A Knight in Shining Armor

  At seven, they opened a bottle of wine, and ate cheese and bread and fruit. Nicholas insisted she read more of the mystery while they ate.

  When it grew dark, they went upstairs to their room and the reality of the intimacy of sharing a room began to dawn on Dougless. But as the hours passed, it seemed more and more natural to spend all her time with this gentle man. Watching him look at the world through wonder-filled eyes was becoming a joy to her. And with each passing hour, her memory of Robert was becoming less distinct.

  When they were alone in the room, Nicholas didn’t allow her to feel awkward. After examining their private bathroom, he demanded to know where the tub was. To Dougless’s American delight, there was a shower stall in the bathroom. But before she could explain how to use the shower, Nicholas had turned on the taps and sprayed himself with cold water. Then, both of them laughing, he bent over while she toweled his hair dry.

  She showed him how to use shampoo and cream rinse, then how to brush his teeth. “Tomorrow I’ll show you how to shave,” she said, smiling at him with his mouth full of toothpaste lather.

  After she’d showered and washed her hair, she put on the plain white nightgown she’d bought and slipped into one of the twin beds. She and Nicholas had had a somewhat heated “discussion” about his bathing every day. The idea seemed to appall him. He’d argued against chills and talked of how body oils protected a person. Dougless had countered by showing him a jar of cold cream. Nicholas said that washing off oils, then buying oil to replace what came for free, was absurd. Dougless had replied that if he didn’t take a bath every day, people on the street and in the restaurants would start talking about how bad he smelled. At that horrible prospect, Nicholas went into the bathroom, shut the door, and she soon heard the water running.

  He must have enjoyed himself, because he stayed in the shower so long that steam came rolling out from under the door. When he finally emerged, he was wearing only a towel about his hips and rubbing his wet hair with another towel.

  There was an awkward moment when he looked up at her as she sat in bed, fresh-faced, wet hair slicked back, and Dougless’s heart jumped into her throat.

  But then Nicholas saw the table lamp beside her, and Dougless spent the next fifteen minutes answering questions about electric lights. Nicholas nearly drove her crazy with turning every switch in the room on and off until, to make him go to bed, she promised to read more to him. She looked away as he dropped his towel and climbed into his own bed wearing absolutely nothing. “Pajamas,” she murmured. “Tomorrow we buy pajamas.”

  She read for only about thirty minutes before she realized that he was asleep, and, turning off the light, she snuggled down under the covers. She was just dozing off when Nicholas’s thrashing made her sit up in alarm. The room was just light enough that she could see him flailing at the covers, rolling back and forth, as he moaned in the grips of a nightmare. Reaching across to his bed, she put her hand on his shoulder. “Nicholas,” she whispered, but he didn’t respond, and his thrashing increased. She shook his shoulder, but he still didn’t wake.

  Throwing back the covers, she sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned over him. “Nicholas, wake up,” she said. “You’re having a nightmare.”

  Immediately, his strong arms reached out, and he pulled her to him.

  “Let me go!” she said, struggling against his grip, but he didn’t release her. Instead, he calmed his thrashing and seemed to be perfectly content to hold her to him as though she were a life-size stuffed toy.

  Using all her strength, Dougless pried his arms from around her, then went back to her own bed. But she was no more under the covers than he began moving about and moaning again. Getting out of bed, she went back to stand over his bed. “Nicholas, you have to wake up,” she said loudly, but her voice had no effect on him. He was kicking at the covers, his arms were flailing about, and judging from the expression on his face, he was reliving some truly horrible experience.

  Sighing in resignation, Dougless pulled back the covers and slipped in beside him. Immediately, he clasped her to him as though he were a scared child and she his doll and, instantly, he settled back into a peaceful sleep. Dougless told herself she was a true martyr, and that she was doing this for him. But somewhere inside herself, she knew she was as lonely and as scared as he probably was. Putting her cheek in the hollow of his warm shoulder, she went to sleep in his arms.

  She awoke before dawn, smiling even before she was fully aware that it was Nicholas’s warm, big body next to hers that was making her feel so good. Her impulse was to turn in his arms and kiss that warm skin.

  But as soon as she was fully aware of where she was, she opened her eyes, then eased out of bed and went to her own bed. For a while, she lay there alone, looking across the beds at him. He was sleeping so quietly, his black curls such a contrast to the white of the pillowcase. Was he her own Knight in Shining Armor? she wondered. Or would he eventually get his memory back and realize that he had a home somewhere in England?

  Feeling a bit devilish, Dougless tiptoed out of bed, quietly pulled the new tape player from where she’d hidden it on the windowsill—she had been waiting for the right moment to show it to him—then put in the Stones tape. Putting the player by Nicholas’s head, she turned the volume up, then pressed play.

  When “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” blasted out, Nicholas came bolt upright in bed. Laughing at the expression of shock on his face, Dougless turned the music off before she woke the other guests.

  Nicholas sat up in bed with a dazed look on his face. “What chaos was that?”

  “Music,” Dougless said, laughing; but as he continued to look shocked, she said, “It was a joke. It’s time to get up, so I thought—”

  Dougless quit smiling when he didn’t smile back. She guessed Elizabethan men didn’t like practical jokes. Correction: Modern men who thought they were Elizabethan men didn’t like practical jokes.

  It was twenty minutes later when Dougless came sputtering out of the bathroom. “You put shampoo on my toothbrush!” she said, wiping her tongue on a towel.

  “I, madam?” Nicholas asked, an exaggerated look of innocence on his face.

  “Why, you—” she said as she grabbed a pillow and tossed it at him. “I’ll get you for this.”

  “More of your ‘music’ at dawn, mayhap?” he said, fending off the pillow.

  Dougless laughed. “All right, I guess I deserved it. Are you ready for breakfast?”

  At breakfast, Dougless told him of his dental appointment. She saw his grimace, but paid no attention to it. Everyone grimaced at the thought of going to the dentist. While he was eating, she got him to give her the names of some of his other estates besides Thornwyck, so, while he was at the dentist, she could go to the local library and see what she could find out.

  Nicholas was quiet as they walked to the dentist, and in the waiting room he didn’t examine the plastic-covered chairs. Dougless knew he was really worried when he wouldn’t even look at the plastic plant she pointed out to him. When the receptionist called him, Dougless squeezed his hand. “You’ll be all right. Afterward I’ll . . . I’ll take you out and buy you ice cream. That’s something to look forward to.” But she knew he had no idea what ice cream was—didn’t remember what ice cream was, she corrected herself.

  Since she’d booked him for a checkup, at least one filling and a cleaning, she knew he’d be in the chair for a while, so she asked the receptionist to call her at the library when he was nearly finished.

  As she walked to the library, she felt as a mother must feel at having left her child behind. “It’s only the dentist,” she told herself.

  The Ashburton library was very small, oriented toward children’s books and novels for adults. Dougless sat on a stool in the British travel section and began searching for any mention of the eleven estates Nicholas said he’d owned. Four were now ruins, two had been torn down in the 1950s (it made her sick to think they’d survived so long and been torn down so re
cently), one was Thornwyck Castle, one she couldn’t find, two were private residences, and one was open to the public. She copied down the pertinent information about the estate open to the public—hours, days open—then looked at her watch. Nicholas had been in the dentist’s an hour and a half now.

  She searched through the card catalog, but could find nothing on the Stafford family. Another forty-five minutes went by.

  When the telephone on the checkout desk rang, she jumped. The librarian told Dougless it was the dentist calling and that Nicholas was nearly finished. Dougless practically ran back to the dentist’s office.

  The dentist came out to greet her and asked her to come to his office. “Mr. Stafford puzzles me,” the doctor said, as he put Nicholas’s X-rays on a wall-lit machine. “I usually make it a policy to never give an opinion about another doctor’s work, but as you can see here,” he said, pointing at the X-ray, “Mr. Stafford’s previous dental work has been . . . Well, I can only describe it as brutal. The three teeth that have been extracted look as though they were literally torn from his mouth. See, here and here the bone was cracked and grew back crooked. The extractions must have been extremely painful afterward as the bone healed. And, too, I know it’s impossible, but I don’t believe Mr. Stafford has ever seen a hypodermic before. Perhaps he was put under when he had those teeth removed.”

  The doctor turned off the light. “Of course he had to have been put under. In this day and age we can’t imagine the pain that extractions such as these must have caused him.”

  “This day and age,” Dougless said softly. “But four hundred years ago teeth were, as you said, ‘torn’ from a person’s mouth?”

  The doctor smiled. “Four hundred years ago I imagine that everyone had extractions like his—but without anesthetic or painkillers afterward. And, yes, I imagine a lot of people went away with cracked jawbones.”

  Dougless took a deep breath. “How were his teeth otherwise? How was he as a patient?”

  “Excellent on both counts. He was very relaxed in the chair, and laughed when the hygienist asked if she’d hurt him when she’d cleaned his teeth. I filled one cavity and checked his other teeth.” The doctor looked puzzled for a moment. “He has some slight ridging on his teeth. I’ve only seen that in school textbooks, and it usually means hunger for a year or so as a child. I wonder what could have caused such ridging in him? He doesn’t strike me as a man whose family couldn’t afford food.”

  Drought, Dougless almost said. Or flooding. Something to make the crops fail in a time of no refrigeration or frozen food or fresh food flown in from around the world.

  “I didn’t mean to keep you,” the doctor said when Dougless said nothing. “It was just that I was concerned about his previous dental work. He . . .” The doctor chuckled. “He certainly asked a lot of questions. He isn’t by chance thinking of going to dental school?”

  Dougless smiled. “He’s just curious. Thank you so much for your time and your concern.”

  “I’m glad I had the cancellations. He has a most interesting set of teeth.”

  Dougless thanked him again, then went into the reception room to see Nicholas leaning across the counter flirting with the pretty receptionist.

  “Come on,” she snapped at him after she’d paid the bill. She hadn’t meant to be so short-tempered, but it seemed that circumstances were trying to force her to believe that this man actually was from the sixteenth century.

  “That is not the barber I have been to,” Nicholas said, smiling, rubbing his still-numb lip. “I should like to take that man and his machines back with me.”

  “All the machines are electric,” Dougless said gloomily. “I doubt that Elizabethan houses were wired for the two-twenty they have in this country.”

  Catching her arm, Nicholas turned her to face him. “What ails you?”

  “Who are you?” she cried, looking up at him. “Why do you have ridges on your teeth? How did your jawbone get cracked when your other teeth were pulled?”

  Nicholas smiled at her because he could see that, at last, she was truly beginning to believe him. “I am Nicholas Stafford, earl of Thornwyck, Buckshire, and Southeaton. Two days ago I was in a cell awaiting my execution and the year was 1564.”

  “I cannot believe it,” Dougless said, looking away from his face. “I will not believe it. Time travel cannot happen.”

  “What would make you believe?” he asked softly.

  SEVEN

  As Dougless walked with him toward the ice cream shop, she pondered the question. What would make her believe? she asked herself. But she could think of nothing. There seemed to be explanations for everything. He could be a fabulous actor and merely pretending that everything was new to him. His teeth could have been wrenched out while playing rugby in school. Since she could verify nearly everything he’d told her, that meant he could have found the information previously, then used it in his charade.

  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 rapists 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. r />
  “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.