A Knight in Shining Armour (19 page)

Nicholas looked at the papers in disbelief. “I but put these in here a few days ago. They were new-made then.”

Taking the papers from him, she unrolled them a bit. They were covered top to bottom, side to side, no margins, with writing that was incomprehensible to her.

“Ah, here is your treasure.” He showed Dougless a small yellow white box, beautifully carved with figures of people and animals.

“This is ivory?” she asked in wonder as she handed him the papers, then took the box. She had seen boxes like this one in museums, but she’d never touched one. “It’s beautiful, and it’s a wonderful treasure.”

Nicholas laughed. “The box is not the treasure. That lies inside. But wait,” he said as Dougless began to open the lid. “I find I am greatly in need of sustenance.” He shoved the papers back into the cabinet as though he never wanted to see them again. Then he took the box from her, opened the tote bag she’d purchased, and slipped the box inside.

“You’re going to make me
wait
until after you’ve eaten before I can see what’s inside that box?” She was incredulous.

Nicholas laughed. “It pleases me to see that the nature of woman has not changed these four hundred years.”

She gave him a smug look. “Don’t get too smart, or did you forget that I have your return train ticket?”

She thought she had bested him, but as she watched, his face changed to softness, and he looked at her through his lashes in a way that made Dougless’s heart beat a little faster. He stepped forward; she stepped back.

“You have heard,” he said, his voice low, “that no woman can withstand me.”

Dougless was backed against the wall, her heart pounding in her ears as he looked down at her. Putting his fingertips under her chin, he gently lifted her face upward. Was he going to kiss her? she wondered, half in outrage and half in anticipation. Anticipation won out; she closed her eyes.

“I shall seduce my way back to the hotel,” he said in a different tone that made Dougless know he’d been teasing her—and he’d known exactly how his warm looks would affect her.

When her eyes flew open and she straightened up, he chucked her under the chin as a father might do—or as the gorgeous private eye might do to his soppy secretary.

“Ah, but mayhap I could not seduce a woman of today. You have told me that women now are not as they were in my day,” he said, shutting the little secret door. “Alas, this is the day of women’s . . .”

“Lib,” she answered. “Liberation.” She was thinking about Lady Arabella on the table.

He looked back at her. “I am sure I would not be able to charm a woman such as you. You have told me that you love . . . ?”

“Robert. Yes, I do,” Dougless said firmly. “Maybe when I get back to the States, he and I can work things out. Or maybe when he gets my message about the bracelet, he’ll come for me.” She wanted to remember Robert. Compared to this man, Robert seemed safe.

“Ah,” Nicholas said, starting for the door, Dougless inches behind him.

“Just what is that supposed to mean?”

“No more, no less.”

She blocked him from leaving the room. “If you want to say something, say it.”

“This Robert will come for jewels but not for the woman he loves?”

“Of course he’s coming for me!” she snapped. “The bracelet is . . . It’s just that Gloria is a brat and she lied, but she’s his daughter so of course Robert believed her. And stop looking at me like that! Robert is a fine man. At least he’ll be remembered for what he did on an operating table instead of on a—” She stopped at the look on Nicholas’s face.

Turning, he strode ahead of her.

“Nicholas, I’m sorry,” she said, running after him. “I didn’t mean it. I was just angry, that’s all. It’s not your fault you’re remembered for Arabella; it’s
our
fault. We see too much TV, read too much
National Enquirer.
Our lives are filled with too much sensationalism. Colin, please.” She stopped where she was. Was he going to walk away and leave her too?

Her head was down, so she wasn’t aware that he’d walked back to her. Companionably, he put his arm around her shoulders. “Do they sell ice cream in this place?”

When she smiled at that, he tipped her chin up and wiped away a single tear. “Are you onion-eyed again?” he asked softly.

She shook her head, afraid to trust her voice.

“Then come,” he said. “If I remember rightly, there is a pearl in that box as big as my thumb.”

“Really?” she asked. She had forgotten all about the box. “Anything else?”

“Tea first,” he said. “Tea and scones and ice cream. Then I shall show you the box.”

They walked together out of the unrestored rooms, past the next tour, and out the In, which the guides did not like at all.

In the tea shop, this time, Nicholas took over. Dougless sat at a table and waited for him as he talked to a woman behind the counter. The woman was shaking her head about something Nicholas was asking, but Dougless had an idea that he’d get whatever it was that he wanted.

Minutes later, he motioned for her to come with him. He led her outside, then down stone stairs, across an acre of garden, to at last stop under the dappled shade of a yew tree with bright red berries. When Dougless turned around, she saw a woman and a man carrying two large trays filled with tea, pastries, little sandwiches with no crusts, and Nicholas’s beloved scones.

Nicholas ignored the two people as they spread a cloth on the ground and set out the tea things. “There was my knot garden,” he said, pointing, his voice heavy with sadness. “And there was a mound.”

After the people left, Nicholas held out his hand to help her sit on the cloth. She poured his tea, added milk, filled a plate full of food for him, then said, “Now?”

He smiled. “Now.”

Dougless dove into the tote bag and pulled out the old, fragile ivory box, then slowly, with breath held, opened it.

Inside were two rings of exquisite loveliness, one an emerald, one a ruby, the gold mountings cast into intricate forms of dragons and snakes. Nicholas took the rings and, smiling at her, slipped them onto his fingers, where, she wasn’t surprised to see, they fit perfectly.

On the bottom of the box was a bit of old, cracked velvet, and she could see that it was wrapped around something. Gingerly, Dougless removed the velvet and slowly opened it.

In her hand lay a brooch, oval, with little gold figures of . . . She looked up at Nicholas. “What are they doing?”

“It’s the martyrdom of Saint Barbara,” he said, his tone implying that she knew nothing.

Dougless had guessed it was a martyrdom because it looked as if the gold man was about to cut off the head of the tiny gold woman. Encircling the figures was an abstract enamel design, and around the edges were tiny pearls and diamonds. Hanging from a loop below the brooch was indeed a pearl as large as a man’s thumb. It was a baroque pearl, indented, even lumpy, but with a luster that no years could dim.

“It’s lovely,” she whispered.

“It is yours,” Nicholas said.

A wave of avarice shot through Dougless. “I cannot,” she said, even as her hand closed over the jewel.

Nicholas laughed. “It is a woman’s bauble. You may keep it.”

“I can’t. It’s too valuable. This pin is worth too much and it’s too old. It should be in a museum. It should—”

Taking the jewel from her hand, he pinned it between the collar points of her blouse.

Dougless took her compact from her purse, opened the mirror, and looked at the brooch. She also looked at her face. “I have to go to the rest room,” she said, making Nicholas laugh as she rose.

Alone in the rest room, she had some time to really look at the pin, and only left when someone else entered. On her way back to Nicholas, she couldn’t resist slipping into the gift shop to look at the postcards. It took her a moment to see what Nicholas had not wanted her to see. There, on the bottom of a rack, was a postcard of a portrait of the notorious Lady Arabella. Dougless took one.

As she was paying, Dougless asked the cashier if there was anything in any of the books for sale about Nicholas Stafford.

The woman smiled in a patronizing way. “All the young ladies ask after him. We usually have cards of his portrait, but we’re out right now.”

“There’s nothing written about him? About his accomplishments other than . . . than with women?” Dougless asked.

Again there was that little smirk. “I don’t believe Lord Nicholas accomplished anything. The only thing of importance that he did was to raise an army against the queen, and he was sentenced to be executed for that. If he hadn’t died beforehand, he would have been beheaded. He was quite a scoundrel of a young man.”

Dougless took the single postcard and started to leave, but she turned back. “What happened to Lord Nicholas’s mother after he died?”

The woman brightened. “Lady Margaret? Now there was a grand lady. Let me see, I believe she married again. What was his name? Oh, yes, Harewood. She married Lord Richard Harewood.”

“Do you know if she left any papers behind?”

“Oh, my, no, I have no idea of that.”

“All the Stafford papers are at Goshawk Hall,” came a voice from the door. It was the guide whose tour she and Nicholas had so rudely interrupted.

“Where is Goshawk Hall?” Dougless asked, feeling embarrassed.

“Near the village of Thornwyck,” the woman said.

“Thornwyck,” Dougless said, and nearly gave a whoop of joy, but caught herself. It was all she could do to thank the women before she ran from the shop into the garden. Nicholas lay stretched out on the cloth, sipping tea and finishing the scones.

“Your mother married Richard, ah . . . Harewood,” she said breathlessly, “and all the papers are at . . .” She couldn’t remember the name.

“Goshawk Hall?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s it! It’s near Thornwyck.”

He turned away from her. “My mother married Harewood?”

Dougless watched the back of him. If he’d died accused of treason, had his mother, in her poverty, been forced to marry some despicable despot? Had his old, frail mother been forced to endure some man who treated her as no more than property?

When Nicholas’s shoulders began to shake, Dougless put her hand on his arm. “Nicholas, it’s not your fault. You were dead, you couldn’t help her.”
What
am I saying? she thought.

But when Nicholas turned around, she saw that he was . . . laughing. “I should have known she would land on her feet,” he said. “Harewood! She married Dickie Harewood.” He could hardly speak for laughing so hard.

“Tell me everything,” Dougless urged, eyes alight.

“Dickie Harewood is a tardy-gaited, unhaired pajock.”

Dougless frowned, not understanding.

“An ass, madam,” Nicholas explained. “But a rich one. Aye, he’s very rich.” He leaned back, smiling. “It is good to know she was not left one-trunk-inheriting.”

Still smiling, he poured Dougless a cup of tea, and as she took it, he picked up her little paper bag and opened it.

“No” she began, but he was already looking at the postcard of Lady Arabella’s portrait.

He looked up at her with such a knowing look that she wanted to dump the tea over his head. “Did they not have a picture of the table too?” he mocked.

“I have no idea what you mean,” she said haughtily, not looking at his face as she snatched the card out of his hands and put it back into the bag. “The picture is for research. It might help us . . .” For the life of her, she couldn’t think what a picture of the mother of Nicholas’s illegitimate child could possibly help them find out. “Did you eat all the scones? You really can be a pig sometimes.”

Nicholas gave a snort of laughter.

After a moment he said, “What say you we stay in this town this night? On the morrow I shall purchase Armant and Rafe.”

It took Dougless a moment to understand what he meant, but then she remembered the American magazines he’d seen. “Georgio Armani and Ralph Lauren?” she asked.

“Aye,” he said. “Clothing of your time. When I return to my house in Thornwyck, I will not be one-trunk-inheriting either.”