She leaned back against him as they stood together in front of the fireplace in their bedchamber.
“I think I drank too much of that wonderful sweet wine,” Caroline said.
“Does that mean I can tie your wrists with my cravats and have my way with you?”
“That sounds interesting. Could you be a bit more specific, North?”
He kissed the nape of her neck, then let her hair fall again. He cupped her breasts in his hands and gently caressed them as he whispered in her ear, “It’s Christmas night. It’s a night of magic and a night when the unexpected just might leap into your lap. I shan’t tell you a thing. Just be tipsy and let me make you yell with pleasure.”
“All right,” she said, turned in his arms, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed his mouth, running her tongue over his bottom lip. “You may do as you please, but then it’s my turn. Oh, North, I do love you so.” The sweet warmth of her breath mingled with his.
“I think I rather love you too,” he said, and she became as still as a statue. “Don’t faint, love, it’s true. Do you believe me?”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide and questioning. She didn’t say anything, just stood there, pressed against him, her arms around his back.
“I didn’t give you your Christmas present. Just a moment.” He left her to go into his small dressing room. When he handed her a small box wrapped with bright red tissue, she again remained silent, taking the box, slowly unwrapping it. She opened the box. She could only stare.
“My God,” she said, then looked up at North. Slowly, she lifted out an armlet so old that she was afraid it would crumble in her hand. On it were etched the letters REX. “My God,” she said again. “Where did you find it? It isn’t fair, North. The Duchess and I searched and searched those damned barrows and didn’t find a single shard of pottery, a single bit of a tool, or a single sliver of a weapon. Where did you get it?”
“Actually, it was Marcus who walked by that wretched clock in the entrance hall when it was chiming. He stared at the thing, put his hands over his ears, and when it was done, he pried open the front casing. The reason the thing has sounded so bloody hideous for all these years is because someone hid the armlet inside. It’s been brushing against the mechanism for God knows how many decades. I thought you’d like it, Caroline. You know, of course, that REX stands for king.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said again. She gently touched her fingertip over the faint letters scored deeply into the gold by a deft hand. “My God, this means that your great-grandfather wasn’t lying after all about finding it. But who the devil hid the thing in the clock? Why didn’t anyone say anything about it when it disappeared?”
“Good questions. I haven’t any answers. Both Marcus and the Duchess thought it would be a nice present for you since you’ve spent so much time trying to prove that King Mark just could possibly be buried here.”
“But I never believed it, not really. Like you, I decided they’d woven the betrayal myth in with their own personal betrayal, mixing them together until they couldn’t tell one from the other.”
“Well, now perhaps all of us will have to believe it.”
Caroline’s present to her husband wasn’t at all serious until he looked into her eyes, saw the sparkling, utterly wicked excitement there, drew a deep breath, and said, “Forget what I said earlier about my cravats. You go first. How do you fasten these things?”
North was flat on his back, his arms tied over his head with the satin-lined leather wrist cuffs, fashioned, Caroline told him, by Pa-Dou. The old man had never uttered a word, never let on that he knew what the cuffs were for. North just lay there, grinning like a fool, until Caroline kissed his belly. He heaved at the cuffs, his blood pounding through his body, and just before he felt himself explode, he heard Caroline whisper against his hot flesh, “Happy Christmas, North.”
36
THE NEXT MORNING, everyone, including Tregeagle and Polgrain, simply sat about not doing much of anything. North was walking across the entrance hall to the library. He grinned at the sight of Tregeagle slumped down in a very old chair with a high lattice back, his shoes off, massaging his left foot. When there was a loud knocking at the front doors, Tregeagle looked toward the door with loathing. North just laughed, waved him away, and said, “Don’t bother, Tregeagle, I will see who’s here to see us. Perhaps it’s only the Prince Regent, here to see if there are any scraps left from Polgrain’s delicious Christmas dinner.”
He pulled the great doors open.
A tall woman stood on the steps in front of him, big-bosomed, as fair as he was dark. She was staring at him, just standing there, staring at him as if she couldn’t believe he was there, a flesh-and-blood man, then she said, and he noticed that her eyes were nearly as dark as his, “Frederic?”
He shook his head, frowning at her, and he couldn’t look away, odd, but true. He said slowly, “No, my name is North.”
“I named you Frederic. I called you Frederic after Frederic the Great of Prussia, you know. I admired him, as did your father. Your father must have changed your name after he brought you back to this house. No, it was probably your grandfather who changed your name to North.”
North felt his heart begin to pound deep, fast strokes. She was older, this woman who was standing there in the cold morning air. There were lines on her face, but still, he saw the sweetness in her dark eyes, the humor in her mouth, that firm jaw that denoted a very strong will.
She said now, “I know this will come as a shock to you, but I’m Cecilia Nightingale. I’m your mother.”
He shook his head even as he said, “There’s no portrait of you.”
“Your grandfather refused to allow it done,” she said, still not moving, still standing there, the dyed green feather in her bonnet fluttering in the stiff winter breeze.
North heard a gasp behind him, then Tregeagle said, “Madam! Oh good Lord, you’re here!”
“Hello, Tregeagle. You continue to age well. I suppose you will age well even when you’re dead.”
Caroline was there then, her head cocked to one side in curiosity. “Who is it, North?”