A Knight in Shining Armor

  The best Dougless-story yet, she thought.

  By the time she got to the hotel, she was slamming things about. Damn all men, she thought. Damn the good ones as well as the bad. They broke your heart over and over again.

  “I see your temper has not improved,” Nicholas said from behind her.

  “My temper is not your concern,” she snapped. “I was hired to do a job, and I’m doing it. I’m going to write Goshawk Hall and see when we can look at the papers.”

  Nicholas was beginning to get angry himself. “The animosity you be-mete to me has not foundation.”

  “I have no animosity toward you,” she said with fury. “I’m doing my best to help you so you can get back to your loving wife and to your own time.” Her head came up. “I just realized that there’s no need for you to be here. I can do the research alone. You can’t read modern books anyway. Why don’t you go to . . . to the French Riviera or somewhere? I can do this by myself.”

  “You would that I leave?” he asked softly.

  “Sure, why not? You could go to London and party. You could meet all the beautiful women of this century. We have lots of tables nowadays.”

  Nicholas stiffened. “You want away from me?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes,” she said. “My research would go much better without you. You’re . . . you’re just getting in my way. You know nothing about my world, so you can’t help me. You can barely dress yourself, you still eat with your hands half the time, you can’t read or write our language, and I have to explain the simplest things to you. It would be a thousand times better if you left me alone.” Her hands were gripping the chair back so hard her knuckles appeared to be about to come through the skin.

  When she glanced up at him, the naked pain on his face was more than she could bear. He had to leave, she thought. He had to let her piece her mind and body back together. Before she yet again humiliated herself with tears, she turned and left the room. Once she was in her own sleeping alcove, she leaned against the door and cried deeply.

  Just to get this over, she thought, to send him away, to go back home and never even look at another man again, that’s what she needed.

  She fell down on her bed, buried her face in her pillow, and cried silently. She cried for a long time, until the worst of it was over and she began to feel better. And once her tears were shed, she began to think more clearly.

  How stupid she’d been acting! What had Nicholas done wrong? She visualized him sitting in a dungeon awaiting execution for a crime he didn’t commit, then the next minute he’s floating through the air and he’s in the twentieth century.

  She sat up and blew her nose. And how well he’d handled everything! He’d adjusted to automobiles, paper money, a strange language, strange food, and . . . And a weepy woman suffering from the rejection of another man. Yet, through it all, Nicholas had been generous with his money, his laughter, and his knowledge.

  And what had Dougless done? She’d been furious with him because he’d dared marry another woman some four hundred years ago.

  When she looked at it that way, it was almost humorous. She glanced up at the door. Her room was dark, but there was light coming under the door. The things she’d said to him! Awful, terrible things.

  She practically ran to the door and flung it open. “Nicholas, I—” The room was empty. She opened the door into the hall and looked out, but the hallway was also empty. When she turned back into the room, she saw the note on the floor, where he must have slipped it under her door. Quickly she looked at the note.

  Dougless had no idea what the words said, but to her eyes the paper looked like an Elizabethan runaway note. His clothes were still in the closet and so were his capcases—suitcases, she corrected herself.

  She had to find him and apologize, tell him he shouldn’t leave, tell him that she did need his help. Her head seemed to ring with all the rotten, terrible things she’d said to him in the last two days. He could read. And he had lovely table manners. He— Damn, damn, damn, she thought as she tore down the stairs and ran out of the hotel into the rain.

  She clasped her hands about her upper arms, put her head down, and started running. She had to find him. He probably had no idea what an umbrella was or a raincoat. He’d catch his death. Or he’d be fighting the rain so hard he’d walk in front of a bus—or a train. Would he know a train track from a sidewalk? What if he got on a train by himself? He wouldn’t know where to get off—or how to get back to her if he did get off.

  She ran to the train station, but it was closed. Good, she thought, pushing cold, wet hair out of her face so she could see. She tried to read the dial on her watch, but the rain was hitting her in the face too hard to see clearly. It looked to be after eleven, so she must have been crying for hours. She shivered, thinking what could have happened to him in all those hours.

  There was a shadow in a gutter, and Dougless ran to it, knowing it was Nicholas lying dead in a heap. But it was only a shadow. Blinking, trying to keep her eyes open against the rain, sneezing twice, she looked at the dark windows of the village.

  Maybe he had just started walking. How far could a person walk in . . . ? She didn’t even know how long he’d been gone. Which direction had he gone?

  She started running toward the end of the street, cold water splashing up the back of her legs and under her skirt. There seemed to be no lights on anywhere; then, as she rounded a corner, she saw a light in a window. A pub, she thought. She’d ask there and see if anyone had seen him.

  When she walked in, the warmth and light of the pub hit her so strongly that for a moment she couldn’t see.

  Freezing, shivering, dripping, she stood still to allow her eyes to adjust to the light; then she heard a laugh that had become familiar to her. Nicholas! she thought, as she ran through the smoke-filled room.

  What she saw was like a painting advertising the seven sins. Nicholas, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, a cigar clamped between his strong teeth, sat behind a table that looked as though it might break under the weight of the food on it. There was a pretty woman on either side of him, and there was lipstick on his cheeks and his shirt.

  “Dougless,” he said in delight. “Come join us.”

  She stood there feeling like a wet cat, her hair plastered against her head, her clothes sticking to her, a gallon of water in each shoe, a puddle at her feet that could sail a three-masted schooner.

  “Get up from there and come with me,” she said in the voice she used to settle down unruly schoolchildren.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Nicholas said, smiling and mocking her at the same time.

  He’s drunk, she thought.

  He kissed each woman on the mouth, then leaped onto the seat, bounded over the table, and swooped Dougless into his arms. “Put me down,” she hissed, but he carried her through the pub and outside.

  “It’s raining,” she said, her lips tight and her arms folded over her chest.

  “Nay, madam, it is a clear night.” Still holding her, he began to nuzzle her neck.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “You’re not going to start that again. Put me down at once.”

  He put her down, but he did so in such a way that her body slid down his.

  “You’re drunk,” she said, pushing him away.

  “Oh, aye, I am that,” he said happily. “The ale here pleases me. And the women please me,” he said as he caught her about the waist.

  Dougless again pushed him away. “I was worried about you and here you were boozing it up with a couple of floozies and—”

  “Too fast,” he cried. “Too many words. Here, my pretty Dougless, look at the stars.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I happen to be very wet and I’m also freezing.” As though to emphasize the fact, she sneezed.

  Once again, he lifted her into his arms. “Put me down!”

  “You are cold; I am warm,” he said, as though that settled the matter. “You feared for me?”

  Was it possible to stay
angry at this man for very long? She was willing to admit defeat as she snuggled against him. He was indeed warm. “I said some awful things to you, and I’m very sorry. You aren’t really a burden.”

  He smiled down at her. “Is this the cause of your fear? That perhaps I was angered?”

  “No. When you were gone, I thought maybe you’d walked in front of a bus or a train. I was afraid of your being hurt.”

  “Do I appear to have no pia mater?”

  “Huh?”

  “Brain. Do I seem stupid to you?”

  “No, of course not. You just don’t know how our modern world works, that’s all.”

  “Oh? Who is wet and who is dry?”

  “Both of us are wet, since you continue carrying me,” she said smugly.

  “For all your knowledge, I have found what we need to know, and tomorrow we ride to Goshawk.”

  “How did you find out anything and from whom? Those women in there? Did you kiss it out of them?”

  “Are you jealous, Montgomery?”

  “No, Stafford, I am not.” That statement proved that the Pinocchio theory was false. Her nose didn’t grow at all. (She checked to make sure.) “What did you find out?”

  “Dickie Harewood owns Goshawk.”

  “But didn’t he marry your mother? Is he as old as you?”

  “Beware, or I will show you how old I am.” He shifted her in his arms. “Am I feeding you too much?”

  “It’s more likely you’re weak from flirting with all the women. It saps a man’s strength, you know.”

  “Mine has not been impaired. Now, I was telling you?”

  “That Dickie Harewood still owns Goshawk.”

  “Yes, on the morrow I shall see him. What is a weekend?”

  “It’s the end of the workweek when everyone gets off. And you can’t just go riding up to some lord’s house. I hope you’re not thinking of inviting yourself for the weekend.”

  “The workers get off? But no one seems to work at all. I see no farmers in the fields, no one plowing. People now shop and drive cars.”

  “We have a forty-hour workweek and tractors. Nicholas, you’re not answering me. What are you planning to do? You really can’t tell this man Harewood you’re from the sixteenth century. You can’t tell anyone that, even women in bars.” She tugged at his collar. “You’ve ruined that shirt. Lipstick never comes out.”

  Grinning, he shifted her again. “You have on none of this lipstick.”

  She moved her head away from him. “Don’t start that again. Now, tell me about Goshawk Hall.”

  “The Harewood family owns it still. They come for the end . . .”

  “Weekend.”

  “Aye, the weekend, and—” He gave Dougless a sideways look. “Arabella is there.”

  “Arabella? What does the twentieth-century Arabella have to do with anything?”

  “My Arabella was Dickie Harewood’s daughter, and there seems to be a Dickie Harewood again at Goshawk hall, and he again has a daughter named Arabella who is the same age as my Arabella was when we—”

  “Spare me,” Dougless said, then looked at him in silence for a moment. The papers recently found, another Arabella, and another Dickie. It was almost as though history were repeating itself. How odd, she thought.

  TWELVE

  Dougless watched Nicholas atop the stallion and held her breath. She’d heard of people riding horses like this one, but she’d never seen it. Every employee and every visitor at the riding stables had stopped to watch as Nicholas brought the high-strung, angry, mean-tempered animal under control.

  Last night they’d stayed up until after one A.M. while Dougless made him tell her all about his relationship to the Harewoods. They’d had estates near one another. Dickie was old enough to be Nicholas’s father and he’d had a daughter, Arabella, who’d married Lord Robert Sydney. She and her husband had hated each other, so after she’d given him an heir, they’d lived apart, although Arabella had given birth to three more children.

  “One of them yours,” Dougless had said, taking notes.

  Nicholas’s face softened. “There is no reason to think ill of her. She and the child died in that childbirth.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dougless said with a grimace, and knew that the woman could easily have died from something as simple as the midwife’s not washing her hands.

  Dougless tried to think of a way to get invited to the Harewood estates as quickly as possible, but she had no credentials as a scholar, and although Nicholas was an earl, his title had been taken from him when he was condemned for treason. He couldn’t even claim to be his own aristocratic descendant. She thought until she couldn’t stay awake any longer; then she’d bid Nicholas good night and gone to her own bed.

  “This is better,” she thought as she drifted into sleep. She had her emotions under control. She was getting over Robert and she was no longer thinking she was falling for a married man. She’d help Nicholas get back to his wife, help him clear his name; then she’d go home feeling good about herself. For once in her life she was not going to fall for an unsuitable man.

  Nicholas woke her early the next morning by throwing open the sitting room door. “Can you ride a horse? Can anyone today ride a horse?”

  Dougless assured him she could ride, courtesy of her Colorado cousins; then after breakfast she’d found a nearby riding stables. It was four miles to the stables and Nicholas insisted they walk. “Your machines have made you lazy,” he said, slapping her on the back as he set off at a brisk pace. At the stables, as Dougless sat on a bench fanning herself, Nicholas had turned up his nose at all the horses for rent, but his eyes had lit up at the sight of an enormous black horse in a field. The animal was prancing about and tossing its head as though it dared anyone to come near it. As though in a trance, Nicholas had walked toward the creature. When the horse ran toward him, Dougless sat up and bit her knuckles in fear.

  “This one,” Nicholas said to the stableman.

  Dougless hurried to him. “You can’t really think of riding that horse. There are lots of horses here; why don’t you pick one of them?”

  But nothing anyone could say would change Nicholas’s mind. The owner of the stables came into the yard, and he seemed to think it would be a great joke to see Nicholas break his neck. Dougless knew that in America there’d be talk of insurance, but not in England. A groom got a rope around the stallion’s neck, then led it into a stall, where another groom saddled it. Finally, the horse was led into a cobbled courtyard and the reins were gleefully handed to Nicholas.

  “I never seen nobody ride like that,” one of the grooms said as soon as Nicholas had mounted and pulled the horse under control. “He ride a lot?”

  “Always,” Dougless answered. “He’ll get on a horse before he’ll get in a car. In fact, he’s spent much more of his life on a horse than in a car.”

  “Must have,” the groom mumbled, watching Nicholas with awe.

  “You are ready?” Nicholas asked Dougless.

  She mounted her sedate mare and followed him as he took off. Never had she seen a happier man, and it struck Dougless afresh how different the modern world must be from what he knew. He and the horse fit together as one being, as though he’d become a centaur.

  Rural England is full of footpaths and horse trails, and Nicholas went galloping down one of them as though he’d been down it a thousand times—which he probably had, Dougless thought. She called out to him that maybe he should ask directions, but then she doubted if someone had moved Goshawk Hall in the last few hundred years.

  She had trouble keeping up with him, lost him repeatedly, and once he returned for her. She had stopped at a crossroads and was looking at the ground for his tracks. When he saw her, he was very interested in what she was doing. Dougless, trying her best to control her mare, who was reacting to the aggressive nearness of Nicholas’s stallion, told him she’d buy him some Louis L’Amour books and read to him about tracking. Laughing, he pointed the way to her, then left in
a flurry of mud and leaves.

  At last she reached an open gate with a small brass plaque that said, “Goshawk Hall.” She rode down the drive to see an enormous, rectangular fortress of a house set amid acres of beautiful, rolling gardens.

  Dougless felt a bit embarrassed to be riding up to this house uninvited, but Nicholas was there, already off his horse and walking toward a tall, grubby-looking man on his hands and knees in a bed of petunias.

  Gratefully dismounting, Dougless took her horse’s reins and ran after him. “Don’t you think we should knock on the front door first?” Dougless asked when she reached him. “Why don’t you ask for Mr. Harewood and tell him we’d like to see the papers.”

  “You are on my ground now,” he said over his shoulder as he walked toward the gardener.

  “Nicholas!” she hissed at him.

  “Harewood?” Nicholas said to the man on his knees in the flower bed.

  Turning, the tall man looked up at Nicholas. He had blue eyes and blond hair that was now turning gray, and his face had the smooth, pink complexion of a baby’s. He also didn’t look especially intelligent. “Ah, yes. Do I know you?”

  “Nicholas Stafford of Thornwyck.”

  “Hmmm,” the man said as he stood up, not bothering to dust off his dirty old trousers. “Not the Staffords with that rogue son who got himself tried for treason?”

  Dougless thought the man could have been speaking of something that happened last year.

  “The same,” Nicholas said, his back straight.

  Harewood looked from him to his horse. Nicholas was wearing a very expensive riding outfit with tall, shiny black boots, and Dougless suddenly felt grubby in her Levi’s, cotton shirt, and Nikes. “You ride that?” Harewood asked.

  “I did. I hear you have some papers on my family.”

  “Oh, yes, we found them when a wall fell down,” he said, smiling. “Looks like somebody hid them. Come in and we’ll have some tea and see if we can find the papers. I think Arabella has them.”