The Nightingale Legacy (Legacy Series #2) » (Unabridged, 11 CDs, 13 hrs. 23 min.)

Catherine Coulter is the author of numerous historical romances, including the Bride series, and contemporary romantic thrillers, including the popular FBI series.

On the eve of her nineteenth birthday, the vivacious Caroline Derwent-Jones looks forward to being free of her oafish guardian, Mr. Ffalkes. But Mr. Ffalkes has other plans for Caroline and her inheritance; Caroline must escape.

In her flight, Caroline encounters Lord Chilton of Mount Hawke, Frederic North Nightingale, and finds herself tangled in mystery and romance. Amid murder, enigmatic secrets, and a long standing tradition of no women at Mount Hawke, Lord Chilton discovers his desire for Caroline.

"Witty dialogue and bawdy, eccentric characters add up to an engaging, fan-pleasing story."--Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

The second novel in Coulter's Legacy trilogy is a delightful Regency romance brimming with drama, sex and colorful characters. It's 1814, and the young, long-haired, brooding Lord Chilton, Frederick North Nightingale, who briefly appeared in The Wyndham Legacy, is on his way from his Cornish castle, Mount Hawke, to London when he stops at an inn for the night. There, he meets the smart, beautiful and feisty 19-year-old Caroline Derwent-Jones, who has just escaped Roland Ffalkes, her lecherous, inheritance-seeking guardian, and is en route to the Cornish home of her aunt, Eleanor Penrose. North protects Caroline from Ffalkes, who shows up unexpectedly, but she departs before the nobleman can tell her that her aunt, whom he knew, has been murdered. North and Caroline soon meet again, though, and before long he accepts her proposal of marriage-much to the horror of his three misogynist male servants, appalled that the union will break the long-standing tradition of no women living at Mount Hawke. Coulter complicates her story line with a couple of weak plot twists involving a search for local treasure and the murder of several other women (the killer's identity and motive, when finally revealed, strain plausibility), but her witty dialogue and bawdy, eccentric characters add up to an engaging, fan-pleasing story nonetheless. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection. (Dec.)