A Knight in Shining Armor Read online

  “This Robert will come for jewels but not for the woman he loves?”

  “Of course he’s coming for me!” she snapped. “The bracelet is . . . It’s just that Gloria is a brat and she lied, but she’s his daughter so of course Robert believed her. And stop looking at me like that! Robert is a fine man. At least he’ll be remembered for what he did on an operating table instead of on a—” She stopped at the look on Nicholas’s face.

  Turning, he strode ahead of her.

  “Nicholas, I’m sorry,” she said, running after him. “I didn’t mean it. I was just angry, that’s all. It’s not your fault you’re remembered for Arabella; it’s our fault. We see too much TV, read too much National Enquirer. Our lives are filled with too much sensationalism. Colin, please.” She stopped where she was. Was he going to walk away and leave her too?

  Her head was down, so she wasn’t aware that he’d walked back to her. Companionably, he put his arm around her shoulders. “Do they sell ice cream in this place?”

  When she smiled at that, he tipped her chin up and wiped away a single tear. “Are you onion-eyed again?” he asked softly.

  She shook her head, afraid to trust her voice.

  “Then come,” he said. “If I remember rightly, there is a pearl in that box as big as my thumb.”

  “Really?” she asked. She had forgotten all about the box. “Anything else?”

  “Tea first,” he said. “Tea and scones and ice cream. Then I shall show you the box.”

  They walked together out of the unrestored rooms, past the next tour, and out the In, which the guides did not like at all.

  In the tea shop, this time, Nicholas took over. Dougless sat at a table and waited for him as he talked to a woman behind the counter. The woman was shaking her head about something Nicholas was asking, but Dougless had an idea that he’d get whatever it was that he wanted.

  Minutes later, he motioned for her to come with him. He led her outside, then down stone stairs, across an acre of garden, to at last stop under the dappled shade of a yew tree with bright red berries. When Dougless turned around, she saw a woman and a man carrying two large trays filled with tea, pastries, little sandwiches with no crusts, and Nicholas’s beloved scones.

  Nicholas ignored the two people as they spread a cloth on the ground and set out the tea things. “There was my knot garden,” he said, pointing, his voice heavy with sadness. “And there was a mound.”

  After the people left, Nicholas held out his hand to help her sit on the cloth. She poured his tea, added milk, filled a plate full of food for him, then said, “Now?”

  He smiled. “Now.”

  Dougless dove into the tote bag and pulled out the old, fragile ivory box, then slowly, with breath held, opened it.

  Inside were two rings of exquisite loveliness, one an emerald, one a ruby, the gold mountings cast into intricate forms of dragons and snakes. Nicholas took the rings and, smiling at her, slipped them onto his fingers, where, she wasn’t surprised to see, they fit perfectly.

  On the bottom of the box was a bit of old, cracked velvet, and she could see that it was wrapped around something. Gingerly, Dougless removed the velvet and slowly opened it.

  In her hand lay a brooch, oval, with little gold figures of . . . She looked up at Nicholas. “What are they doing?”

  “It’s the martyrdom of Saint Barbara,” he said, his tone implying that she knew nothing.

  Dougless had guessed it was a martyrdom because it looked as if the gold man was about to cut off the head of the tiny gold woman. Encircling the figures was an abstract enamel design, and around the edges were tiny pearls and diamonds. Hanging from a loop below the brooch was indeed a pearl as large as a man’s thumb. It was a baroque pearl, indented, even lumpy, but with a luster that no years could dim.

  “It’s lovely,” she whispered.

  “It is yours,” Nicholas said.

  A wave of avarice shot through Dougless. “I cannot,” she said, even as her hand closed over the jewel.

  Nicholas laughed. “It is a woman’s bauble. You may keep it.”

  “I can’t. It’s too valuable. This pin is worth too much and it’s too old. It should be in a museum. It should—”

  Taking the jewel from her hand, he pinned it between the collar points of her blouse.

  Dougless took her compact from her purse, opened the mirror, and looked at the brooch. She also looked at her face. “I have to go to the rest room,” she said, making Nicholas laugh as she rose.

  Alone in the rest room, she had some time to really look at the pin, and only left when someone else entered. On her way back to Nicholas, she couldn’t resist slipping into the gift shop to look at the postcards. It took her a moment to see what Nicholas had not wanted her to see. There, on the bottom of a rack, was a postcard of a portrait of the notorious Lady Arabella. Dougless took one.

  As she was paying, Dougless asked the cashier if there was anything in any of the books for sale about Nicholas Stafford.

  The woman smiled in a patronizing way. “All the young ladies ask after him. We usually have cards of his portrait, but we’re out right now.”

  “There’s nothing written about him? About his accomplishments other than . . . than with women?” Dougless asked.

  Again there was that little smirk. “I don’t believe Lord Nicholas accomplished anything. The only thing of importance that he did was to raise an army against the queen, and he was sentenced to be executed for that. If he hadn’t died beforehand, he would have been beheaded. He was quite a scoundrel of a young man.”

  Dougless took the single postcard and started to leave, but she turned back. “What happened to Lord Nicholas’s mother after he died?”

  The woman brightened. “Lady Margaret? Now there was a grand lady. Let me see, I believe she married again. What was his name? Oh, yes, Harewood. She married Lord Richard Harewood.”

  “Do you know if she left any papers behind?”

  “Oh, my, no, I have no idea of that.”

  “All the Stafford papers are at Goshawk Hall,” came a voice from the door. It was the guide whose tour she and Nicholas had so rudely interrupted.

  “Where is Goshawk Hall?” Dougless asked, feeling embarrassed.

  “Near the village of Thornwyck,” the woman said.

  “Thornwyck,” Dougless said, and nearly gave a whoop of joy, but caught herself. It was all she could do to thank the women before she ran from the shop into the garden. Nicholas lay stretched out on the cloth, sipping tea and finishing the scones.

  “Your mother married Richard, ah . . . Harewood,” she said breathlessly, “and all the papers are at . . .” She couldn’t remember the name.

  “Goshawk Hall?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s it! It’s near Thornwyck.”

  He turned away from her. “My mother married Harewood?”

  Dougless watched the back of him. If he’d died accused of treason, had his mother, in her poverty, been forced to marry some despicable despot? Had his old, frail mother been forced to endure some man who treated her as no more than property?

  When Nicholas’s shoulders began to shake, Dougless put her hand on his arm. “Nicholas, it’s not your fault. You were dead, you couldn’t help her.” What am I saying? she thought.

  But when Nicholas turned around, she saw that he was . . . laughing. “I should have known she would land on her feet,” he said. “Harewood! She married Dickie Harewood.” He could hardly speak for laughing so hard.

  “Tell me everything,” Dougless urged, eyes alight.

  “Dickie Harewood is a tardy-gaited, unhaired pajock.”

  Dougless frowned, not understanding.

  “An ass, madam,” Nicholas explained. “But a rich one. Aye, he’s very rich.” He leaned back, smiling. “It is good to know she was not left one-trunk-inheriting.”

  Still smiling, he poured Dougless a cup of tea, and as she took it, he picked up her little paper bag and opened it.

  “No” she began,