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?”