A Knight in Shining Armour (52 page)

He gave her a puzzled look, but turned away when he heard a shout. One of the guards had ridden ahead, so the news of Kit’s near-death had reached the household. Lady Margaret and all her ladies were waiting to greet them. At the sight, Dougless swallowed in fear. Would she again be accused of witchcraft?

As soon as Kit dismounted, Lady Margaret clasped her eldest son to her; then she turned to Dougless.

“I beg your pardon, my lady,” Dougless said, “for my appearance. I—”

Taking Dougless’s face in her hands, Lady Margaret kissed her on both cheeks. “You are beautiful to me,” she said, her voice full of her gratitude.

Dougless felt her face grow pink with embarrassment, but also with pleasure.

Turning to Nicholas, Lady Margaret glanced at his bloody arm, then yelled, “Leech!”

At that, Dougless put herself between mother and son. “Please, my lady, may I see to his arm? Please,” she whispered. “Honoria will help me.”

Lady Margaret seemed to be torn. “Do you have a tablet for wounds?”

“No, just soap and water and disinfectant. Please, let me care for him.”

After a look over Dougless’s shoulder to Nicholas, Lady Margaret nodded.

Once upstairs in Nicholas’s bedchamber, Dougless gave Honoria a list of things she’d need. “The strongest, harshest soap you have, something with lye in it; then I want a kettle for boiling water, and I’ll need needles—silver needles—white silk thread, beeswax, my tote bag, and the cleanest, whitest linen in this house.” Three maids scurried to do her bidding.

When she was alone with Nicholas, she had him soak his bandaged arm in a long copper pan of boiled water she had taken from the kettle over the fireplace. He was bare from the waist up, and as efficient as Dougless tried to be, she could feel his hot eyes on her.

“Tell me of what we once were each to the other.”

Dougless put more water on to boil. “You came to me in my time.” Now that he was ready to listen, she found herself reluctant to talk. The Nicholas who accused her of witchcraft had no power over her, but this Nicholas, who looked at her with sparkling eyes, made her toes curl.

When she went back to him, she saw that the dried blood had softened away from the bandages. Propping his arm on the pan, she took small sewing scissors and began to snip away the encrusted bandage.

“Were we lovers?” he asked softly.

Dougless’s breath drew in sharply. “I cannot do this if you don’t hold still.”

“I did not move, you did,” he said, then watched her for a while. “Were we together long? Did we love much?”

“Oh, Nicholas,” she said and found to her shame that tears were again coming to her eyes. “It wasn’t like that. You came to me for a
reason.
You had been found guilty of treason, and you came to my time because Lady Margaret’s papers had been found. You and I researched to find out who had betrayed you.”

Slowly, she began to peel strips of linen off his arm.

“Did we find the truth?”

“No,” she said softly.
“We
did not. I found out the truth after you went back, after you . . .” She looked up at him. “After you had been executed.”

Nicholas’s face was changing, losing its look of sex. He could no longer continue to not listen to the woman. She had known about the servants in the closet when he and Arabella had been fumbling on the table. And she had known about Kit. His heart hammered in his chest when he thought how close he had come to losing Kit. If the woman had not been there, Kit would have died.

And it would have been Nicholas’s fault, he thought. His own fault and no one else’s, because he’d lied when she’d asked him about the cabinet at Bellwood. She had said that Kit showed Nicholas the cabinet a week before his death, but Nicholas had not listened. He had heard only that she spoke of his handsome brother. His jealousy had nearly cost his brother’s life.

Nicholas leaned back against the pillows. “What more do you know?”

She opened her mouth to tell him of Lettice, but she couldn’t, not yet. It was too soon and he didn’t yet trust her enough. She knew he loved Lettice deeply. He had so much wanted to leave the twentieth century—and Dougless—to get back to his beloved wife. It would take more time before she had his trust enough that she could talk to him about his beloved Lettice. Certainly, now was not the time.

“I will tell you everything later,” she said, “but now I must see to your arm.”

Dougless continued pulling the bandage from his wound until she at last saw the deep slash. She’d never been good with bloody wounds, but years of teaching elementary school had taught her to look at chipped teeth, blood-dripping wounds, and broken limbs while remaining cheerful for the child’s sake. She knew Nicholas’s wound needed a doctor, but she also knew that now she was the best that was available.

When Honoria and the maids returned with all Dougless had ordered, she set them to work. Honoria did not allow the maids to question anything Dougless told them to do. The four women removed their outer sleeves, rolled up the linen sleeves above the elbow; then Dougless had them scour their hands and arms while she boiled needles and silk thread.

The only sedative-type pills she had in her tote bag were what she took to calm her nervous stomach. She wished she had good ol’ Valium, but she didn’t. She gave Nicholas two pills and hoped they’d make him drowsy.

They did, and within minutes, he was asleep.

When all the equipment was as clean as she could get it, Dougless set Honoria to sewing Nicholas’s arm. Honoria blanched, but Dougless insisted because Honoria’s stitches were fine and accurate.

Dougless wasn’t sure exactly how to do it, but she directed Honoria to sew the gash in Nicholas’s arm in two layers. The inside stitches would have to remain in his arm forever, but Dougless’s father had a steel plate in his leg from his time in the military, so she guessed Nicholas could live with some silk inside his arm. Dougless carefully held Nicholas’s skin together while Honoria sewed it.

When Nicholas’s wound was sewn together, Dougless wrapped his arm in clean linen. She told the maids she wanted them to boil linen to be used the next day, and when they touched the linen, their hands were to be very clean. Honoria said she would see to it.

Finally, Dougless dismissed all of them; then she sat down on a chair by the fire and proceeded to wait—and to worry. If Nicholas developed a fever she had no penicillin, no oral antibiotics, nothing but a few aspirin. She told herself she needn’t worry because she knew Nicholas’s future, but today she had changed history. If Kit didn’t die, then perhaps Nicholas would. Would she go back to the twentieth century and find that Kit had lived to a grand old age, but his younger brother had died from an infected cut on his arm? History, or in this case, the future, was different from now on.

Hours later, Dougless was dozing in the chair when the door opened and Honoria entered. In her arms was a beautiful gown of deep purple velvet, the color of an eggplant, with wide, trailing sleeves of soft white ermine, the little black tails sewn on at intervals.

“Lady Margaret sends this to you,” Honoria whispered so as not to disturb Nicholas. “It will have to be fit to you, but I thought you might see it now.”

Dougless touched the soft velvet. It wasn’t like modern rayon velvet or heavy cotton velvet, but this was all silk and glistened as only silk could. “How is Kit?” Dougless whispered.

“Sleeping. He says someone tried to kill him. When he swam out to the girl, someone, or maybe two of them, came from under the water, caught his legs, and pulled him under.”

Dougless looked away. In Lady Margaret’s account found in the wall, she said she believed that Kit had been murdered, that his drowning had not been an accident.

“If you had not known how to raise him from the dead . . .” Honoria whispered.

“I didn’t raise anyone from the dead,” Dougless said sharply. “There was no magic or witchcraft involved.”

Honoria gave her a hard look. “Your arm no longer pains you? It is well?”

“It’s fine now, just a dull ache. It’s—” Breaking off, she refused to meet Honoria’s eyes. Yes, there was magic involved. Her feeling the pain of Nicholas’s cut arm was the least of the magic, but Honoria didn’t need to be told that.

“You should rest now,” Honoria said. “And change your gown.”

Dougless glanced at Nicholas, still asleep. “I must stay with him. If he wakes, I want to be here. I can’t risk his having a fever. Do you think Lady Margaret would mind if I stay here?”

Honoria smiled. “Were you now to ask for deeds to half the Stafford estates, I do not believe Lady Margaret would deny you.”

Dougless smiled back. “I just want Nicholas to be safe.”

“I will bring you a robe,” Honoria said, then left the room.

An hour later, Dougless had removed her torn and dirty gown, as well as her steel corset, and now she sat before a warm fire, wearing a pretty ruby red brocade robe. Every few minutes she put her hand to Nicholas’s forehead. It was warm, but he didn’t seem to be running more than a few degrees of temperature.

T
he shadows in the room lengthened
and still Nicholas slept. A maid brought Dougless food on a tray, but Nicholas did not waken. As night fell, she lit candles and looked down at him, so peaceful on the bed, his dark curls vivid against his pale skin. For hours she’d done nothing but watch him, but when she saw no signs of fever, she began to relax and look about her.

Nicholas’s room was adorned richly, as befitted a son of the house. His mantelpiece had several plates and goblets of gold and silver on it, and Dougless smiled when she looked at them. She’d come to understand what Nicholas had meant when he’d said his wealth was in his house. Since there were no banks to hold the wealth of a great family like the Staffords, all they had was put into gold and silver and jewels, which were formed into beautiful objects. Smiling, she touched a pitcher and thought that her family’s wealth would be a lot more enjoyable if their stocks and bonds were turned into gold dishes.

Beside the fireplace was a long row of tiny oval portraits, all done in exquisite colors. Most of them were people she didn’t know, but one of them had to be Lady Margaret as a young woman. There was a hint of Nicholas’s eyes in hers. There was an older man who had the shape of Nicholas’s jaw. His father? she wondered. There was a miniature oil of Kit. And on the bottom was Nicholas.

She took the portrait from the wall, held it a moment and caressed it. What had happened to these portraits in the twentieth century? she wondered. Were they hanging on some museum wall with “Unknown Man” on a card beside them?

Still holding the portrait, she walked about the room. There was a cushioned seat beneath the window, and Dougless went to it. She knew the top lifted and she wondered what Nicholas kept inside. Glancing at him to make sure he was asleep, she put the portrait on a shelf, then lifted the seat. It creaked but not too loudly.

Inside the seat were rolls of paper tied with pieces of yarn. She took one, untied the string, then unrolled it out on a table. It was a sketch of a house, and Dougless knew instantly that the house was Thornwyck Castle.

“Do you pry?” Nicholas asked from the bed, making Dougless jump.

She went to him and felt his forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Less well than if there were not a woman invading my private goods.”

Dougless thought he sounded just like a little boy whose mother had looked inside his secret box. She picked up the plan. “Have you shown these to anyone besides me?”