“Yer ’orse is gone, milord.”
“I beg your pardon? It’s the bay gelding with the two white socks.”
“I know, milord, but Sparkie says the young lady took Treetop and left ’er own ’orse fer ye—a brave old mare, full in the shoulders, but not a goer, milord, iffen ye ken what I mean.”
He shouldn’t be surprised, he thought, this time curses rather than amusement bubbling up. She’d done in Mr. Ffalkes and now she’d done him in as well, and with little effort on her part. She’d doubtless eyed Treetop and known she’d make better time with that superb beast carrying her than her own mare, who looked like she’d been eating her head off since they’d arrived here. She looked sleepy and lazy.
“Well, you old nag, what do you say?”
The old nag gave him a bored look.
“That bad, is it? No choice, sorry. Shall we find your mistress? It seems she’s misplaced herself along with my horse.”
Within minutes he’d found the note scribbled on a small bit of foolscap stuck in one of the leather saddle folds. He read:
Lord Chilton:
Do forgive me for taking your horse, but I don’t want Mr. Ffalkes to catch up with me. I would have to shoot him this time. I will return your horse to you, I swear. Wherever I go I will ask about Goonbell.
yr. servant
Caroline Derwent-Jones
Within five more minutes he was on his way back to Cornwall. So much for London, his man of business,
his charming mistress, Judith, who was also an actress, who wouldn’t remain faithful to him or any other man if memorizing her lines depended on it. He sighed. Well, Judith was a bit slow in her thinking even if she chattered all the time. He remembered one evening he’d just crested in his pleasure when she’d said in a chirpy voice, “How I would love to play Desdemona, my lord. Can’t you just see me in a long blond wig—yellow blond—and Iago would do me in and my handsome Moor would strangle me and then regret it so deeply that he would arrange my lovely self against the covers and the pillow and then kill himself in his anguish and—”
He’d groaned, his fingers itching to go around her damned throat. He realized now that he was perilously close to laughing aloud remembering the ridiculous matter. He’d believed Judith incredibly skilled, which she was, but stupid, which hadn’t mattered. Her incessant chatter had grated, but somehow it paled when she caressed him and kissed him and… Damnation, now he was riding after that damned chit who had stolen his horse. Treetop had never known a sidesaddle before. He hoped he wouldn’t find her in a ditch somewhere with a broken neck.
He didn’t find her at all. She must be an excellent rider, for Treetop could be a handful even for him. For a stranger? For a female stranger who had the gall to put a sidesaddle on his massive back?
Unlike Miss Derwent-Jones, he didn’t have to hide himself during the day, and whatever else she was, stupid wasn’t it. He knew she’d continue the same habit of sleeping during the day and riding only at night. Thus, he rode through Exeter on to Bovey Tracy, rested for several hours in a copse of maple trees beside the road, then rode in one long spurt to Liskeard. He put up at the Naked Goose Inn and slept for six straight hours. He was off again at six o’clock in the morning.
The weather had held, thank heaven for that, and he’d made excellent time. He might be riding a horse he would disdain in any other circumstance, but he found that the mare did have grit and a good deal of endurance. It never occurred to him to sell her or leave her at an inn and rent another horse. No, even though he didn’t know her name, he quite liked her. Toward the end of that first long day, just as he was growing near to Liskeard, he’d named her Regina, for that’s what she’d become. “It’s just a temporary name,” he told her, patting down her fat neck, “just until we find that damned mistress of yours. If she survives the meeting with me, why then, you can return to her and to your old name.”
When he’d come out of the Naked Goose Inn in Liskeard early the following morning, he knew she’d seen him coming, for her head went up and she whinnied at him, nodding her head. Then when he reached her, she’d butted her head against his hand.
“You’re quite the seductress, aren’t you, Reggie? Have a carrot, old girl, then we’ll be on our way.” He stroked her soft muzzle, fed her until he swore she was grinning at him, then mounted and off they went, all the way to St. Agnes today.
He wondered what he would do when he met Caroline Derwent-Jones again. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, telling her that someone had killed her aunt. He wondered what he would do when Mr. Ffalkes came here to get her. He sighed. He didn’t want to be involved with this girl, with her bravado and her innocence, ah, and he couldn’t forget that her ready wit had made him laugh at least twice, had made him resort to wit and conversation that had come rather easily and made him not at all uncomfortable. He’d felt a bit like he’d felt at Chase Park with the Wyndhams, a temporary feeling at best, this liking and comfort he’d found with Marcus and his bride, Duchess, and their servants, who were better friends than most people gained in a lifetime. No, he’d left Yorkshire, deeming it time for him to return to Cornwall, to face those demons that awaited him there, finally, to take over his birthright, for he’d become Viscount Chilton fifteen months earlier upon the unexpected death of his father.
Above all, though, he’d wanted his solitude. He did better alone. He had his dogs, his horses, his house that was vast and empty save for the few servants who had lived their lives there, it seemed, knowing nothing else save the Nightingales.
No, he didn’t want to deal with Miss Derwent-Jones again. Once was quite enough. He didn’t want to admire her delicious little ears or those nicely arched eyebrows of hers that he’d smoothed down with his fingertips each time he’d awakened her, or that long graceful neck, save to close his fingers around it and squeeze. Most of all, he didn’t want to be the one to tell her that her aunt was dead, murdered, stabbed in the back, and thrown over the ledge at St. Agnes Head.
He rode directly to his estate, Mount Hawke, looming high and stark atop a gently rising hill above the village of the same name, the protector of those villagers since the time Henry VIII had chopped off Katherine Howard’s pretty head. Indeed, the estate records showed that the great doors were affixed to Mount Hawke on the exact day of her beheading.
He hated the bloody mausoleum, more a square-built castle really, with four towers that weren’t good for anything, large drafty staircases and corridors, stone floors that echoed footsteps as if an army were marching through, cold as the devil those bloody floors were, save where his ancestors along about one hundred years later had thrown down thick Turkey carpets. It was built all of mellow gray stone quarried nearby at Baldhu, and still quite beautiful if one were objective, which North wasn’t. And the pile belonged to him and he was supposed to cherish it, since it had passed from father to son in an unbroken chain for nearly three hundred and fifty years, quite a feat in itself, the continuous propagation of male after male. It was impressive, he admitted, in a rather foreboding, menacing sort of way, standing tall atop its own private hill, casting its shadow over the slopes of the hill and the town below.
It was nearly dark when he rode up the wide carriage drive that made deep curves back and forth many times so the ascent wouldn’t be too steep before reaching the great black iron gates. Since there was no more threat of invading armies or invading neighbors, comfort was the thing. He imagined that when it was built, it looked like a clumsy helmet sitting atop a naked man’s head, all impressive and isolated and alone.
Tom O’Laddy, the Nightingale gatekeeper for longer than North had been alive, greeted him with a huge grin, showing the empty space that should have held his front teeth, the result of a fight he’d won. He sighed, then fainted dead away. O’Laddy was a man of ale and jests. Too much ale, and he was a man of violence.
“Ho, my lord! ’Tis home ye are. ’Twere a short trip to Lunnon, eh? Foul place, Lunnon. Mr. Coombe and Mr. Tregeagle weren’t expecting ye fer another fortnight.”
“Good evening, Tom. Yes, I can see you’re wondering where Treetop is, but this sweet old girl is Reggie and she’s really quite a surprise, lots of heart. How’s your nephew?”
“He’s still on the weak side, my lord, but Mr. Polgrain sends the lad some of his special broth every day and thus he’s on the mend.”