A Knight in Shining Armour (44 page)

B
y the time Dougless climbed into bed
beside Honoria that night, she was exhausted. No wonder she’d seen so few fat people and the women had such tiny waists. Between the steel corset and the constant activity, fat didn’t have a chance to settle on a person’s body.

She and Honoria had left the garden to attend a service in the pretty little chapel on the ground floor of the house. They’d listened to a richly dressed minister and they’d spent a great deal of time on their knees. Dougless couldn’t pay attention to what the minister was saying for looking at the stunning clothes of the men and women around her: silk, satin, brocade, fur, jewels.

It was in the chapel that she had her first glimpse of Christopher. He looked like Nicholas, but not so young or handsome. But there was a quiet strength coming from him that made Dougless stare at him. When he glanced across at her, there was so much interest in his eyes that Dougless looked away, blushing. She didn’t see Nicholas watching the two of them and frowning.

After chapel was supper, which Dougless took in the Presence Chamber with Lady Margaret, Honoria, and four other women. There was vegetable beef soup, a nasty bitter beer, and fried rabbit. A man, who Honoria said was the butler, had to chip cinders from the crust of a loaf of bread before he served it to them, and thereby explained the holes in the crust of Dougless’s earlier loaf.

The other women, Dougless learned, were Lady Margaret’s gentlewomen and chamberers. As far as Dougless could tell, everyone in the household had a specific rank, and servants had servants who had servants. And, to her surprise, they also had specific duty hours. Her knowledge of servants was based on what she’d read of Victorian households, where the servants worked from very early to very late, but she learned from questioning Honoria, there were so many servants in the Stafford household that no one worked longer than about six hours at a time.

At supper, Dougless was introduced, and the ladies eagerly asked about her country of Lanconia and her uncle the king. Dougless, squirming with the lie, muttered replies, then asked the ladies about their clothes. She received some fascinating information on the Spanish style of dress, the French, the English, and the Italian fashions. Dougless became very involved in this, and soon found herself planning a gown in the Italian style that had something called a bum role under the skirt instead of a farthingale.

After supper, servants cleared the tables, then moved them against the wall, and Lady Margaret asked to hear Dougless’s songs. What followed was an energetic and laugh-filled evening. With no TV and professional performances ever seen, no one was shy about singing or dancing. Dougless knew she was terrible compared to the people she’d heard on the radio and on records, but before the evening was over she found herself singing solos.

Christopher came to join them, and Honoria taught him “They Call the Wind Maria,” which he played on the lute. Everyone seemed to play an instrument, and before long Lady Margaret and all five of her ladies were playing the melodies on oddly-shaped, strange-sounding instruments. There was a guitar of sorts but shaped like a violin, a three-stringed violin, a tiny piano, an enormous lute, several kinds of flutes, and a couple of horns.

Dougless found herself drawn to Kit. He was so much like Nicholas, the Nicholas she’d known in the twentieth century—certainly not this sixteenth-century Nicholas who went from one woman to another. She sang “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and Kit quickly picked up the melody. In no time they were all singing the funny song.

At one point she saw Nicholas standing in the doorway glowering. He refused to enter even when Lady Margaret motioned to him.

It was only about nine o’clock when Lady Margaret said it was time to retire. Kit kissed Dougless’s hand, and she smiled at him; then she followed Honoria off to bed.

Honoria’s maid came to help the two women undress. Dougless took several lovely, deep breaths after the steel corset was removed; then, wearing the long linen undergarment she’d worn under her dress all day and a little cap to protect her hair, she climbed into bed beside Honoria. The sheets were linen and scratchy and not too clean, but the mattress was of goose down and as soft as a whisper. She was asleep before she’d pulled the coverlet over her.

She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when she awoke. She felt as though someone was calling her, but when she lifted her head and listened, she heard no one, so she lay back down. But the feeling that someone wanted her would not go away. Although the room was silent, she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she was needed by someone.

“Nicholas!” she said, coming bolt upright.

After a glance at the sleeping back of Honoria, Dougless crept out of bed. She put on a heavy brocade robe that was at the foot of the bed; then she slipped her feet into the soft, wide shoes. Elizabethan corsets might be murder but the shoes were heaven.

Silently, she left the room, then stood outside the closed door and listened. There was no sound, and what with the straw on the floor, she’d have been able to hear any footsteps. She started walking to the right, for she felt the call strongest there. She went to one closed door, put her hand on it, but felt nothing. The same at the second door. It was at the third door that she could feel the call the strongest.

When she opened the door, she wasn’t surprised to see Nicholas sitting on a chair wearing his tight hose, the baggy shorts, and a big linen shirt open to the waist. A fire burned in the fireplace, and he held a silver tankard. He looked as though he’d been drinking for a while.

“What do you want of me?” she asked. She was more than a little afraid of this Nicholas, as he didn’t seem remotely like the man who had come to her own century.

He didn’t look at her, just stared at the fire.

“Nicholas, I’m willing to talk, but if you’re just going to give me the silent treatment, then I’d like to go back to bed.”

“Who are you?” he asked softly. “How do I know of you?”

She sat on the chair next to him, facing the fire. “We are bonded somehow. I can’t explain it. I cried for help and you came to me. I needed you and you heard my call. You gave me . . .” Love, she almost said. Somehow that seemed long ago and this man was a stranger to her. “It seems to be my turn now. I’ve come to warn you.”

He looked at her. “Warn me? Ah, yes, I must not commit treason.”

“You don’t have to sound so cynical. If I can come all this way back here, the least you can do is listen. That is, if you can keep your hands from under some woman’s skirt long enough.”

She could see his face turning red with rage. “Callet!” he said under his breath. “You who use your witchcraft to befuddle my mother, who exhibit yourself to my brother, dare to speak ill of me?”

“I am
not
a witch. I’ve told you that a thousand times. All I’ve done is what I’ve had to do to get myself inside your house so I can warn you.” Standing up, she tried to calm herself. “Nicholas, we have to stop arguing. I’ve been sent back to warn you, but unless you listen to me, everything’s going to happen the same way it did before. Kit will—”

He stood up, cutting her off, then leaned over her threateningly. “When you came to me this night, did you come from my brother’s bed?”

Dougless didn’t think about what she did. She just slapped him across the face.

He grabbed her against him, his body forcing hers backward as he put his mouth on hers, hard, angry.

Dougless wasn’t going to allow a man to use force to kiss her. She pushed at him with all her strength, but he didn’t release her. One of his hands was on the back of her head, forcing her head sideways, while the other hand slipped to the small of her back and pushed her body intimately to his.

When his lips touched hers, Dougless stopped fighting him. This was Nicholas, the Nicholas she’d come to love, the man that even time couldn’t separate her from. Her arms went about his neck, and she opened her mouth under his. As she kissed him in return, her body began to melt into his. Her legs were weak, trembling.

His lips moved to her neck.

“Colin,” she whispered, “my beloved Colin.”

He pulled his face away from her, looking puzzled. She touched the hair at his temples, ran her fingertips down his cheeks.

“I thought I had lost you,” she whispered. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“You may see all of me that you wish,” he said, smiling; then he put his hand under her knees and carried her to his bed. He stretched out beside her and Dougless closed her eyes as his hand went under her robe, then untied the neck of her gown. He kissed her ear, nibbling at her lobe, then ran his tongue down the sensitive cord of her neck while his hand slipped inside her gown to touch her breast.

As his thumb rubbed the peak of her breast, as his breath was on her ear, he whispered, “Who has sent you to me?”

“Mmm,”
Dougless murmured. “God, I suppose.”

“What is the name of the god you worship?”

Dougless could barely hear him as he slipped one leg over hers. “God. Jehovah. Allah. Whoever.”

“What man worships this god?”

Dougless was beginning to hear him. She opened her eyes. “Man? God? What are you talking about?”

Nicholas squeezed her breast. “What man has sent you to my house?”

She was beginning to understand his motive in making love to her. She pushed away from him, and sitting up, she tied her gown and robe. “I see,” she said, trying to control her anger. “This is how you always get what you want from women, isn’t it? At Thornwyck all you had to do was kiss my arm and I’d agree to do whatever you wanted. So now you’ve decided that I’m up to no good, so you’re going to seduce a confession out of me.”

She got off the bed and stood glaring at him. But Nicholas lounged on the bed, not at all upset by the revelation of his devious actions. “Let me tell you something, Nicholas Stafford, you’re not the man I thought you were. The Nicholas I knew was a man who cared about honor and justice. All
you
care about is the number of women you can bed.”

She stood up straighter. “All right, I’m going to tell you who sent me and why I’m here.” She took a deep breath. “I’m from the future, the twentieth century actually, and you came to me there. We spent several lovely days together.”

His mouth dropped open and he started to speak, but Dougless put up her hand. “Hear me out. When you came to me the time here was September of 1564, four years from now and you were sitting in a prison awaiting your execution for treason.”

Nicholas’s eyes began to twinkle in amusement as he rolled off the bed and picked up his tankard. “I see why my mother has taken you to amuse her. Tell me more. What treason had I committed?”

Dougless clenched her fists at her side. It was difficult to be caring toward a man who was smirking in derision. “You hadn’t. You were innocent.”

“Ah, yes,” he said patronizingly. “I would be.”

“You were gathering an army to protect your lands in Wales, but in your haste, you didn’t petition the queen for permission to raise the army. Someone told her you were planning to use the army to take her throne.”

Nicholas sat down and looked at her, his eyes filled with amazement. “Pray tell me, who lied to the queen about these lands I do not own and this army I do not possess?”

She was so angry at his attitude that she wanted to leave the room. Why bother to try to save him? Let the history books record that he was a wastrel. He
was
a wastrel. “They were your lands and your army because Kit was dead, and Robert Sydney and your beloved Lettice had lied to the queen.”

Nicholas’s face changed to cold rage. He advanced on her. “Do you enter this household to threaten my brother’s life? Do you think to cast your spells on me so that I feel all that you do in the hopes that I will take you to wife and make you a countess? Do you stop at nothing? You besmirch the name of my betrothed as well as my cater-cousin to gain your desires?”

She backed away from him, afraid of him now. “I can’t marry you because my life doesn’t belong in this century. I certainly can’t go to bed with you because if I did I’d probably disappear, and if I disappeared now, I’m sure nothing would be changed. And besides that, I don’t
want
to marry you. Okay, so I came back to give you a message and that’s it. So now maybe I’ll get lucky and disappear. I
hope
I do. Truthfully, I hope I never have to see you again.”

She grabbed the door handle, but he slammed the door shut and wouldn’t let her leave.