“I see,” North said with disgust. “Didn’t they write enough about King Mark? Wasn’t his damned betrayal enough for them? This is supposed to convince me to become as woman-hating as the rest of you lunatics? I can’t help what my ancestors did, but listen to me, I have nothing to do with them, nothing at all. Now, get out of here, all of you. Caroline and I will be married next week, and if there’s any hint of a dead pilchard in any dish you serve her, I’ll gullet all of you. I’ll send my bayonet through your bellies. I’ll see that none of you ever breathe again.”
“That is rather comprehensive, my lord,” Coombe said. “No woman has lived here at Mount Hawke since your great-grandfather’s time. Please, my lord, listen to us. It just isn’t done.”
“That’s absurd.”
“It’s true what Mr. Coombe says,” Tregeagle said. “Women aren’t allowed here.”
“Th
ey are now,” North said. “Go on, now, get out, all of you.”
Polgrain, Coombe, and Tregeagle slowly nodded and left the library. North stared after them, then just shook his head. He heard Tregeagle stop and looked up. “Please, my lord, read what the Nightingale men have written. It’s all true. Truth casts a long shadow, particularly for Nightingale men.”
“Damnation, all right, I’ll read it, but it won’t change anything.”
“You never should have left when you were sixteen. You didn’t learn the truth of things. You would have come to understand why—”
“You would have left too, Tregeagle, had my father been your father. That miserable bastard, he—” North shut up, and drew upon his control. “Go away, Tregeagle, just go away.”
“Yes, my lord, but I really don’t want to. All of us just seek to protect you, to nurture you in your privacy, here with us, alone and happy.”
“Get out of here, you idiot.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Flash Savory faced Lord Chilton across his desk and said without preamble, “Bennett Penrose was here, skulking about in Goonbell some three weeks before Eleanor Penrose was murdered. He used his own name and added the name York. I imagine that’s why you didn’t learn much of anything when you initially looked into her death, my lord. Yes, old Bennett York was trying to be clever, but I found him out.”
“Excellent, Flash. If he did kill her then it would be in hopes that she’d left him money, lots of it.”
“That’s right. I doubt he knew a thing about Miss Caroline, and if he did, I imagine that old Bennett—being such a man’s man—thought no one could possibly leave any groats at all to a mere female.”
“That could put Caroline in danger, but not for long. Once we’re wedded, then all her money belongs to me. Then there’d be no motive for the little sod.” North sat back in the high-backed leather chair and closed his eyes. “That still leaves Mr. Ffalkes. I can’t say I want him living here at Mount Hawke for much longer, Flash.”
“I say let him go, my lord. Once you and Miss Caroline are wed, just let him go. And you will ensure he knows that he would get his neck stretched on the gibbet if he killed you or if anything at all happened to you.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought, Flash.”
“Aye, I venture to say nearly as much as you. Also I spoke to the captain. He said he’d be quite pleased to tell Mr. Ffalkes the facts of his new life.”
North smiled at that. “It seems all goes forward, then. We still don’t have any evidence, however. That bloody knife—what did the killer do with it? Dr. Treath, once the poor man could speak about it, said he believed it to be just a regular knife, the sort one would find in any kitchen. Not a fishing or hunting knife, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“I plan to visit Mr. Bennett Penrose’s chamber this evening at Scrilady Hall. Our boyo will be in Goonbell drinking with his cohorts again. I’ll see what I can unearth. Also, my lord, I found out from Mrs. Freely, quite a talker she is, and—” Flash paused a moment and preened. “Aye, it’s true, the ladies find me quite appetizing. Well, in any case, she told me that Mrs. Penrose wasn’t the first lady to die under mysterious circumstances. There was another lady who was skewered with a knife some three years ago, by the name of Elizabeth Godolphin, the widow of a merchant who lived down near Perranporth. The lady had a goodly competence, but she wasn’t rich, as Mrs. Eleanor was.”
“Any other similarities?”
“Mrs. Freely said something about her seeing some gentleman, but she couldn’t remember any more. She said she’d be seeing some of her friends who live there and she’d ask them about it.”
“Good, we’re gaining ground, then.”
“Congratulations on your marrying Miss Caroline, my lord. She’s a fine girl, all full of spit and fire and mischief, and that mouth of hers, well, the captain told me she’d give you as many fits as Lady Victoria gives him.”
North grunted. The thought of walking his hounds on the moors, however, didn’t play such a large part in his scenario of daily life anymore.
“I’ll also find out if our Bennett Penrose was here when the other lady was killed. It’s my understanding he’s been hereabouts throughout the years. The little bugger would have been about your age then, my lord. Maybe he was living off her, maybe… ah, well, we’ll see.”
At one o’clock that morning, North was propped up in his bed reading the slim volume Tregeagle had given him. Quite simply, he couldn’t believe it. It was a house of men only, and certainly he’d wondered about that, but any questions when he’d been a boy had been dealt with harshly by his father. When he’d been a boy and asked about his mother, he’d been told she was a slut, a trollop, and she was dead, just as she deserved. He hadn’t understood the words, but he’d well understood the rage, the bitterness. He’d not asked about his mother all that much past the age of five when he’d come to Mount Hawke with his father to live after his mother had died. He shook his head, leaned back, and closed his eyes. His father’s written words were burned sharply in his mind: “Nightingale men don’t suffer like other men, once they understand that they are different. I didn’t believe my father’s and his father’s words, but now I do. By all the gods, they were right. At least I have the next generation Nightingale, the next Viscount Chilton, and that miserable slut is gone. All will be well. I will teach North, and pray God he will listen and believe me. There’s no need for him to go through what I went through. He will beget his heir and quickly rid himself of the slut necessary to be the Nightingale vessel. He will be free. He won’t suffer even a moment’s anguish, like the rest of us. He will believe me.”
Those words were written when North had been five years old. He tried desperately to remember that time, but all he could remember was screaming and shouting and crying, a woman crying. His mother? He didn’t know. Then he’d come here. Then he’d been told that his mother was dead. And then there’d been the year upon year of misery and hatefulness and spite and utter gloom. What had happened?