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

It took Dougless a while to find the library, and when she did, she was pleased to see that it looked just as she thought a library in one of these big, grand houses should look: leather-bound books, leather chairs, dark green walls, oak doors. She was looking around the room so intently that she didn’t at first see the man standing in front of the bookcases, reading a book. She saw him before he saw her, and instantly, she knew who he was. Only a man like her father, a man who had dedicated his life to learning, could be so absorbed in a book that he was oblivious of all else. He was young, blond, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, and he looked as though he worked out often. Even with his face tipped down, Dougless could see that he was very good looking, not divine, as Nicholas was, but good enough to set a few hearts to beating quickly. She also took in the fact that he was only about five feet six inches tall. However, it had been Dougless’s experience that short, handsome men were as vain as bantam roosters, and they loved short, pretty females such as Dougless.

“Hello,” she said.

The man glanced up from his book, down, then up again, and ended by staring at her with unabashed interest. He put his book away and came forward with his hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Hamilton Nolman.”

Dougless took his hand. Blue eyes, perfect teeth. What a very interesting man, she thought. “I’m Dougless Montgomery, and you are an American.”

“The same as you,” he said, and there was an immediate bond between them. He stepped closer. “Can you believe this place?” he said as he glanced around the room.

“Never. Or the people. Lady Arabella sent me in here to type and I don’t even work for her.”

Hamilton laughed. “She’ll have you scrubbing toilets before long. She doesn’t allow pretty women near her. All the maids working here are dogs.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” She looked at him. “Aren’t you the doctor who’s working on the Stafford papers? The ones that fell out of the wall?”

“That I am.”

“That must have been exciting,” Dougless said, wide-eyed, trying to look as young and innocent, and as dumb, as possible. “I heard the papers contained secret information. Is that true, Dr. Nolman?”

He chuckled in a fatherly way. “Please, call me Lee. It has been rather exciting, although I’m just now getting into the papers.”

“They’re all about some man who was about to be beheaded, aren’t they? I . . .” She lowered her eyes and her voice. “You wouldn’t possibly tell me about the papers, would you?”

She watched him puff out his chest in pride; then the next minute they were seated and he was telling her about how he’d come to have the job and what had happened since he’d arrived. In spite of the fact that he seemed a tiny bit too full of himself, she found herself liking him. Wouldn’t her father love having a son-in-law who was interested in medieval history?

Wait a minute, Dougless, she cautioned herself. You’re swearing off men, remember? She was listening so intently to Lee that she didn’t hear Nicholas enter the room.

“Miss Montgomery!” Nicholas said so loudly that her arm fell out from under her chin and she nearly fell off the chair. “Are my letters typed?”

“Typing?” she asked. “Oh, Ni . . . Ah, your lordship, I’d like you to meet Dr. Hamilton Nolman, he’s—”

Arrogantly, Nicholas walked past Dr. Nolman, ignoring the doctor’s outstretched hand, as he went to the window. “Leave us,” Nicholas said over his shoulder.

Lee wiggled his eyebrows at Dougless, picked up his books, and left the room, shutting the heavy doors behind him.

“Just who do you think you are?” Dougless asked. “You’re no longer some sixteenth-century lord and master now. You can’t just dismiss people like that. And, besides, what do you know about typing?”

When Nicholas turned to look at her, she could tell by his expression that he had no idea what she was talking about. “You were very close to that small man.”

“I was . . . ?” Dougless trailed off. Was that jealousy in his voice? She walked over to the big oak desk. “He’s very good looking, isn’t he? And a scholar at his age, imagine. How’s Arabella doing? Told her about your wife yet?”

“What conversation did you have with that man?”

“The usual,” she said, running her finger along the desk. “He told me I was pretty, that sort of thing.”

When she looked back at Nicholas, she saw his face had an expression of controlled rage. Her heart swelled with happiness. Revenge, she thought, can be sweet. “I did find out some things though. Lee—that’s Dr. Nolman—hasn’t really read much of the papers yet. It seems that your Arabella took her time in choosing from the many scholars who asked to look at the papers. From what I gather, she chose the best-looking man from the photographs she insisted that the applicants send. Sort of a male beauty contest. I hear she threw away the women’s photos. Pure heterosexual, our lovely Arabella is. Lee said she was awfully disappointed that he turned out to be shorter than she is. He said Arabella took one look at him and said, ‘I thought all Americans were tall.’ Lee, thankfully, seems to have his ego intact, because he just laughed. He pretty much thinks Arabella is a jerk. Oh, sorry, I’m forgetting how much you adore her.”

Nicholas’s face was still enraged, and Dougless gave him her biggest smile. “How is Arabella?” she asked sweetly.

Nicholas glared at her for a moment, then his eyes changed. Turning, he pointed at an old oak table standing against a wall. “That, madam, is the true table.” With a smug little smile, he left the room.

With her fists clenched, Dougless went over to the table and gave it a good, hard kick. Hobbling about, holding her toe, she cursed all men.

THIRTEEN

Dinner was to be served at eight, and as Dougless dressed in her museum-visiting clothes, she hoped Elizabeth would send the gowns to her as soon as possible. But as eight drew near and no one summoned her to dinner, she wondered what was going on. She knew the servants had eaten earlier and she hadn’t been invited to eat with them, so she assumed she was to eat with the family. Sitting in her room, she waited.

At eight-fifteen, a man came to her and told her to follow him. She was led through the maze of rooms to a narrow dining room with a big fireplace and a table long enough to use for skateboarding. Arabella, her father, Nicholas, and Lee were already seated. Arabella, as Dougless had expected, was wearing a dress so low cut it pretty much left her bare from the waist up. She was showing more than Dougless even possessed.

As unobtrusively as possible, Dougless slipped into a chair next to Lee that a servant held out for her.

“Your boss wouldn’t eat until you were here,” Lee whispered as the first course was served. “What’s going on between you two? Is he a descendant of the Nicholas Stafford, the one that was almost beheaded?”

Dougless gave Lee the same story she had given the cook, a story she was sure that by now every servant probably knew, that Nicholas was indeed a descendant, and he very much wanted to clear his ancestor’s name.

“I’m glad I had ol’ Arabella sign a contract,” Lee said, “because if he’d asked first, I think she would have given him exclusive access to the papers. Look at the two of them. With the way she’s looking at him, they just might go to it on the table—again.”

Dougless choked on her salmon so badly, she had to drink half a glass of water to clear her throat.

“What is this boss to you? You two aren’t . . . ? You know.”

“No, of course not,” Dougless said as she watched Nicholas lean over Arabella, his eyes looking down her dress. Looking down to see what? Dougless thought. There weren’t but a couple of inches that she wasn’t exposing for everyone in the house to see.

When Nicholas glanced up at her, Dougless moved a little nearer Lee. “I was thinking, Lee, since my boss seems to be so busy, maybe you need a secretary for the weekend. My father is a professor of medieval history, so I’ve had some experience with helping him research.”

“Montgomery,” Lee said slowly; then his eyes lit up. “Not Adam Montgomery?”

“That’s my dad.”

“I once heard him present a brilliant paper on thirteenth-century economics. So, he’s your father. Maybe I could use a little help.”

Dougless could almost read his mind. Adam Montgomery would be in a position to help a struggling young professor. But Dougless didn’t mind. Wasn’t ambition good? Besides, she would let Lee believe whatever he wanted if it helped her find out what secret Nicholas’s mother knew.

“The trunk is in my room,” Lee was saying, and his glances were decidedly warmer since finding out who her father was. “Maybe after dinner you’d like to, ah . . . visit.”

“Sure,” Dougless said as she envisioned an evening spent running around a table trying to escape his advances. At the thought of a table, she glanced at Nicholas and saw he was glaring at her. Smiling, she lifted her wineglass to him in salute, then took a deep drink. Nicholas turned away, glowering.

After dinner, Dougless went back to her room to get her notebook and a few supplies as well as her handbag. She thought she might as well be prepared for a long night spent rummaging through four-hundred-year-old documents.

Twice she got lost in the house as she turned wrong corners in her search for Lee’s room. She halted outside an open door when she heard Arabella’s seductive voice coming from inside. “But, darling, I get so frightened when I’m alone at night.”

“Truly,” Dougless heard Nicholas say, “I would have thought you past such childish fears.”

Dougless rolled her eyes skyward.

“Here, let me refill your glass,” Arabella said. “And then I’d like to show you something.” Her voice lowered. “In my room.”

Dougless grimaced. Stupid man! According to the cook, Arabella showed everything in her room to every male who visited Goshawk Hall. With a malicious little smile, Dougless began looking through her handbag. Smiling brightly, she walked into the parlor. Every light except one dim one was off, Arabella was pouring a water glass full of bourbon, and Nicholas sat on the sofa with his shirt half open.

“Oh, your lordship,” Dougless said briskly as she began going about the room turning on every light. “Here’s the calculator you wanted, but I’m afraid the only one I have is solar. It will only work in a brightly lit room.”

Nicholas stared with interest at the small calculator she handed him, and when she began to demonstrate it, his eyes turned to saucers. “One may add?”

“And subtract and multiply and divide. See, here’s your answer. Say you wanted to subtract this year, 1988, from 1564, the year your ancestor was accused of treason and lost his family’s fortune forever, you’d get a minus four hundred and twenty-four years. Four hundred and twenty-four years in which to right a wrong and keep your descendants from laughing at you—at him, I mean.”

“You,” Arabella said, so angry she could barely speak, “leave this room at once.”

“Uh-oh,” Dougless said innocently. “Was I disturbing the two of you? I’m so awfully sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just doing my job.” She started backing toward the door. “Please carry on with what you were doing.”

Dougless left the room, walked down the hall a few feet, then tiptoed back to stand outside the door. She saw the shadows from the room darken.

“I need light,” Nicholas said. “The machine does not work without light.”

“Nicholas, for God’s sake, it’s only a calculator. Put it away.”

“It is a most wondrous machine. What is this mark?”

“It’s a percent sign but I can’t see what it matters now.”

“Demonstrate its function.”

Dougless could hear Arabella’s sigh through the walls. Smiling, quite pleased with herself, Dougless continued her search for Lee’s room. He greeted her wearing, of all things, a silk smoking jacket. Dougless refrained from giggling. One look at his face and at the martini glass he held, and Dougless knew that he had no intention of talking to her about anything except why she should jump into bed with him. She took the martini he offered her, sipped it, then grimaced. She hated martinis, dry or otherwise.

Lee started by telling her how beautiful her hair was, how surprised he was to find such a stunning woman in this moldy old house, what a great dresser she was, and how little her feet were. Dougless could have yawned. Instead, when he refilled her glass, she surreptitiously took two of her stomach tranquilizers from her bag, opened the capsules, and poured them into Lee’s drink. “Bottoms up,” she said cheerfully.

While she was waiting for the pills to take effect, she showed Lee the note Nicholas had slipped under her door the night before. “What does this say?”

He glanced at it. “I think I should write the translation.” He took a pen and paper and wrote:

I think my selfe moch

bownden unto yow.

I am Desyrynge yo

assystance no further.

“Desyrynge?”

“Deserving.”

She had come close to guessing what Nicholas had written last night when he’d left her, before she’d found him in a tavern.

Yawning, Lee rubbed his hand over his eyes. “I feel a little—” He yawned again.

With many apologies, he stood up, then went to the bed and stretched out “for just a minute.” He was asleep instantly, and Dougless quickly went to the little wooden chest on the table near the fireplace.

The papers inside were old, yellow, and brittle, but the writing was clear, the ink not faded as modern inks faded in a mere year or two. Dougless eagerly grabbed the papers, but her heart sank as she looked at them. They were in the same kind of handwriting as the note Nicholas had slipped under her door, and she couldn’t read a word.

She was bent over the papers, trying to decipher a word here and there, when suddenly the door burst open.

“Ah ha!” Nicholas said, his sword in his hand, as he charged into the room.

When Dougless’s heart settled back in place from the fright he’d given her, she smiled at him. “Arabella finish with you?”

Nicholas looked from Lee asleep on the bed to Dougless bending over the papers, and began to look embarrassed. “She was off to bed,” he said.

“Alone?”

Nicholas walked to the table and picked up a letter. “My mother’s hand,” he said.