A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggart #15)

A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggart #15) Page 14

Was there anything he could do to prove to her that he was from the past?

In the ice cream parlor she absently ordered herself a single cone of mocha ice cream, but for Nicholas, she ordered a double cone of French vanilla and chocolate fudge. She was considering her question so hard that she didn’t see his face when he took his first licks, so she was startled when he leaned over and kissed her quickly, but firmly, on the mouth.

Blinking, she looked up at him and saw the sublime happiness on his face as he ate his ice cream. Dougless couldn’t help laughing.

“Buried treasure,” she said, and startled herself with the words.

“Mmm?” Nicholas asked, his attention one hundred percent on his ice cream.

“To prove to me that you’re from the past, you have to know something no one else does. You have to show me something that isn’t in a book.”

“Such as who the father of Lady Arabella Sydney’s last child was?” He was down to the chocolate scoop and looked as though he might melt from happiness. Placing her hand under his elbow, she ushered him to a table.

Sitting across from him, looking at those blue eyes and thick lashes as he licked his cone, she wondered if he looked at a woman like that when he made love to her.

“You gaze at me most hard,” he said, then looked at her through his lashes.

Turning away, Dougless cleared her throat. “I do not want to know who fathered Lady Arabella’s kid.” She didn’t look back when she heard Nicholas’s laugh.

“‘Buried treasure,’” he said as he crunched the cone. “Some valuable trinket that was hidden, but is still there after four hundred and twenty-four years?”

He can add and subtract, Dougless thought as she looked back at him. “Forget about it. It was just an idea.” She opened her notebook. “Let me tell you what I found out at the library,” she said as she began to read her notes about the houses.

When she looked up, Nicholas was wiping his hands on a paper napkin and frowning. “A man builds so that something of himself lives on. It pleases me not to hear that what was mine is gone.”

“I thought children were supposed to carry on a person’s name.”

“I left no children,” he said. “I had a son, but he died in a fall the week after my brother drowned. First his mother, then the child.”

Dougless watched pain shoot across his face and suddenly felt how easy and safe the twentieth century was. Sure, America had ra**sts and mass murderers and drunk drivers, but Elizabethans had plague and leprosy and smallpox. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry both for you and for them.” She paused a moment. “Have you had smallpox?” she asked softly.

“Neither small nor large,” he said with some pride.

“Large pox?”

He glanced about the room, then whispered, “The French disease.”

“Oh,” she said, understanding. Venereal disease. For some reason she was glad to hear that he’d never had “large pox”—not that it mattered, but they did share a bathroom.

“What is this ‘open to the public’?” he asked.

“Usually the owners couldn’t afford the houses, so they gave them to the National Trust, so now you pay money and a guide takes you through the house. They’re great tours. This particular house has a tea shop and a gift shop and—”

Nicholas suddenly sat up straight. “It is Bellwood that is open?”

She checked her notes. “Yes, Bellwood. Just south of Bath.”

Nicholas seemed to be calculating. “With fast horses we can be to Bath in about seven hours.”

“With a good English train we could make it in two hours. Would you like to see your house again?”

“See my house sold to a company, with tallow-faced apron-men marching through it?”

Dougless smiled. “If you put it like that . . .”

“Can we go on this . . .”

“Train.”

“Train to Bellwood now?”

Dougless looked at her watch. “Sure. If we leave right now, we can have tea there and see Bellwood. But if you don’t want to see the tallow-faced . . .”

“Apron-men,” he said, smiling.

“Marching through the house, then why go?”

“There is a chance, a small chance, that I could, mayhap, find your buried treasure. When my estates were confiscated by your”—he looked at her mockingly—“your Virgin Queen”—he let Dougless know what he thought of the absurdity of that idea—“I do not know if my family was given permission to clear the estates. Perhaps there is a chance . . .”

The idea of an afternoon spent looking for buried treasure excited Dougless. “What are we waiting for?” she asked as she picked up her new handbag. This time, she’d packed it full of travel-size toiletries, and she wasn’t going anywhere without it.

The train system was another thing Dougless loved about England. Nearly every village had a station, and, unlike American trains, they were clean, with no graffiti, and well kept. When Dougless bought their tickets, she was told that a connecting train to Bath was just about to leave the station, which was not an unusual occurrence since the English trains were wonderfully frequent.

Once seated on the train and it started to move, Nicholas’s eyes bulged at the speed. But, after a few nervous moments, like a true Englishman, he adjusted to the speed and began to walk around. He studied the ads high up on the walls, smiling in delight at one for Colgate, recognizing the toothpaste she’d purchased. If he could recognize words, perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult to teach him to read, she thought.

In Bristol, they changed trains. Nicholas was aghast at the number of hurrying people in the station, and he was fascinated with the ornate Victorian ironwork. She purchased a fat guidebook to the great houses of southern England at the newsstand, and on the ride to Bath, she started to read to Nicholas about his houses that were now in ruins. But when she saw that hearing of such waste and destruction made him sad, she stopped reading.

He looked out the big windows and now and then would say, “There’s William’s house,” or “Robin lives there,” when he saw one of the enormous houses that dotted the English countryside almost as frequently as did the cows and sheep.

Bath, beautiful, beautiful Bath, was a wonder to Nicholas. To Dougless it was old, since the architecture was all eighteenth century, but to him it was very modern. Dougless thought that New York or Dallas with its steel and glass buildings would look like outer space to him. He would act as though they looked weird, she corrected herself, then noticed that she was correcting herself less often with each hour she spent with him.

They had lunch at an American-type sandwich shop, and Dougless ordered club sandwiches, potato salad, and iced tea for both of them. He thought the meal was tasty but lacking in quantity. It took some fast talking, but Dougless managed to drag him out of the restaurant before he started demanding a boar’s head or whatever.

He was so fascinated with the crescent-shaped rows of houses in Bath that Dougless hated to get a taxi and take him out of town. But getting into an automobile took Nicholas’s mind off the buildings. The taxi drivers in England are a different breed from those in America. English drivers don’t yell when someone takes “too long” to get into a car, so Nicholas was given time to look at the vehicle. He examined the door and the door lock, opening and closing it three times before getting in, and once in, after examining the backseat, he leaned forward and watched the driver steer and shift gears.

When they arrived at Bellwood, the next tour didn’t start for half an hour, so they had time to walk around the gardens. Dougless thought they were beautiful, but Nicholas curled his lip and barely looked at the flowering plants and the ancient shade trees. When he walked around the big, sprawling house, he told her what had been added to the house and what had been changed. He thought the additions were architecturally dreadful and minced no words in telling her so.

“Is the treasure buried in the garden?” she asked, annoyed at herself for asking; she sounded like an excited child.

“Ruin a garden by putting gold at the roots of my plants?” he asked in mock horror.

“By the way, where did you put your money? Where did they put their money, I mean?”

Nicholas clearly didn’t understand her question—or didn’t want to—so she dropped it. Since the gardens seemed to be making him angry, she led him to the gift shop, and for a while, he was happy in the shop. He played with the pens and some plastic change purses, and he laughed aloud when he first saw a tiny flashlight with “Bellwood” stamped on it. But he didn’t like the postcards, and Dougless couldn’t figure out what had so upset him about them.

He removed a tote bag with a silk-screened photo of Bellwood on the front from a rack. “You will need one of these,” he said, smiling; then he leaned forward and whispered, “For the treasure.”

Dougless did her best not to look thrilled at his words. As calmly as she could, she carried the tote bag and the flashlight to the register, where she paid for them and tickets for the next tour. She tried again to look at the postcards, but Nicholas would not let her. Every time she got near the rack, he forcibly clamped his strong fingers on her arm and pulled her away.

When the next tour was called, Dougless and Nicholas followed a dozen other tourists into the house. To Dougless’s eyes, the interior of the house looked like a set for a play about Elizabeth the First. The walls were paneled in dark oak, there were Jacobean chairs scattered about as well as carved chests, and armor was hanging on the wall.

“Is this more like what you’re used to?” Dougless whispered up to Nicholas.

There was an expression of disgust on his handsome face; his upper lip curled upward. “This is not my house,” he said in distaste. “That what I did should come to this is most unpleasing.”

Dougless thought the place was beautiful, but didn’t say so because the guide had started her lecture. It was her experience that English tour guides were excellent and knew their subject thoroughly. The woman was telling the history of the house, built as a castle in 1302, by the first Stafford.

Nicholas was quiet as she spoke—until she came to Henry the Eighth’s time.

“A medieval woman was the chattel of her husband,” their guide said, “to be used as her husband saw fit. Women had no power.”

Nicholas snorted loudly. “My father told my mother she was his property—once.”

“Sssh,” Dougless hissed, not wanting to be embarrassed by him.

They moved to a small, oak-paneled room where the darkness was oppressive. “Candles were very expensive,” the guide was saying, “so medieval man lived his life in gloom.”

Nicholas again started to speak, but Dougless frowned at him to be quiet. “Stop complaining, and, by the way, where’s your treasure?” she asked.

“I cannot seek treasure now. I must hear how your world thinks of mine,” he said. “Pray tell me why your people think we had no mirth?”

“With all the plague and big pox and small, plus trips to the barber to have your teeth torn out, we think you didn’t have time for fun.”

“We made use of the time we had,” he said as the group moved into another room. As soon as they entered, Nicholas opened a door concealed in the paneling, and as soon as he did, a loud buzzer went off. Dougless slammed the door shut, then gave a weak smile of apology to the tour guide, whose quelling look made her feel like a child caught with her hand in a cookie jar.

“Behave!” Dougless hissed at him. “If you want to leave, I’m ready.” His actions were embarrassing, and she feared that he just might start telling the guide that he had built this house, and he had lived here.

But Nicholas didn’t want to leave. He followed the guide through room after room, snorting now and then in derision, but saying nothing.

“We now come to our most popular room,” the guide said, and by the little smile she gave, her audience knew something amusing was coming up.

Nicholas, being taller, saw into the room before Dougless did. “We will leave now,” he said stiffly, but he said it in a way that made Dougless very much want to see what was in the room.

The guide began to speak. “This was Lord Nicholas Stafford’s private chamber, and, to put it politely, Lord Nicholas was what is known as a rake. As you can see, he was a very handsome man.”

When she heard that, Dougless pushed her way through the group to the front. There, hanging over the mantel, was a portrait of Lord Nicholas Stafford—her Nicholas. He was dressed just as she’d first seen him, wearing the beard and mustache she’d first seen, and he was just as handsome then as he was now.

Of course he wasn’t the same man, Dougless told herself, but she was willing to admit that the man she knew had to be a descendant.

The guide, smiling at what she felt was an amusing story, began to tell of Lord Nicholas’s exploits with various ladies. “It was said that no woman could withstand his charm once he set his mind to have her, so his enemies were concerned that if he went to court, he might seduce the young and beautiful Queen Elizabeth.”

Dougless felt Nicholas’s fingers biting into her shoulder. “I will take you to the treasure now,” he whispered into her ear.

She put her fingers to her lips for him to be quiet.

“In 1560,” the guide said, “there was a great scandal concerning Lady Arabella Sydney.” The guide paused.

“I wish to go now,” Nicholas said emphatically into her ear.

Dougless waved him away.

The guide continued. “It was said at the time that Lady Sydney’s fourth child was fathered by Lord Nicholas, who was some years younger than she. It was also said”—the guide’s voice lowered conspiratorily—“that the child was fathered on that table.”

There was a combined intake of breath as everyone looked at an oak trestle table standing against the wall.

“Furthermore,” the guide said, “Lord Nicholas—”

From the back of the room came a very loud buzzer. It went on then off, on then off, making it impossible for the guide to continue speaking.

“Would you mind!” the guide said, but the buzzer kept going on and off.

Dougless didn’t have to look to see who was opening and closing the alarmed door—or why he was doing it. Quickly, she began to make her way to the back of the group.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the guide said sternly, looking over the heads of the tourists to the back of the group. “You may go out the way you came.”