She pulled the other paintings out from the wall, turning them one by one so she could study each of them. They were all of ladies, going back well into the sixteenth century—one lady, older than most of the others, was pursing a very thin mouth and squinting too-small eyes. She wore a wide white ruff around her neck and three ropes of pearls. She looked like a harpy. Caroline wouldn’t have wanted her for a mother-in-law.
There were at least two dozen paintings, all of them, obviously, former Nightingale wives. All had been dumped here, removed entirely from the main living quarters of Mount Hawke and stacked in this out-of-the-way room to molder. At least they hadn’t been burned or destroyed outright. She found a lady with her hair powdered and puffed high on her head in the style of the mid and late last century. North’s grandmother, no doubt. Again, she was very young, no older than Caroline was now. But where was his mother? She couldn’t find a more recent portrait.
Who had done away with the portrait? And then she knew. North’s great-grandfather. He’d either destroyed it or refused to have her portrait done. After all, he’d been the one to teach all that bitterness to North’s grandfather, who’d bored her endlessly with his whining and carping and his frankly despotic view of the world and his place in it, a place with women as slaves, possessed and kept under the man’s thumb. It had been North’s great-grandfather who had started the belief that King Mark was really buried here at Mount Hawke and not in Fowey or in Brittany. Given his endless diatribes against women that were liberally interspersed amongst his writings of King Mark, he had to be the one who’d had all the female portraits removed. She wondered now, as she’d wondered several times before, why the great-grandfather hadn’t selected King Arthur—much more familiar and just as betrayed by his best friend and Guinevere. Why King Mark, who very few people even knew about? The perfidy of the woman was the same in both, after all. She shook away the thoughts. The Nightingale ancestors had been mad and their madness didn’t have to recognize reason and it obviously hadn’t.
She turned to study the portraits again. Most were in bad shape. They all needed some restoration except for the two painted in the last hundred years. She dusted her hands on her skirt. There was a militant look in her eye. Damn all those past Nightingale men. She managed to pick up the two portraits, one under each arm. She hauled them down to her bedchamber. She was still panting from her efforts when she rang for Mrs. Mayhew.
She then danced a jig, sending up clouds of billowing dust decades old from her filthy gown.
North looked at his wife, at her soiled muslin gown, her dusty boots. She was filthy, smudges of the blackest dirt he’d ever seen on her cheeks, her hands grubby, but she was smiling at him. “Come here, my lord,” she called out to him. “Do come here. I’ve a surprise for you.”
He realized that the other six female residents of Mount Hawke were standing behind his wife, all looking hopeful, and if he wasn’t mistaken, a bit frightened of him. On the other side were Polgrain, Tregeagle and Coombe. They looked ready to drag the women to an auto-da-fé. He had no difficulty at all seeing them lighting the fires with eager dispatch.
He focused on Caroline. “You look like an urchin. What have you been doing?”
She grinned at him, said nothing, simply pointed up to the wall. He stood beside her and looked up. He stared; he couldn’t look away. He felt his throat tighten. Beside the portrait of his great-grandfather was another portrait, one of that same long-ago Nightingale male painted when he was young, in his prime. He was standing behind a young lady who was obviously his bride and North’s great-grandmother. North said nothing, just continued to stare. God, she was beautiful and so very young. His great-grandfather looked like a man blessed, happy, full of hope, and quite pleased with himself and the lovely young lady seated before him.
North finally looked to see another single portrait of a lady, this one obviously his grandmother, this grandmother of his painted like his great-grandmother, when she was very young, newly wed. She looked gay and ever so filled with wicked humor. She looked ready to burst into laughter. She looked happy. There were no shadows in her lovely eyes, no hint of what was to come.
Suddenly he wanted very much to see his mother, wanted very much to see what she looked like, to try to remember, but there was no portrait beside his father’s, just the old man’s grim face, dark eyes narrowed, such anger and bitterness shining from them, and North quickly turned away. He said very quietly, “Where did you find them?”
“I was exploring in the east wing on the third floor. There are at least two dozen portraits, North, all of Nightingale women back to Queen Elizabeth’s time. Most of those are in frightful shape, but I hope, I pray, they can be restored.”
He said nothing, just stared hungrily up at his grandmother. “My mother,” he said, then stopped. “She’s dead, you know. You didn’t find a portrait of her?”
“I’m sorry. There was no portrait more recent than this one of your grandmother.”
“She looks so very young, so happy, as does my great-grandmother.”
“I know. It’s odd, but all the others—your ancestresses—are painted twice, once in their youth and again in their middle years. Yet your great-grandmother and your grandmother are painted only when they are surely newly wed.”
“It’s because they were booted out before they could have a chance to get old with their husbands. I just remembered. My mother’s name was Cecilia. I wonder, if she’d been painted very early on, if she would have been smiling and happy like my grandmother and great-grandmother.”
“My lord.”
“Yes, Tregeagle?”
“May I speak with you, my lord?”
“Perhaps later, Tregeagle,” North said absently. He turned to Caroline and smiled down at her. He rubbed the spot of dirt from her cheek.
“My lord.”
“Yes, Coombe?”
“We would appreciate your attention to us, in private.”
“Not now, Coombe.”
“Very well, my lord. You force me to speak our mind in front of all and sundry and female. We didn’t want these portraits brought down. Actually, even though we knew they existed and were in that room, we’d honestly forgotten about them. We tried to explain to her that your great-grandfather had had them all removed, that he forbade any female portraits ever to hang here at Mount Hawke, that the female portraits were meant to remain forgotten and locked away, only the door was open to her and we don’t understand that, for Tregeagle swears it was locked.”
“How do you know that, Coombe?”
“Your great-grandfather wrote of it, my lord. Didn’t you read the diaries Mr. Tregeagle gave you before you brought this Female Person into Mount Hawke?”
To North’s surprise, Caroline laughed. “Oh, do give it up, Coombe. Come, Tregeagle, this is a new and different time. The past is past, and all the unhappiness of the past is where it should be, behind us. It’s no longer a part of us or of this house, nor should you continue harking back to it. Do welcome a return to what is right and just. These ladies are Nightingales just as much as are the men. All the men had to have mothers, you know, including his lordship here.”
“We do not like it,” Tregeagle said. “The Nightingale mothers weren’t worthy. They were all, we regret to say, trollops. They were Nightingales only temporarily, only until the Nightingale men realized how very perfidious they were. It does lead one to generalize, my lord, and rightfully so.” He paused apurpose, staring toward Caroline. “In the recent past there has been no Nightingale wife who was loyal and true to her husband. The Nightingale men carry this curse or this blessing, depending on how one regards it. It is their legacy—your legacy—my lord.”
“I think that’s quite enough, Tregeagle,” North said, his voice low and smooth and quite deadly.
“But, my lord, we know she’s already carrying on with Dr. Treath!” Coombe shouted. “Everyone knows!”
Tregeagle said, his voice earnest as a vicar’s at a funeral, “It?
??s true, my lord. She’s just like all the others. It’s the Nightingale men’s burden to bear.”
“I think,” North said slowly, looking at each of his three male servants in turn. “I think I will just take you all out and shoot you. You’ll not change. Caroline, may I borrow your pistol?”
“I’m sorry, North, but I gave it to Timmy the maid, remember?”
“Then a length of rope,” he said. “I’ll hang all the buggers from the apple tree branches in the orchard. When they rot they can hit the ground just like the apples.”
29
“NOW, MY LORD,” Tregeagle began, a sheen of sweat on his brow. “That isn’t exactly what I would call a playful jest on your part.”
“I’m not jesting.”
Coombe said, “It isn’t something any of us enjoy contemplating.”
“No, Mr. Coombe,” Mrs. Mayhew said, stepping right up to him to stare him straight in the eye, “it isn’t. Therefore, you’d best listen to me. His lordship has been more than patient with the three of you, but enough is enough. And you, Mr. Sniggledy-Piggledy,” Mrs. Mayhew continued to Tregeagle, stepping even closer until she wasn’t more than two inches from his nose, “her ladyship is quite right. Mount Hawke is no longer a male sanctuary, and it’s about time things were put back to normal. Now, sir, why don’t you and Mr. Coombe and Mr. Polgrain all go to the kitchen and have a nice restoring cup of brandy. It will soothe your nerves, perhaps grant you some proper perspective. It might also save you from his lordship, for he does indeed look ready to stretch your miserable necks.”
“He doesn’t have that particular look at all,” said Polgrain. “He just looks a bit distracted, and no wonder, with all of you chattering about and doing things you shouldn’t be doing.”
“He wouldn’t harm us,” said Coombe. “It isn’t civilized and all Nightingale men have been civilized.”
“But he might if I helped him,” Caroline said. “And I’ll tell you, I’m close to the brink now. Just stop it. You must, gentlemen, accustom yourselves, for your attitudes will no longer be allowed here. This is a new day at Mount Hawke. Nightingale women are back again where they should be.”
To her surprise, all six other females began to cheer. The three males of the Mount Hawke servant bastion stood there frozen. North looked from one side to the other and raised his hand. There was instant silence. He was the master, after all.
He looked quickly at Caroline, who just happened to be giving him the most adoring look he’d ever had directed upon him in his entire life, except for those other times when she’d been looking at him with that same adoring look. He forgot what he wanted to say. He wanted to kiss her dirty face and strip off her dirty gown. He wanted her filthy hands all over him. He wanted her legs wrapped around his waist with him carrying her, shoving into her as she threw back her head and screamed her pleasure, her hair falling free and thick.
He cleared his throat. “Her ladyship is quite right. Whatever happened in the past here at Mount Hawke is over. Mrs. Mayhew is perfectly right as well. No longer will you refer to the Viscountess Chilton as ‘you’ or as ‘miss’ or as ‘madam.’ She is ‘your ladyship’ or ‘my lady.’ The past will no longer taint the present. There will be a return to sanity now at Mount Hawke, and with God’s blessing, there will be children, not just the obligatory Nightingale heir. I ask you to consider this carefully. Now, go away, all of you. Have a cup of brandy just as Mrs. Mayhew suggested. But know this: Mount Hawke is now going to be the way it was before my great-grandfather’s time.”
The three male martinets filed out of the great entrance hall, stiff and silent, and Caroline suddenly worried that the oxtail soup that had made Alice ill had been done apurpose, just as had that monster face in her window. Oh, surely not. A monster’s face dangling in her window was one thing, but poisoning soup was quite another. No, she wouldn’t credit that. They were simply all old men who were faced with change none of them could accept, at least yet. Mrs. Mayhew wasn’t, however, a gloater. She wouldn’t tweak their noses; she wouldn’t taunt them in their loss.
Mrs. Mayhew curtsied to Caroline and shooed Chloe and Molly away to get on with their duties. Miss Mary Patricia said, “Alice is feeling a bit peaked, Miss Caroline. Evelyn believes she should rest now. I’ll see to it.” She nodded to North and gave him a smile that bespoke a great deal of satisfaction. He didn’t see it, Caroline noted. He was looking distracted again; he was staring again at the portraits.
“Caroline,” he said finally, “why do you think my mother’s portrait wasn’t even painted when she was newly married to my father?” He closed his eyes a moment. “No, you don’t have to ponder on that because I know. My grandfather was still alive when my father married my mother. She was allowed to come here to Mount Hawke only once, my father wrote in that damned diary. My grandfather kicked her out. After she birthed me, she, like the other Nightingale wives, cuckolded my father and he tossed her out on her ear. He told me again and again that she was a whore and I was to forget her. He told me she died and she deserved to die. I remember it more clearly now, just as I also remember their screaming at each other. I was very small, but I remember their being so big and so loud and I hated it and then suddenly she was gone forever. I don’t remember living at Mount Hawke until after that day. But it was a miserable place and I hated it and wanted my mother. It didn’t matter when my grandfather finally died, because my father had become just like him, maybe worse.”
“I’m so sorry, North.” She put her arms around him and held him tightly against her. “But things are different now; we will make them different. I’m so sorry.”
“Why were you with Dr. Treath at that oak copse?”
She looked at him straightly, not blinking, not moving, and said calmly, “The note some idiot sent you to tell you I was meeting my lover—do you believe it, North?”
“No.”
“You are not your father or your grandfather or your great-grandfather, nor am I any of those poor wretched Nightingale wives.”
“I know.”
“Dr. Treath said he’d wanted to speak to me alone and thus he followed me when I rode from Mount Hawke. He said he wanted to tell me about Nora Pelforth, that she had been his very good friend after my aunt Eleanor was killed, that he didn’t understand any of this and he hated it. But foremost, he didn’t want me to get the wrong idea if I heard he’d known Nora Pelforth from anyone else. He didn’t want me to believe he was fickle and hadn’t truly loved my aunt. He was distressed, North. I tried to comfort him, tried to assure him I quite understood, and he kissed me on the cheek and said he only wished that I could have become his stepniece.”
“Thank you, Caroline, for telling me.”
“I would have before, but I forgot all about everything when you began kissing me. You have great power over my mind, North Nightingale. Ah, that was lovely with you, in the copse, with those skinny slivers of sunlight coming through the oak leaves. I felt the heat of the sun on my face when you were over me. There could be nothing more wonderful than that.”
He shook, but managed to say in a calm enough voice, “Yes, it was lovely. I remember the heat of the sun on my back. What did he show you?”
She looked up at him a moment, studying him closely, he knew, wondering why he was asking her, knowing it was distrust bred deep into him, yet accepting it, not getting angry with him, for he would change and he prayed she was right.
She said simply, “It was a letter that Nora Pelforth had written to him after my aunt’s death. In it she wrote that she knew how much he had loved my aunt and how very sorry she was. Would you like me to show it to you, North?”
He nodded and said, “No.”
“Thank you for that, I think. Dr. Treath never gave it to me so I would have to ask him for it, and that would be a bit embarrassing. Ah, well, at least half of you believes me.” She paused a moment, her fingers lightly stroking his upper arms, kneading him, and he knew it was unconscious on her part; she simply enjoyed touchi
ng him, having the physical contact with him.
She said, “North, I’m so sorry about your mother. Perhaps one of the three male martinets can tell you more about her.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could feel his pain, a pain from long ago that was vague now, but still there deep inside him. She placed her hand on his arm. “North, you said you remembered coming back here to Mount Hawke after that last horrible fight between your parents, when your mother left. Where were you living?”
He blinked, looked hungrily up at his grandmother’s portrait, and said slowly, “I don’t know, Caroline. I wasn’t living here, thus it must have been at another property my father owned, another property that I now own.”
“How many do you own?”
“There are three. A hunting box in the Cotswolds, near Lower Slaughter, a house on the Steyne in Brighton, and a country manor house in Yorkshire, near Northallerton.” He paused a moment, then said, “Good God, I forgot all about that house when I was in Yorkshire just a month and a half ago.”
“Why were you there?”
“I was visiting a very good army friend of mine, the Earl of Chase, and his new bride. You would like both Marcus and the Duchess.”
“Duchess?”
“Yes, that is what Marcus named her when she was nine years old. She was his uncle’s bastard.”
“Goodness, North, I want to hear more about this.”
“All right. Perhaps this winter when we’re hunched close to the fireplace to keep warm, I’ll tell you about their Wyndham legacy and all that happened.”
Her eyes lit up and he kissed her quickly. “No, Caroline, later. I don’t want to be rushed in the telling. Let me tell you about the houses. I haven’t been to any of them in years and I just don’t remember if I was raised those first five years in one of them.”