my lady. Just you sip on the tea and I’ll look through my ma’s journals. My ma recorded every purchase she ever made for this inn. Sure enough she’ll have written down where she got this bed.”

Caroline was both excited and depressed because it did seem true that North’s great-grandmother, that smiling happy young lady whose portrait now graced the huge white wall at the foot of the stairs, did indeed betray her husband. Caroline supposed she wished it wasn’t true.

When Mrs. Freely told her that the bed had belonged to the Griffin family, Caroline wasn’t surprised. It seemed the family had fallen onto hard times, what with all the sons gambling and wenching, and had left England to go to the Colonies, selling off their furnishings before they’d left, way back in the 1780s. “Aye, my ma wrote in her housekeeping book that they went off to Boston to stay with their kin.”

Well, that was indeed one Nightingale wife who had betrayed her husband. Caroline was depressed. She’d started the whole thing.

She told North that night as they snuggled together, “I read all your great-grandfather’s part of the journal. He never wrote Griffin by name. Also, it appears he didn’t kill him, or if he did, he buried him deep because no one ever found his body. Then your great-

grandmother died only a month or so after he left. It’s all so tragic.”

North was silent for a very long time. “You know, I think I’ll write a letter to the Griffins in the Colonies. You say Mrs. Freely heard they’d moved to Boston?”

She nodded against his shoulder, breathed in the scent of him, and was lost.

“My God,” North said some time later when he was able again to put two words together, “you surely give me glimpses of heaven, Caroline.”

“Don’t you ever forget that, North Nightingale,” she said. She nipped his chin, then sighed deeply. “I wish our King Mark legacy could be real, like the Wyndhams’ legacy. Just think, the Wyndhams found old books and strange clues and they managed to weave their way through it all and discovered it was real.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, but it won’t ever be more than the meanderings of bruised male hearts.”

“What a nice way to speak of your male ancestors. I had really hoped that your great-grandmother hadn’t betrayed your great-grandfather. Now there doesn’t seem to be any doubt.”

“No, no doubt at all. But perhaps there were reasons. Who knows?”

* * *

Caroline just shut her eyes and clamped her mouth closed. “Now, Caroline, just relax. I won’t hurt you, but I do have to poke about just a little bit. North, please step back, unless you want to do the poking.”

North stepped back and watched Dr. Treath examine his wife. He didn’t lift her nightgown, merely slipped his hands beneath the covers and the gown. He pulled his hands free then and said to North, “Her belly is smooth and malleable but I need to examine her internally.”

Before North could even begin to sputter, Dr. Treath stood and said to his sister, “I need some hot water and soap. Yes, Bess, it’s important, and must be done.”

“I don’t like this at all,” Caroline said to Dr. Treath.

“I wouldn’t either, my dear, but as I told Bess, it must be done. I do it on every one of my female patients who is with child. I’ll be careful not to hurt you, but I must examine you.”

Before he did that, he felt her breasts, and she tried to think of other things. His fingers were long and dry and she hated the way they felt on her flesh. When he eased two fingers inside her, he was careful and gentle, she’d give him that, but it was mortifying. His fingers were large and that hurt and he pushed, and with his other hand pressed down on her belly until finally she gasped with pain.

“Done,” Dr. Treath said, and eased his fingers out of her. “Well, my dear, it appears that you’re just fine, quite healthy, actually. We won’t have to do that again until you’re much farther along. Now, North, let’s go downstairs whilst Bess helps your wife get dressed.”

“That was awful,” Caroline said when the men had left the bedchamber.