North shook his head. He kicked Treetop in his muscled sides but he didn’t gallop forward, announcing his arrival. No, he kept Treetop to a slow canter until he could see her and the man.
It was Benjamin Treath and he was standing close to Caroline, something in his outstretched hand. Ah, he was showing her something, nothing more, nothing less.
This was no clandestine tryst. But what was he showing her? And why here? She wasn’t like all those former Nightingale wives who had betrayed their husbands, wives who had been faithful to the Nightingale men until they’d birthed the heir, then fallen into a whore’s ways and birthed bastards, or were kicked out like North’s mother was, and died. No, Caroline was loyal—to him and to no one else. He would wager everything he owned, all that he valued within himself, that she was loyal to him, only to him… yes, only to him.
Then Dr. Treath leaned toward Caroline and he placed his hand on her shoulder, a big hand, North saw, that covered a lot of her and he didn’t like it. They seemed to be speaking very seriously about something. North felt himself freeze when Dr. Treath kissed Caroline’s cheek, his big hand still on her shoulder, no, now it was moving down her arm. He watched the doctor straighten finally and walk away from her, back to his gelding. He gave her a small wave and another smile as he settled into the saddle.
What the hell was going on here?
In that moment, every word North had read in those damned diaries Tregeagle had forced on him came back with raw clarity. Women weren’t to be trusted. His mother had betrayed his father, had left him and died. His grandfather had also been betrayed and his father before him. Both his father and grandfather had written about the perfidy of women, the dishonor bred into them throughout the ages, the wit of Nightingale men not to trust them beyond the birthing of their heir.
No, he thought, he’d escaped Mount Hawke and his father, escaped this damning legacy because he couldn’t bear the bitterness and emptiness of it, his father’s continual ranting about his mother—a whore, a bitch—who had betrayed him; ah, and there was justice, for the damned trollop was dead. He remembered then that as a boy he’d had no idea what all those words meant, but he did now, and again he felt an instant of surprise that there were so many terrible words to describe a woman a man disapproved of. His hands clenched on Treetop’s reins.
Thank God he’d had the good sense to leave ten years before, as soon as he’d been able to make his own way. It had been difficult but he’d believed anything had to be better than remaining at Mount Hawke with his father. He knew in his bones that if he’d stayed, the next thing his father would have done would have been to force that damned diary down his throat and tell him it was his duty, once he’d bred an heir off a likely female, to toss her out and begin his own entries about what sluts women were, wives in particular. And yet when Tregeagle had given him the diary, he’d read some of it, not all, certainly, for he wasn’t that far gone, but still, some of the poison had seeped into him. And now he hated himself for it.
He wasn’t like his father nor was he like his grandfather or his great-grandfather, and he would never accept that he was. The Nightingale legacy to its sons would end with him. As he rode Treetop straight to where Caroline was standing, he wondered what she was thinking. Surely she wasn’t thinking of Benjamin Treath, surely not.
It was a lovely copse of trees, Caroline was thinking, and she much enjoyed the gently rolling hillocks, and the vastly romantic stone fence that stretched some hundred yards in either direction. The stones had been hand-placed, of course, and fitted together so tightly and with such care that there were still few places where they’d broken free and fallen to the rich earth. When had the stones been so carefully and skillfully made into this fence? Who had done it? And those hillocks, works of art, all of them, but why? What was the purpose? She looked up then and saw him.
She gave a shout and ran toward him. Her riding skirt was narrow, hampering her, so she simply jerked it to her knees, never slowing.
He pulled Treetop to a halt and jumped off his back to catch her in his arms just as she threw herself against him, lifting her high to twirl her around.
“Hello,” he said, lowering her slowly, kissing her mouth as his hands molded her hips to him. “I missed you. It took me long enough to find you.”
She kissed him again and yet again a third time for good measure. “By the by, how did you find me?”
He kissed her again and said, “Someone wrote me a note that you would be meeting your lover here.”
She stared at him, so surprised she almost forgot to kiss him back, but then she did, loving the feel of him, the taste of him, and when she finally spoke, she was breathless. “You’re jesting, aren’t you?”
He set her back onto her feet and handed her the note. Caroline spread out the crumpled page and read it through once, then again. “Goodness,” she said, looking up finally. “This is rather amazing.”
“I thought it was.”
“What nodcock could have penned it?” Before he could do more than shrug, she began to laugh. At first he drew back, wondering, a part of himself long buried, a part of himself that had been formed by his father’s bitterness, his father’s rage, that part was asking why she was laughing, was demanding to know if she was attempting to brazen it out.
She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, then waved the crumpled letter about. “This idiot couldn’t have known what an incredible lover you are, North. After all, who could possibly think I would have the energy to take another lover? And besides that, why would I want to when I’ve got the most wonderful man ever as my husband? Surely they couldn’t know what you let me do to you, surely they couldn’t believe I would want to tie another man’s hands to the bedpost, could they?”
He could only stare down at her. He was all of that to her? She really believed what she said? “It is a puzzle, isn’t it?” he said finally.
She snorted. “A puzzle? I’d call it bloody nonsense. We’ve been married less than a month. North, I’m sorry, but this smacks of your male martinets at work, just as I’m sure they did that monster in my window on our wedding night. Can’t you just see Tregeagle or Coombe lying flat on his belly, hanging a wire down from the roof, with this monster face dangling off the end of it? I wish the sod had caught a bad chill. Perhaps I can see Tregeagle’s style shining forth in this”—she waved the letter under his nose—“the damnable blockhead.” She snorted again, and he felt a smile tugging at his mouth.
She was frowning now, waving that damned letter about. “But in this instance they misjudged their master’s ardor. How could they possibly believe that I would let you out of my sight? Well, I did let you out of my sight just for a little while today, but you found me quickly enough. I won’t ever again, you know, never. Now, kiss me.”
He did, thinking there was no woman like Caroline in all of Cornwall and now she was his and all the duplicity of the past, the Nightingale legacy of betrayal, was ended, here and now.
But she had been out of his sight.
He raised his head and looked down at her, all his doubts, all his father’s long-buried accusations about women, making his eyes nearly black and opaque, his expression hard and frightening.
“Oh, North, is that your brooding look? Yes, it is, and I don’t like it a bit. It is dark and menacing. You look dangerous and immensely fascinating. If you weren’t my husband and I much preferred your laughter and jesting, because it’s your laughter that makes me tingle all over, why, I’d probably think it vastly romantic. A silent strong man, yes, it would make a maiden shudder with mysterious delight, more fool the maiden. I’m glad I know as far down as my toes that you would never hurt me else I’d be frightened of you. I wouldn’t ever want to be your enemy. You must have scared the French down to their shaking knees. They must have rejoiced when you sold out and returned to England.”
“What were you doing here?”
She grinned up at him, locked her fingers behind his neck, pulled his head down, and kissed him again until he was caressing her back, pulling her so tightly against him he wondered if either of them would be breathing shortly.
“I was here because of an entry I found in the King tome, made by your grandfather. He goes on and on about Queen Isolde, and how she betrayed poor Mark with his nephew Tristan, or maybe Tristan was even his son, and Isolde was a harlot, a slut, and any number of other nasty things, how the nunnery was too good for the likes of her Mark—it gets quite boring, really, all the same things your great-grandfather wrote—but then he breaks away from the same old stuff his father had written. He begins to speak about how Fowey used to be a very different place and how it was ripped apart in a huge natural upheaval way back even before the Vikings ruled most of England. And after the land heaved and twisted and formed itself anew, it became evident to this local monk that K