A Knight in Shining Armor Page 3

  “Dougless,” Robert said. “I think maybe we’re lost. Where is this church? I thought you were going to watch the road maps. I can’t drive and navigate.” There was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there yesterday and Dougless knew he was still angry about her reaction to the bracelet.

  Quickly, Dougless fumbled with the map, then looked around Gloria’s head to try to see the road signs. “Here!” she said. “Take a right.”

  Robert turned down one of the narrow English lanes, bushes on either side nearly covering the road, and drove toward the remote village of Ashburton, a place that looked as though it hadn’t changed in hundreds of years.

  “There’s a thirteenth-century church here containing the tomb of an Elizabethan earl.” Dougless checked her notebook. “Lord Nicholas Stafford, died 1564.”

  “Do we have to see another church?” Gloria wailed. “I’m sick of churches. Couldn’t she find something better to look at?”

  “I was told to search out historic sights,” Dougless snapped before she thought to modulate her tone.

  Robert stopped the car in front of the church and looked back at Dougless. “Gloria’s statement was valid, and I see no call for your bad temper. Dougless, you are making me begin to regret bringing you with us,” he said, then got out of the car and walked away.

  “Bringing me?” Dougless said, but he was already halfway to the church, his arm around Gloria. “But I’m paying my own way,” she whispered.

  Dougless didn’t go inside the church with Robert and Gloria. Instead she stayed outside, walking around the lumpy graveyard, absently looking at the ancient grave markers. She had some serious decisions to make and she wanted time to think. Should she stay and be miserable, or should she leave? If she left now, she knew Robert would never forgive her and all the time and effort she’d invested in him would have been for nothing.

  “Hello.”

  Dougless jumped at the voice, then turned to see Gloria just behind her. Maybe it was Dougless’s imagination, but the girl’s diamond bracelet seemed to flash in the sun.

  “What do you want?” Dougless asked suspiciously.

  Gloria stuck her lower lip out. “You hate me, don’t you?”

  Dougless sighed. “No, I don’t hate you. I just . . . It’s a grown-up thing.” She took a deep breath. She wanted to be alone so she could think. “Why aren’t you inside looking at the church?”

  “I got bored. That’s a pretty blouse,” Gloria said, her eyelids lowered in a sly way that Dougless had seen too many times before. “It looks expensive. Did your rich family buy it for you?”

  Dougless wasn’t about to take the bait and let the girl get to her. Instead, she gave her a quelling look, then turned and walked away.

  “Wait!” Gloria cried out, then yelled, “Ow!”

  Dougless turned back to see Gloria crumpled in a heap beside a rough-surfaced tombstone. Dougless doubted if the girl was actually hurt because Gloria loved drama. Sighing, Dougless went back to help her up, but as soon as she was upright, Gloria burst into tears. Dougless couldn’t quite bring herself to hug Gloria, but she did manage to pat her shoulder. She even gave a little expression of sympathy because Gloria’s arm was raw where she’d hit the stone. Gloria looked at her arm and began to cry louder.

  “It couldn’t hurt that much,” Dougless said, trying to soothe the girl. “I know. Why don’t you put your new bracelet on that arm? I’ll bet the pain’ll stop instantly.”

  “It’s not that,” Gloria said, sniffing. “I’m upset because you hate me. Daddy said you thought my bracelet was going to be an engagement ring.”

  Dougless dropped her hand from Gloria’s arm and stiffened. “What made him think such a ridiculous thing as that?” she asked, trying to sound convincing.

  Gloria looked at Dougless out of the corner of her eye. “Oh, my daddy knows everything about you,” she said, her voice sly. “He knows you thought his surprise was going to be a marriage proposal, and he knows that you thought the check to the jeweler was for an engagement ring.” Gloria gave a little smile. “Daddy and I laugh all the time about you and how much you want to marry him. He says you’ll do anything he tells you to if he makes you think he’s going to ask you to marry him.”

  Dougless was standing so rigid that her body began to tremble.

  Gloria’s little smile turned malicious and her voice lowered. “Daddy says that if you weren’t going to inherit so much money, he’d get rid of you.”

  At that remark, Dougless slapped Gloria’s smug, fat face.

  Robert appeared from inside the church just in time to see the slap, and Gloria went screaming into her father’s arms.

  “She hit me over and over,” Gloria screamed, “and she scratched my arm. Look at it, Daddy, it’s bleeding. She did this to me!”

  “My God, Dougless,” Robert said, his eyes wide in horror. “I can’t believe this of you. To beat a child, to—”

  “Child! I’ve had enough of that child! And I’ve had enough of the way you baby her. And I’ve had enough of the way you two treat me!”

  Robert glared at her coldly. “We have been nothing but kind and thoughtful to you this entire trip, while you have been jealous and spiteful. We have gone out of our way to please you.”

  “You haven’t made any effort to please me. Everything has been for Gloria.” Tears came to Dougless’s eyes and filled her throat until she almost choked. She kept hearing Gloria’s words ringing in her head. “You two have laughed at me behind my back.”

  “Now you’re fantasizing,” Robert said, still glaring at her, still holding Gloria protectively under his arm as though Dougless might attack the girl at any moment. “But since we are so displeasing to you, perhaps you’d rather do without our company.” Turning, Gloria huddled against his side, he started walking toward the car.

  “I agree,” Dougless said. “I’m ready to go home.” Bending, she reached for her handbag where she’d set it down by a gravestone. But her bag wasn’t there. Quickly, she looked behind a few tombstones, but there was no sign of her bag. She looked up when she heard a car start.

  At first she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Robert was driving away and leaving her!

  Dougless ran toward the gate, but the car had already pulled onto the road. Then, to Dougless’s horror, she saw Gloria stick her arm out the window—and dangling from her fingertips was Dougless’s handbag.

  In a futile attempt to reach them, Dougless ran after the car, but it was soon out of sight. Dazed, numb, disbelieving, she walked back to the church. She was in a foreign country with no money, no credit cards, no passport. But, worst of all, the man she loved had just walked out on her.

  The heavy oak door of the church was standing open, so Dougless went inside. It was cool and damp and dim inside the church, and the tall stone walls made the place feel calm and reverent.

  She had to think about her situation and make some plans about what she should do. But, then, surely, Robert would return for her. Maybe even now he was turning around and driving back to get her. Maybe any minute he’d come running into the church, pull Dougless into his arms, and tell her he was sorry and he hoped she could forgive him.

  But, somehow, Dougless didn’t believe any of that was going to happen. No, Robert had been too angry—and Gloria was too much of a liar. Dougless was sure the girl would elaborate on how Dougless had injured her arm, and Robert’s anger would be refueled.

  No, it would be better if Dougless made some plans about how to get herself out of this mess. She’d have to call her father, collect, and have him send her money. And again she would have to tell him that his youngest daughter had failed at something. She’d have to tell him that his daughter couldn’t so much as go on a holiday without getting herself into trouble.

  Tears started in her eyes as she imagined hearing her oldest sister, Elizabeth, say, “What has our little scatterbrained Dougless done now?” Robert had been Dougless’s attempt at making her family proud of her. Rober
t wasn’t like the other stray-cat men Dougless had fallen for. Robert was so respectable, so very suitable, but she’d lost him. Maybe if she’d just held her temper with Gloria . . . Maybe . . .

  Tears blurred Dougless’s eyes as she looked around the church. Sun was streaming through the old windows high above her head, and sharp, clear rays lit the white marble tomb in the archway to the left. Dougless walked forward. Lying on top of the tomb was a full-length, white marble sculpture of a man wearing the top half of a suit of armor and an odd-looking pair of shorts, his ankles crossed, a helmet tucked under his arm. “‘Nicholas Stafford,’” she read aloud, “‘Earl of Thornwyck.’”

  Dougless was congratulating herself for holding up so well under her current circumstances when, suddenly, everything that had happened hit her, and her knees collapsed. She fell to the floor, her hands on the tomb, her forehead resting against the cold marble.

  She began to cry in earnest, to cry deeply from far down inside herself. She felt as though she were a failure, a complete and absolute failure. Her tears were not just for today, but it seemed that everything she’d ever touched in her life had failed. Since she’d reached puberty, her father had had to bail her out of what had to be hundreds of scrapes.

  There was the “boy” she’d fallen madly in love with when she was sixteen. She had defied her entire family because they hadn’t liked him. But her sister Elizabeth—wise, never-made-a-mistake-in-her-life Elizabeth—showed Dougless some papers. The boy she loved was twenty-five years old and had a prison record. Defiantly, Dougless declared that she loved him no matter what flaws he had. They broke up when he was arrested for grand theft.

  Then there was the minister she’d fallen for when she was nineteen. A minister had seemed a safe person for her to love. She ended their relationship when his picture appeared on the front page of the newspapers. He was already married to three other women.

  And then there was . . . Dougless was crying so hard that she couldn’t remember all the others. But she knew that the list was endless. Robert had seemed so different, so ordinary, so respectable—but she hadn’t been able to hold on to him.

  “What is wrong with me?” she cried.

  Through her tears, she looked at the marble face of the man on the tomb. In the Middle Ages they had arranged marriages. When she was twenty-two and had just found out that her latest love, a stockbroker, had been arrested for insider trading, she’d crawled onto her father’s lap and asked him if he’d choose a man for her.

  Adam Montgomery had laughed. “Your problem, sweetheart, is that you fall in love with men who need you too much. You ought to find a man who doesn’t need you, but just wants you.”

  Dougless had sniffed. “That’s exactly what I want: a Knight in Shining Armor to swoop down off his white horse and want me so much that he carries me back to his castle, where we live happily ever after.”

  “Something like that,” her father had said, smiling. “Armor’s okay but, Dougless, sweetheart, if he gets mysterious phone calls in the night, then jumps on his Harley and doesn’t return for days at a time, get out, okay?”

  Dougless cried harder as she remembered the many times she’d had to go to her family for help. And now she was going to have to ask for their help again. Once again she was going to have to admit that she’d made a fool of herself over a man. But this time was worse, because this man had been someone who had her family’s approval. But somehow Dougless had lost him.

  “Help me,” she whispered, her hand on the marble hand of the sculpture. “Help me find my Knight in Shining Armor. Help me find a man who wants me.”

  Sitting back on her heels, with her hands covering her face, Dougless began to cry harder.

  After a long while, she slowly came to realize that someone was near her. When she turned her head, a stream of sunlight coming from a high window hit metal and so blinded her that she sat back on the stone floor with a thud. She put her hand up to shield her eyes.

  Standing before her was a man, a man who appeared to be wearing. . . armor.

  He was standing so still, and glaring down at Dougless so fiercely, that at first she thought he wasn’t real. She couldn’t help staring up at him in openmouthed astonishment. He was an extraordinarily good looking man, and he was wearing the most authentic-looking stage costume she’d ever seen. There was a small ruff about his neck, then armor to his waist. But what armor! The shiny metal looked almost as though it was silver. Down the front of the armor were many rows of etched flower designs, each design filled with a gold-colored metal. From his waist to mid-thigh he wore a type of shorts that ballooned out about his body. Below the shorts, his legs—his big, muscular legs—were clad in stockings that looked to be knitted of . . . there was only one fiber on earth that reflected light in just that way: silk. Tied above his left knee was a garter made of blue silk and beautifully embroidered. His feet sported odd, soft shoes that had little cut-outs across the toes.

  “Well, witch,” the man said in a deep baritone, “you have conjured me, so what now do you ask of me?”

  “Witch?” Dougless asked, sniffing and wiping away tears.

  From inside his ballooned shorts, the man pulled out a white linen handkerchief and handed it to her. Dougless blew her nose noisily.

  “Have my enemies hired you?” the man asked. “Do they plot against me more? Is not my head enough for them? Stand, madam, and explain yourself.”

  Gorgeous, but off his rocker, Dougless thought. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Slowly, she stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  She didn’t say any more because he drew a thin-bladed sword that had to be a yard long, then held the sharp point against her throat. “Reverse your spell, witch. I would return!”

  It was all too much for Dougless. First Robert and his lying daughter, and now this mad Hamlet. She burst into tears again and slumped against the cold stone wall.

  “Damnation!” the man muttered, and the next thing Dougless knew he had picked her up and was carrying her to a church pew.

  He put her down to sit on the hard pew, then stood over her, still glaring. Dougless couldn’t seem to stop crying. “This has been the worst day of my life,” she wailed. The man was scowling down at her like an actor out of an old Bette Davis movie. “I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “I don’t usually cry so much, but to be abandoned by the man I love and attacked—at sword point, no less—all in the same day, sets me off.” As she wiped her eyes, she glanced down at the handkerchief. It was a large linen square, and around the border was an inch and a half band of intricate silk embroidery of what looked to be flowers and dragons. “How pretty,” she choked out.

  “There is no time for trivialities. My soul is at stake—as is yours. I tell you again: Reverse your spell.”

  Dougless was recovering herself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was having a good cry all alone, and you, wearing that absurd outfit, came in here and started yelling at me. I’ve a good mind to call the police—or the bobbies, or whatever they have in rural England. Is it legal for you to carry a sword like that?”

  “Legal?” the man asked. He was looking at her arm. “Is that a clock on your arm? And what manner of dress is it that you wear?”

  “Of course it’s a clock, and these are my traveling-to-England clothes. Conservative. No jeans or T-shirts. Nice blouse, nice skirt. You know, Miss Marple–type clothes.”

  He was frowning at her, but there seemed to be less anger about him. “You talk uncommonly strangely. What manner of witch are you?”

  Throwing up her hands in despair, Dougless stood up and faced him. He was quite a bit taller than she was, so she had to look up. His black, curling hair just reached the stiff little ruff he wore, and he had a black mustache above a trim, pointed, short beard. “I am not a witch, and I am not part of your Elizabethan drama,” she said firmly. “And now I’m going to leave this church, and I can promise you that if you try anything fancy with that sword
of yours, I’ll scream the windows out. Here’s your handkerchief. I’m sorry it’s so wet, but I thank you for lending it to me. Good-bye, and I hope your play gets great reviews.” Turning sharply, she walked out of the church.

  “At least nothing more horrible than what I’ve already been through can happen to me today,” Dougless murmured as she left the churchyard. There was a telephone booth beyond the gate, within sight of the church door, and Dougless used it to make a collect call to her parents’ home in the U.S. It was early in the morning in Maine, and a sleepy Elizabeth answered the phone.

  Anybody but her, Dougless thought, rolling her eyes skyward. She’d rather talk to anyone on earth than her perfect older sister.

  “Dougless, is that you?” Elizabeth asked, waking up. “Are you all right? You’re not in trouble again, are you?”

  Dougless grit her teeth. “Of course I’m not in trouble. Is Dad there? Or Mom?” Or a stranger off the street, she thought. Anybody but Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth yawned. “No, they went up to the mountains. I’m here house-sitting and working on a paper.”

  “Think it’ll win a Nobel prize?” Dougless asked, trying to make a joke and sound carefree.

  Elizabeth wasn’t fooled. “All right, Dougless, what’s wrong? Has that surgeon of yours stranded you somewhere?”

  Dougless gave a little laugh. “Elizabeth, you do say the funniest things. Robert and Gloria and I are having a wonderful time. There are so many fantastic things to see and do here. Why, just this morning we saw a medieval play. The actors were so good. And you wouldn’t believe how good the costumes are!”

  Elizabeth paused. “Dougless, you’re lying. I can hear it over the phone. What’s wrong? Do you need money?”