“There’s a bit on him in the tour book but nowhere else. He didn’t live long enough to accomplish much,” the cashier said.
She asked if they’d yet received postcards of his portrait, but they hadn’t. Dougless bought the tour book, then went outside to the gardens. Finding the place where she and Nicholas had sat down to tea, that heavenly day when he’d given her the pin, she began to read.
In the fat, beautifully illustrated book, Nicholas rated only a short paragraph, and that was about the women and how he’d raised an army against the queen and been executed for it.
Dougless leaned back against the tree. Even knowing the name of the man who’d betrayed him hadn’t helped. Nicholas still hadn’t been able to persuade the queen of his innocence. And he hadn’t even been able to destroy the diary written by that nasty little clerk that had left Nicholas’s name blotted for all time. And, too, it seemed that now no one doubted Nicholas’s guilt. The guidebook description, as brief as it was, portrayed Nicholas as a power-mad womanizer. And the tour group had chuckled when they’d been told of Nicholas’s execution.
Dougless closed her eyes and thought of her beautiful, proud, sweet Nicholas mounting the steps to a wide platform. Would it have been like in the movies, with a muscular man dressed in black leather holding a hideous-looking ax?
Her eyes flew open. She could not think of that. Could not think of Nicholas’s beautiful head rolling across a wooden floor.
She stood up, picked up her heavy tote bag, left the grounds, and walked the two miles to the train station, where she bought a ticket to Thornwyck. Perhaps there, in the library, in their collection of books on the Stafford family, she’d find some answers.
The librarian in Thornwyck welcomed her back, and in answer to Dougless’s question, said she’d never seen Dougless with a man. Dispirited, Dougless went to the Stafford books and began to read. Each and every book told of Nicholas’s execution. No more did they tell of his dying before the execution and poison being suspected. And every book was as disdainful of Nicholas as it had been before. The notorious earl. The wastrel. The man who had everything and threw it away.
The librarian came to tell her the library was closing, so Dougless shut the last book and stood. She felt dizzy and swayed, catching herself against the table.
“Are you all right?” the librarian asked.
Dougless looked at the woman. The man she loved had just had his head cut off. No, she was far from all right. “Yes, I’m fine,” Dougless murmured. “I’m just tired and maybe a little hungry.” She gave the woman a weak smile; then went outside.
Dougless stood in front of the library for a moment. She knew she should get a room somewhere, and she should eat something, but it didn’t seem to matter. Over and over and over, she kept seeing Nicholas climbing the stairs to meet an executioner. Would his hands be tied behind his back? Would he have a priest with him? No, 1564 was after Henry the Eighth had abolished Catholicism. Who would have been with him?
She sat down on an iron bench and put her head in her hands. He had come to her and loved her and left her. For what? He had returned to a scaffolding and a bloody ax.
“Dougless? Is that you?”
She looked up to see Lee Nolman standing over her.
“I thought that was you. Nobody else has hair that color. I thought you left town.”
When she stood up, she swayed against the bench.
“Are you all right? You look terrible.”
“Just a little tired.”
He looked at her closely, at the circles under her eyes and the gray tinge to her skin. “And hungry, too, is my guess.” Taking her arm firmly in his, he shouldered her bag. “There’s a pub around the corner. Let’s get something to eat.”
Dougless allowed him to lead her down the street. What did she care what happened to her?
Inside the pub, he escorted her to a booth and ordered a couple of beers and some food. One sip of her
beer and it went to her head, and Dougless realized she hadn’t eaten since yesterday, when she’d had breakfast with Nicholas—and they’d made love on the floor.
“So what have you been doing since you left Thornwyck last week?” Lee asked.
“Nicholas and I went to Ashburton,” she said, watching him.
“He somebody you met?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “And what about you?”
He smiled in a Cheshire cat way, as though he knew something very important. “The day after you left, Lord Harewood had the wall in Lady Margaret Stafford’s room repaired, and guess what we found?”
“Rats,” Dougless said, not caring about anything.
Lee leaned across the table conspiratorily. “A little iron box, and in it Lady Margaret’s story of the truth of why Lord Nicholas was executed. I tell you, Dougless, what was in that box is going to establish my reputation forever. It’ll be like solving a four-hundred-year-old murder mystery.”