A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggart #15)

When he had finally finished eating, he thanked the landlady, then took Dougless’s arm in his and ushered her outside.

“Where are we going?” she asked as she ran her tongue over her teeth. She hadn’t brushed them in twenty-four hours, and they felt fuzzy. Also, her scalp itched.

“To the church,” he said. “There we will conceive of a plan.”

They walked quickly to the church, with Nicholas stopping only once to gawk at a small pickup truck. Dougless started to tell him about eighteen-wheelers and cattle trucks, but thought better of participating in his game.

The old church was open and empty, and Nicholas led her to sit on a pew that was at a right angle to the tomb. In silence, she watched him as he looked at the marble sculpture for a while, then ran his hands over the date and name.

At last he turned away, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace. “As I see it, Mistress Montgomery,” he said, “we need each the other. It is my belief that God has put us together for a reason.”

“I thought I did it with a spell,” she said, meaning it as a joke, but, actually, she was glad that he at last seemed to realize that she was not a witch.

“It is true that I believed that at first, but I have not slept since you called me into the rain and I have now had time to consider more thoroughly.”

“I called you?” she said in disbelief. “I never even thought about you, much less called you. And I can assure you that there weren’t any telephones in that field, and I certainly couldn’t shout loud enough for you to hear me.”

“Nonetheless, you did call me. You woke me with your need.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, starting to get angry. “We’re going back to your belief that I somehow, through some sort of hocus-pocus, brought you here from your grave. I can’t take this anymore. I’m leaving,” she said as she started to stand up.

But before she could move, he was in front of her, one hand on the high arm of the pew, the other on the back, his big body pinning her to her seat. “It matters not to me whether you believe or not,” he said, his face near hers, his eyebrows drawn together. “Yesterday morn when I woke it was the year of our Lord 1564, and this morn it was . . .”

“Nineteen eighty-eight,” she whispered up at him.

“Aye,” he said, “over four hundred years later. And you, witch, are the key to my being here and to my returning.”

“Believe me, I’d send you back if I could,” she said, her mouth a hard line. “I have enough problems of my own without having to take care of—”

He leaned so close to her face that his nose nearly touched hers, and she could feel the heat of his anger. “You could not dare to say that you must care for me. It is I who must pull you from fields in the dead of night.”

“It was just the one time only,” Dougless said weakly, then sat back against the pew. “Okay,” she said with a sigh, “how did you hear my . . . need, as you call it?”

He dropped his arms from the pew, then went back to look down at the tomb. “There is a bond between us,” he said quietly. “Mayhap it is an unholy bond, but it is there. I was awakened during the night with your calling of me. I did not hear words, but nonetheless, I heard you calling me. The . . . feel of the call woke me, so I followed it to find you.”

Dougless was silent for a moment. She knew that what he said had to be true because there was no other explanation for how he’d found her. “Are you saying that you think there’s some kind of mental telepathy between us?”

Turning back to her, he gave her a puzzled look.

“Mental telepathy is thought transference. People can read each other’s thoughts.”

“Perhaps,” he said, looking back at the tomb. “I am not sure it is thoughts as much as it is . . .” He trailed off for a moment. “Need. I seem to hear your need of me.”

“I don’t need anyone,” Dougless said stubbornly.

Turning back, he glared at her. “I do not understand why you are not still in your father’s house. I have yet to see a woman who needs care more than you.”

Again, Dougless started to stand up, but a look from Nicholas made her sit back down. “All right, you heard me ‘call,’ as you say. So what do you think that means?”

Again, Nicholas put his hands behind his back and began to pace. “I have come to this time and this fast, strange place for a reason, and I believe you are to help me find the answer as to why I am here.”

“I can’t,” Dougless said quickly. “I have to find Robert and get my passport so I can go home. The truth is that I’ve had all the vacation I can stand. Another twenty-four hours like the last ones, and somebody better start carving my tombstone.”

“My life and death are a jest to you, but they are not so to me,” Nicholas said quietly.

Dougless lifted her hands in frustration. “You want me to feel sorry for you because you’re dead? But you aren’t dead. You’re here; you’re alive.”

“No, madam, there am I,” he said, pointing at the tomb.

For a moment, Dougless put her head back against the pew and closed her eyes. Right now, she should leave. Actually, she should probably ask someone for help. But the truth was, she couldn’t do either of those things. Whatever this man’s real story was, even if she didn’t believe he was from another time period, he certainly seemed to believe it. And after he’d rescued her last night, she owed him. She looked at him. “What do you plan?” she asked softly.

“I will help you find your lover, but in return, you must help me find the reason I am here.”

“How can you help me find Robert?” she asked.

“I can feed, clothe, and shelter you until he is found,” he shot back instantly.

“Ah, yes. Those things. How about eyeshadow too? Okay, only kidding. So, supposing ‘we’ do find Robert, what do you want me to do to help you find your, ah, way back?”

“Last night you talked to me of Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth. You seemed to know who our young queen will marry.”

“Elizabeth doesn’t marry anyone, and she becomes known as the Virgin Queen. In America there’re a couple of states named for her: Virginia and West Virginia.”

“Nay! This cannot be true. No woman can rule alone.”

“She not only rules alone but does a damn fine job of it. Did a great job of it. She made England the ruling power of all Europe.”

“This is so?”

“You don’t have to believe me; it’s history.”

For a moment, Nicholas was thoughtful. “History, yes. All that has happened to me, to my family, is now history, so perhaps all of it is recorded somewhere?”

“I see,” Dougless said, smiling. “You think maybe you were sent forward to find out something? How intriguing,” she said, then frowned. “I mean if it were possible for a person to have been sent forward, it would be intriguing. But since it isn’t possible, it’s not.”

His look of puzzlement was beginning to become familiar to her. When he couldn’t seem to figure out what she’d just said, he continued. “Perhaps there is something you know that I must find from you.” He moved to stand over her. “What do people of your time know of the Queen’s decree against me? Who has told her I raise an army to overthrow her? This would be recorded?”

“Oh, yes. My father used to get angry whenever he read something that said Elizabeth the First had an illegitimate child. My father said that every day of her life is documented, so it wasn’t possible that she could have sneaked away and had a baby in secret.” As she was saying this, Nicholas was looking at her with such intensity that she smiled. “I have an idea. Why don’t you stay here in this time period? Why go back at all? I’m sure you could get a job. You’d be great as an Elizabethan teacher. Or you could research and write. I’m sure you’d have enough to live on after the sale of your coins. If you invested carefully, that is. My father could help you invest, or my uncle J.T. could. Both of them know a lot about money.”

“No!” Nicholas said fiercely, his right fist clasped in his left hand. “I must return to my own time. My honor is at risk. The future of the Staffords is at stake. If I do not go back, all will be forfeit.”

“Forfeit?” Dougless asked, and a little shiver went up her spine. She knew enough about medieval history to have some idea what he was talking about. Her voice lowered. “Usually a nobleman forfeited his estates to the king, or queen, when he was accused of . . .” For a moment, she just looked up at him. “Treason,” she whispered. “In medieval times, people forfeited estates due to treason. And treason was paid for . . . in other ways.” She took a deep breath. “How . . . how did you die?”

“I assume I was executed.”

SIX

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.”