Free The Nightingale Legacy by Catherine Coulter

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 athim, 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