The Nightingale Legacy (Legacy 2)

Caroline said, “I guess it will remain a mystery. Who put it there and why? When was it done? Why didn’t any of the Nightingale men ever say anything about it?”

“It’s not a mystery, Caroline,” Cecilia Nightingale said.

“What do you mean, Mother? Do you know anything about the damned thing?”

“Ah, well, I did it, you know.”

“Did what, Mother?”

Cecilia Nightingale looked at her son and said, “I overheard your grandfather speaking to your father. It was one of the very few times your grandfather wasn’t screaming at your father to rid himself of me. Anyway, I eavesdropped. Your grandfather was showing your father the armlet. He was stroking it as if it was alive, as if it was the most precious thing in the world. He said that the Nightingale men kept it close, never showing anyone else. You see, North, your great-grandfather, who had found the wretched thing, had nearly had it stolen, and thus he hid it away. He didn’t tell your grandfather about it until he was dying. Your grandfather, who’d been ill the previous winter, decided it was time to pass the armlet down to his son, your father. I’ll never forget how he stroked the thing, caressed it as one would a man or a woman. It was obscene, and rather pathetic. I watched when your grandfather placed the armlet reverently back into the safe. I saw the combination. Late that night, I opened the safe and took the armlet. I wanted to get back at your grandfather, North, as simple as that. He loved the armlet as much if not more than a human being loves another human being. I hated it and I hated him, so I took the damned armlet and hid it in the clock. Paltry of me, I know, but I wanted him to suffer, to lose something he valued above all else. No one said a word. It was as if the thing had never existed, but I knew the pain he must have felt, knowing someone had stolen it and not knowing who had done it. His own son? I do wonder if he blamed his son, your father, if he even accused him of taking it. Or perhaps he believed it was one of the male martinets. And I was pleased because I knew he’d never know. He would listen to that bloody clock for the rest of his days and never realize what was inside it. And now you found its mate.”

“Where the devil do you think that first armlet came from?” North asked no one in particular.

“Well,” Caroline said slowly, eyeing the armlet, “it must have been accidentally dropped by those people who were carving the chamber into the cliff. Good Lord, at least a thousand years ago, don’t you think? There was no reason for your great-grandfather to lie about where it was found.”

“Near the barrows and that stone fence and the copse of trees,” North said. “It’s the only explanation, I guess.”

“And to think,” the Duchess said, “all this time everyone believed that if any king were here, it was King Mark.”

“But King Arthur isn’t buried there.”

“Just the treasure and the s—”

“The what, Caroline?” the Duchess said, raising a graceful dark eyebrow.

“Nothing. My mind is just meandering. Goodness, here’s Miss Mary Patricia with two babes!”

The cooing and laughter, the pats, the kisses, the pained looks from Coombe, and the occasional yells for food from Little North and Eleanor became the focus for the remainder of the afternoon.

Coombe came into the drawing room that evening, his arm resting in an interesting sling, cleared his throat, and announced, “Dinner is served, my lady.”

“Ah, Coom

be, thank you,” North said. “You’re looking quite the romantic hero. How are you and Polgrain doing?”

“We will survive, my lord, we will survive, but it is difficult. One thinks that one knows another, but in this case, it wasn’t true. Poor Mr. Polgrain deeply regrets that he wasn’t conscious enough to aid you that night, my lady, but Mr. Tregeagle had drugged him as well as her ladyship, as you know. It was only me he believed would succumb to his plot. It has depressed us profoundly.”

Perhaps disappointing and depressing for him, Caroline thought, eyeing the very neat sling he wore around his shoulder and under his elbow. It made him look very dapper. The memory of that night was clear and sharp. All that had happened, the terror, the grinding pain, and finally the triumph, all of it was there deep inside her, and would be with her always. But most of all what would remain with her until she died was the image of herself easily drawing Excalibur from the stone, feeling how it had been made just for her, that it was part of her. It would always be with her, that aura of being touched by something beyond herself, beyond this modern world. She’d been touched by magic, by ancient magic that had no explanation, but it did have reality, it did have meaning. It had saved her life. No, it had given her the gift of enabling her to save her own life.

“You’re looking deep and thoughtful,” North said to her as he placed her hand over his forearm to lead her into dinner. “Are you perhaps considering the use of those wrist cuffs on me tonight?”

She grinned up at him. “Yes, that just might please both of us mightily.”

It did please both of them, North in particular, who lay sprawled on his back, staring up at his wife’s flushed face, wondering how she could look more beautiful than she had just that morning. Her breasts were larger, and he gently pulled his hands from the cuffs and cupped them in his palms. “I love you,” he said, and she leaned down so he could kiss her.

“Come lie next to me,” he said, and pulled her down, gently pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “Now, let me tell you about Dr. Treath. He is leaving next week. I spoke to him this afternoon. He blames himself, which perhaps he should do, I don’t know. I don’t understand how he could be so blind to what happened to every woman who ever came into his orbit, but there it was. I didn’t ask him if he remembered taking his own fourteen-year-old sister to bed. I didn’t think it mattered. Everyone knows about his sister now, just as everyone knows that Tregeagle drugged you and helped her take you away to St. Agnes Head. Thank God she had to leave for a while to go back to her brother, for he would have missed her. But it gave you the time you needed.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re still damp from our lovemaking. I like that. Also, let me tell you that I admire you, Caroline. You’re brave and loyal and inventive, but then again, it was those qualities that drew me to you in the first place, those qualities, your beautiful self, and that mess of problems you carried on your back. But, you know, there’s something new about you, something that happened that night—” He paused, and she felt his shrug.

“Perhaps it’s a new strength I sense in you, a deeper understanding of why we mortals are here, why it’s important for us to be decent, to cherish those important to us. Ah, I’m making no sense at all.”

She kissed his shoulder. “I received a letter today. The painter will be coming with the man who will restore all the Nightingale women’s portraits. Can we be painted together, North, after he paints your mother and Marie and you with both of them?”

“So we’ll be hanging about forever and ever?”

“Yes. I want our great-great-grandchildren to know that we were together always and we loved each other and there was nothing that ever set us apart. Just as those two armlets are together again.”

“Shall I be painted with my wrist cuffs on?”

She laughed into his shoulder, licked his warm flesh. And she thought, I’ll be touched by magic every day of my life.