A Knight in Shining Armor

  Lady Margaret glared at her. “From whence do you come? Where did you live before you came here?”

  Dougless clamped her mouth shut. She could say nothing, absolutely nothing. If she told Lady Margaret the truth, Dougless’s life would be worth nothing, and there would never be a chance of her seeing Nicholas again. “I . . . I will provide entertainments,” Dougless said, her voice desperate. “I know more songs, more games. And I can tell you many more stories about America. I could tell you about airplanes and automobiles and—”

  Lady Margaret put up her hand. “I weary of your amusements. I cannot feed and clothe you. Who are you? A peasant’s daughter?”

  “My father teaches, and I teach too. Lady Margaret, you can’t throw me out. I have nowhere to go, and Nicholas needs me. I have to protect him as I protected Kit. I saved Kit’s life, remember? He offered me a house then. I’ll take it now.”

  “You asked for your reward and received it. Due to you, my son works as a tradesman.”

  “But—” Dougless put out her hands, pleading.

  “You will go. We harbor no liars here.”

  “I’ll wash dishes,” Dougless said, pleading. “I’ll be the family physician. I can’t do worse than the leeches. I’ll—”

  “You will leave!” Lady Margaret half shouted, her eyes glistening like precious stones. “I will have you no longer in my house. My son asked to be released from his betrothal for you.”

  “He did?” Dougless almost smiled. “He never told me.”

  “You disarray my household. You bewitch my son till he does not know his duty. Be you glad I do not have a whip taken to you.”

  “This is better? Sending me out there, into those . . . those people? Sending me away from Nicholas?”

  Lady Margaret stood up, then turned her back on Dougless. “I will not argue with you. Say your farewells this day, and on the morrow you will be sent from my house. Now go. I do not wish to see you again.”

  Numbly, Dougless turned and left the room. Not seeing anything, she made her way back to Honoria’s room. Honoria took one look at her face and guessed what was wrong.

  “Lady Margaret has sent you away?” Honoria whispered.

  Dougless nodded.

  “Do you have a place to go? One who will take care of you?”

  Dougless shook her head. “I will be leaving Nicholas to that evil woman.”

  “Lady Lettice?” Honoria asked, puzzled. “The woman is cool perhaps, but I do not believe she is evil.”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “You do?”

  “I know a great deal about her. I know what she’s going to do.”

  Honoria had learned to ignore these odd remarks of Dougless’s. She thought perhaps that she didn’t want to know all there was to know about Dougless. “Where will you go?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you have relatives?”

  Dougless gave a weak smile. “Probably. I imagine there are some sixteenth-century Montgomerys about somewhere.”

  “But you do not know them?”

  “I only know Nicholas.” Nicholas who was by now, no doubt, married. She had thought she had choices, that she could choose to stay or go, but now it looked as though her fate had been decided for her. “I know Nicholas, and I know what will happen,” she said tiredly.

  “You shall go to my family,” Honoria said firmly. “They will love your games and songs. They will care for you.”

  Dougless managed a bit of a smile. “That’s very kind of you, but if I can’t stay with Nicholas, I don’t want to stay here at all.”

  Honoria’s face whitened. “Suicide is against God.”

  “God,” Dougless whispered and tears came to her eyes. “God did this to me, and now it’s all going wrong.” She closed her eyes. “Please,” she whispered, eyes closed. “Please, Nicholas, don’t marry her. I beg you, please.”

  Concerned, Honoria went to Dougless and felt her forehead. “You are warm. This day you must remain in bed. You are ill.”

  “I am past ill,” Dougless said as she allowed Honoria to push her down on the bed. She barely felt Honoria’s hands unfastening the front of her dress as she closed her eyes.

  Hours later she opened her eyes to see a darkened room. She was in Honoria’s bed wearing only her linen gown, her hair down. Her pillow was wet, so she knew she had been crying while she slept.

  “Nicholas,” she whispered. Married now. Married to the woman who would kill him, who would eventually kill all the Staffords. Dougless closed her eyes again. When she awoke next it was night outside and the room was very dark. Honoria was asleep beside her.

  Something is wrong, Dougless thought. Very wrong. She remembered Lady Margaret telling her that she must leave the Stafford family, but there was something else.

  “Nicholas,” she whispered. “Nicholas needs me.”

  She got out of bed and went into the hall. All was quiet. Barefoot, she went down the stairs, her feet moving about under the dried river rushes on the floor. She went out the back toward the garden, following where instinct and some indefinable pull led her.

  She went across the brick terrace, down the stairs, along the raised walk, then turned into the knot garden. There was only a quarter moon, so it was very dark, but she didn’t need to see, for she had an inner sight.

  As she approached the garden, she heard the fountain splashing, the fountain where she had showered each morning until Nicholas left. She had not been outside since Nicholas rode away.

  There, standing in the fountain, his body nude, covered in soap lather, was Nicholas.

  Dougless didn’t think, and certainly used no reason. One minute she was outside the fountain, and the next she was in Nicholas’s wet arms, holding him, kissing him with all the desperation and fear that she felt.

  Everything happened too suddenly for her to stop and think. She was in his arms; they were on the ground; she was nude. They came together with a clash of pent-up desire that made Dougless cry out. Nicholas, not gently, no, not gentle at all, bent her body backward over a stone bench and rammed into her with blinding force. Dougless held on to his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin, put her legs about his waist, and held on.

  Fast, furious, frantic, they tore at each other. Their bodies, covered with sweat, stuck together as they rose and fell together, again, again, again.

  When at last they finished, Nicholas put his strong hands under her and lifted her to meet his final deep, deep thrust. Dougless cried out as the world darkened and her body stiffened as she found release.

  It was a while before she recovered herself and could see again, think again. Nicholas was grinning at her, his teeth white. Even in the darkness she could see his happiness.

  But Dougless was beginning to think. “What have we done?” she whispered.

  Nicholas unwrapped her legs from his body and pulled her to stand before him. “We have just begun.”

  She was blinking at him, trying to make her mind work, because her body was trembling at the touch of him. The tips of her breasts were touching his chest and they were tingling. “Why are you here? Oh, God, Nicholas, what have we done?” She started to sit on the bench, but he pulled her into his arms.

  “Later there will be time for words,” he said. “Now I will do what I have much wanted to do.”

  “No,” she said as she pushed away from him. She was fumbling about for the remnants of her gown. “We have to talk now. There will be no time later. Nicholas!” Her voice was rising. “We will have no more time!”

  He pulled her back into his arms. “You do still insist you will disappear? Here, look you, we have tasted—merely tasted—of one another, yet you do remain.”

  How could she tell him? She collapsed on the bench, her head down. “I knew you were here. I felt you. And just as I knew you needed me, I know that this is our last night together.”

  Nicholas didn’t speak, but after a moment he sat down on the bench beside her, very close, but their
nude bodies were not touching. “I have always felt you,” he said softly. “This night you heard my call, but it has always been so with me. After I left I . . .” He paused. “I felt your tears. I could hear nothing but your weeping. I could not see Lettice for seeing you in your tears.”

  Putting out his hand, he took hers. “I left the woman. I said naught, not even to Kit. I took my horse and rode. When I should have been saying vows, I was riding to you. It took until now to reach you.”

  This is what she had wanted, but now that it was here, the enormity of what he’d done scared her. She looked at him. “What will happen now?”

  “There will be . . . anger,” he said, “anger on both sides. Kit . . . My mother will . . .” He looked away.

  Dougless could see how torn he was between duty and love. But now she wouldn’t be here to help him. She squeezed his hand. “You will not marry her even after I’m gone?”

  He turned blazing eyes toward her. “You would leave me now?”

  Tears came again to her eyes as she flung herself against him. “I would never leave you if I had a choice, but I don’t. Not now. Now there is no choice. I will go soon, I know it. I can feel it.”

  He kissed her, then smoothed her hair back. “How much time?” he whispered.

  “Dawn. No more. Nicholas, I—”

  He silenced her with a kiss. “I would rather hours with you than a lifetime with another. Now, no more talk. Come, we will love away these hours.”

  He stood up, then pulled her up beside him and led her into the still-running fountain, where he began to lather her with the last of her soft soap. “You left this behind,” he said, smiling at her.

  Forget that this is the end, Dougless thought. Forget it. Time must stand still for this one night. “How did you kn-know I showered here?” she asked, her voice stumbling.

  “I was one of those who watched.”

  She stopped soaping herself, and Nicholas’s hands stilled at her look. “Watched? Who watched me?”

  “All,” he said, grinning. “Did you not notice the men’s yawns? They rose most early to hide themselves.”

  “Hide!” Her anger was rising. “And you were one of them? You allowed this? You let men spy on me?”

  “Were I to have stopped you, I would have halted my own pleasure. It was a dilemma.”

  “Dilemma! Why, you—!” She lunged at him.

  Nicholas sidestepped, then caught her, pulling her close to him. He forgot about soaping her as he bent his head and began kissing her breasts, the water pouring down on top of them. “I have dreamed of this,” he said, “since my vision.”

  “The shower,” she murmured. “The shower.” Her hands were entangled in his hair as his mouth moved lower and lower. He was on his knees before her. “Nicholas, my Nicholas.”

  They made love again, as they had done before, in the water. For Nicholas it was a discovery of her body, but for Dougless, she had had weeks of remembering and wanting. Her hands were all over him, memorizing, remembering, finding new places she had not touched or tasted before.

  By the time they finished, it was hours later. The water had stopped flowing, and Dougless guessed that whoever was turning the wheel was too tired to continue. She and Nicholas lay in each other’s arms on the sweet grass.

  “We have to talk,” she said at last.

  “Nay, do not.”

  She snuggled closer to him. “I must. I wish with all my heart that I didn’t have to speak, but I must.”

  “On the morrow, when the sun touches your hair, you will laugh at this. You are no woman from the future. You are here with me now. You will remain with me for all time.”

  “I wish . . .” Her voice grew hoarse and she swallowed. Her hand was roaming over his body, touching him. The last time. The last time. “Nicholas, please,” she said. “Listen to me.”

  “Aye, I will listen, then I will love you again.”

  “When you left before, no one remembered you. It was as though you hadn’t existed. It was so horrible for me.” She buried her face in his shoulder. “You had come and gone, but no one remembered. It was as though I’d made you up.”

  “I am most forgettable.”

  She raised on her elbow to look at him, to touch his beard, his cheek, to caress his eyebrows, to kiss his eyelids. “I will never forget you.”

  “Nor I, you.” He lifted a bit to kiss her lips, but when he wanted more, Dougless pulled away.

  “The same may happen when I leave. I want you to be prepared if no one remembers me. Don’t . . . I don’t know what to say . . . Don’t make yourself crazy trying to make them remember.”

  “No one will forget.”

  “They probably will. What if the songs I taught you were remembered? It could ruin some very good Broadway shows in the twentieth century.” She tried to smile but didn’t quite make it. “I want you to swear some things to me.”

  “I will not marry Lettice. I doubt now I will be asked again,” he said sarcastically.

  “Good. Oh, very, very good. Now I won’t have to read about your execution.” She ran her fingertips over his neck. “Promise me you’ll take care of James. No more swaddling, and play with him sometimes.”

  He kissed her fingertips and nodded.

  “Take care of Honoria; she’s been so good to me.”

  “I will find her the best of husbands.”

  “Not the richest, the best. Promise?” When he nodded, she went on. “And anyone who’s delivering a baby has to wash his or her hands first. And you have to build Thornwyck Castle and leave records behind that show that you designed it. I want history to know.”

  He was smiling at her. “Naught else? You will have to remain by my side to remind me of all this.”

  “I would,” she whispered. “I would, but I cannot. May I have the miniature of you?”

  “You may have my heart, my soul, my life.”

  She clasped his head in her arms. “Nicholas, I can’t bear it.”

  “There is naught bad to bear,” he said, kissing her arm, her shoulder, his lips traveling downward. “Perhaps Kit will give me a small estate, and we—”

  She pulled away to look at him. “Wrap the miniature of you in oiled cloth, something that will protect it over the next four hundred years, and put it behind the . . . What’s the stone thing that holds up the beams?”

  “A corbel.”

  “At Thornwyck Castle you’ll make a corbel that’s a portrait of Kit. Wrap the miniature and put it behind the corbel. When I . . . when I return, I’ll go get it.”

  He was kissing her breast.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard all. James. Honoria. Midwives. Thornwyck. Kit’s face.” With each word, he punctuated it with a little sucking-kiss on her breast. “Now, my love,” he whispered, “come to me.”

  He lifted her body and set her down on top of him, and Dougless forgot everything on earth except the touch of this man she loved so much. He stroked her hips, her breasts as they moved together. Up and down. Slowly at first, then building faster.

  Nicholas rolled with her until she was on her back, and his passion rose as he entered her deeply, her body rising to meet his. They arched together, both with their heads back, then they collapsed, Nicholas on top of her, holding her very tightly.

  “I love you,” he whispered. “I will love you for all time.”

  Dougless clung to him, holding him as tightly as she could. “You will remember me? You won’t forget me?”

  “Never,” he said. “Never will I forget you. Were I to die tomorrow, my soul would remember you.”

  “Don’t speak of death. Speak only of life. With you I am alive. With you I am whole.”

  “And I with you.” He rolled to one side and pulled her close to him. “Look, you. The sun comes up.”

  “Nicholas, I’m afraid.”

  He stroked her damp hair. “Afraid of being seen unclad? It is not something we have not seen before.”

  “You!” she said, lau
ghing. “I’ll never forgive you for not telling me.”

  “I will have a lifetime in which to make you forgive me.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. It will take a lifetime.”

  He glanced at the lightening sky. “We must go. I must tell my mother what I have done. Kit will no doubt be here soon.”

  “They will be very angry. And my part in this won’t help matters any.”

  “You must go to Kit with me. I will be shameless. I will tell my brother he must give us a place to live in memory of your saving him.”

  Dougless looked up at the sky, saw it was growing lighter by the minute. She could almost believe she was going to be able to stay with him. “We’ll live in a pretty little house somewhere,” she said, her words beginning to gain speed. “We’ll have only a few servants, fifty or so,” she said, smiling. “And we’ll have a dozen kids. I like kids. And we’ll educate them properly and teach them how to wash. Maybe we can invent a flush toilet.”

  Nicholas chuckled. “You wash too much. My sons will not—”

  “Our sons. I’m going to have to explain to you about women’s equality.”

  He stood up, then pulled her into his arms. “Will this explaining take long?”

  “About four hundred years,” she whispered.

  “Then I will give you the time.”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Time. We will have all the time we need.”

  He kissed her then, kissed her long and hard and deeply; then his kiss lightened. “Forever,” he whispered. “I will love you throughout time.”

  One moment Dougless was in his arms, his lips on hers, and the next she was in the church at Ashburton, and outside a jet flew overhead.

  THIRTY - THREE

  Dougless didn’t cry. What she was feeling was too deep, too profound for her to cry. She was sitting on the floor in the little church in Ashburton, and she knew that behind her was Nicholas’s marble tomb. She couldn’t bear to look at it, couldn’t bear to see the warm flesh of Nicholas translated into cold marble.

  She sat where she was for a while and looked at the church. It looked so old and so plain. There was no color on the beams or on the walls, and the stone floors looked bare with no rushes on them. In the first pews were some needlepointed pillows, and now they looked crude. She was used to seeing Lady Margaret’s women’s exquisite needlework.