He was listening to her with concentration, as one does when hearing a foreign language. “What is this ‘lunch’?”
“You’ll see,” Dougless said as she led the way to a nearby pub. Pubs were one of the things Dougless liked best about England, as they were family oriented, but you could still have a drink. After they’d settled into a booth, Dougless ordered two cheese salad sandwiches, a pint of beer for him, a lemonade for her; then she proceeded to tell Nicholas the difference between a bar in America and a pub in England.
“There are more unescorted women?” he asked in amazement.
“More than just me?” she asked, smiling. “There are lots of independent women today. We have our own jobs, our own credit cards. We don’t have, or need, men to take care of us.”
“But what of cousins and uncles? Do these women have no sons to look after them?”
“It’s not like that now. It’s—” She stopped talking when the waitress put their sandwiches before them. But they were not sandwiches as Americans know them. An English cheese sandwich was a piece of cheese on two pieces of buttered white bread. A cheese salad sandwich had a small piece of lettuce on it. The sandwich was small, dry, tasteless.
Nicholas watched her as she picked up the strange-looking food and began to eat it; then he followed her lead.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“It has no flavor,” he said, then took a drink of his beer. “Nor does the beer.”
Dougless looked about the pub and asked if it was anything like the public houses in the sixteenth century. Not that she believed he was . . . The heck with it, she thought.
“Nay,” he answered. “There is gloom and quiet here. There is no danger here.”
“But that’s good. Peace and safety are good.”
Nicholas shrugged as he ate the rest of the sandwich in two bites. “I prefer flavor in my food and flavor in my public houses.”
She smiled as she started to stand up. “Are you ready to go? We still have lots to do.”
“Leave? But where is dinner?”
“You just ate it.”
He raised one eyebrow at her. “Where is the landlord?”
“The man behind the bar seems to be in charge, and I saw a woman behind the counter. Maybe she cooks. Wait a minute, Nicholas, don’t make a fuss. The English don’t like for people to cause problems. If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll go and—”
But Nicholas was already h
alfway to the counter. “Food is food, no matter what the year. No, madam, stay where you are and I will procure us a proper dinner.”
As Dougless watched, Nicholas talked earnestly to the bartender for a few moments; then the woman was called over and she, too, listened to Nicholas. When Dougless saw the man and woman scurrying away to do whatever they’d been told, it occurred to her that if Nicholas learned his way around the twentieth century, he might be a bit of a problem.
Moments later he returned to the booth, and minutes afterward, dishes of food began to be placed on the table. There was chicken, beef, a big pork pie, bowls of vegetables, one of salad, and a nasty looking dark beer was set before Nicholas.
“Now, Mistress Montgomery,” he said when the table was loaded with food, “how do you propose to find my way home?”
When she looked up at him, his eyes were twinkling and she knew that, for once, she had been the one wearing the incredulous expression. It was his turn to be the one who knew how to do something she didn’t.
“Chalk one up for you,” she said, laughing as she speared a chicken leg. “Why don’t you ask the cook if she knows any good witches’ spells?”
“Perhaps if we mix all those bottles you bought . . .” Nicholas said, his mouth full of English beef. “Ow!” he said when he nearly pierced his tongue with the fork he was trying to learn to use.
“Forget the witchcraft,” she said as she withdrew a spiral notebook and a pen from a bag. “I have to know all about you before we can start research.” Perhaps now, with dates and places, she’d trip him up.
But nothing she asked him even slowed him down as he ate plateful after plateful of food. He was born the sixth of June, 1537.
“And what’s your full name, or, I guess, in your case, what’s your title?” She was eating mashed parsnips with her left hand, writing with her right.
“Nicholas Stafford, earl of Thornwyck, Buckshire, and Southeaton, lord of Farlane.”