A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggert 13) - Page 47

Nicholas’s face changed. He looked at her with that expression men have when a woman says something they’ve not thought of—as though the impossible has happened.

“Who stood to inherit? Your dear, darling Lettice?” Dougless snapped her lips together, wishing she’d kept the jealousy out of her voice.

Nicholas didn’t seem to notice. “Lettice had her marriage property, but she lost all at my death. I inherited from Kit, but I can assure you I did not wish for his death.”

“Too much responsibility?” Dougless asked. “Being the boss carries a burden to it.”

He gave her a look of anger. “You believe your history books. Come,” he said, “you must read more. You must discover who betrayed me.”

Dougless read all afternoon while Nicholas laughed over The Merchant of Venice, but she could find out nothing more.

In the evening Nicholas wanted her to dine with him, but she refused. She knew she had to spend less time with him. Her heart was too newly broken and she had come too close to caring more for him than was good for her. Looking like a sad little boy, he stuck his hands in his pockets and went downstairs to dinner, while Dougless asked for a bowl of soup and some bread to be brought up to her room. As she ate, she went over her notes, but could come up with no new ideas. No one seemed to gain anything by the deaths of Christopher and Nicholas.

About ten P.M., Nicholas had still not returned from dinner so, curious, she went downstairs to look for him. He was in the beautiful stone-walled drawing room laughing with half a dozen guests. Dougless stood in the shadow of the doorway and watched—and anger, unreasonable, unjust anger, flooded her body. She had called him forward, but now two other women were drooling over him.

Turning away, she left the hallway. He was exactly as the books said, she thought. No wonder someone had so easily betrayed him. When he should have been taking care of business, he was probably in bed with some woman.

She went upstairs, put on her nightgown, and got into the little bed the hotel had brought up for her. But she didn’t sleep. Instead, she lay there feeling angry and foolish. Maybe she should have left with Robert. Robert had a bit of a problem about sharing money and he did love his daughter excessively, but he’d always been faithful to her.

At about eleven she heard Nicholas open the bedroom door, and she saw light under the door between their rooms. When she heard him open her door, she tightly closed her eyes.

“Dougless,” he whispered, but she didn’t answer. “I know you do not sleep, so answer me.”

She opened her eyes. “Should I get my pad and paper? I’m afraid I don’t take shorthand.”

Sighing, Nicholas took a step toward her. “I felt something from you tonight. Anger? Dougless, I do not want us to be enemies.”

“We’re not enemies,” she said sternly. “We are employer and employee. You are an earl and I am a commoner.”

“Dougless,” he said, his voice pleading and all too seductive. “You are not common. I meant . . .”

“Yes?”

He backed away. “Forgive me. I have had too much to drink, and my tongue runs away from me. I meant what I said. On the morrow you must discover more about my family. Good night, Miss Montgomery.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she said mockingly.

In the morning, she refused to eat breakfast with him. This is better, she told herself. Do not relax for even a moment. Remind yourself that he is as much a scoundrel now as he was then. She walked to the library alone, and when she looked out its windows, she saw Nicholas laughing with a pretty young woman. Dougless buried her nose in the book.

Nicholas was still smiling when he came to sit across from her. “A new friend?” she asked, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

“She is an American and she was telling me about baseball. And football.”

“You told her that you’ve never heard of those sports because last week you were in Elizabethan England?” Dougless was aghast.

Nicholas smiled. “She believes me to be a man of learning, so I have had not time for such tilly-fally.”

“Learning, ha!” Dougless muttered.

Nicholas continued to smile. “You are jealous?”

“Jealous? Most certainly not. I am your employee. I have no right to be jealous. Did you tell her about your wife?”

Nicholas picked up one of the books of Shakespeare’s plays the librarian had left out for him. “You are frampold this morning,” he said, but he was smiling as though he was pleased.

Dougless had no idea what he meant, so she wrote the word down and looked it up later. Disagreeable. So, he thought she was disagreeable, did he? She went back to her research.

At three o’clock she nearly jumped out of her chair. “Look! It’s here.” Excitedly, she went around the table to take the chair next to Nicholas. “This paragraph, see?” He did, but he could read only phrases of it. She was holding a two-month-old copy of a magazine on English history.

Tags: Jude Deveraux Montgomery/Taggert Historical
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