Dougless blinked. “Anything else?”
“A few baronetcies, but none of great importance.”
“So much for barons,” she said as she had him repeat what he’d said so she could write it down. Next, she began to list the properties he owned. There were estates from East Yorkshire to South Wales, plus more land in France and Ireland.
When her head was beginning to whirl with all the names, she closed her notebook. “I think that with all that we should be able to find something about you—him,” she said, her tone showing her understatement.
After “lunch” they stopped in a barbershop so Nicholas could be shaved. When he sat up in the chair, clean shaven at last, Dougless took a moment to catch her breath. Hidden under the beard and mustache had been a full-lipped mouth of great sensitivity.
“I will do, madam?” he asked, softly chuckling at her expression.
“Passable,” she said, trying to sound as though she’d seen better. But as she walked ahead of him, his laugh filled her ears. Vain! she thought. He was much too vain!
When they returned to the bed-and-breakfast, the landlady said a room with a private bath had come vacant. A sane, sensible part of Dougless knew she should ask for a room of her own, but she didn’t open her mouth when the landlady looked at her in question. Besides, Dougless told herself, when Robert came for her, it might be good for him to see her with this divine-looking man.
After she and Nicholas had moved what little they had into the new room, they went to the church and spoke to the vicar, but there was no word from Robert for her, nor any inquiries about the bracelet. They went to a grocery and bought cheese and fruit; to a butcher for meat pies; to a baker for bread, scones, and pastries; then to a winery, where they purchased two bottles of wine.
By teatime, Dougless was exhausted.
“My purse bearer looks sinking-ripe,” Nicholas said, smiling at her.
Dougless felt exactly like sinking-ripe sounded. Together they walked back to their little hotel, where they took the bag containing the new books to the garden. Mrs. Beasley served them tea and scones, and gave them a blanket to spread on the grass. Nicholas and Dougless sat on the blanket, drank tea, ate the scones, and looked at the books. It was heavenly English weather, cool yet warm, sunny but not brilliant. The garden was green and lush, the roses fragrant. Dougless was sitting up; Nicholas stretched before her on his stomach as he ate scones with one hand and carefully turned pages with the other.
The cotton shirt he wore was stretched across his back muscles, and the trousers clung to his thighs. Black curls brushed his collar. Dougless found herself looking at him more than at the travel book she was thumbing through.
“It is here!” Nicholas said, rolling over and sitting up so abruptly Dougless’s tea splashed out. “My newest house is here.” He shoved the book at her as she put down her cup.
“‘Thornwyck Castle,’” she read beside the full page photo, “‘begun in 1563 by Nicholas Stafford, earl of Thornwyck . . .’” She glanced at him. He was lying on his back, his hands behind his head, and smiling angelically, as though he’d at last found some proof of his existence. “‘. . . was confiscated by Queen Elizabeth the First in 1564 when . . .’” She trailed off.
“Go on,” Nicholas said softly, but he was no longer smiling.
“‘. . . when the earl was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be beheaded. There was some doubt of Stafford’s guilt, but all investigation stopped when’”—Dougless’s voice lowered—“‘when three days before his execution the earl was found dead in his cell. He had been writing a letter to his mother when he apparently died of a heart attack. He was found with his head face down on a table, the letter to his mother’”—she looked up and whispered—“‘unfinished.’”
Nicholas watched the clouds overhead and was silent for a while. “Does it say what became of my mother?” he asked at last.
“No. The rest of the article describes the castle and says it was never finished. ‘What had been completed fell into disrepair after the Civil War’—your Civil War, not mine—‘then was renovated in 1824, for the James family, and—’” She stopped. “‘And now it’s an exclusive hotel with a two-star restaurant!’”
“My house is a public house?” Nicholas asked, obviously appalled. “My house was to be a center of learning and intelligence. It was—”
“Nicholas, that was hundreds of years ago. I mean, maybe it was. Don’t you see? Maybe we can get reservations to stay at this hotel. We can possibly stay at your house.”
“I am to pay to stay in my own house?” he asked, his upper lip curled in disgust.
She threw up her hands in despair. “Okay, don’t go. We’ll just stay here and go shopping for the next twenty years, and you can spend all your time badgering pub owners into serving you medieval banquets every day.”
“You have a sharp tongue on you.”
“I can see the truth, if that’s what you mean.”
“Except about men who abandon you.”
She started to get up, but he caught her hand.
“I will pay,” he said, looking up at her, but he began caressing the fingers of the hand he held. “You will remain with me?”
She pulled her hand out of his grasp. “A bargain’s a bargain. I’ll help you find out what you need to know so maybe you can clear your ancestor’s name.”
Nicholas smiled. “So now I am my own ancestor?”