A Knight in Shining Armor Read online

  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 h