The Nightingale Legacy (Legacy 2)

“Except for tonight. Tonight was just perfect. She and I together wrapped you in the cloak and brought you here, but she had to leave because her beloved brother was waiting for her, so I tied you tightly, but not tightly enough. I had no reason to stay here because she wanted to be the one to kill you, she alone. She told me it was her privilege, her duty, so I returned to Mount Hawke and there was Coombe and I realized that he suspected. I didn’t say anything, and there the old fool was, wringing his hands, incoherent with worry after he discovered you were gone from Mount Hawke. I told him all about it then, tried to make him understand, but he wouldn’t. I even told him about Bess Treath and how she would take care of you. He turned white, the cowardly old man, but then he struck me. When I came to my senses, he was gone, come here to help you. I knew it just as I knew I would have to make him pay for it.”

North said, “Did you know that her ladyship just found King Mark’s treasure trove? Down there, in a chamber behind the cliff.”

“That’s a bloody lie, my lord. She’s taught you how to lie. Now you won’t try to distract me again. I’ve got to kill her and then I don’t know what I’ll do because you’ll be here and know that I killed her, and perhaps you’ll be angry with me and want revenge.”

He raised the pistol. North lunged at him, grabbing his raised arm, bending it back. The two men went down, North tangling in the folds of Tregeagle’s cloak.

Caroline jumped forward, tripped over the rope, and went to her hands and knees. She quickly grabbed the rope and looped it even as she ran to where North and Tregeagle were rolling about on the ground, closer and closer to the cliff.

“North!”

He was straddling Tregeagle now, pounding his fist into the man’s mouth. Tregeagle, with one final spurt of strength, whipped up his legs, striking North in the back. He went over Tregeagle’s head, toward the edge of the cliff, rolling, rolling, faster and faster. Caroline ran after him, jumping over Tregeagle, who was lying there, huge breaths wheezing out of his chest, and she grabbed at North. She caught his ankle, managing to hold him long enough to slide the looped rope over his foot and pull tightly. She sat back, digging in her heels, trying to gain leverage, but still he slid toward the edge of the cliff. She yelled at the top of her lungs, “Rafael! Help me! Rafael!”

But it wasn’t Rafael Carstairs who pulled North back. It was Tregeagle. Once he’d secured his master, he looked down at him, then over at Caroline.

“I couldn’t beat you,” he said very slowly. “You took my boy and I couldn’t beat you. I nearly killed him and you saved him.” Then he turned and simply stepped off the cliff. There was only the sound of the howling wind.

North was on his hands and knees, looking over the edge of the cliff. He saw Tregeagle spread on his back, looking for the world like a fallen angel, on the beach below.

He rose slowly and turned to face Caroline.

“It is too much,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I take it back. He doesn’t look like a fallen angel lying down there, he looks like a pathetic old man.”

“Yes, but you’re alive. Nothing else matters.”

He pulled her to her feet and into his arms. He held her close, rocking her.

“My God, are the two of you all right?”

It was Rafael Carstairs and he was still none too steady on his feet.

“We’re all right.”

“I saw Tregeagle jump. Why did he do it? What the hell happened? Caroline, where were you? He sneaked up on me and struck me. I’m sorry.”

“We’re alive,” North said. “We’ll explain everything later. Actually, nothing else is all that important.”

“Well,” Caroline said, drawing a deep breath. “Actually there is. As I already told North, I found King Mark’s treasure trove. There’s a chamber some twenty feet down the face of the cliff. I fell through it and into the chamber. Come, I’ll show you.”

North clutched her arms in his hands. “You think you’re climbing down that cliff face again?”

“Why, certainly. I found the treasure. It’s my right, North, my right.”

“Like hell it is. I don’t believe you, Caroline. You’re pregnant—oh God, is the babe all right?”

He was pressing his palms against her belly, trying to cradle her in his arms.

“The babe is fine. Now, listen. Rafael, after you let us down with the rope, you’ll have to pull up Coombe. He’s been wounded. Then you must take him to Dr. Treath.”

“I still can’t believe that Bess Treath is the one who murdered all the women. It boggles the mind, even now that I can glimpse some understanding.” She knew he was trying to grasp the reality of it, the truth of it.

“She loved her brother in her mad way, and any woman she fancied he loved or she fancied wanted him, she killed. She planted the bloody knife in Coombe’s chamber at the inn, just as Tregeagle told us. She hoped he’d left for good and thus could be blamed for my murder as well.”

North’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “But Coombe saved you?”

“No, I saved myself.”

“But how?”