The Nightingale Legacy (Legacy 2)

North disliked the thought of magic, thoroughly disliked anything he couldn’t eventually explain, but he couldn’t deny the presence of the sword in front of him or the etching clear and fine on its shining steel. Had she really pulled it free? Rather, had the sword come free in her hands because it was magic?

He smiled down at his wife. “Those jewels aren’t embedded in the stone. What do you want to do with them, Caroline?”

She leaned forward to pick up one of the golden chalices and bumped her hip against the stone. She felt the gold piece of jewelry she’d tripped over when she was trying to escape from Bess Treath. Slowly she withdrew it. It was an armlet. It seemed to match the one that sat in its place of honor on the crimson bed of velvet in the drawing room with the etched letters REX on it.

“Where did you get that? It looks just like the other one.”

“It does look like the other one’s twin. I tripped over it when I was running away from Bess Treath and stuffed it in my cloak pocket. There’s etching on this one, North. Can you make it out in this dim light?”

He squinted at the etching, turned the armlet this way and that, then very slowly lowered it. He looked very pale in the shadowy light. His hand holding the armlet was none too steady.

“I don’t believe this,” he said.

“What is it?” she said, clutching at his arm.

“I really hate to have to say this. This armlet shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t feel warm and alive in my hand, as if it was worn just moments ago.” He handed her the armlet. “Here, Caroline. Read it.”

She turned it over and over in her palms, just feeling it, not looking closely at it. He said, “Are you reading it with your fingers?”

She gave him a smile. “Actually, I really don’t have to. It’s the mate to the other one, and since the other one says REX, I have no doubt that this one says REGINA.”

“Oh no, it’s much more specific than that,” North said. “It says Guinevere.”

40

THE EARL AND Countess of Wyndham were seated in the drawing room, the Duchess frowning sadly into her teacup. “To think, Marcus, we missed all the excitement, every drop of it, and only by three days. It’s not fair.”

“You must have just missed my messenger,” North said.

“Your messenger,” the earl said, “is right this minute very likely enjoying himself greatly. My servants will feed him and cosset him and will no doubt wring every scrap of information out of him, count on it, then they’ll probably send him back with advice, the bloody meddlers.”

“Now, Duchess, it is fair,” Caroline said. “It was our adventure, not yours. Now, since you and Marcus just might have been the ones to save the day, North and I wish to thank you both very much and to give you this.” Caroline handed the Duchess a beautiful gold necklace, thick and rich-looking, so very old, yet shining and vibrant, warm to the touch.

“You can wear it with your pearls,” the earl said, lightly touching his fingertips to the rich gold links.

“As for the remaining jewels and gold coins and jewelry, like you and the Duchess, Caroline and I are sending some to the British Museum, giving the chalices to the Salisbury Cathedral, and displaying the remainder here at Mount Hawke so all can come and see them.”

“If we ever lose all our groats, we can always sell a bracelet or two and save ourselves,” Caroline said.

“Ha, you’d send me to work in the tin mines before you’d part with a single piece of jewelry we found,” North said, lightly stroking his fingertips over her arm.

She smiled, and for a brief moment it was a faraway smile, one that severed her from all of them completely, but then she was back again, and her smile was warm and filled with mischief and happiness. She looked over at the bed of crimson velvet. In it now were two armlets, touching each other, together again for as long a time as the Nightingales existed. As for the sword, she and North had agreed that it be left where it was and that no one else should know about it, not even their family, not even the Earl and Countess of Wyndham. He’d told her that same night, “The fewer who know, the better. Rafael Carstairs won’t say a thing, I’ve already spoken to him, and naturally Coombe won’t.”

Caroline had frowned, saying, “It still isn’t enough, North. We don’t want anyone accidentally stumbling upon it. Indeed, from the beach you can see the shadows there in the middle of the cliff, see there’s something strange. Anyone with a whit of curiosity would investigate. I know I would. The last thing we want is scavengers going in there and trying to steal it. No, what we need is a nice explosion of some kind. The good Lord knows there are enough of them at the damned tin mines.”

“We need a bloody miracle,” North said. “God, I’m so tired I can’t think anymore. We’ll worry about it in the morning.”

Both of them had indeed considered it a miracle. Near to dawn that same night, when they’d finally fallen into their bed, so exhausted they could barely think, the wind had risen to gale force, the rain had pounded the earth and uprooted trees, sending even huge rocks tumbling over the cliffs and into the water, and the cliff had collapsed in on itself, sealing away forever that chamber and the sword Excalibur embedded in that slab of stone.

Caroline said now to her mother-in-law, “You refused to tell me what you wanted of the treasure. Please, you must have whatever it is you desire. Marie, too.”

Cecilia Nightingale said, “I’ll ask Marie. Doubtless she would enjoy one of the armlets. As for me, my dear, I would just as soon never touch any of those things again for as long as I live.”

“Why ever not, Mother?” North said, his head cocked to one side in question.

“Er, it’s rather difficult, North,” she said, looking down at her hands, which were whiter and softer now since she’d come to Mount Hawke. “I saw the armlet Caroline placed over there on that crimson velvet, the one your great-grandfather supposedly found here on Mount Hawke land. And the one beside it that you found, Caroline, in the cliff.”

“Yes,” Marcus Wyndham said. “I found the first one in that croaking old clock. It was the reason the thing sounded so bloody ugly, like a sick person trying to cough.”