“Near the village of Thornwyck,” the woman said.
“Thornwyck,” Dougless said, and nearly gave a whoop of joy, but caught herself. It was all she could do to thank the women before she ran from the shop into the garden. Nicholas lay stretched out on the cloth, sipping tea and finishing the scones.
“Your mother married Richard, ah . . . Harewood,” she said breathlessly, “and all the papers are at . . .” She couldn’t remember the name.
“Goshawk Hall?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s it! It’s near Thornwyck.”
He turned away from her. “My mother married Harewood?”
Dougless watched the back of him. If he’d died accused of treason, had his mother, in her poverty, been forced to marry some despicable despot? Had his old, frail mother been forced to endure some man who treated her as no more than property?
When Nicholas’s shoulders began to shake, Dougless put her hand on his arm. “Nicholas, it’s not your fault. You were dead, you couldn’t help her.” What am I saying? she thought.
But when Nicholas turned around, she saw that he was . . . laughing. “I should have known she would land on her feet,” he said. “Harewood! She married Dickie Harewood.” He could hardly speak for laughing so hard.
“Tell me everything,” Dougless urged, eyes alight.
“Dickie Harewood is a tardy-gaited, unhaired pajock.”
Dougless frowned, not understanding.
“An ass, madam,” Nicholas explained. “But a rich one. Aye, he’s very rich.” He leaned back, smiling. “It is good to know she was not left one-trunk-inheriting.”
Still smiling, he poured Dougless a cup of tea, and as she took it, he picked up her little paper bag and opened it.
“No” she began,
but he was already looking at the postcard of Lady Arabella’s portrait.
He looked up at her with such a knowing look that she wanted to dump the tea over his head. “Did they not have a picture of the table too?” he mocked.
“I have no idea what you mean,” she said haughtily, not looking at his face as she snatched the card out of his hands and put it back into the bag. “The picture is for research. It might help us . . .” For the life of her, she couldn’t think what a picture of the mother of Nicholas’s illegitimate child could possibly help them find out. “Did you eat all the scones? You really can be a pig sometimes.”
Nicholas gave a snort of laughter.
After a moment he said, “What say you we stay in this town this night? On the morrow I shall purchase Armant and Rafe.”
It took Dougless a moment to understand what he meant, but then she remembered the American magazines he’d seen. “Georgio Armani and Ralph Lauren?” she asked.
“Aye,” he said. “Clothing of your time. When I return to my house in Thornwyck, I will not be one-trunk-inheriting either.”
Dougless bit into a little sandwich. Unless she found Robert and got her suitcases back soon, she was going to have to buy more clothes too.
She looked at Nicholas, his hands behind his head. Tomorrow they’d go shopping, then the next day they’d go to Thornwyck, where they’d try to find out who had betrayed him to the queen.
But tonight, she thought. Tonight they’d once again spend alone in a hotel room.
EIGHT
Dougless sat in the back of the big black taxi, luggage all around her. This is where I came in, she thought, remembering being in the back of Robert’s rental car and trying to get comfortable around Gloria’s luggage. But now, sprawled beside her, his long legs stretched out, was Nicholas. He was absorbed in a battery-powered video game that they’d purchased this morning.
Putting her head back, Dougless closed her eyes and thought about the last several hours. After tea at Bellwood yesterday, she had called a taxi and asked to be taken to a nice hotel in Bath. The driver had taken them to a lovely eighteenth-century building where she was able to get a double room for the night. Neither she nor Nicholas mentioned asking for separate rooms. It was a beautiful room done in yellow chintz and flowered wallpaper, with white bedspreads piped in yellow on the two beds. Nicholas ran his hand over the wallpaper and vowed that when he got home, he was going to have someone paint the walls of his house with lilies and roses.
After they checked in, they went walking to look in the windows of the wonderful shops in Bath. It was near dinnertime when Dougless saw a movie house called the American Cinema.
“We could always go to a movie and eat hot dogs and popcorn for dinner,” she said, making a joke.