He looked back at his food but not at her. “It concerns the man she believes to be my ancestor. She has, ah, heard the stories of . . .”
“Of you two on the table.” Dougless grimaced. “Great, now she wants to repeat history. Is she going to let you see the documents or not?”
“She cannot. She has signed a contract with a physician.”
Dougless had to figure that one out. A physician? Was she ill? No, a doctor. “Not the doctor in the magazine? What was his name? Dr. Something Hamilton. No, Hamilton something. That guy?”
Nicholas nodded. “He arrived but yesterday. He hopes to gain something by clearing my name, but I do not know what. Arabella says the book will take years. I do not believe I can wait that long. Your world costs too much.”
Dougless knew from her father’s career how important it was to get published. To the outside world it might not seem important to solve an Elizabethan mystery, but to a scholar, especially a young man just starting out, a book with new information could mean the difference between tenure or not, or between getting a teaching position at a large, well-paid school or at a small community college.
“So,” she said, “Dr. Whatever is there, and he’s sworn your Arabella to secrecy, so you’re not going to be given access to the papers. Yet it seems that we’re invited as houseguests anyway.”
Nicholas smiled over his wineglass. “I have persuaded Arabella to tell me what she knows of me. I hope I can persuade her to tell me all. And you”—he fixed Dougless with a look—“you are to talk to this physician.”
“He’s a Ph.D., not a physician and . . . What! Wait a minute, are you saying what I think you are? I am not, under any circumstances, going to play up to some history nut to help you out. I signed on as a secretary, not as a . . . What are you doing?”
Nicholas had taken her hand in both of his and was kissing her fingertips one by one.
“Stop that! People are looking.” Dougless’s shoes came off her feet. Nicholas’s lips traveled up her arm until they reached the sensitive little spot on her inner elbow. Dougless was sinking down in the chair.
“All right!” she said. “You win! Stop that!”
He looked up at her through his lashes. “You will help me?”
“Yes,” she said as he kissed her arm again.
“Good,” he said, then dropped her arm so that it landed in her dirty plate. “Now we must pack.”
Dougless, grimacing, mopped up her arm and ran after him. “Is that how you’re going to persuade Arabella?” she called after him, then stopped as she saw the other diners staring at her. Dougless gave a crooked smile of apology and ran from the room.
In their suite, Dougless saw a different Nicholas. He was very concerned that his clothes weren’t correct. He held up a gorgeous linen shirt and said, “It needs pluming up.”
Dougless looked at her own meager wardrobe and felt like crying. A weekend at an English lord’s estate, where they dress for dinner, and she had nothing but serviceable wool. She wished she had her mother’s white gown, the one with the pearls, or the red one with—
Halting, she thought for a moment. Then she smiled. And the next minute she was on the phone to her sister Elizabeth in Maine.
“You want me to send you two of Mother’s best gowns?” Elizabeth said. “She will kill both of us.”
“Elizabeth,” Dougless said firmly. “I take full responsibility. Just send them NOW. Overnight mail. Got a pencil?” She gave Elizabeth the address at Goshawk Hall.
“Dougless, what’s going on? First I get a frantic-sounding call from you where you won’t tell me anything, and now you want me to ransack Mother’s closet.”
“Nothing much. How’s your paper coming?”
“It’s making me crazy. And if that weren’t bad enough, I have stopped up drains. A plumber is coming today. Dougless, are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. Good luck with your paper and your plumber. Bye.”
Dougless packed her suitcase, then Nicholas’s—it was one of those things he wouldn’t consider doing for himself—then she called a taxi. There was no suitcase large enough to hold his armor, so it was put into the biggest shopping bag.
When they arrived at Goshawk Hall, Arabella literally met Nicholas with open arms. “Come inside, darling,” she purred, her hands all over him. “I feel we already know one another. After all, our ancestors were very friendly. Who are we to be any different?” She ushered him inside, leaving Dougless with a half-dozen or so suitcases at her feet.
“Who are we to be any different?” she mocked in a falsetto voice as she paid the cab driver.
It didn’t take Dougless five minutes to learn that she was not considered a houseguest but a servant, and not a very welcome one at that. A man ushered her—Dougless carrying her own suitcases—to a small, barren, cold room not far from the kitchen. Feeling like a governess in a gothic, neither servant nor family, she unpacked and hung her clothes in a grubby little wardrobe. Looking about the ugly little room, she felt martyred. Here she was doing this to help some guy save his life and his family name and she was never even going to be able to tell anyone about it.
She left the room and went into the kitchen to find the big room empty, but tea for two had been set up at one end of the worktable.