A Knight in Shining Armor Read online

  “Now, madam, you must tell me what plagues you so that tears pour forth from your eyes as from a waterfall.”

  Dougless didn’t want to tell anyone what had happened to her. But her need to share was greater than her pride, and within minutes, she was pouring out her story to him.

  “This man left you alone? Unattended?” Nicholas asked, aghast. “He left you at the mercy of ruffians and thieves?”

  Nodding, Dougless blew her nose on a paper napkin. “And at the mercy of men who believe they’re from the sixteenth century, too. Oh, sorry,” she added.

  But Nicholas didn’t seem to hear her. He got up and began pacing the garden. There were four other tables but no other customers. “You but knelt by the tomb—my tomb—and asked for a . . .” He looked at her.

  “A Knight in Shining Armor. It’s an American saying. All women want a gorgeous . . . I mean, a . . . Well, a man to rescue her.”

  Smiling a bit, his lips hidden in his beard and mustache, he said, “I was not wearing armor when you called me forth.”

  “I didn’t call you,” she said fiercely. “It’s customary to cry when you get left in a church. Especially when a fat brat of a girl steals your handbag. I don’t even have a passport. Even if my family wired me money for a ticket home, I couldn’t leave immediately. I’d have to apply for another passport.”

  “Nor can I get home,” he said, beginning to pace again. “That we have in common. But if you brought me forth, you can send me back.”

  “I am not a witch,” she practically shouted at him. “I do not practice black magic, and I certainly don’t know how to send people back and forth in time. You’ve imagined all of this.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “No doubt your lover was justified in leaving you. With your vile temper, he would not want to remain with you.”

  “I was never ‘vile-tempered’ as you call it, with Robert. Maybe a little-short-tempered now and then, but only normally so, because I loved him. Love him. And I shouldn’t have complained so much about Gloria. It was just that her lying was beginning to get on my nerves.”

  “And you love this man who abandoned you, this man who allowed his daughter to steal from you?”

  “I doubt if Robert knows Gloria took my bag and, besides, Gloria is just a kid. She probably doesn’t even realize what she did. I just wish I could find them and get my passport back so I could go home.”

  “It seems we have kindred goals,” he said, his eyes boring into hers.

  Suddenly, she knew where he was leading. He wanted her to help him on a permanent basis. But she was not going to saddle herself with a man with amnesia.

  She set her empty cup down. “Our goals aren’t alike enough that we should spend the next few months together until you remember that you live in New Jersey with your wife and three kids, and that every summer you come to England, put on fancy armor, and play some little sex game with an unsuspecting tourist. No, thank you. Now, if you don’t mind, I believe we have an agreement. I’ll find you a hotel room, then I’m free to leave.”

  When she finished speaking, she could see the flush of anger through his beard. “Are all the women of this century as you are?”

  “No, just the ones who have been hurt over and over again,” she shot back at him. “If you really have lost your memory, you should go to a doctor, not pick up a woman in a church. And if this is all an act, then you should definitely go to a doctor. Either way, you don’t need me.” She put the tea things on the tray to carry them back into the shop, but he stood between her and the door.

  “What recourse have I if I tell the truth? Have you no belief that your tears could have called me from another time, another place?”

  “Of course I don’t believe that,” she said. “There are a thousand explanations as to why you think you’re from the sixteenth century, but not one of them has to do with my being a witch. Now, will you excuse me? I need to put these down so I can find you a hotel room.”

  He stepped aside so she could enter the tea room, then followed her to the street. All the while, he kept his head down as though he were considering some great problem.

  Dougless had asked the woman in the tea shop where the nearest bed-and-breakfast was, and as she and Nicholas walked quietly along the street, it bothered her that he didn’t speak. Nor did he look about him with the intense interest he’d shown earlier.

  “Do you like your clothes?” she asked, trying to make conversation. He was carrying the shopping bags full of armor and his old clothes.

  He didn’t answer, but kept walking, his brow furrowed.

  There was only one room available at the bed-and-breakfast, and Dougless started to sign the register. “Do you still insist that you’re Nicholas Stafford?” she asked him.

  The woman behind the little desk smiled. “Oh, like in the church.” She took a postcard of the tomb in the church from a rack and looked at it. “You do look like him, only a bit more alive,” she said, then laughed at her own joke. “First door on the right. Bath’s down the hall.” Smiling, she left them alone in the entrance hall.

  When Dougless turned to look at the man, she suddenly felt as though she were a mother abandoning her child. “You’ll remember soon,” she said soothingly. “And this lady can tell you where to get dinner.”

  “Lady?” he asked. “And dinner at this hour?”

  “All right,” she said, frustrated. “She’s a woman and a meal this late is supper. I’ll bet that after a good night’s sleep you’ll remember everything.”

  “I have forgot naught, madam,” he said stiffly, then seemed to relent. “And you cannot leave. Only you know how to return me to my own time.”

  “Cut me some slack, will you?” she snapped at him. Didn’t he understand that she, too, had needs? She couldn’t give up all that she needed to help this stranger, could she? “If you’ll just give me the fifty dollars we agreed on, I’ll leave. In pounds, that’s . . .” To her horror, she realized that was only about thirty pounds. A room in this bed-and-breakfast had cost forty pounds. But a deal was a deal. “If you’ll give me thirty pounds, I’ll be on my way.”

  When he just stood there, she rummaged in the shopping bags until she found his paper money; then she removed thirty pounds and gave him the rest of it. “Tomorrow you can take your coins to the dealer and he’ll give you more modern money,” she said as she turned to go. “Good luck.” She gave one last look to his blue eyes that looked so sorrowful, then turned and left.

  But once she left the house, she didn’t feel jubilant at finally having rid herself of the man. Instead, she felt as though she were missing something. But Dougless forced herself to put her shoulders back and her head up. It was getting late and she had to find a place to spend the night—a cheap place—and she had to decide where to go from here.

  FIVE

  When Nicholas found the upstairs room where he was to spend the night, he was appalled. The room was small, with two tiny, hard-looking beds with no cloth hangings enclosing them, and the walls were very bare. But upon closer examination he saw that the walls were painted with thousands of tiny blue flowers. On second thought, he decided that with a few borders and some order to the paintings they might look all right.

  There was a window with that marvelous glass in it, and it had fabric side hangings of painted cloth. There were framed pictures on the walls, and when he touched one, he felt the glass—so clear he could hardly see it. One of the pictures was quite lewd, showing two naked women sitting on a cloth near two fully dressed men. It was not that Nicholas didn’t like the picture, but he couldn’t bear to see such a shameful thing displayed so openly. He turned it to face the wall.

  There was a door that led to a press, but there were no shelves in it. There was only a round stick going from one side to the other, with the same steel shapes that he had seen in the clothes shop hanging from the stick. There was a cabinet in the room, but such as he’d never seen before. It was entirely full of drawers! He tried, but the to