“And their daughters,” Dougless said, including herself in his derogatory description.
Turning, he looked at her with cool contempt. “You believe what these fools have written about me,” he said. “You believe my life was naught but horses and women.”
“I didn’t say that, the books did, my lord,” she answered him in the same tone.
“On the morrow we will begin to find what the books do not say.”
ELEVEN
In the morning they were both at the library when the door was unlocked. After spending twenty minutes explaining the free library system to Nicholas, Dougless got five of the books on the Staffords from the shelves and began to read. Nicholas sat across from her, staring at the pages of a book, and frowning in consternation. After thirty minutes of watching him struggle, Dougless took pity on him.
“Perhaps, sir,” she said softly, “in the evenings I might teach you to read.”
“Teach me to read?” he asked.
“In America I teach school, and I’ve had quite a bit of experience teaching children to read. I’m sure you could learn,” she said gently.
“Could I?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. He didn’t say any more, but got up, went to the librarian, and asked her a few questions, which Dougless couldn’t hear. Smiling, the librarian nodded, left the desk for a moment, then returned and handed him several books.
Nicholas put the books on the table in front of Dougless and opened the top one. “There, Miss Montgomery, read that to me.”
On the page was an incomprehensible type-face of oddly-shaped letters and strangely-spelled words. She looked up at him.
“This is my printing.” Picking the book up, he looked at the title page. “It is a play by a man named William Shakespeare.”
“You haven’t heard of him? I thought Shakespeare was as Elizabethan as any man ever was.”
Nicholas, starting to read, took a seat across from her. “Nay, I have no knowledge of him.” Quickly, he became absorbed in his reading as Dougless dug more into the history books.
She could find very little about what happened after Nicholas’s death. The estates had been taken over by the queen. Neither Christopher nor Nicholas had children, so the Stafford title and line had died with them. Again and again, she read of what a wastrel Nicholas had been and how he’d betrayed his entire family.
At noon they went to a pub for lunch. After their first visit, Nicholas had not insisted upon a heavy midday meal. He was beginning to get used to the light lunches, but he continued to grumble.
“Foolish children,” he said, moving his food about on his plate. “If they had listened to their parents, they would have lived. Your world fosters such disobedience.”
“What children?”
“In the play. Juliet and . . .” He paused, trying to remember.
“Romeo and Juliet? You’ve been reading Romeo and Juliet?”
“Aye, and a more disobedient lot I have never seen. That play is a good lesson to children everywhere. I hope children today read it and learn from it.”
Dougless nearly screeched at him. “Romeo and Juliet is about romance, and if the parents hadn’t been so narrow-minded and uptight, they—”
“Narrow-minded? They were good parents. They knew such a liaison could only end in tragedy—and it did!” he said fiercely.
Dougless’s ideas of being cool fled her mind. “The tragedy came because the parents—” They argued throughout the meal.
Later, as they walked back to the library, Dougless asked him how his brother Christopher had died.
Nicholas stopped walking and looked away. “I was to go hunting with him that day, but I had cut my arm during sword practice.” Dougless saw him rubbing his left forearm. “I still bear the scar.” After a moment Nicholas turned to her, and she could see the pain in his eyes. Whatever she thought of Nicholas Stafford, she had no doubt of his love for his brother. “He drowned. I was not the only brother who liked women. Kit saw a pretty girl swimming in a lake, and he told his men to leave him alone with her. After a few hours the men returned to find my brother floating in the lake.”
“And no one saw what happened?”
“Nay. Perhaps the girl did, but we never found her.”
Dougless was thoughtful for a moment. “How odd that your brother drowned with no witnesses to attest to what happened; then a few years later you were tried for treason. It’s almost as though someone planned to take the Stafford estates.”