A Knight in Shining Armor

Smiling and frowning at the same time, she took the ring Kit offered. The ring was worth nothing compared to Nicholas’s emerald, but had the values been reversed, Nicholas’s ring would have been worth much more to Dougless. “Thank you,” she murmured, then looked back at Nicholas. But he was looking away now and she knew that what he had remembered was gone.

  TWENTY - FIVE

  You are too silent, brother,” Kit said, smiling at Nicholas. “You should come and make merry. Dougless is to teach us a card game called poker this night.”

  Nicholas looked away from his brother. Something had happened tonight, he thought, something he couldn’t understand. At supper he had bitten into one of the chocolate cakes the woman had prepared and he’d known, quite suddenly, without words, that she was not his enemy.

  Even as he handed her his ring, he told himself he was being a fool. Often, when it came to this woman, he was sure he was the one sane person in his household. He was the only person who did not believe her to be a gift from God. And if her good works did turn out to be treachery, he would be the only one who was able to see her as she truly was.

  But this evening, as he’d eaten that wonderful cake, images had flashed across his mind. He saw her with her hair loose, her legs bare, and sitting on an odd two-wheeled metal frame of sorts. He saw her with water pouring down over her beautiful, nude body. And he saw her clutching his emerald ring to her breast and looking at him with love. Without a thought, he had slipped the ring from his finger and given it to her, because, somehow, the ring seemed to belong to her.

  “Nicholas?” Kit was saying. “Are you well?”

  “Yes,” Nicholas said absently. “I am well.”

  “Do you join us in this new game?”

  “Nay,” Nicholas murmured. He didn’t want to be near the woman, didn’t want her to cause him to see images of something he knew had not happened. It was better for him to stay away from her. If he spent time with her, perhaps he would begin to listen to her, even begin to believe her absurd stories of past and future.

  “Nay, I do not go,” he said to Kit. “I work this night.”

  “Work?” Kit asked, his voice teasing. “No women? When I think on it, have you had a woman to your bed since Lady Dougless arrived?”

  “She is no—” Nicholas began. He suddenly had another image of her smiling down at him, of her hair soft and full about her shoulders.

  Kit laughed knowingly. “It goes that way, does it? I cannot blame you; the woman is beautiful. Do you mean to make her your mistress after your marriage?”

  “Nay!” Nicholas said forcibly. “The woman is naught to me. Take her away with you. I wish never to see her again, never to hear her voice. I wish she had never come into my life.”

  Kit stepped back, still smiling. “So the thunderbolt has hit,” he said, obviously enjoying Nicholas’s agony.

  Nicholas came out of his chair, ready to do battle over his brother’s smirking, knowing tone. But Kit backed toward the door, and when Nicholas came close, Kit left the room, laughing loudly as he shut the door in his brother’s face.

  Nicholas sat down at the table again and tried to give his attention to the accounts before him, but all he could think of was the red-haired woman. He knew that she was laughing now, amused at what she was doing. He knew that, somehow, he’d feel it if she wasn’t happy.

  He walked toward the window, turned its latch, opened it, then looked down into the garden. Unwanted, an image came to him. In his mind’s eye, he saw another garden. It was night, and it was raining, and the woman was calling to him. He saw lights, strange, purple-blue lights on poles, and he saw himself in the rain, clean-shaven and wearing strange clothes.

  Pulling away from the window, Nicholas slammed it shut, then rubbed his hands over his eyes as though to clear the vision. He would not let this woman ensorcell him. He must not let her control his mind!

  Leaving the office, he went to his bedchamber, poured himself a tall goblet of sack, then downed it. Only after he’d downed a second and third helping as quickly as possible, did he feel the warmth of the wine coursing through his veins. He would drown his images of her. He would drink until he couldn’t hear her, see her, smell her . . . or remember her.

  For a while the wine worked and he was able to still the images in his head. Content, feeling calm, Nicholas stretched out on his bed and was asleep instantly.

  But then the images came again, this time in the form of dreams.

  “You must tell me if Kit has shown you the door,” he heard the woman saying. “Tell me if you cut your arm.” “Kit died and you caused it.” “What if you are wrong?” The woman’s voice grew louder, urgent. “What if you are wrong and Kit dies because you won’t listen?”

  Nicholas awoke sweating, and the rest of the night he lay with his eyes open, afraid to go back to sleep. Something had to be done about the woman if she wouldn’t let him sleep. Something had to be done.

  TWENTY - SIX

  At four A.M. Dougless crept out of the house to go to the fountain to take a shower. Yesterday a couple of the ladies had been talking about the suds in the fountain and Lady Margaret had looked at Dougless knowingly. Flushing, Dougless looked away, wondering if there was anything that went on in the Stafford household that Lady Margaret didn’t know about.

  Now Dougless smiled in memory. If it weren’t all right for her to use the fountain for a shower, no doubt Lady Margaret would have told her so.

  Even in the faint light, Dougless could see Lucy waiting for her. Poor lonely kid, she thought. Since yesterday, Dougless had asked questions and found out that Lucy and her guardian had been brought to England to the Stafford household when Lucy was just three years old. It was believed that she’d make a better wife for Kit if she knew English ways and got to know her husband’s family before marriage.

  But from the moment Lucy had arrived, Lady Hallet had denied anyone access to the child, who had been very ill from the voyage across the Channel and the rough road journey across England. By the time Lucy was well, no one seemed to remember she was living with them.

  Something Dougless had noticed about the sixteenth century was that the adults didn’t idolize children the way twentieth-century Americans did. It had surprised Dougless to find out that most of Lady Margaret’s ladies were married, and two of them had young children at their homes, which were often a hundred miles away. The women didn’t seem to be in any throes of agony over whether or not they were spending “quality time” with their children. Dougless once, over embroidery—which they did very well and at which Dougless was hopelessly clumsy—mentioned that in her country women spent whole days with their children, entertaining them, teaching them, and trying never to be bored by them. The women had been horrified by this idea. They believed you should ignore children until they were of marriageable age. After all, they said, children died easily and their souls weren’t formed until they were of age.

  Dougless had returned to her embroidery. Heretofore, she’d thought parents had always, throughout time, adored their children. She’d thought that mothers were always agonizing over whether or not they gave enough to their children. But there seemed to be more differences between the twentieth century and the sixteenth than just clothes and politics.

  Now, looking at Lucy, she could feel the girl’s loneliness. She was a stranger in a house where she’d lived since she was a toddler, yet she knew fewer people than Dougless did.

  “Hello,” Dougless said.

  Lucy smiled broadly, then caught herself and resumed her stiff pose. “Good morn,” she said formally. “Do you mean to do this again?” she asked as Dougless started to remove her robe, then turned away as Dougless stepped, nude, into the fountain.

  “Every day,” Dougless said as she gave a whistle for the boy to turn the wheel. She gasped at the icy water, but a clean body was worth some discomfort.

  Lucy remained turned away while Dougless bathed and washed her hair, but when the girl didn’t leave, Dougless sensed that the
re was something she wanted. But perhaps it was only that she wanted a friend.

  Dougless got out of the fountain-shower, dried, then turned to Lucy. “This morning we’re going to play charades. Maybe you’d like to join us.”

  “Will Lord Christopher attend?” she asked quickly.

  “Ah,” Dougless said, understanding. “I don’t think so.”

  Lucy slumped down on a bench as though she were a beach ball that had suddenly been deflated. “Nay, I will not attend.”

  As Dougless toweled her wet hair, she looked at Lucy thoughtfully. How did a dumpy-figured, not-very-pretty adolescent capture the attention of a gorgeous hunk like Kit?

  “He talks of you,” Lucy said sullenly.

  Dougless sat beside her on the bench. “Kit talks about me? When do you see him?”

  “He visits me most days.”

  Kit would, Dougless thought. He seemed awfully thoughtful and kind—and he probably considered visiting his future wife his duty. “Kit talks to you of me, but what do you talk to him about?”

  Lucy wrung her hands in her lap. “I say naught.”

  “Nothing? You don’t say anything to him? He comes to visit you every day and you just sit there like a bump on a log?”

  “Lady Hallet says it would be unseemly for me to—”

  Dougless couldn’t control her anger. “Lady Hallet! That ogre? That woman is so ugly that the sight of the back of her head would crack a mirror.”

  Lucy giggled. “A hawk once went to her instead of to its master. I thought the hawk mistook her for its mate.”

  Dougless laughed. “With that beak of hers I can understand the mistake.”

  Lucy laughed aloud, then covered her mouth. “I wish I were like you,” she said wistfully. “If I could make my Kit laugh . . .”

  She didn’t have to say more to make Dougless understand. “My Kit,” as in “my Nicholas.”

  “Maybe we could find a way to make Kit laugh. I was thinking about doing a vaudeville routine with Honoria, but maybe you and I could do it together.”

  “‘Vaudeville’? ‘Routine’? I do not believe Lady Hallet will—”

  “Lucy”—Dougless took the girl’s hands in hers—“something that I’ve found that hasn’t changed over time is that if you want the man, you have to fight for him. Now, what you want is for Kit to notice you, and what you need is a little self-confidence. You also need to trust your own judgment and not someone else’s. So maybe we can accomplish a few of these things by putting on a show. Kit will see that you’re no longer a little girl—and so will Lady Hallet, for that matter—and we’ll both have a good time. So how about it?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I . . .”

  “What did one duke say to the other duke?”

  Lucy looked blank.

  “‘That was no lady, that was my wife.’”

  Lucy’s mouth opened in shock; then she giggled.

  “Where does a three-hundred-pound canary sit?” Dougless paused. “Anywhere he wants to.”

  Lucy laughed harder.

  “You’ll do,” Dougless said. “You’ll do very well. Now, let’s plan. When can we rehearse? No excuses. You’re the heiress, remember, and Lady Hallet works for you.”

  By the time Dougless got back to the house, it was full daylight. She knew that many people had an idea of what she was doing each morning, for there were no secrets in the household, but everyone politely refrained from asking her point-blank.

  In the mornings Lady Margaret was too busy to want any new games, so Dougless wandered into the gardens and soon found herself drawing the ABCs in the dirt for three children who worked in the kitchen. Before she realized it, it was time for dinner.

  Neither Nicholas nor Kit came to dinner. Dougless vowed that after the meal she would look for Nicholas and again try to talk to him. At least now that she knew that Kit hadn’t shown Nicholas the secret door at Bellwood, she knew Kit’s “accident” was not imminent.

  Smiling, she left the table and allowed Honoria to again try to teach her how to make lace from a bit of linen. Honoria was making a beautiful cuff with the word Dougless in it, surrounded by odd little birds and animals.

  Bent over her embroidery frame, Dougless felt at peace. She was going to be able to help Lucy, and yesterday Nicholas had remembered something about their time in the twentieth century. She glanced at the big emerald ring on her thumb. Now that his memory had been jogged, surely he’d soon remember more. She was going to be able to accomplish what she had failed to do the first time.

  TWENTY - SEVEN

  Nicholas’s head hurt, and he didn’t feel too steady on his feet. He’d seen no more images after he stopped sleeping last night, but this morning he was still haunted by the dreams. “What if you are wrong?” he kept hearing in the woman’s voice. Wrong about what? About her being a witch? The images she’d put into his head were proof that he was right.

  Groggily, he went downstairs to sword practice. He lunged with his sword at the man before him, not seeing the startled look on the knight’s face. Nicholas wasn’t usually aggressive in sword practice, but today, what with his head pounding and his anger, he felt aggressive. Again and again he lunged. The knight stepped back, his sword at his side.

  “Sir?” the man said, astonished.

  “Do you mean to give me a good fight or not?” Nicholas challenged, then lunged again. Perhaps if he was tired enough, he wouldn’t be able to hear the woman or see her inside his mind.

  Nicholas wore out three men before a fourth, fresh man brought him low. Nicholas went right when he should have gone left, and the man’s blade neatly sliced his left forearm open almost to the bone. While Nicholas stood there staring at his bleeding arm, an image came to him. But this image was different, he didn’t just see it, he was in the dream.

  He was walking beside the red-haired woman in a strange place, and they stopped before a building with glass windows, but windows such as he’d never dreamed existed, with glass so clear it was as though it were not there. A machine, a big, strange machine with wheels went by, but he didn’t seem to be interested in it. Instead, he was intent only on talking to the woman and telling her of the scar on his arm. He was telling her that Kit had drowned on the day he’d hurt his arm at sword practice.

  He came out of the dream as abruptly as he went into it, and when he returned to the present, he was lying on the ground, his men hovering anxiously over him, one of them trying to stop the flow of blood.

  Nicholas had no time to give over to pain. “Saddle two horses,” he said quietly, “one with a woman’s saddle.”

  “Ride?” asked one man. “You mean to ride with a woman? But, my lord, your arm—”

  Nicholas turned to him with cold eyes. “For the Montgomery woman, she—”

  “She can ride only enough to keep from falling from the horse,” said another man, contempt in his voice.

  Awkwardly, and with help, Nicholas got to his feet. “Bind my arm so the bleeding stops, then saddle two horses—with men’s saddles. Do it now,” he said. “Waste no time.” His voice was low, but there was command in it.

  “Should I fetch the woman?” another man asked.

  Nicholas, his arm held out while a man bound a cloth tightly about it, looked up at the windows of the house. “She will come,” he said with confidence. “We do but wait.”

  Hunched over her embroidery frame, Dougless was listening to one of the ladies telling a juicy story about a woman who’d tried to bed another woman’s husband. Dougless was listening to the story with all her attention when suddenly a fierce, burning pain stabbed her left forearm.

  With a cry of pain, Dougless fell back on the stool and landed on the floor. “My arm. Something has hurt my arm.” She cradled her arm to her, tears of pain coming instantly.

  Leaping to her feet, Honoria ran to kneel by Dougless. “Rub her hands, do not let her faint,” Honoria commanded as she quickly untied Dougless’s sleeve at the shoulder and slipped it down. Honoria winced a
t Dougless’s moan of pain as she had to pull Dougless’s arm away from her breast to remove the sleeve. Once the sleeve was off, Honoria pushed the linen undersleeve up to look at Dougless’s arm.

  There was nothing wrong with it. The skin was not even reddened.

  “I see nothing,” Honoria said, suddenly afraid. She’d grown to care for Dougless, but the woman was very odd. Sir Nicholas accused her of being a witch. Was this pain a manifestation of her witchcraft?

  The pain in her arm was blinding, but when Dougless looked down, she saw that there was nothing wrong with her forearm. “It feels as though it’s been cut,” she whispered, “as though someone has cut it deeply with a knife.”

  She used her right hand to rub her forearm, but she could barely feel her own touch. “I can feel the cut,” she whispered, trying not to whimper. The women around her were looking at her strangely, as though Dougless weren’t quite sane.

  Suddenly, Dougless could hear Nicholas’s voice in her head. They were in bed together and she’d touched the scar on his left forearm. He said he’d been injured on the day Kit had drowned.

  Dougless was on her feet instantly. “Where do the men practice swords?” she asked, trying not to sound frantic. Please, God, she prayed, do not let me be too late.

  At her remark, the other women seemed to be assured of Dougless’s lack of sanity, but Honoria answered. Nothing Dougless did could surprise her. “To the back, past the maze, through the northeast gate.”

  Nodding, Dougless wasted no more time. She grabbed her skirts, thanked heaven for the farthingale that held the skirts away from her legs, then began to run. In the hall she crashed into a man, and when he fell, she leaped over him. A woman in the kitchen was getting something off a high shelf. Crouching, Dougless kept running under her arms. A wagonload of barrels had come untied, and Dougless leaped five barrels, one after another, looking like an oddly dressed Olympic hurdler. She ran past Lady Margaret outside the maze, but when the woman called to her, Dougless didn’t answer. When the gate in the wall at the back of the maze stuck, Dougless lifted her foot and smashed it open.