A Knight in Shining Armor

Dougless forgot about the question of whether he was or was not from the sixteenth century. “Tell me what happened,” she whispered.

He paced a moment longer; then, after another look at the tomb, he went to sit by her. “I have lands in Wales,” he said softly. “When I learned my lands were under attack, I raised an army. But in my haste to protect what was mine, I did not petition the queen for permission to raise this army. She was . . .”

For a moment he looked into the distance, his eyes angry and hard. “The queen was told by someone . . .” Pausing, he took a breath. “She was told that the army I was gathering was to join forces with the young Scots queen.”

“Mary Queen of Scots,” Dougless said, and he nodded.

“I was given a hasty trial and condemned to be beheaded. I had but three days left before I was to be executed when you . . . when you called me here.”

“Then you’re lucky!” Dougless said. “Beheading. Disgusting. We don’t do that now.”

“You have no treason that you do not need to behead people?” Nicholas asked. “Or perhaps you punish the nobility in another way.” He put up his hand when she started to answer. “Nay, we will discuss this later. My mother is a powerful woman and she has friends. From the moment I was taken, she has worked without rest to prove my innocence—and she has made progress. She believes she is close to finding who betrayed me. I must return and prove that I am not guilty. If I do not, she will lose all. She will be a pauper.”

“The queen would take everything you own?”

“All. It would be as though I truly were a traitor.”

Dougless thought about what he’d told her. Of course none of what he was saying was real, but if it were, perhaps there was something to be learned today from the history books. “Do you have any idea who told the queen your army was going to be used to take her throne?”

“I am not sure, but when I came forward, I was writing a letter to my mother. At last I had remembered a man from some ten years ago who may have had a grudge against me. I had been told that he was now at court. Perhaps he . . .” Trailing off, Nicholas put his head in his hands in despair.

Dougless almost reached out to him to touch his hair, perhaps to rub his neck, but she withdrew. She reminded herself that this man’s problems were not her own, and there was no reason on earth she should spend her time trying to help him find out why he—or maybe one of his ancestors—had been unjustly accused of treason.

On the other hand, the idea of injustice made Dougless’s skin crawl. Maybe it was in her blood. Her grandfather, Hank Montgomery, had been a union organizer before he returned home to Maine to run the family business, Warbrooke Shipping. To this day, her grandfather hated any type of injustice and would risk his life to stop it.

“As I told you, my father is a professor of medieval history,” Dougless said softly, “and I’ve helped him do some research. Maybe I could help you find what you’re looking for. And, besides, how many people are you going to find who are in such a situation that they’d even consider helping a man wearing a sword and balloon shorts?”

Nicholas stood up. “You refer to my slops? You jest at my clothing? These . . . these . . .”

“Trousers.”

“Aye, these trousers. They bind a man’s legs so that I cannot bend. And these,” he said as he put his hands in his pockets. “They are so small that I can carry nothing. And last night I was cold in the rain and—”

“But you’re cool today,” she said, smiling.

“And this.” He pulled back the fly to show the zipper. “This can hurt a man.”

Dougless began to laugh. “If you wore your underwear instead of leaving it on the bed, maybe the zipper wouldn’t hurt.”

“Underwear? What is that?”

“Elastic, remember?”

“Ah, yes,” he said, and began to smile.

Dougless suddenly thought, What else do I have to do? Cry some more? Six of her women friends had taken her out to dinner before she left for England to wish her bon voyage. There had been a lot of laughter about her romantic holiday. Yet here she was wanting to go home after just five days.

Looking up at this smiling man, Dougless wondered, if she were honest with herself, would she rather spend four and a half weeks with Robert and Gloria, or would she rather help this man research what may or may not be his previous life? Smiling back at Nicholas, she thought that the whole thing reminded her of a ghost story where the heroine goes to the library and reads about the curse on the house she’s rented for the summer.

“Yes,” she heard herself say. “I will help you.”

Nicholas sat down by her, took her hand in his, and fervently kissed the back of it. “You are a lady at heart.”

She was smiling at the top of his head, but his words made her smile disappear. “At heart? Are you saying that I’m not a lady elsewhere?”

He gave a little shrug. “Who can fathom why God has joined me with a commoner?”

“Why you—” she began. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that her uncle was the king of Lanconia and she often spent summers playing with her six cousins, the princes and princesses. But something stopped her. Let him think what he wanted. “Should I address you as ‘your lordship’?” she asked archly.

Nicholas frowned thoughtfully. “I have considered that question. Now, when no one knows of my titles, I can move about unharmed. And these clothes, they are the clothes of all the people. I cannot understand your sumptuary laws. I am sure I should hire retainers, yet in this time a shirt costs a man’s yearly wage. Try as I might, I cannot understand your ways. Often I . . .” He looked away. “Often, I make a fool of myself.”

“Oh, well, I do that and I’ve grown up in this century,” Dougless said lightly.

“But you are a woman,” he said, looking back at her.

“First of all, let’s get one thing straight: in this century women aren’t men’s slaves. We women today say what we want to say and do what we want to do. We know we weren’t put on this earth only to entertain men.”

Nicholas’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. “Is this what is believed today of women of my time? You believe that our women were for pleasure only?”

“Obedient, docile, locked away in a castle somewhere, kept pregnant, and never allowed to go to school.”

Emotions ran across Nicholas’s face: astonishment, anger, disbelief. At last, his face relaxed and he smiled, his eyes full of merriment. “When I return, I will tell my mother what is believed about her. My mother has buried three husbands.” Laughter made his lips twitch. “King Henry said my mother’s husbands wished themselves into the grave because they weren’t half the man she is. Docile? Nay, lady, not docile. No schooling? My mother speaks four languages and argues philosophy.”

“Then your mother is an exception. I’m sure most women are—were—downtrodden and brutalized. They had to be. They were the property of the men. Chattel.”

He gave her a piercing stare. “And in your day men are noble? They do not abandon women? They do not leave them to the mercy of the elements, with no means of support, no protection, no funds to so much as find a night’s lodging?”

Dougless turned away, blushing. So maybe she wasn’t in a good position to argue about this. “Okay, you’ve made your point.” She looked back at him. “All right, let’s get down to business. First we go to a drugstore, or chemist, as it’s called here in England, and we buy toiletries.” She sighed. “I need eyeshadow, base, blush, and I’d kill for a tube of lipstick right now. And we need toothbrushes, toothpaste, and floss.” Halting, she looked at him. “Let me see your teeth.”

“Madam!”

“Let me see your teeth,” she repeated in a no-nonsense voice. If he were an overworked graduate student, he’d have fillings, but if he were from the sixteenth century no dentist would have touched his mouth.

After a moment, Nicholas obediently opened his mouth, and Dougless moved his head this way and that to look inside. He had three molars missing and there looked to be a cavity in another tooth, but there was no sign of modern dental work. “We need to get you to a dentist and take care of that cavity.”

Instantly, Nicholas pulled away from her. “The tooth does not pain me enough to have it pulled,” he said stiffly.

“Is that why you have three teeth missing? They were pulled?”

He seemed to think this was obvious, so Dougless opened her mouth, showed him her fillings, and tried to explain what a dentist was.

“Ah, there you are,” said the vicar from the back of the church. “So you two have become friends.” His eyes were twinkling.

“We haven’t . . .” Dougless began, intending to explain that they hadn’t become the friends that the vicar’s tone was implying. But she stopped. The truth would take too much explanation. She stood up. “We have to go, as we have a great deal to do. Nicholas, are you ready?”

Smiling at her, Nicholas offered her his arm, and they left the church together. Outside, Dougless paused for a moment and looked at the enclosed graveyard. It had been just yesterday that Robert had left her here.

“What shines there?” Nicholas asked, looking at one of the grave markers.

It was the gravestone Gloria had fallen against, then lied to Robert about her scrapes, saying Dougless had hurt her. Curious, Dougless went to the stone. At the bottom, hidden by grass and dirt, was Gloria’s five-thousand-dollar diamond and emerald bracelet. Picking it up, Douglass held it up to the sunlight.

“The quality of the diamonds is good, not excellent,” Nicholas said as he peered over her shoulder. “The emeralds are but cheap.”

Smiling, Dougless clasped the bracelet tightly in her hand. “I’ll find him now,” she said. “Now he’ll come back for sure.” Quickly, she went into the church and told the vicar that should Robert Whitley call and ask about a lost bracelet, he was to say that Dougless had it; then she gave him the name of the bed-and-breakfast where she and Nicholas were staying.

As Dougless left the church, she felt jubilant. Everything was going to work out now. Robert would be so grateful that she’d found the bracelet that . . . Her mind flooded with visions of Robert’s protestations of undying love and endless apologies. “I didn’t know I could miss anyone as much as I missed you,” ran through her head in Robert’s tearful voice. “How can you forgive me?” and “I wanted to teach you a lesson, but I was the one who learned from you. Oh, Dougless, can you—?”

“What?” she asked, looking up at Nicholas blankly.

He was frowning. “You said we must see an alchemist. Do you prepare new spells?”

She didn’t bother to defend herself; she was too happy to allow anything he said to bother her. “Not ‘alchemist,’ a chemist’s,” she said happily. “Let’s go shopping.”

As they walked, she made a mental list of the things she’d need to be looking her best when she saw Robert again. She needed products for her face and hair, and she’d need a new blouse that didn’t have a cut sleeve.

First they went to the coin dealer and sold another coin, this one for fifteen hundred pounds. There Dougless called the B and B to reserve their room for three more nights because the dealer had said he needed time to find a buyer for Nicholas’s rarer coins. And to give Robert time to find me, Dougless thought.

Then they went to a chemist’s shop. As the doors to a magnificent English drugstore, a Boots, opened, even Dougless looked about in awe. The English didn’t fill their shelves with gaudily packaged over-the-counter medicines—even cough syrup was kept behind the counter—but, instead, the shelves were full of products that smelled good. Within minutes, Dougless, a canvas shopping basket at her feet, was trying to decide between mango shampoo or jasmine. And should she get the aloe face pack or the cucumber? she wondered as she tossed a bottle of lavender-scented conditioner into the basket.

“What is this?” Nicholas whispered, looking at the many rows of gaily wrapped packages.

“Shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, all the usual stuff,” Dougless said distractedly. She had lemon verbena body lotion in one hand and evening primrose in the other. Which?

“I know not those words.”

Dougless’s head was full of the decisions she was trying to make, but then she looked at the products as an Elizabethan man must see them—if Nicholas were from the past, which of course he wasn’t, she reminded herself. Her father had said that until recently, people had made all their toiletries at home.

“This is shampoo to wash your hair,” she said as she opened a bottle of papaya-scented shampoo. “Smell.”

At first whiff, Nicholas smiled at her in delight, then he nodded toward the other bottles, and Douglass began opening them. With each product, Nicholas’s face showed his wonder. “This is marvelous. These are heaven. How I’d like to send one of these to my queen.”

She recapped a bottle of hyacinth-scented conditioner. “Is this the same queen who cut off your head?”

“She had been lied to,” Nicholas said stiffly, making Dougless shake her head. An American had a difficult time understanding such loyalty to the monarchy.

“I have heard that she is especially fond of what smells good,” Nicholas said, picking up a bottle of men’s aftershave. “Mayhap they have washed gloves here,” he said, looking about.

“Washed? You mean clean gloves?”

“Scented.”

“Scented skin but no scented gloves,” Dougless said, smiling.

“Ah, well,” he said slowly, then looked at her in a way that threatened to make her blush. “I needs must make do with scented skin.”

Quickly, Dougless looked down at the rows of shaving products. “You wouldn’t consider shaving that beard of yours, would you?”

Nicholas ran his hand over his beard, seeming to consider her words. “I have seen no man with a beard now.”

“Some men still wear beards, but, on the whole, they’re not fashionable.”

“Then I will find a barber and shave it,” he said finally, then paused. “You have barbers now?”

“We still have barbers.”

“And this barber is the one you will have put silver in my sore tooth?”

Dougless laughed. “Not quite. Barbers and dentists are separate professions now. Why don’t you pick out a shaving lotion while I get foam and razors?” Picking up the portable shopping basket, she saw that she had nearly filled it with shampoo, cream rinse, combs, toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, and a small electric travel set of hair rollers. Minutes later, she was happily looking over the makeup when she heard a noise from the other side of the shelves. Nicholas was trying to get her attention.

When she went around the corner, she saw that he’d opened a tube of toothpaste and the white cream had squirted down the front of the racks.

“I but meant to smell it,” he said rigidly, and Dougless could feel his deep embarrassment.

Grabbing a box of tissues from a shelf, she opened it, took out a handful, and began to clean the counter.

At the wonder of the tissues, Nicholas lost his embarrassment. “This is paper,” he said, feeling the soft tissues, wonder in his voice. “Here, stop that!” he said. “You cannot waste paper. It is too valuable, and this paper has not been used before.”

Dougless didn’t understand what he was talking about. “You use a tissue once, then throw it away.”

“Is your century so rich as this?” he asked, then ran his hand over his face as though to clear his mind. “I do not understand this. Paper is so valuable it is used in place of gold, yet paper is so worthless, it can be used for cleaning, then thrown away.”

Smiling, Dougless thought of how all paper in the sixteenth century was handmade. “I guess we are rich in goods,” she said. “Maybe richer than we should be.” She put the opened tissue box in her basket, then continued choosing items they needed. She bought shaving cream, razors, and deodorant, washcloths for both of them (because the English hotels didn’t supply them), and a full set of cosmetics for herself.

When she went to checkout, once again, she took charge of Nicholas’s modern money. And once again he was nearly sick when he heard the total. “I can buy a horse for what this bottle costs,” he mumbled when she read a price to him. After she paid, she lugged the two shopping bags full of goods out of the store. Nicholas did not offer to take the bags from her, so she guessed that only bags full of armor were masculine enough for him to carry.

“Let’s take these back to the hotel,” she said. “Then we can—” She broke off because Nicholas had stopped in front of a shop window. Yesterday he’d had eyes only for the street, for gaping at cars, for feeling the surface of the pavement, and for staring at the people. Today he was more interested in the other side of the street, as he kept noticing the shops, marveling at the plate-glass windows, and frequently touching the lettering of the signs.

He had halted in front of a bookstore window. On prominent display was a big, beautiful coffee table edition of a book on medieval armor. Beside it were books on Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth the First. Nicholas’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates. Turning, he pointed at the books, then opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

“Come on,” she said, smiling, as she pulled him inside. Whatever troubles of her own that Dougless had, she soon forgot them when she saw the wonder and joy on Nicholas’s face as he reverently touched the books. After dropping off the shopping bags at the counter, she walked about the store with Nicholas. Some big, expensive books were lying faceup on a table just inside the door, and he ran his fingertips slowly over the glossy photos.

“They are magnificent,” he whispered. “I have never imagined such as these could exist.”

“Here’s your Queen Elizabeth,” Dougless said, lifting a large color volume.

As though he were almost afraid to touch it, Nicholas gingerly took the book from Dougless.

Watching him, Dougless could almost believe that he’d never seen a modern color photo before. She knew that in Elizabethan times books were precious and rare, prized possessions owned by only the richest of people. If the books had pictures, they were woodcuts or hand-colored illuminations.

She watched as Nicholas reverently opened the book he held and ran his hand over the glossy photos. “Who has painted these? Do you have so many painters now?”

“All the books were printed by a machine.”

Nicholas looked at a picture of Queen Elizabeth the First. “What is it she wears? Is the shape of this sleeve the new fashion? My mother would know of this.”

Dougless looked at the date: 1582. She took the book from him. “I’m not sure you should look at the future.” What was she saying?! 1582 the future? “Why don’t you look at this book?” she said as she handed him Birds of the World. Her reaction was, of course, absurd, because any moment now, this man was going to regain his memory. However, just to be safe, she didn’t want to tamper with changing history because a medieval man had seen the future. Except of course what history they changed if they saved his life. But that—

Dougless’s attention was taken from her thoughts when Nicholas almost dropped the book because the music system, which had been silent until then, suddenly began to play. Twisting about, Nicholas looked around the store. “I see no musicians. And what is that music? Is it ragtime?”

Dougless laughed. “Where’d you hear of ragtime? No,” she corrected herself, “I mean, your memory must be returning if you’re remembering ragtime.”

“Mrs. Beasley,” he said, referring to the woman who ran the bed-and-breakfast. “I played for her from her music, but it was not like this music.”

“Played for her on what?”

“It is like a large harpsichord, but it sounded most different.”

“Probably a piano.”

“You have not told me what is the source of the music.”

“It’s classical music. Beethoven, I think, and it comes from a cassette in a machine.”

“Machines,” he whispered. “Again machines.”

As Dougless watched him, she had an idea. Perhaps she could use music to help bring his memory back.

Along one wall of the store was a selection of cassette tapes. She chose Beethoven, excerpts from La Traviata, and some Irish folk music. She started to choose the Rolling Stones, but then thought she ought to get something more modern, but her thought made her laugh at herself. “Mozart is new to him,” she said as she took the Stones tape off the shelf. “Maybe.” On the bottom shelf were some inexpensive cassette players for sale, so she bought one that included earphones.

When she went back to Nicholas, he had moved to the stationery section of the store and was gingerly touching the wide selection of papers. Dougless picked up a spiral notebook and began demonstrating felt-tip pens, ballpoints, and mechanical pencils. Nicholas made a few squiggles on the testing paper, but she noticed that he didn’t write words. For all that, according to him, his mother was a scholar of great magnitude, Dougless wondered if he could read and write, but she didn’t ask him.

They left the store with another shopping bag, this one full of spiral notebooks, felt-tips of every color imaginable, cassettes and a player, plus six travel books. Three of the travel books were on England, one about America, and two were about the world. On impulse she’d also purchased a set of Winsor and Newton watercolors and a block of watercolor paper for Nicholas. She somehow felt that he might like to paint. She also tucked in an Agatha Christie.

“Could we take these bags back to the hotel now?” Dougless asked. Her arms felt as if they were lengthening from carrying the heavy bags.

But Nicholas had stopped again, this time in front of a women’s clothing store. “You will purchase yourself new clothing,” he said, and it was an order.

Dougless didn’t like his tone. “I have my own clothes, and when I get them, I will—”

“I will travel with no beldame,” he said stiffly.

Dougless wasn’t sure what the word meant, but she could guess. She looked at her reflection in the glass. If she thought she had looked bad yesterday, she had surpassed herself today. There was a time for pride and a time for being sensible. Without another word, she handed him the bag with the books. “Wait for me over there,” she said in the same tone of command that he had used on her, as she pointed to a wooden bench under a tree.

After taking the bag with the cosmetics, Dougless straightened her shoulders and entered the shop.

It took over an hour, but when Dougless returned to him, she didn’t look like the same person. Her auburn hair, wildly unkempt from days without care, was now pulled back off her face and, neatly combed, it fell back in soft waves to the silk scarf she’d used to tie it at the nape of her neck. Softly applied cosmetics brought out the beauty of her face. She was not a beauty of the type that looked fragile and overbred, but Dougless was healthy and wholesome-looking, as though she’d grown up on a horse ranch in Kentucky or on a sailboat in Maine—which she had.

She’d chosen clothes that were simple, but exquisitely made: a teal Austrian jacket; a paisley skirt of teal, plum, and navy; a plum silk blouse; and boots of soft navy leather. On impulse she’d also purchased navy kid gloves and a navy leather handbag, as well as a full set of lingerie and a nightgown.

Carrying her shopping bags, she crossed the road toward Nicholas, and when he saw her, she was pleased by his incredulous expression. “Well?” she asked.

“Beauty knows no time,” he said softly, rising, then kissing her hand.

There were advantages to Elizabethan men, she thought.

“Is it time for tea yet?” he asked.

Dougless groaned. Men were timeless, she thought. It was always: You-look-great-what’s-for-dinner?

“We are now going to experience one of the worst aspects of England, and that is lunch. Breakfast is great; tea is great. Dinner is great if you like butter and cream, but lunch is . . . indescribable.”

He was listening to her with concentration, as one does when hearing a foreign language. “What is this ‘lunch’?”

“You’ll see,” Dougless said as she led the way to a nearby pub. Pubs were one of the things Dougless liked best about England, as they were family oriented, but you could still have a drink. After they’d settled into a booth, Dougless ordered two cheese salad sandwiches, a pint of beer for him, a lemonade for her; then she proceeded to tell Nicholas the difference between a bar in America and a pub in England.

“There are more unescorted women?” he asked in amazement.

“More than just me?” she asked, smiling. “There are lots of independent women today. We have our own jobs, our own credit cards. We don’t have, or need, men to take care of us.”

“But what of cousins and uncles? Do these women have no sons to look after them?”

“It’s not like that now. It’s—” She stopped talking when the waitress put their sandwiches before them. But they were not sandwiches as Americans know them. An English cheese sandwich was a piece of cheese on two pieces of buttered white bread. A cheese salad sandwich had a small piece of lettuce on it. The sandwich was small, dry, tasteless.

Nicholas watched her as she picked up the strange-looking food and began to eat it; then he followed her lead.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“It has no flavor,” he said, then took a drink of his beer. “Nor does the beer.”

Dougless looked about the pub and asked if it was anything like the public houses in the sixteenth century. Not that she believed he was . . . The heck with it, she thought.

“Nay,” he answered. “There is gloom and quiet here. There is no danger here.”

“But that’s good. Peace and safety are good.”

Nicholas shrugged as he ate the rest of the sandwich in two bites. “I prefer flavor in my food and flavor in my public houses.”

She smiled as she started to stand up. “Are you ready to go? We still have lots to do.”

“Leave? But where is dinner?”

“You just ate it.”

He raised one eyebrow at her. “Where is the landlord?”

“The man behind the bar seems to be in charge, and I saw a woman behind the counter. Maybe she cooks. Wait a minute, Nicholas, don’t make a fuss. The English don’t like for people to cause problems. If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll go and—”

But Nicholas was already halfway to the counter. “Food is food, no matter what the year. No, madam, stay where you are and I will procure us a proper dinner.”

As Dougless watched, Nicholas talked earnestly to the bartender for a few moments; then the woman was called over and she, too, listened to Nicholas. When Dougless saw the man and woman scurrying away to do whatever they’d been told, it occurred to her that if Nicholas learned his way around the twentieth century, he might be a bit of a problem.

Moments later he returned to the booth, and minutes afterward, dishes of food began to be placed on the table. There was chicken, beef, a big pork pie, bowls of vegetables, one of salad, and a nasty looking dark beer was set before Nicholas.

“Now, Mistress Montgomery,” he said when the table was loaded with food, “how do you propose to find my way home?”

When she looked up at him, his eyes were twinkling and she knew that, for once, she had been the one wearing the incredulous expression. It was his turn to be the one who knew how to do something she didn’t.

“Chalk one up for you,” she said, laughing as she speared a chicken leg. “Why don’t you ask the cook if she knows any good witches’ spells?”

“Perhaps if we mix all those bottles you bought . . .” Nicholas said, his mouth full of English beef. “Ow!” he said when he nearly pierced his tongue with the fork he was trying to learn to use.

“Forget the witchcraft,” she said as she withdrew a spiral notebook and a pen from a bag. “I have to know all about you before we can start research.” Perhaps now, with dates and places, she’d trip him up.

But nothing she asked him even slowed him down as he ate plateful after plateful of food. He was born the sixth of June, 1537.

“And what’s your full name, or, I guess, in your case, what’s your title?” She was eating mashed parsnips with her left hand, writing with her right.

“Nicholas Stafford, earl of Thornwyck, Buckshire, and Southeaton, lord of Farlane.”

Dougless blinked. “Anything else?”

“A few baronetcies, but none of great importance.”

“So much for barons,” she said as she had him repeat what he’d said so she could write it down. Next, she began to list the properties he owned. There were estates from East Yorkshire to South Wales, plus more land in France and Ireland.

When her head was beginning to whirl with all the names, she closed her notebook. “I think that with all that we should be able to find something about you—him,” she said, her tone showing her understatement.

After “lunch” they stopped in a barbershop so Nicholas could be shaved. When he sat up in the chair, clean shaven at last, Dougless took a moment to catch her breath. Hidden under the beard and mustache had been a full-lipped mouth of great sensitivity.

“I will do, madam?” he asked, softly chuckling at her expression.

“Passable,” she said, trying to sound as though she’d seen better. But as she walked ahead of him, his laugh filled her ears. Vain! she thought. He was much too vain!

When they returned to the bed-and-breakfast, the landlady said a room with a private bath had come vacant. A sane, sensible part of Dougless knew she should ask for a room of her own, but she didn’t open her mouth when the landlady looked at her in question. Besides, Dougless told herself, when Robert came for her, it might be good for him to see her with this divine-looking man.

After she and Nicholas had moved what little they had into the new room, they went to the church and spoke to the vicar, but there was no word from Robert for her, nor any inquiries about the bracelet. They went to a grocery and bought cheese and fruit; to a butcher for meat pies; to a baker for bread, scones, and pastries; then to a winery, where they purchased two bottles of wine.

By teatime, Dougless was exhausted.

“My purse bearer looks sinking-ripe,” Nicholas said, smiling at her.

Dougless felt exactly like sinking-ripe sounded. Together they walked back to their little hotel, where they took the bag containing the new books to the garden. Mrs. Beasley served them tea and scones, and gave them a blanket to spread on the grass. Nicholas and Dougless sat on the blanket, drank tea, ate the scones, and looked at the books. It was heavenly English weather, cool yet warm, sunny but not brilliant. The garden was green and lush, the roses fragrant. Dougless was sitting up; Nicholas stretched before her on his stomach as he ate scones with one hand and carefully turned pages with the other.

The cotton shirt he wore was stretched across his back muscles, and the trousers clung to his thighs. Black curls brushed his collar. Dougless found herself looking at him more than at the travel book she was thumbing through.

“It is here!” Nicholas said, rolling over and sitting up so abruptly Dougless’s tea splashed out. “My newest house is here.” He shoved the book at her as she put down her cup.

“‘Thornwyck Castle,’” she read beside the full page photo, “‘begun in 1563 by Nicholas Stafford, earl of Thornwyck . . .’” She glanced at him. He was lying on his back, his hands behind his head, and smiling angelically, as though he’d at last found some proof of his existence. “‘. . . was confiscated by Queen Elizabeth the First in 1564 when . . .’” She trailed off.

“Go on,” Nicholas said softly, but he was no longer smiling.

“‘. . . when the earl was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be beheaded. There was some doubt of Stafford’s guilt, but all investigation stopped when’”—Dougless’s voice lowered—“‘when three days before his execution the earl was found dead in his cell. He had been writing a letter to his mother when he apparently died of a heart attack. He was found with his head face down on a table, the letter to his mother’”—she looked up and whispered—“‘unfinished.’”

Nicholas watched the clouds overhead and was silent for a while. “Does it say what became of my mother?” he asked at last.

“No. The rest of the article describes the castle and says it was never finished. ‘What had been completed fell into disrepair after the Civil War’—your Civil War, not mine—‘then was renovated in 1824, for the James family, and—’” She stopped. “‘And now it’s an exclusive hotel with a two-star restaurant!’”

“My house is a public house?” Nicholas asked, obviously appalled. “My house was to be a center of learning and intelligence. It was—”

“Nicholas, that was hundreds of years ago. I mean, maybe it was. Don’t you see? Maybe we can get reservations to stay at this hotel. We can possibly stay at your house.”

“I am to pay to stay in my own house?” he asked, his upper lip curled in disgust.

She threw up her hands in despair. “Okay, don’t go. We’ll just stay here and go shopping for the next twenty years, and you can spend all your time badgering pub owners into serving you medieval banquets every day.”

“You have a sharp tongue on you.”

“I can see the truth, if that’s what you mean.”

“Except about men who abandon you.”

She started to get up, but he caught her hand.

“I will pay,” he said, looking up at her, but he began caressing the fingers of the hand he held. “You will remain with me?”

She pulled her hand out of his grasp. “A bargain’s a bargain. I’ll help you find out what you need to know so maybe you can clear your ancestor’s name.”

Nicholas smiled. “So now I am my own ancestor?”

With a look at him that said she could do without his sarcasm, she went into the house to call Thornwyck Castle. At first the reservations clerk haughtily told her that reservations needed to be made a year in advance, but there was a commotion and a moment later the clerk returned to say that, unexpectedly, their best suite was currently available. Dougless said, “Yes!” without asking the price.

As she hung up, Dougless realized she wasn’t surprised by the coincidence of a room becoming available. It was beginning to seem as though a kind of wish therapy was at work. Every time she wished for something, she got it. She’d wished for a Knight in Shining Armor and he had appeared. Maybe her wish had been more of a metaphor than a desire for a man who believed he was from the sixteenth century and wore silver armor, but, still, she had received her wish. She’d wished for money and a bag of coins worth hundreds of thousands of pounds had shown up. She needed a place to spend the night and that had appeared too. Now she needed a reservation to an exclusive hotel and of course the hotel had “unexpectedly” had a vacancy.

Dougless took Gloria’s bracelet from her pocket and looked at it. It looked like something some rich, fat old man would give his twenty-years-younger mistress. What could Dougless wish for with Robert? That he’d come to realize that his own daughter was a lying thief? She didn’t want any parent to despise his own child. So where did that leave her? She wanted Robert, but his daughter and his love for his daughter came with him. How was she going to deal with that? Was she destined to be cast as the proverbial wicked stepmother no matter what she did?

Before Dougless went back to the garden, she called the vicarage and was again told that no one had called about the bracelet. She asked the vicar for a recommendation for a dentist, and when she was able to make an appointment, again due to a cancellation, for the next morning, Dougless almost laughed aloud. As she started back outside, she saw several American magazines on a table. There was Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Gentleman’s Quarterly. Scooping them up, she took them outside and handed them to Nicholas.

Right away, there were some exclamations on his part when she explained that these beautiful “books” were actually disposable goods. Once he conquered his amazement, he started looking through the magazines, studying the ads and the clothes on the models with the intensity of a general studying battle campaigns. At first he hated the clothes, but by the end of the first magazine he was nodding his head as though he were beginning to understand.

Dougless picked up her Agatha Christie and began to read.

“You will read aloud to me?” he asked.

From the way he merely looked at the pictures of the books and magazines, she again thought that perhaps he didn’t know how to read, so she read aloud as he looked at the photos in Gentleman’s Quarterly.

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 recently), 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.