A Knight in Shining Armour (28 page)

In their suite, Dougless saw a different Nicholas. He was very concerned that his clothes weren’t correct. He held up a gorgeous linen shirt and said, “It needs pluming up.”

Dougless looked at her own meager wardrobe and felt like crying. A weekend at an English lord’s estate, where they dress for dinner, and she had nothing but serviceable wool. She wished she had her mother’s white gown, the one with the pearls, or the red one with—

Halting, she thought for a moment. Then she smiled. And the next minute she was on the phone to her sister Elizabeth in Maine.

“You want me to send you two of Mother’s best gowns?” Elizabeth said. “She will kill both of us.”

“Elizabeth,” Dougless said firmly. “I take full responsibility. Just send them NOW. Overnight mail. Got a pencil?” She gave Elizabeth the address at Goshawk Hall.

“Dougless, what’s going on? First I get a frantic-sounding call from you where you won’t tell me anything, and now you want me to ransack Mother’s closet.”

“Nothing much. How’s your paper coming?”

“It’s making me crazy. And if that weren’t bad enough, I have stopped up drains. A plumber is coming today. Dougless, are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Good luck with your paper and your plumber. Bye.”

Dougless packed her suitcase, then Nicholas’s—it was one of those things he wouldn’t consider doing for himself—then she called a taxi. There was no suitcase large enough to hold his armor, so it was put into the biggest shopping bag.

When they arrived at Goshawk Hall, Arabella literally met Nicholas with open arms. “Come inside, darling,” she purred, her hands all over him. “I feel we already know one another. After all, our ancestors were
very
friendly. Who are we to be any different?” She ushered him inside, leaving Dougless with a half-dozen or so suitcases at her feet.

“Who are we to be any different?” she mocked in a falsetto voice as she paid the cab driver.

It didn’t take Dougless five minutes to learn that she was not considered a houseguest but a servant, and not a very welcome one at that. A man ushered her—Dougless carrying her own suitcases—to a small, barren, cold room not far from the kitchen. Feeling like a governess in a gothic, neither servant nor family, she unpacked and hung her clothes in a grubby little wardrobe. Looking about the ugly little room, she felt martyred. Here she was doing this to help some guy save his life and his family name and she was never even going to be able to tell anyone about it.

She left the room and went into the kitchen to find the big room empty, but tea for two had been set up at one end of the worktable.

“There you are,” said a large woman with graying hair.

Minutes later, Dougless was sitting at the table having tea with the woman. Mrs. Anderson was the cook and the most wonderful gossip Dougless had ever met. There wasn’t a thing the woman didn’t know or was unwilling to tell. She wanted to know why Dougless was there and who Lord Stafford was, and in return she wanted to tell Dougless
everything.
Dougless obliged with a complicated web of lies that she prayed she’d be able to remember.

An hour later the other servants began filtering back into the kitchen, and Dougless could see they wanted her to leave so Mrs. Anderson could tell them all the juicy news.

Upon leaving the kitchen, Dougless went in search of Nicholas. She found him outside with Arabella under a grape arbor, the two of them cozied up like nesting birds.

“My lord,” Dougless said loudly, “you wanted to dictate letters?”

“His lordship is busy at the moment,” Arabella said, glaring. “He will attend to business on Monday. In the library are notes of mine that you may type.”

“His lordship is—” Dougless had intended to say “my employer, not you,” but Nicholas interrupted her.

“Yes, Miss Montgomery, perhaps you can help Lady Arabella.”

Dougless started to tell him what she thought of him, but his eyes were pleading with her to be obedient. In spite of what she knew she should do, that is, tell them both what she thought of them, she turned and went back into the house. It wasn’t any of her business, she thought. It didn’t matter to her what he did with other women. Of course she might point out to him that his foolishness with Arabella in the past had left generations of people laughing at him, and now it looked as though he was about to repeat himself. Yes, she might bring herself to point out that one small fact to him. And, also, if he was so madly in love with his wife, why was he snuggling up with the overendowed Arabella?

It took Dougless a while to find the library, and when she did, she was pleased to see that it looked just as she thought a library in one of these big, grand houses should look: leather-bound books, leather chairs, dark green walls, oak doors. She was looking around the room so intently that she didn’t at first see the man standing in front of the bookcases, reading a book. She saw him before he saw her, and instantly, she knew who he was. Only a man like her father, a man who had dedicated his life to learning, could be so absorbed in a book that he was oblivious of all else. He was young, blond, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, and he looked as though he worked out often. Even with his face tipped down, Dougless could see that he was very good looking, not divine, as Nicholas was, but good enough to set a few hearts to beating quickly. She also took in the fact that he was only about five feet six inches tall. However, it had been Dougless’s experience that short, handsome men were as vain as bantam roosters, and they loved short, pretty females such as Dougless.

“Hello,” she said.

The man glanced up from his book, down, then up again, and ended by staring at her with unabashed interest. He put his book away and came forward with his hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Hamilton Nolman.”

Dougless took his hand. Blue eyes, perfect teeth. What a very interesting man, she thought. “I’m Dougless Montgomery, and you are an American.”

“The same as you,” he said, and there was an immediate bond between them. He stepped closer. “Can you believe this place?” he said as he glanced around the room.

“Never. Or the people. Lady Arabella sent me in here to type and I don’t even work for her.”

Hamilton laughed. “She’ll have you scrubbing toilets before long. She doesn’t allow pretty women near her. All the maids working here are dogs.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” She looked at him. “Aren’t you the doctor who’s working on the Stafford papers? The ones that fell out of the wall?”

“That I am.”

“That must have been exciting,” Dougless said, wide-eyed, trying to look as young and innocent, and as dumb, as possible. “I heard the papers contained secret information. Is that true, Dr. Nolman?”

He chuckled in a fatherly way. “Please, call me Lee. It has been rather exciting, although I’m just now getting into the papers.”

“They’re all about some man who was about to be beheaded, aren’t they? I . . .” She lowered her eyes and her voice. “You wouldn’t possibly tell me about the papers, would you?”

She watched him puff out his chest in pride; then the next minute they were seated and he was telling her about how he’d come to have the job and what had happened since he’d arrived. In spite of the fact that he seemed a tiny bit too full of himself, she found herself liking him. Wouldn’t her father love having a son-in-law who was interested in medieval history?

Wait a minute, Dougless, she cautioned herself. You’re swearing off men, remember? She was listening so intently to Lee that she didn’t hear Nicholas enter the room.

“Miss Montgomery!” Nicholas said so loudly that her arm fell out from under her chin and she nearly fell off the chair. “Are my letters typed?”

“Typing?” she asked. “Oh, Ni . . . Ah, your lordship, I’d like you to meet Dr. Hamilton Nolman, he’s—”

Arrogantly, Nicholas walked past Dr. Nolman, ignoring the doctor’s outstretched hand, as he went to the window. “Leave us,” Nicholas said over his shoulder.

Lee wiggled his eyebrows at Dougless, picked up his books, and left the room, shutting the heavy doors behind him.

“Just who do you think you are?” Dougless asked. “You’re no longer some sixteenth-century lord and master now. You can’t just dismiss people like that. And, besides, what do you know about typing?”

When Nicholas turned to look at her, she could tell by his expression that he had no idea what she was talking about. “You were very close to that small man.”

“I was . . . ?” Dougless trailed off. Was that jealousy in his voice? She walked over to the big oak desk. “He’s very good looking, isn’t he? And a scholar at his age, imagine. How’s Arabella doing? Told her about your wife yet?”

“What conversation did you have with that man?”

“The usual,” she said, running her finger along the desk. “He told me I was pretty, that sort of thing.”

When she looked back at Nicholas, she saw his face had an expression of controlled rage. Her heart swelled with happiness. Revenge, she thought,
can
be sweet. “I did find out some things though. Lee—that’s Dr. Nolman—hasn’t really read much of the papers yet. It seems that your Arabella took her time in choosing from the many scholars who asked to look at the papers. From what I gather, she chose the best-looking man from the photographs she insisted that the applicants send. Sort of a male beauty contest. I hear she threw away the women’s photos. Pure heterosexual, our lovely Arabella is. Lee said she was awfully disappointed that he turned out to be shorter than she is. He said Arabella took one look at him and said, ‘I thought all Americans were tall.’ Lee, thankfully, seems to have his ego intact, because he just laughed. He pretty much thinks Arabella is a jerk. Oh, sorry, I’m forgetting how much you adore her.”

Nicholas’s face was still enraged, and Dougless gave him her biggest smile. “How
is
Arabella?” she asked sweetly.

Nicholas glared at her for a moment, then his eyes changed. Turning, he pointed at an old oak table standing against a wall. “That, madam, is the
true
table.” With a smug little smile, he left the room.

With her fists clenched, Dougless went over to the table and gave it a good, hard kick. Hobbling about, holding her toe, she cursed all men.

D
inner was to be served
at
eight,
and as Dougless dressed in her museum-visiting clothes, she hoped Elizabeth would send the gowns to her as soon as possible. But as eight drew near and no one summoned her to dinner, she wondered what was going on. She knew the servants had eaten earlier and she hadn’t been invited to eat with them, so she assumed she was to eat with the family. Sitting in her room, she waited.

At eight-fifteen, a man came to her and told her to follow him. She was led through the maze of rooms to a narrow dining room with a big fireplace and a table long enough to use for skateboarding. Arabella, her father, Nicholas, and Lee were already seated. Arabella, as Dougless had expected, was wearing a dress so low cut it pretty much left her bare from the waist up. She was showing more than Dougless even possessed.

As unobtrusively as possible, Dougless slipped into a chair next to Lee that a servant held out for her.

“Your boss wouldn’t eat until you were here,” Lee whispered as the first course was served. “What’s going on between you two? Is he a descendant of
the
Nicholas Stafford, the one that was almost beheaded?”

Dougless gave Lee the same story she had given the cook, a story she was sure that by now every servant probably knew, that Nicholas was indeed a descendant, and he very much wanted to clear his ancestor’s name.