“I’m on my way to the bathroom now.”
“All right! But it’s hard to remember what you said that night. You were hysterical. You said something about having a job helping some guy rewrite history. That’s all I remember.”
“Rewrite history,” Dougless said under her breath. Yes, that’s what Nicholas had wanted to do in this century: change history.
“Dougless! Dougless!” Robert was shouting, but she had put down the telephone.
When Nicholas had come to her, he had been facing an execution. But what they had found out had saved him from that. Grabbing her big carry-on satchel from the closet, she stuffed some clothing and toiletries into it. As she closed a drawer, she glanced into the mirror and put her hand to her throat. Beheading. Today, she thought, we read about it, read that some person walked up a platform and another person struck them with an ax. But we don’t think of what it really means.
“We saved you from that,” she whispered.
Once she was packed, she sat down on a chair to wait for morning. Tomorrow she’d go to Nicholas’s houses and hear how they had changed history. Perhaps hearing that Nicholas had lived to be an old man and had accomplished great things would help her feel better. She leaned back on the chair and stared at the bed. She didn’t dare
close her eyes for fear she’d dream.
Dougless was on the first train out of Ashburton and arrived at Bellwood before they opened the gates. She sat outside on the grass and waited for them to open—and tried not to think.
When the gates opened, she bought a ticket for the first tour. Some of her misery was beginning to leave her as she thought of how much Nicholas’s name had meant to him. He’d so hated being a laughingstock, and now she was going to have the comfort of hearing how he’d changed history.
The tour guide was the same woman who’d led her and Nicholas the first time, and Dougless smiled at the memory of Nicholas opening and closing the alarmed door.
Dougless didn’t pay much attention to the first part of the tour or listen to the guide. She just looked at the walls and furniture, and wondered what part of the design Nicholas had contributed.
“And now we come to our most popular room,” the guide said, and there was that same little smirk in her voice as before.
The guide had Dougless’s full attention now, but something in her tone puzzled Dougless. Shouldn’t the guide be more respectful now?
“This was Lord Nicholas Stafford’s private chamber and, to put it politely, he was what is known as a rake.”
The crowd moved forward, eager to hear of this notorious earl, but Dougless stood where she was. Things should have changed. When Nicholas went back, he meant to change history. Dougless had once said that history couldn’t be changed. Had she been terribly, horribly right?
With several firm “excuse me’s,” Dougless pushed to the front of the group. The guide’s talk was word for word as it had been the first time. She talked of Nicholas’s devastating charm with the ladies, and she again told the awful story of Arabella and the table.
Dougless felt as though she wanted to put her hands over her ears. Between the people in Ashburton not remembering Nicholas and now history being the same, it almost made her doubt whether any of what she remembered had happened. Was she crazy, just as Robert said? When she’d so frantically asked the people of Ashburton if they’d seen Nicholas, they had looked at her as though she were insane.
“Alas,” the guide was saying, “poor, charming Nick was executed for treason on the ninth of September, 1564. Now, if you’ll step through here, we’ll see the south drawing room.”
Dougless’s head shot up. Executed? No, Nicholas was found dead, slumped over his mother’s letter.
Dougless made her way to the guide, who looked down her nose at Dougless. “Ah, the door opener,” she said.
“I didn’t open the door, Ni . . .” She halted. There was no use in explaining if this woman remembered her, not Nicholas, opening and closing the alarmed door. “You said that Lord Nicholas Stafford was executed. I heard that three days before the execution was to take place, he was found dead, slumped over a letter he was writing to his mother.”
“He was not,” the woman said emphatically. “He was sentenced to death, and the sentence was carried out on schedule. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a tour to conduct.”
Dougless stood where she was for a moment, staring up at the portrait of Nicholas hanging over the fireplace. Executed? Beheaded? Something was deeply, sincerely wrong.
Turning, she started to leave, but on her way out she stopped at the door with the NO ADMITTANCE sign on it. Behind that door, down a few corridors, was the room that held the secret cabinet and in it the ivory box. Could she find the room and the cupboard door? She put out her hand to the knob.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” someone behind her said.
Dougless turned to see one of the guides, an unfriendly look on her face.
“A few days ago some tourists went in there. We’ve had to put a lock and an alarm on the door since then.”
“Oh,” Dougless murmured. “I thought it was a rest room.” Turning away, she made her way out of the house, the guides outside frowning because she once again went out the entrance door.
She went to the gift shop and asked to buy anything they had on Nicholas Stafford.