“What did the book say?” Dougless asked.
The guide gave her a hard look, obviously remembering the door-opening incident. “Basically, Lord Nicholas talked of cleanliness and said that doctors and midwives must wash their hands before touching a patient. Now, if you’ll follow me, we shall see—”
Dougless left the tour after that, went out the entrance, and walked to the village library.
She spent the afternoon reading the history books. Every scrap of information was different now. She saw the names of people she had known and come to love. They were just names in history books to other readers, but to her they were flesh and blood people.
After three husbands, Lady Margaret never married again, and lived into her seventies.
Kit had married little Lucy, and one book said Lucy had come to be a great benefactress who encouraged musicians and artists. Kit had run the Stafford estates well until he died of a stomach ailment at age forty-two. Since he and Lucy had had no children, the earldom and estates went to Nicholas.
As she read about Nicholas, she touched the printed words, as though they could make him seem closer. When she read that Nicholas had never married, quick tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them away.
Nicholas had lived to the grand old age of sixty-two, and during his life he had done many great things. The books went into detail about the beauty and creativity of the buildings he had designed. “His use of glass was far ahead of its time,” one author wrote.
One book told of Nicholas’s ideas about medicine, how he had crusaded for cleanliness. “Had his advice been taken,” the author said, “modern medicine would have had its start hundreds of years earlier.”
“Far ahead of his time,” the books said again and again.
She leaned back in her chair. No Arabella-on-the-table. No diary being found that told of what a womanizer Nicholas was. No betrayal. No conspiracy between his wife and his friend. And, most important, no execution.
She left when the library closed, walked to the station, and took a train back to Ashburton. She still had a room at the hotel and her clothes were there.
Once in her hotel room, she had difficulty adjusting to the modernness of it, especially the bathroom. She took a shower, but couldn’t bear the hot water or the hard, sharp forcefulness of the showerhead. She turned the knobs until the water was a lukewarm drizzle and felt more at home.
The flushing of the toilet seemed like a waste of water to her, and she kept staring at the big mirror in wonder.
After a room service supper, she put on her flimsy nightgown and felt like a lewd woman. And when she went to bed, she felt lonely without Honoria beside her.
Surprisingly, she went to sleep immediately, and if she dreamed, she did not remember doing so.
In the morning she had difficulty with the hotel when she asked for beef and beer for breakfast, but the English, better than any other people on earth, understood eccentrics.
She reached Thornwyck Castle by ten A.M., just as the gates were opening. She bought a ticket and started on the tour. The guide talked at length about the Stafford family, some of whose members still owned the house, and especially about their brilliant ancestor, Nicholas Stafford.
“He never married,” the guide said with twinkling eyes, “but he had a son named James. When Nicholas’s older brother died and left no children, Nicholas inherited, and when Nicholas died, the Stafford estates went to James.”
Dougless smiled, remembering the sweet little boy she had played with.
The guide continued. “James made a brilliant marriage and tripled the family fortunes. It was through James that the Stafford family really made its money.”
And he would have died if Dougless had not intervened.
The guide went on to the next generation of the family and the next room, but Dougless slipped away. When she’d seen Thornwyck before, it had been half in ruins, but Nicholas had shown her the corbel with Kit’s face high on the wall of what would have been the second floor. Unfortunately, the second floor was not open to the public.
But Dougless had been through too much to allow anything to stop her. She opened a door that said NO ADMITTANCE, and found herself in a small sitting room furnished in English chintz. Feeling like a spy, but also knowing that she had to do what she did, she went to the doorway and peered out. The hall was clear, so she tiptoed down it, thinking that carpet on the floor made sneaking much easier than noisy rushes.
She found a staircase and went up to the second floor. Twice she had to hide when she heard footsteps, but no one saw her. In Nicholas’s time there would have been so many servants running about that it would have been impossible for an intruder to get to the second floor unnoticed, but those days were long gone.
Once on the second floor, she had trouble orienting herself as she tried to remember just where the corbel would be. She searched three rooms before she entered a bedroom and saw it, high up above a beautiful walnut dresser.
She plastered herself between the dresser and the wall as a maid walked out of the adjoining bath. Dougless held her breath as the maid straightened the bedspread, then left the room.
Alone again, Dougless went to work. She pulled a heavy chair beside the dresser, climbed on it, then, after three tries, managed to climb on top of the dresser. She had just put her hand on the old stone corbel when the door opened. Dougless flattened herself against the wall.
The maid came in again, this time with an armload of towels that blocked her from seeing Dougless. She didn’t breathe until the woman left.
When the door closed, Dougless turned and touched Kit’s stone face. The stonework looked to be solid and she wished she’d had the foresight to bring a screwdriver or small crowbar. She pulled and tugged at the face and was almost ready to give up when the stone moved in her hand.