The Nightingale Legacy (Legacy 2)

“I don’t suppose you want to be transported?”

Bennett put his face in his hands. He was silent as the clock that had stood in the corner of the kitchen that had stopped running the moment it was brought into Mount Hawke some seventy-five years before.

“Well?”

Bennett moaned and said behind his handkerchief, “I never heard of any heiresses in the Colonies.”

“I’ve finally found our squirrelly lad,” North said to Caroline a week later when they sat across from each other at the breakfast table. It was quite early and thus they were the only ones present.

“The one who couldn’t put two words together without jumping out of his boots?”

“That’s the one. Flash tracked him down in Trevellas. He’s the son of a dairy farmer. He took Timmy the maid there before he took me just to make sure he had the right lad. Poor Timmy the maid couldn’t imagine how he didn’t know him. It upset him terribly that he’d let me down.”

“All right, tell me. Who gave him the letter?”

“Coombe.”

She felt both relief and depression. “Oh,” she said. “Well, at least we know.”

“Would you like to be with me when I confront Coombe with this?”

“Yes, I suppose it would be best. Oh dear, North, the three of them have been so quiet lately. I’d rather hoped they’d come to grips with things.”

“Oh no, I never believed that for a moment,” North said. He rose and tossed his napkin onto the white tablecloth. “More’s the pity.”

An hour later in the library, Coombe stood before his lordship, who was sitting behind the massive mahogany desk that dominated the entire corner. Coombe saw movement from the corner of his eye and felt a spasm of anger wash through him. It was that upstart girl who’d managed to snare his innocent noble lordship, the Female Person the master still doted on. What was going on?

“I met a young boy named Johnny Trilby, a lad who stutters and who does odd errands for people who pay him well because he’s a cute little fellow and they feel sorry for him. His father approves, you see, lets him out of his chores on the dairy farm because the people pay him well and the father takes just about all of it.”

Coombe stood straighter, saying nothing, looking over North’s left shoulder.

“Young Johnny told me you paid him to give me that letter. Odd but I didn’t recognize your handwriting, Coombe, but I haven’t seen much of it, have I, since my return? And I was only sixteen when I left Mount Hawke.”

“There is a mistake, my lord,” Coombe said, his voice smooth as the bolt of crimson velvet that North had bought from a tinker near Oporto, Portugal, two years before and pl

anned to give to Caroline at Christmas. He’d carried it around with him for so long it probably had moth holes in it. “Yes,” Coombe said, “it’s a mistake and not at all my fault. I venture to say it is all her fault, for everything has been topsy-turvy since she came here that first time, pretending she was in shock over her aunt’s death.”

Caroline said, “Your timing was excellent, Coombe, that or your luck. You had to have Johnny Trilby deliver that letter to his lordship when you knew that Dr. Treath was off to see me.”

“No, Caroline,” North said. “It wasn’t difficult at all. I fancy if we question Dr. Treath, he too will have received a message purporting to be from you, Caroline, telling him you were concerned and wanted to see him. Doubtless you also wrote in your letter that you would be pleased if he wouldn’t speak of it, to anyone, including you. Am I right, Coombe?”

Caroline said after the silence stretched on without Coombe filling it, “I’m very curious about something, Coombe. Do you really believe that all the Nightingale wives betrayed their husbands?”

“Dead sure,” Coombe said, stiff as a nail, staring still over North’s left shoulder. “Disloyal trollops, every one of them.”

“Yet you lied to North, telling him that I was meeting my lover when in truth it was all a fabrication.”

“You will betray him, it’s just a matter of time. I only wanted him to get rid of you now before you really do cuckold him and make his life a misery.”

“You want him rid of me even before I present him with an heir?”

“No, never! I—oh, dear.”

“It appears you didn’t think things through clearly, Coombe,” North said. “It appears your dislike of her ladyship and all the changes she’s brought to Mount Hawke clouded your reasoning. You mucked it up, didn’t you?”

Coombe nodded now. “Yes, I suppose I didn’t think things through, my lord. I wanted her gone from here so you could be happy again.”

North could only stare at Coombe in utter astonishment. “Happy again? When the devil was I ever happy? Before I escaped my father and his utter lunacy? As happy as I was when my grandfather was still alive and ranting and screeching around here like a lunatic, not even allowing the vicar’s wife to visit Mount Hawke, much less any person who happened to be female? As happy as I was in the army getting shot at in more battles than I care to remember? As happy as I was in my solitude, for a man alone I’ve been all my life, Coombe. Good God, man, I don’t believe I’ve ever been quite so happy in my entire bloody life as I am now. With her. With my wife. Do you understand me, Coombe, she’s my wife.”