A Knight in Shining Armour (58 page)

“You risk everything because of what people might say?”

Nicholas searched for a way to explain what must be so that she could understand. “In your time do you not contract bargains? Legal bargains on paper?”

“Of course. We have contracts for everything. We even have marriage contracts but marriages should be made for love, not—”

“My class does not marry for love. We cannot. Look you about. See the wealth of this house? This is but one house my family owns. These riches have come to us because my ancestors married for estate, not for love. My grandfather married a shrew of a woman, but she brought three houses with her and much plate.”

“Nicholas, I understand the theory, but marriage is so . . . so intimate. It’s not like signing a contract to do some work for someone. Marriage has to do with love and children, and a home and safety, and having a friend.”

“So you live in poverty with the one you love. Does this love feed you, clothe you, keep you warm in winter? There is more to marriage than what you say. You are poor, so you cannot understand.”

Her eyes blazed. “For your information I am
not
poor. Not by a long shot. My family is very rich. Lots of money. But just because my family has money doesn’t mean I don’t want love, or that I’d sell myself to the highest bidder.”

“How did your family obtain its wealth?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know. We’ve had it forever. My father said that our ancestors married—” She broke off and looked at him with wide eyes.

“Your ancestors married who?”

“Nothing. It was a joke. He didn’t mean anything.”

“Who?” Nicholas asked.

“Rich women,” she said angrily. “He said our ancestors were quite good at marrying rich women.”

Nicholas said nothing, just stood there looking at her.

Her anger left her and she went to him, putting her arms about his waist, holding him tightly. “Marry for money,” she said. “Marry the richest woman in the world, but please don’t marry Lettice. She is bad. She’ll hurt you, Nicholas, hurt all of you.”

Nicholas pushed her out to arm’s length to look into her eyes. “Lettice Culpin is the highest I can hope for. I am a younger son, a mere knight. I have naught but what Kit allows me. I am fortunate he is so generous as to allow me to live at his expense. The lands Lettice brings to this family will benefit us all. How can I not do this for a brother who has given me so much?”

“Lettice isn’t the best you can hope for. Lots of women like you. You can get someone else. If you have to marry someone for money, we’ll find her. Somebody rich but not ambitious like Lettice.”

Nicholas smiled down at her. “Having a woman in bed is not the same as a marriage alliance. You must trust me on this. Lettice is a good match for me. No, do not frown. I will be safe. Do you not see? The danger of her is in not knowing. Now that I know, I can save my family and myself.”

“If she finds out that you aren’t interested in overthrowing the queen or even in going to court, perhaps
she
will break the engagement.”

“For all that she is related to the Throne and has money, her family is not so old as mine. If what you say about her plans is true, she will not release me. What woman does not believe that she can bend a man to her will?”

“Then she’s going to kill you,” Dougless said. “Are you going to check every saddle cinch to see if it’s been cut? What about poison in your food? What about a wire stretched across the stairs? What if she hires thugs to beat you up? What about drowning? Burning?”

He chuckled in a patronizing way. “I am pleased you care. You shall help me keep watch.”

“Me?” She pulled away from him. “Me?”

“Aye. You shall stay in my household.” He gave her a look through his lashes. “You shall attend to my wife.”

It took Dougless a moment to react. “Attend to your wife?” she said evenly. “You mean like help her dress, check that her bathwater isn’t too hot? That sort of thing?”

Her calm tone didn’t fool him. “Dougless, my love, my one and only love, it will not be so bad. We will spend much time together.”

“Do we spend the time together with or without a permission slip from your wife?”

“Dougless,” he pleaded.

“You can ask this of me after the way you talked about my living with Robert? At least with Robert I was his
only
woman. But you . . . you’re asking me to wait on that . . . that killer! What am I supposed to do at night while you’re trying to produce an heir with her?”

Nicholas stiffened. “You cannot ask me to be celibate. You say you cannot share my bed for fear of returning.”

“Oh, I see,
I
can be celibate; that’s perfectly okay. But you, Mr. Macho Stud, you have to have a different woman every night. What do you do on the nights when Lettice tells you no? Chase the maids into the arbor?”

“You may not speak to me like this,” he said, his eyes darkening with anger.

“Oh, I can’t, can’t I? If someone travels four hundred years just to warn another person, and that person won’t listen for no reason except his own vanity, then the party of the first part can say any damn thing she pleases. Go ahead, marry Lettice, see if I care. Kill Kit. Kill your mother. Lose your estates you think are so bloody valuable.
Lose your head!”

She shouted the last part, then pushed past him and ran through the maze, tears blinding her.

She was lost within three minutes and she just stood where she was crying. Maybe a person
couldn’t
change history. Maybe it was predestined that Kit was going to die and Nicholas was going to be executed. Maybe it was never meant that the Stafford family should continue to live. Maybe no one could change what was going to happen.

Nicholas came to her, but he didn’t speak, and Dougless was glad. She knew that mere words would not change what each felt must be done. Silently, she followed him out of the maze.

F
or Dougless the next three days were hell.
Everyone in the Stafford household was very excited about Nicholas’s forthcoming marriage, and it was all anyone could talk of. The food, the clothes, who would be there, who from the Stafford household would get to go, and who would stay at home with Lady Margaret, were all topics of conversation. Huge carts were packed with the goods Nicholas and Kit would take with them to the Culpin estate, where the wedding would be held. With a feeling of doom, Dougless watched the preparations for the long visit. Nicholas and Kit were taking not only their clothes with them, but furniture and servants as well.

To Dougless it seemed that every item that was loaded onto the carts was a weight on her heart. She tried to talk to Nicholas. Tried and tried and tried. But he wouldn’t listen. Duty meant more to him than anything else in the world. He would not forsake his duty to his family for any reason on earth, not for love, not even to avoid the possibility of his own death.

On the night before the day Nicholas was to leave, Dougless felt the worst she ever had. Only the day Nicholas had returned to the sixteenth century and left her in the church was comparable.

At night, after the maid had helped her undress, she removed her thin, silky slip from her tote bag and put it on. With her borrowed robe about her, she went to Nicholas’s bedchamber.

Outside his room she put her hand to the door. She knew he was awake; she could feel it. Without knocking, she opened the door. He was sitting up in bed, the rough sheet covering his legs, leaving his chest and hard, flat stomach bare and exposed. He was drinking from a silver tankard, and he didn’t look up when she entered.

“We must talk,” she whispered. The room was silent except for the crackle of a fire and the sputter of candles.

“Nay, we have no more to say,” he answered. “We both must do what we must.”

“Nicholas,” she whispered, but he still didn’t look at her. She slipped the concealing robe from her. The nightgown she wore wasn’t outrageous by twentieth-century standards, but it was when compared to Elizabethan modes of dress. Its thin straps, low neck, and clinging fabric left nothing to the imagination.

She crawled across the bed to him, like a tigress on the stalk. “Nicholas,” she whispered. “Do not marry her.”

When she was near him, he looked at her—and the wine sloshed from his tankard. “What do you?” he asked hoarsely, his eyes at first shocked, then hot.

“Perhaps you’ll stay with me this night,” she said, drawing nearer to him.

Nicholas looked down the front of her nightgown, and when he put out a hand to touch her shoulder, his hand trembled.

“One night,” she whispered, moving her face close to his.

Nicholas reacted instantly. His arms were around her, his lips on hers; he was drinking of her, taking of her, as he’d wanted to do for so long. The fabric of her nightgown tore away as his hands and his lips were on her breasts, his face buried in them.

“This one night for your promise,” Dougless was saying, her head back. She was trying to remember what she had to do before Nicholas’s lips and hands drove all thoughts from her mind. “Swear to me,” she said.

“All that I have is yours. Do you not know that?” he said, his lips moving lower on her body, down her stomach. His hands were on her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh.

“Then do not go tomorrow,” she said. “This one night for tomorrow.”

Nicholas’s strong hands were lifting her hips up, and the remains of the gown were sliding farther down. “You may have all my tomorrows.”

“Nicholas, please.” Dougless was trying to remember what she meant to say, but Nicholas’s touch was making her unable to think. “Please, my love. I do not believe I will be here after tonight, so you must swear to me.”

After a moment Nicholas raised his head and looked up at her, up past her lovely body to her face. His mind was reeling with the sensations of touching this woman who had come to mean so much to him, but he was beginning to hear her. “What would you have me swear to you?” he asked in a low voice.

Dougless lifted her head. “I will spend tonight with you if you’ll swear not to marry Lettice after I’m gone,” she said evenly.

For a long moment Nicholas looked at her, his bare body poised over her half-nude body, and Dougless held her breath. She had not come to this decision easily, but she knew that, even if it meant losing Nicholas forever, she had to stop this marriage.

He rolled off of her and the bed in one smooth motion, pulled on a loose robe, then went to stand before the fire, his back to her. When he spoke, his voice was low and husky. “Do you think so little of me to believe I would risk the loss of you for one night’s pleasure? Do you think so little of yourself to sell yourself to me for a promise?”

His words were making Dougless feel very small. She pulled her torn gown up over her shoulders. “I couldn’t think of any other way,” she said as an excuse. “I’d do
anything
to stop your marriage.”

He turned to look at her, his eyes dark with emotion. “You have told me of your country and of your ways. Do you think yours is the only way? This marriage means naught to me, yet it means all to you.”

“I can’t have you risk your life for—”

His eyes blazed. “You risk
our
life for her!” he said angrily. “You tell me again and again that you cannot come to my bed. Yet you are here now, dressed as a . . . as a . . .”