A Knight in Shining Armor

  “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 . . .”

  Dougless pulled the sheet over her bare shoulders, feeling like a strumpet. “I only meant to try to get you to promise you wouldn’t marry her,” she said, feeling near to tears.

  He went to the bed, looming over her. “What love is this you bear for me? You come creeping to my bed, appealing to me like a whore. Only you do not want gold, nay, you want me to dishonor my family, to put aside what means most to me.”

  Dougless put her hands over her face. “Don’t, please. I can’t bear this. I never meant—”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her hands away. “Do you have any idea how much I dread the morrow? That I dread the woman who I must make my wife? Were I free, were I in your time, I could freely choose where I love. But here and now, I cannot. Were I to marry you, I could not feed you. Kit would no longer give me a place to live, food to eat, clothes to—”

  “Kit’s not like that. Surely there would be a way for us to live. You help Kit with the estates, so he’d not throw you out. He’d—”

  Nicholas’s hands tightened on her wrists. “Can you not hear? Can you not understand? I must make this marriage.”

  “No,” she whispered. “No.”

  “You cannot stop what must be. You can only help me.”

  “How? How can I help you? Can I stop an axman’s blade?”

  “Aye,” he said. “You can. You can stay by me for always.”

  “Always? While you live with another woman? Sleep with her? Make love to her?”

  He released her hands. “So you do this,” he said, looking at her bare shoulders above the sheet. “You would take yourself from me for all eternity rather than see me with another woman?”

  “No, that’s not it. It’s just that Lettice is evil. I’ve told you what she’ll do. Choose another woman.”

  He gave a smile that had no mirth in it. “You would allow me another wife? Allow me to touch another woman when I cannot touch you? You are willing to stand to one side for the rest of our lives?”

  Dougless swallowed. Could she live in the same house with him while he lived with another woman? What would she do, be a maiden aunt to Nicholas’s children? How would she feel when, each night, he went off to bed with another woman? And how long would he continue to love her if he couldn’t touch her? Were either of them strong enough for a platonic love?

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know if I could stand by and see you with another woman. Nicholas, oh Nicholas, I don’t know what to do.”

  He sat on the bed beside her and gathered her into his arms. “I will not risk losing you for a hundred women like Lettice. You are worth all to me. God has sent you to me, and I mean to hold you.”

  She put her head on his chest, parting the robe so her cheek was on his skin. In spite of herself, tears came to her eyes. “I am frightened. Lettice is—”

  “A mere woman. No more, no less. She possesses no great wisdom, no amulets of power. If you are by me, she can do me or my family no harm.”

  “By you?” Her hand went under his robe, touching his skin. “Can I stay by you and not touch you?”

  He moved her roaming fingers from inside his robe. “You are sure you will return if I . . .”

  “Sure,” she answered firmly. “At least I think I’m sure.”

  He held her fingers up and looked at them as a starving man might look at a feast. “It would be much to lose were we to try, would it not?”

  “Yes,” she said, sadly. “Much, much too much.”

  He dropped her hand. “You must go. I am a man, and you tempt me more than I can bear.”

  Dougless knew she should go, but she hesitated. Once again she put her hand on Nicholas’s skin.

  “Go!” he commanded.

  Quickly, she rolled away from him, then ran from the room. She went back to Honoria’s room and slipped into bed, but she didn’t sleep.

  Tomorrow the man she loved, no, more than loved, the man who meant so much that even time could not separate them, was leaving to marry another woman. What was she to do when Nicholas returned with his beautiful wife? (Dougless had heard so much of Lettice’s beauty that she would have hated the woman even if she knew nothing else about her.) Should she curtsy and congratulate her? Something like, “Hope you enjoy him. And I certainly hope he’s as good a lover with you as he was with me.”

  Dougless had a vision of Nicholas and his pretty wife laughing together over some private joke. She saw Nicholas sweeping Lettice into his arms and carrying her off to the room they shared. Would they put their heads together over meals and smile at each other?

  Dougless slammed her fist into the pillow, making Honoria stir. Men were such fools. They never saw past a pretty face. When a man asked about a woman, all he wanted to know was, was she pretty? No man ever asked if a woman had morals, whether she was honest, kind, did she like children or not? Dougless imagined a beautiful Lettice torturing a puppy in front of Nicholas, but Nicholas not noticing because dear, luscious Lettice had looked at him through fluttering lashes.

  “Men!” Dougless muttered, but even as she said it, she didn’t mean it. Nicholas had not allowed himself to be seduced tonight because he was afraid he’d lose Dougless. If that wa
sn’t love, what was?

  “Maybe he was saving himself for Lettice,” Dougless said into the pillow, and that’s when she began to cry.

  The sun came up and still Dougless cried. It was as though she couldn’t stop. Honoria did everything she could to cheer Dougless up, but nothing worked.

  Dougless could see, hear, think of nothing but Nicholas and the beautiful woman he was to marry. When Dougless thought of the hideous non-choices she had, she began to cry harder. She could stay in the sixteenth century and watch Nicholas with his wife, watch them talking together, watch while Lettice was given an honored place in the family as a son’s wife. Or she could threaten Nicholas that he had to give up his wife or she, Dougless, would leave the house. And if she left the Stafford household, what would she do? How could she earn her living in the sixteenth century? Drive a taxi? Maybe become an executive secretary? She was rather good with computers. She’d been in the Elizabethan age long enough to see how well a lone woman would fare without a man. She couldn’t so much as go two miles from the house without fear of being set upon by thieves.

  And even if she could leave him, that would mean he’d be left in the hands of the scheming Lettice.

  So what could she do if she couldn’t leave and she couldn’t stay? She could work harder at seducing Nicholas; then, after one lovely night of passion, she would be returned to the twentieth century. Without Nicholas. Alone. Never to see him again. She imagined herself at home in Maine, sitting by herself and thinking that she would give all she possessed to see Nicholas, to speak to him just one more time. By that time, she’d be so lonely she wouldn’t care if he were with a hundred women, if she could just see him one more time.

  “Women’s lib doesn’t cover this situation,” she said through her tears. The ideal of equality for women said you weren’t supposed to put up with the man in your life having affairs, so she guessed she certainly wasn’t supposed to let him marry someone else.

  It was all or nothing. To have Nicholas she had to share him; she’d have to share him physically, mentally, share him in every way possible. To leave him meant absolute, eternal loneliness for Dougless, and possibly death for Nicholas and his family.

  Every thought made her cry harder. Days went by and still she cried. Honoria made sure that Dougless was dressed each day and she tried to see that she ate, but Dougless couldn’t eat. She didn’t care about eating or sleeping. Her mind was on Nicholas.

  At first the other people in the Stafford household were sympathetic to Dougless’s tears. They knew why she cried. They had seen the way she and Nicholas looked at each other, the way they touched. Some of them sighed and remembered their first loves. They felt sorry for Dougless when Nicholas went off to be married, and they saw the way Dougless cried in heart-broken grief. But their sympathy wore thin when Dougless’s tears went on day after day after day. They became so annoyed that they began to ask themselves what use the woman was. Lady Margaret had given Dougless everything, but now Dougless was giving nothing in return. Where were the new games, the new songs the woman should be providing?

  On the fourth day, Lady Margaret called Dougless to her.

  Dougless, weak from fasting and endless tears, stood before Lady Margaret, her head down, her cheeks wet, her face swollen and red.

  Lady Margaret was silent for a moment as she looked at Dougless’s bent head and heard the soft weeping. “Cease!” Lady Margaret commanded. “I am most tired of your tears.”

  “I can’t,” Dougless said, hiccuping. “I can’t seem to stop.”

  Lady Margaret grimaced. “Have you no spine? My son was a fool to believe himself to love you.”

  “I agree. I’m not worthy of him.”

  Sitting down, Lady Margaret contemplated Dougless’s bent head. She knew her younger son well enough to know that this woman’s tears would wrench his too-soft heart. Before he left, Nicholas was saying he could not do his duty and marry the Culpin woman. How would their marriage fare if he returned and found this strange red-haired wench crying for love of him? Lady Margaret had always been able to reason with Kit, but Nicholas, like his father, had a stubborn streak. She did not think Nicholas would do it, but what if he returned, saw the red-eyed face of this Dougless, and attempted to set his marriage aside?

  Lady Margaret continued to look at the bent head before her. The woman must go from this house. Yet why did she hesitate in sending her away? For that matter, why had she allowed this woman into the Stafford house? At first Nicholas had been enraged that his mother had so trusted the oddly dressed, oddly spoken young woman enough to take an unknown tablet from her. Yet Lady Margaret had taken one look at the woman’s face and she had trusted her. Trusted her with her life.

  Nicholas had been so angry after that. Lady Margaret smiled in memory. Nicholas had locked the girl in a filthy cell at the top of the house, and she’d stayed up there, eaten by fleas, while Lady Margaret had argued with her son over the girl’s fate. Nicholas had wanted to toss her into the road, and, in truth, Lady Margaret had known he was right. But something prevented her, something inside her, made her refuse to thrown the girl out.

  It was Nicholas who had gone to get the girl. He had been “trying to reason” with his mother (“reason” is what he called his stubborn insistence that he was right) when, abruptly, he got up, left the room, and went to fetch the girl.

  Lady Margaret smiled more broadly when she thought of the girl’s absurd story of being a princess from far off Lanconia. Lady Margaret hadn’t believed her for a moment, but the foolish story had given her a reason for keeping the girl near her, against Nicholas’s strenuous protests.

  Those first days had been divine. The girl was lively and entertaining beyond all reasoning. Even her speech was amusing. And her actions never failed to delight, puzzle, and fascinate. The girl was stupid about so many things, such as dressing and even eating, yet she was very clever about some things. She knew more about medicine than any physician. She told curious stories about the moon and the stars and the earth being round. She had devised a short, wide chair that was stuffed with down and had fabric nailed over it. She called it an “easy chair” and had given it to Lady Margaret. She didn’t know it, but she had half the household rising early to hide in the gardens to watch her bathing in the fountain, using a marvelous foam on her hair and skin. In private Lady Margaret had inspected the wonders in her bag, had even used the little brush and something called toothpaste.

  Oh, the girl was entertaining, all right. At one point, Lady Margaret had hoped she would never leave.

  But then Nicholas had fallen in love with her. Lady Margaret had not at first cared. Young men often fell in love. At sixteen Kit had been in love with one of her ladies-in-waiting. Lady Margaret saw that the woman took Kit to bed and taught him a thing or two; then she’d sent Kit to the kitchens, where she knew a voluptuous servant girl was working. Within a week Kit had been “in love” with the serving wench.

  Lady Margaret had had no such troubles with Nicholas. Nicholas had never needed an introduction to women. Over the years he had given his body freely, but never his heart.

  She should have known that when Nicholas did give his heart, he would give it so completely that a hundred voluptuous serving girls would not be able to take it back. At first Lady Margaret had been glad when Nicholas had shown such extraordinary interest in this Dougless Montgomery. Lady Margaret had thought that when Nicholas returned with his bride, since Dougless loved him, the red-haired woman would not be tempted to leave the Stafford household. Lady Margaret would miss the girl’s humor and knowledge if she were gone.

  But as the days progressed, Lady Margaret refused to see just how attached Nicholas was becoming to her. When at last Lady Margaret had really looked at her household, what she saw did not please her. Her youngest son loved the woman to the point of obsession. Her eldest son spoke of giving the girl great riches, and Kit’s future wife talked of little else except what Dougless said or did.

  As did the r
est of the household. “Dougless says children should not be swaddled.” “Dougless says the wound must be washed.” “Dougless says my husband had no right to beat me.” “Dougless says a woman should have control of her own money.” Dougless says, Dougless says, Lady Margaret thought. Who ran the Stafford household? Did the Staffords or this girl who lied about her relatives?

  And now she stood before Lady Margaret weeping, weeping as she had done for days. Lady Margaret clenched her teeth when she thought of how the tears of this one woman were affecting everyone.

  But worse, she knew that these tears would affect Nicholas. Nicholas who said he loved her, Nicholas who talked of breaking a betrothal because of this woman who had nothing, who was nothing. Yet this woman, to whom Lady Margaret had given so much, now threatened everything in her family. Were Nicholas to disavow his contract with the Culpin family . . . No, she did not like to think what could happen.

  The red-haired woman must go.

  Lady Margaret’s mouth set into a firm, hard line. “The runner has come from Lanconia. You are no princess. You are related to no one in the royal house. Who are you?”

  “J-just a woman. No one special,” Dougless said, sniffing.

  “We have given you all that our house has to offer, yet you have lied to us.”

  “Yes, I have.” Dougless kept her head down, agreeing with everything. There was nothing anyone could say to her to make her feel worse. The marriage was to take place this morning. Today Nicholas would marry his beautiful Lettice.

  Lady Margaret took a breath. “On the morrow you will leave us. You will take what clothes you came in, no more, and you will be sent forever from the Stafford house.”

  It took a moment for Dougless to understand. She looked at Lady Margaret, blinking at her through tear-filled eyes. “Leave? But Nicholas wishes me to stay, to be here when he returns.”

  “Do you think his wife will wish to see you? My foolish son has grown too attached to you. You do him harm.”

  “I would never harm Nicholas. I came here to save him, not to hurt him.”