“Don’t do that! Whatever you do, don’t put your money on anyone but Elizabeth.” As she spoke, Dougless wondered if she was changing history. If the Staffords and all their money had been put at Mary’s disposal, would she have taken the throne? If Elizabeth weren’t queen, would there have been a time when England was the reigning world power? If England weren’t a world power that sent settlers to America, would America be speaking English? “Heavy,” she said under her breath, mocking a young cousin of hers.
“Who will Elizabeth marry?” Nicholas asked. “Who will she put on the throne beside her?”
“No one, and don’t start on me, because we’ve already had this argument. Elizabeth marries no one, and she does a super job of running the country and a lot of the world with it. Now, are you going to let me tell you the rest of our story, or are you going to keep telling me that what did happen didn’t?”
He grinned at her. “You gave yourself to a man for free and I came to save you. Yes, please continue.”
“That’s not exactly what happened, but . . .” Trailing off, she looked at him. He had saved her. He’d appeared in that church, sunlight flashing off his armor, taken her away from a man who didn’t love her, and shown her the true give-and-take of love. With Nicholas she could be herself. She never had to think about having to please him; she just seemed to naturally please him. When she was growing up, she’d tried so hard to be as perfect as her older sisters. But it seemed that every schoolteacher she ever had, had had all of her sisters in her classes before Dougless. And, by comparison, Dougless was always a disappointment. Dougless daydreamed, but her sisters never did. Dougless wasn’t much good at sports, but her sisters had excelled. Her sisters had had millions of friends, but Dougless was always a bit shy and had always felt like an outsider.
Her parents had never compared her to her sisters. They never seemed to notice that the tennis trophies, equestrian trophies, baseball trophies, spelling bee medals, and science fair ribbons all belonged to their eldest daughters. Dougless had once won a third prize yellow ribbon at church for the best apple pie, and her father had proudly hung it up beside his other daughters’ blue ribbons and purple best-of-show ribbons. The yellow had looked so strange and, to Dougless, so embarrassing, that she took the ribbon down.
All her life it seemed that Dougless had wanted to please people, but, somehow, she’d never been able to. Her father kept saying that whatever she did was okay with him, but Dougless merely had to look at her sisters’ accomplishments and she knew she needed to do something great. Robert had been an attempt to impress her family. Maybe Robert, a distinguished surgeon, was supposed to be the biggest trophy of all.
But Nicholas had saved her, she thought. Not in the way he meant. He hadn’t saved her because he’d pushed Robert out a door. No, he’d saved her by respecting her, and, because of him, Dougless had begun to see herself through his eyes. When she thought about it, Dougless doubted very much if her sisters could have handled what had happened as well as she had. All of them were so sensible and so levelheaded they would probably have called the police on a man in armor who said he was from the sixteenth century. Not one of them would have been softhearted enough to take pity on a poor crazy man.
“What makes you smile so?” Nicholas asked softly.
“I was thinking about my sisters. They’re perfect people. Not a flaw in them, but I just realized that perfect can sometimes be a little lonely. Maybe I do try to please people, but I guess there are worse things. Maybe I should just find the right person to please.”
Nicholas was obviously confused by this. He took her hand and began to kiss the palm. “You please me much.”
She snatched her hand away. “We can’t . . . touch each other,” she said, stammering.
He looked at her through his lashes, his voice low. “But we have touched, have we not? I remember seeing you. I seem to know of touching you.”
“Yes,” Dougless whispered. “We have touched.” They were alone on the bed, the room dark except for the golden glow of three candles.
“If we have touched, then it will not matter if we touch again in this life.” His hands were reaching for her.
“No,” she said, her eyes pleading. “We cannot. I would be returned to my own time.”
Nicholas didn’t move closer to her, and he couldn’t understand why he stopped. But he could feel the urgency in her. Never before had a woman’s “no” stopped him, because he soon found the women hadn’t really meant no. But now, on the bed with this most desirable woman, he found himself listening to her words.
Leaning back against the pillows, he sighed. “I am too weak to accomplish much,” he said heavily.
Dougless laughed. “Sure, and if you believe that, I have some land in Florida to sell you.”
Nicholas grinned, understanding her meaning. “Come, then, sit close by me and tell me more of your time and of what we did there.” He held up his uninjured arm, and Dougless, against her better judgment, moved near him.
Pulling her very close to the side of him, he wrapped his strong right arm about her. She pushed at him for a moment, then sighed and snuggled against his bare chest. “We bought you some clothes,” she said, smiling in memory. “And you attacked the poor clerk because the prices were so high. Afterward we went to tea. You loved tea. Then we found you a bed-and-breakfast.” She paused. “That was the night you found me in the rain.”
Nicholas was listening to her with half an ear. He wasn’t yet sure he believed her story of past and future, but he was sure of how she felt in his arms. Her body next to his was something he remembered very well.
She was explaining that he’d seemed able to “hear” her. She said she wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but she’d used it the first day she’d come to the sixteenth century. She had “called” to him in the rain, and he had come to her. She chided him for his rudeness on that day and for making her ride on the back of the horse. Later, when she was in the room in the attic, she had again “called” him.
Nicholas didn’t need further explanation of this, for he seemed to always feel what she felt. Now, as she lay in his arms, her head on his chest, he could feel her sense of comfort, but at the same time he felt her sexual excitement. He’d never wanted to make love to a woman as much as he wanted to make love to her, but something stopped him.
She was telling of going to Bellwood and how he had shown her the secret door.
“I believed you after that,” she said. “Not because you knew of the door, but because you were so hurt that the world remembered your misdeeds instead of all the good you had done. No one in the twentieth century knew for sure that you had designed Thornwyck Castle. There was nothing left behind to prove that you were the designer.”
“I am not a tradesman. I will not—”
She looked up at him. “I told you that in our world it’s different. Talent is appreciated.”
He looked down at her, her face close to his, and put his fingertips under her chin. Ever so slowly he brought his lips to hers and kissed her gently.
Then he pulled back, startled. Her eyes were closed and her body was soft and pliant against his. He could take her, he knew that, but, still, something was stopping him. When he moved his hand from her chin, he found that it was trembling. He felt like a boy with his first woman. Except that the first time Nicholas had bedded a woman, he had been eager and enthusiastic, not trembling as he was now.
“What do you to me?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” Dougless said, her voice husky. “I think maybe we were meant to be together. Even though we were born four hundred years apart, we were meant for each other.”
He ran his hand down her face, then her neck, shoulder, and arm. “Yet I am not to bed you? I cannot take the clothes from your body and kiss your br**sts, kiss your legs, kiss—”
“Nicholas, please,” she said, pushing out of his arms. “This is difficult enough as it is. All I know is that when we were together in the twentieth century, after we made love, you disappeared. I was holding you and you slipped right out of my grasp. I have you again now, so I don’t want to lose you a second time. We can spend time together, we can talk, and we can be together in every way except physically.” She paused. “That is, if you want me to stay with you.”
As Nicholas looked at her, he felt the pain she’d felt at their separation, but at the moment, he wanted to make love to her more than he wanted to understand anything.
Dougless saw what he was thinking, so when he lunged at her, she rolled off the bed. “One of us has to keep his wits. I want you to get some rest. Tomorrow we can talk more.”
“I do not want to talk to you,” he said sullenly.
Laughing, Dougless remembered all the things she’d once done to entice him. She didn’t need high heels now! “Tomorrow, my love. I must go now. It’s almost dawn, and I must meet Lucy and—”
“Who is Lucy?”
“Lady Lucinda something or other. The girl Kit’s to marry.”
Nicholas snorted. “A fat lump that.”
Dougless’s anger flared. “Not beautiful like the woman you’re to marry, is she?”
Nicholas smiled. “Jealousy becomes you.”
“I’m not jealous; I’m—” She turned away. Jealousy didn’t begin to describe what she felt for Lettice, but she said nothing. Nicholas had already made it clear that he loved the woman he was to marry, so she was sure he wouldn’t listen to anything Dougless said against her. “I have to go,” she said at last. “And I want you to sleep.”
“I would sleep well if you would but stay with me.”
“Liar,” she said, smiling. She didn’t dare go too near him again. She was tired from the excitement of the day and from a night without sleep. Lifting her tote bag, she stepped to the door, gave one last look at his bare chest, his skin dark against the white of the pillows; then hurriedly, before she changed her mind, she left the room.
Lucy was waiting for her by the fountain, and after Dougless had showered, they rehearsed their vaudeville act. Dougless was going to play the straight man, the dummy who asked the questions, so Lucy would get all the laughs.
At daybreak, Dougless made her way back to the house, and Honoria was waiting for her, holding up the purple velvet dress.
“I thought I might take a nap,” Dougless said, yawning.
“Lady Margaret and Lord Christopher await you. You are to be rewarded.”
“I don’t want any reward. I just want to help.” Even as she said it, she knew her words were a lie. She wanted to live with Nicholas for the rest of her life. Sixteenth century, twentieth century, she didn’t care which if she could just stay with him.
“You must come. You may ask for whatever you wish. A house. An income. A husband. A—”
“Think they’d let me have Nicholas?”
“He is pledged,” Honoria said softly.
“I know that only too well. Shall we start getting me harnessed?”
After Dougless was dressed, Honoria led her to the Presence Chamber, where Lady Margaret and her oldest son were playing a game of chess.
“Ah,” Kit said when Dougless entered; then he lifted her hand and kissed it. “The angel of life who gave me back mine.”
Smiling, Dougless blushed.
“Come, sit,” Lady Margaret said, pointing to a chair. A chair, not a stool, so Dougless knew she was being greatly honored.
Kit stood behind his mother’s chair. “I wish to thank you for my life, and I wish to give you a gift, but I know not what you would wish. Name what you would have of me. And think high,” he said, eyes twinkling, “my life is worth much to me.”
“There is nothing I want,” Dougless said. “You have given me kindness. You have fed and clothed me most sumptuously. There is nothing more I could want.” Except Nicholas, she thought. Could you gift wrap him and send him to my apartment in Maine?
“Come,” Kit said, laughing. “There is something you must want. A chest of jewels perhaps. I have a house in Wales that—”
“A house,” Dougless said. “Yes, a house. I’d like you to build a house in Thornwyck, and Nicholas is to draw the plans for it.”
“My son?” Lady Margaret asked, aghast.
“Yes, Nicholas. He’s made some sketches for a house, and it will be beautiful. But he must have Kit’s . . . I mean, Lord Christopher’s backing.”
“And you would live in this house?” Kit asked.
“Oh, no. I mean, I don’t want to own it. I just want Nicholas to be allowed to design it.”
Both Kit and Lady Margaret stared at her. Dougless looked at the women around them, sitting at their embroidery frames. They were gaping.
Kit recovered first. “You may have your wish. My brother will get his house.”
“Thank you. Thank you so very much.”
No one in the room spoke again, so Dougless stood up. “I believe I owe you a game of charades,” she said to Lady Margaret.
Lady Margaret smiled. “You no longer need to earn your keep. My son’s life has paid for you. Go and do what you wish.”
Dougless at first started to protest that she didn’t know what to do with herself, but then she figured she’d think of something. “Thank you, my lady,” she said, and bobbed a curtsy before leaving the room. Freedom, she thought, as she went back to Honoria’s bedroom. No more having to entertain people. Good thing, since her store of songs was down to the McDonald’s jingle.
Honoria’s maid helped Dougless remove her new dress and corset (her old corset that was beginning to rust through its silk covering), and she went to bed smiling. She had prevented Nicholas from impregnating Arabella, and she’d saved Kit. All that was left was to get rid of Lettice. If she could do that, she would change history. She fell asleep smiling.
TWENTY - NINE
What followed was, for Dougless, the happiest week of her life. Everyone in the Stafford household was pleased with her, and it seemed that she could do no wrong. She figured it would wear off in a few days, so she planned to enjoy it while it lasted.
She spent every minute she could with Nicholas. He wanted to know all about her twentieth century world, and he never tired of asking questions. He had difficulty believing her talk of automobiles, and airplanes he didn’t believe at all. He went through everything in her tote bag. In the bottom were a couple of foil-wrapped tea bags, and Dougless made him a cup of tea with milk. As he’d done the first time, he kissed her soundly in pleasure at the taste.