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

A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggart #15) Page 29

“Of course.”

“Ah, then it has changed. In my time it was a wild place.” Putting his arm about her shoulders, he left the hotel with her.

SEVENTEEN

At the church, Dougless wouldn’t release Nicholas. He knelt to pray, and she knelt beside him, both her arms tightly locked around his shoulders. When he didn’t push her away as she feared he might, she knew that, in spite of his pretended amusement, he was as frightened as she was.

They knelt together on the cold floor for over an hour. Dougless’s knees hurt from the stones, and her arms ached from holding on to Nicholas, but she never considered relaxing her grip. Twice, the vicar came in and stood for a while watching them, then silently walked away.

As hard as Nicholas prayed for forgiveness, Dougless prayed twice as hard for God not to take him away but to let him stay with her forever.

At long last, Nicholas opened his eyes and turned to her. “I remain,” he said, smiling. Laughing, he stood up, and Dougless, almost crippled, also tried to stand, her arms still tight around him.

“My arms have no blood in them,” he said, chiding her gently.

“I’m not letting you go until we’re out of this place.”

He laughed. “It is finished. Can you not see that? I am still here. I have not turned into marble.”

“Nicholas, stop teasing me and let’s get out of here. I never want to see your tomb again.”

Still smiling at her, he started to take a step, but his body didn’t move. Puzzled, he looked down at his feet. From his knees down, there was nothing, merely space. There was floor where his feet should have been.

Quickly, he pulled Dougless into his arms and held her as though to crush her. “I love you,” he whispered. “With all my soul I love you. Across time I will love you.”

“Nicholas,” she said, her voice betraying her fear at his words. “Let’s get out of here.”

He held her face in his hands. “Only you have I loved, my Dougless. No other woman. Only you.”

She felt it then. She felt that his body was no longer solid in her arms. “Nicholas,” she yelled in fear.

He kissed her again, kissed her softly, but with all the yearning and wanting and desire and need he felt for her.

“I’m going with you,” she said. “Take me with you. God!” she screamed. “Let me go with him!”

“Dougless,” Nicholas said, and his voice was far away, “Dougless, my love.”

He was no longer in her arms but standing before his tomb wearing his armor. He was faded, indistinct, like a movie seen in a bright room. “Come to me,” he said, holding out his hand. “Come to me.”

Dougless ran to him, but she couldn’t reach him.

A streak of sunlight came through the windows and flashed off his armor.

And then there was nothing.

For one hideous moment, Dougless stood and stared at the tomb; then she put her hands to her ears and screamed, a scream such as no human had ever uttered before. The old stone walls vibrated with the sound, the windows quivered, and the tomb . . . The tomb just lay there, silent and cold.

Dougless collapsed to the floor.

EIGHTEEN

Drink this,” someone was saying.

Dougless caught the hand that held the cup to her lips. “Nicholas,” she said, a faint smile on her lips. Her eyes flew open and she sat up. She was stretched out on a pew in the church, just a few feet from the tomb. She swung her legs to the side, placing her feet on the floor, but she felt too dizzy to take a step.

“Are you feeling better?”

She turned to see the vicar, his kindly face full of concern, a cup of water in his hand.

“Where is Nicholas?” she whispered.

“I didn’t see anyone else. Should I call someone for you? I heard you . . . scream,” he said, knowing it wasn’t a scream. Just remembering that sound made the hair on his body stand on end. “When I got here, you were lying on the floor. Could I call someone for you?” he asked again.

On weak legs, Dougless made her way to the tomb. Slowly, memory was coming back to her, yet still she couldn’t believe it. She looked at the vicar. “You didn’t see him leave, did you?” she asked hoarsely. Her throat was raw.

“I saw no one leave. I just saw you praying. Not many people pray with such . . . intensity today.”

She looked back at the tomb. She wanted to touch it, but she knew the marble would be cold, so unlike Nicholas. “You mean you saw us praying,” she corrected.

“Just you,” the vicar said.

Slowly, Dougless turned to look at him. “Nicholas and I were praying together. You came in and saw us. You’ve watched him for days.”

The vicar gave her a sad look. “I’ll take you to a doctor.”

She moved away from his outstretched hand. “Nicholas. The man who prayed here every morning and every afternoon for the last four days. He was the man in the Elizabethan armor. Remember? He nearly walked in front of a bus.”

“More than a week ago I saw you nearly step in front of a coach. Later, you asked me the date.”

“I . . . ?” Dougless asked. “But that was Nicholas. You told me this week you were amazed at how devout he was. I waited for him outside while he prayed. Remember?” Her voice was urgent as she stepped toward him. “Remember? Nicholas! You waved to us as we rode by on bicycles.”

The vicar backed away from her. “I saw you on a bicycle but no man.”

“No . . .” Dougless whispered, then stepped back from him, her eyes wide with horror.

Turning, she ran out of the church, through the churchyard, down three streets, to the left, then the right, and into the hotel. Ignoring the greeting of the woman at the desk, she ran up the stairs.

“Nicholas,” she cried as she looked about the empty room. The bathroom door was closed, and she ran to it, flung it open. Empty. She turned back to the room, but stopped in the doorway, then looked back into the bathroom. She stared at the shelf below the mirror. Her toiletries were there, but his were gone. She touched the empty half of the shelf. No razor, no shaving cream, no aftershave lotion. In the shower, his shampoo was gone.

In their room, she flung open the closet door. Nicholas’s clothes were gone. Only hers hung there, her suitcases and her carry-on below on the floor. In the dresser his socks and handkerchiefs were missing.

“No,” she whispered, then sat down on the side of the bed. It almost made sense that Nicholas was gone, but not his clothes, not the things he had given her. For a moment she put her hand to her heart, then snatched open her blouse. The pin, the beautiful gold pin with the pearl hanging from it, was gone.

Dougless didn’t try to think after that. She tore the room apart looking for something, anything, of his that had been left behind. The emerald ring he’d given her was gone; the note he’d left under her door was gone. She opened her notebooks. Nicholas had written in them in his bizarre handwriting, but now the pages were blank.

“Think, Dougless, think,” she said. There had to be some mark left by him. In the closet were the books they’d purchased; Nicholas had written his name inside them. They were blank now.

There was nothing, nothing of him. She even looked on her clothes for any dark hairs. Clean.

It was when she saw her red silk nightgown that Nicholas had torn from her body and saw that it was now whole that she became angry. “No!” she said, teeth clenched. “You can’t take him away from me so completely. You cannot!”

People, she thought. Even if there was no physical evidence of him there were an awful lot of people who would remember him. Just because a daffy old vicar couldn’t remember him didn’t mean other people didn’t.

Grabbing her handbag, she left the hotel.

NINETEEN

Dougless opened the door to the hotel room slowly, dreading the empty room. Her body was exhausted, but unfortunately, her mind was still working.

She sat on the edge of the bed, then wearily turned and lay down. It was late and her body was empty of food, but she didn’t consider eating. Her eyes were wide open, sandy-feeling, dry, as she stared up at the underside of the bed canopy.

No one remembered Nicholas.

The coin merchant had no medieval coins, and he didn’t remember seeing Nicholas. Vaguely, he remembered that Dougless had come into his shop to browse. He didn’t remember examining Nicholas’s clothes, and he said he’d never seen silver and gold armor outside a museum. The clerk in the clothing store didn’t remember Nicholas pulling a sword on him. The librarian said Dougless had checked out books, but she’d always been alone. The dentist said he’d never seen a man with ridges on his teeth and a cracked jaw. He had no X-rays for a Nicholas Stafford. No one at the pubs remembered him or at the tea shops. They all remembered Dougless coming in alone. The bicycle shop showed her the receipt, which indicated she’d rented only one bike. Their sweet landlady at the bed-and-breakfast didn’t remember Nicholas, and she said no one had played her piano since her husband had died.

Like a woman possessed, Dougless went wherever she and Nicholas had been and asked anyone who might have seen him. She asked tourists in tea shops, residents on the street, clerks in stores.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Weary, numb with the dawning realization of what had happened, she went back to the hotel and now lay on the bed. She didn’t dare go to sleep. Last night she’d awakened from a dream that Nicholas was lost to her. Nicholas had cradled her in his arms, gently laughed at her, and told her she was dreaming, that he was with her and always would be.

Last night, last night, she thought. He had touched her and loved her, and today he was gone. More than gone. His body, his clothes, even other people’s memory of him was gone.

And it was her fault. He had stayed as long as they hadn’t made love, but once he’d touched her, he’d been taken away. It didn’t help to know she’d been right. He’d come to her for love, not for righting a wrong. He’d stayed when he’d found out who had betrayed him, but he’d slipped away through her arms once he’d admitted he loved her.

She clasped her arms about her chest. He was gone as irreversibly as death. Only she had no comfort of other people who remembered and loved him.

When the telephone on the bedside table rang, she didn’t at first hear it. On the fifth ring, dully, she picked it up. “Hello?”

“Dougless,” said Robert’s voice, stern and angry. “Are you over your hysterics yet?”

She felt too numb, too empty to fight. “What do you want?”

“The bracelet, of course. If you aren’t too wrapped up in Lover-boy to find it.”

“What?” Dougless said, slowly at first, then, “What! Did you see him? Did you see Nicholas? Of course you did. He pushed you out the door.”

“Dougless, are you out of your mind? No one has ever pushed me through any door, and they better not try it either.” He sighed. “Now you’ve got me acting crazy. I want that bracelet.”

“Yes, of course,” she said hurriedly, “but what did you mean when you referred to ‘Lover-boy’?”

“I don’t have time to repeat every—”

“Robert,” Dougless said calmly, “you either tell me, or I flush the bracelet down the toilet, and I don’t believe you have insurance on it yet.”

There was a pause on the other end. “I was right to ditch you. You’re crazy. No wonder your family won’t let you have the dough until you’re thirty-five. I can’t put up with you that long.”

“I’m on my way to the bathroom now.”

“All right! But it’s hard to remember what you said that night. You were hysterical. You said something about having a job helping some guy rewrite history. That’s all I remember.”

“Rewrite history,” Dougless said under her breath. Yes, that’s what Nicholas had wanted to do in this century: change history.

“Dougless! Dougless!” Robert was shouting, but she had put down the telephone.

When Nicholas had come to her, he had been facing an execution. But what they had found out had saved him from that. Grabbing her big carry-on satchel from the closet, she stuffed some clothing and toiletries into it. As she closed a drawer, she glanced into the mirror and put her hand to her throat. Beheading. Today, she thought, we read about it, read that some person walked up a platform and another person struck them with an ax. But we don’t think of what it really means.

“We saved you from that,” she whispered.

Once she was packed, she sat down on a chair to wait for morning. Tomorrow she’d go to Nicholas’s houses and hear how they had changed history. Perhaps hearing that Nicholas had lived to be an old man and had accomplished great things would help her feel better. She leaned back on the chair and stared at the bed. She didn’t dare close her eyes for fear she’d dream.

Dougless was on the first train out of Ashburton and arrived at Bellwood before they opened the gates. She sat outside on the grass and waited for them to open—and tried not to think.

When the gates opened, she bought a ticket for the first tour. Some of her misery was beginning to leave her as she thought of how much Nicholas’s name had meant to him. He’d so hated being a laughingstock, and now she was going to have the comfort of hearing how he’d changed history.

The tour guide was the same woman who’d led her and Nicholas the first time, and Dougless smiled at the memory of Nicholas opening and closing the alarmed door.

Dougless didn’t pay much attention to the first part of the tour or listen to the guide. She just looked at the walls and furniture, and wondered what part of the design Nicholas had contributed.

“And now we come to our most popular room,” the guide said, and there was that same little smirk in her voice as before.

The guide had Dougless’s full attention now, but something in her tone puzzled Dougless. Shouldn’t the guide be more respectful now?

“This was Lord Nicholas Stafford’s private chamber and, to put it politely, he was what is known as a rake.”

The crowd moved forward, eager to hear of this notorious earl, but Dougless stood where she was. Things should have changed. When Nicholas went back, he meant to change history. Dougless had once said that history couldn’t be changed. Had she been terribly, horribly right?

With several firm “excuse me’s,” Dougless pushed to the front of the group. The guide’s talk was word for word as it had been the first time. She talked of Nicholas’s devastating charm with the ladies, and she again told the awful story of Arabella and the table.