we need to get some things straight between us. If this is an English pickup, I’m not interested. I already have a guy. Or did have one.” Dougless took a breath. “I do have a man in my life. In fact I’m going to call him right now, and I’m sure he’ll come and get me.”
The man didn’t reply to her little speech, but just stood there looking at her. With a sigh, Dougless called the operator to place a collect call to Robert at their hotel. After a moment’s hesitation, the hotel clerk informed her that Robert and his daughter had checked out an hour ago.
Dougless hung up, then slumped against the telephone cubicle. Now what do I do? she thought.
“What is this?” the man asked, looking at the telephone with great interest. “You talked to this?”
“Give me a break, will you?” she half-yelled, taking her anger out on him. Turning back, she jerked the phone up, called the operator, and got information for the number of the hotel that was next on the itinerary she’d made for Robert and her. The clerk at the second hotel informed her that Robert Whitley had canceled his reservation only moments before.
Dougless leaned against the phone cubicle and, in spite of herself, tears came to her eyes. “So where’s my Knight in Shining Armor?” she whispered. As she said the words, she looked at the man standing before her. A fading ray of sunlight struck his armor, a shadow fell across his blue-black hair, and a jewel in his sword hilt twinkled. This man had appeared the last time she’d cried and begged for a Knight in Shining Armor.
“You have had bad news?” he asked.
She straightened. “It looks as though I’ve been abandoned,” she said softly, looking at him. No, it couldn’t be, and she wasn’t going to even consider it. It was a one in a million chance that this actor, who was so involved in his role that he believed it, should appear exactly at the moment she’d asked for a Knight in Shining Armor. The truth was that Dougless was a magnet for strange men. Men who had problems seemed to have radar for finding her.
“I, too, seem to have lost all,” he said so softly she hardly heard him.
Oh, no! she thought. She was not going to fall for that line. “Someone around here must know who you are. Maybe if you ask at the post office, someone can tell you how to get home.”
“Post office?”
He looked so genuinely lost that she could feel herself softening toward him. No, Dougless, no, she told herself, but the next moment she heard herself say, “Come on. I’ll take you to the coin dealer so you can exchange your coins.”
They walked together, and his erect, perfect carriage made Dougless straighten her shoulders. None of the English people they passed stared at them—as far as Dougless could tell, the English stared only at people wearing sunglasses—but then she and Nicholas passed a couple of American tourists with their two adolescent children. The man had two cameras about his neck.
“Lookit that, Myrt,” the man said, the adults rudely gaping at Nicholas in his armor, and the children laughing and pointing.
“Ill-mannered louts,” Nicholas said under his breath. “Someone should teach them how to behave in the presence of their betters.”
Things happened very quickly after that. A bus stopped just a few feet from them, and out stepped fifty Japanese tourists, their cameras clicking as they photographed every inch of the quaint little English village. When they saw Nicholas, they advanced on him, cameras covering their faces.
At the sight of the approaching tourists, Nicholas drew his sword and stepped forward. Watching from the sidelines, the American woman tourist yelled in fear, but the Japanese kept moving closer, their cameras clicking like cicadas on a hot summer night.
To prevent the coming clash, Dougless did the only thing she knew worked: she flung herself against the armor-clad man and yelled, “No!” Unfortunately, when she hit him, the edge of his sword slashed the upper sleeve of her blouse and cut her arm. Startled by the pain, Dougless tripped and nearly fell, but the knight caught her, lifted her into his arms for the second time, and carried her back to the sidewalk. Behind them, the Japanese cameras were still clicking and the Americans applauded.
“Gee, Daddy, this is better than Warwick Castle,” an American kid said.
“It’s not in the guidebook, George,” the woman said. “I think they should put things like this in the guidebook, or otherwise a body could think it was real.”
Nicholas set the woman down. Somehow, he did not know how, but he had made a fool of himself. Did this century allow a nobleman to be defamed? And what manner of weapon were the small black machines these people held before their faces? For that matter, what manner of little people were they who held the machines?
He did not ask his questions, as questions seemed to annoy the witch-woman. “Madam, you are injured,” he said, and Dougless could tell by the way he stiffened that he was mortified that he’d injured her.
Her arm was bleeding and the wound hurt, but she decided to let him off the hook. “It’s only a flesh wound,” she said, parodying the TV westerns. But the man didn’t smile at her joke. Instead, he continued to look embarrassed. “It’s not anything,” she said, looking at the bloody place on her arm. She took a tissue from her skirt pocket and pressed it over the cut. “The coin shop is down there. Let’s go.”
When Dougless entered the little shop, the dealer smiled at her in welcome. “I hoped to see you again. I—” He broke off when he saw Nicholas. Slowly, without a word, the man came forward and began to walk around Nicholas, examining his clothing. After one circuit, he dropped the jeweler’s loupe down over his eye and looked at the armor, murmuring, “Mmm hmm,” over and over. While Nicholas stood stiffly erect, looking at the man in distaste, but also looking as though he didn’t want to commit another faux pas, the coin dealer examined the jewels on Nicholas’s sword hilt, the jewels of the ring on the hand that rested on the sword, and the jewels on the dagger in his belt—a weapon Dougless hadn’t noticed before. Flipping up his loupe, the man went to his knees and examined the embroidery on the garter about Nicholas’s knee, then looked at the knitting of his hose, and, last of all, at his soft slippers.
Finally, the coin dealer straightened and peered at Nicholas’s face, examining his beard and hair.
Throughout this, Nicholas had been enduring the tradesman’s scrutiny with ill-concealed distaste.
At last the coin dealer stepped back. “Remarkable,” he said. “I have never seen anything like it. I must get the jeweler from next door to see this.”
“You will do no such thing!” Nicholas snapped. “Do you think I wait all day here to be inspected like a hog at a fair? Will you do business, or do I go elsewhere?”
“Yes, sir,” the coin dealer muttered, scurrying back behind his counter.
Nicholas dropped a sackful of coins onto the counter. “What do you trade me for these, and remember, man, I take care of those who cheat me.”