A Knight in Shining Armour (46 page)

Honoria looked so puzzled that Dougless asked what a pillicock was. “It is a term of endearment; it means a pretty rogue.”

“Endearment? But—” She broke off. When Nicholas had asked her to return to the sixteenth century to cook for him and she’d been so angry, she’d called him rotten names and Nicholas had supplied “pillicock” to the list. He must have loved hearing an angry woman call him a term of endearment.

She smiled in memory. He could indeed be a pillicock.

One of the women, who was a maid to a maid to Lady Margaret, passed about little cookies made of crushed almonds.

Munching, Dougless asked, “Who was the handsome dark-haired woman sitting next to Nicholas at dinner today?”

“Lady Arabella Sydney.”

Dougless choked and coughed, sputtering crumbs. “Lady Arabella? Has she been here long? When did she come? When will she leave?” The postcard, Dougless thought. That’s where she’d seen the woman: in the portrait on the postcard she’d bought at Bellwood.

Honoria smiled. “She arrived yester eve and leaves early on the morrow. She journeys with her husband to France. They will not return for years, so she came to bid my Lady Margaret farewell.”

Dougless’s mind raced. If Nicholas hadn’t had Arabella on the table yet and tomorrow Arabella left, then
this
had to be the day. She had to stop it!

Suddenly, she doubled over, her hands on her stomach, and began to groan.

“What ails you?” Honoria asked, concerned.

“Something I ate. I must return to the house.”

“But—” Honoria began.

“I
must.”
Dougless gave a few more groans.

Quickly, Honoria went to Lady Margaret and returned in a few minutes. “We have permission. I will accompany you with one groom.”

“Great. Let’s just go fast.”

Honoria looked confused as Dougless hurried toward the horses. As a groom helped her onto the saddle, Dougless didn’t look at all ill.

Dougless would have thrown her leg over the idiot sidesaddle, but there was no stirrup on one side, so she tightened her leg around the big protrusion in the front, took a little riding crop, and applied it to the horse’s flanks. Leaning forward, she hung on as the horse thundered down the rutted, dirty road.

Behind her came the groom and Honoria, doing their best to keep up with her.

Twice Dougless had to make the horse jump, once over a wagon tongue, once over a small wooden wheelbarrel. She reined in sharply as a child ran across the road and managed to miss him. She ran through a flock of geese that set up a terrible clatter.

When she reached the house, she leaped from the saddle, tripped on the heavy skirts, and fell face forward. But she didn’t waste a moment as she got up and began running, flinging open the gate, then running down the brick walk and up the stairs, across the terrace and in through the front door.

Once she was inside the house, she stopped and stared up at the staircase. Where? Where was Nicholas? Arabella? The table?

To her left came voices, and when she heard Kit, she ran to him. “Do you know where there’s a table, about six feet long, three feet wide? The legs are turned in a spiral.”

Kit smiled at the urgency in her voice—and at the wild look of her. Her face was running with perspiration, her cap was half off, and her auburn hair was falling about her shoulders. “We have many such tables.”

“This one is special.” She was trying to remain calm, but she couldn’t quite do it. And she was trying to breathe, but the corset was constricting her lungs. “It’s in a room Nicholas uses, and there’s a closet in the room, a place big enough that two people can hide in it.”

“Closet?” Kit said, puzzled, and Dougless realized that a closet in Elizabethan England wasn’t a place to hang clothes.

An older man behind Kit whispered something to him, and Kit smiled. “The chamber next to Nicholas’s bedchamber has such a table. He often—”

Dougless didn’t hear the rest. Tossing her skirt and petticoats over her arm, she ran up the stairs. Nicholas’s bedroom was two rooms down on the right and next to it was a door. She tried the handle, but it was locked. She ran into his bedroom, and through it, but the connecting door was also locked.

She banged on the door with her open palms. “Nicholas! If you’re in there, let me in. Nicholas! Do you hear me?”

She could swear she heard sounds inside the room. “Nicholas!” she screamed as she pounded and kicked the door. “Nicholas!”

When he opened the door, he had a lethal-looking dagger in his hand. “Is my mother well?” he asked.

Dougless pushed past him. There, against the wall was the table she’d seen in the Harewoods’ library. It was four hundred years younger, but it was the same table. And sitting on a chair, trying to look innocent, was Lady Arabella.

“I will have your—” Nicholas began.

But Dougless cut him off when she flung open a little door to the left of the window. There, huddled against the shelves, were two servants.
“This
is why I wanted you to open the door,” she said to Nicholas. “These two spies would have seen everything you two were about to do.”

Nicholas and Arabella were gaping at her, speechless.

Dougless looked at the two servants. “If one word of this gets out, we’ll know who told. Do you understand me?”

In spite of Dougless’s odd speech pattern, they did indeed understand her. “Now get out of here,” she said.

As quickly as mice, they scurried from the room.

“You—” Nicholas began.

Ignoring him, Dougless turned to Arabella. “I’ve saved your life, because your husband would have heard of this and eventually he would have—” Dougless took a deep breath. “I think you’d better go.”

Arabella, not used to being spoken to like this, started to protest, but then she thought of her husband’s temper. She hurried from the room.

When Dougless turned to Nicholas, she saw the rage on his face—which was nothing new, since he’d hardly looked at her any other way since she’d arrived. She gave him a hard glare, then started to leave.

She didn’t make it out the door because Nicholas slammed it in her face.

“Do you spy on me?” he asked. “Do you enjoy watching what I do with other women?”

Count to ten, Dougless thought, or better yet, twenty. She drew a deep breath. “I do not get my kicks from watching you make a fool of yourself with women,” she said calmly. “I’ve told you why I’m here. I knew you were about . . . about to have Arabella on the table because you’d already done so. The servants told everybody, John Wilfred wrote the story, Arabella had your kid, and Robert Sydney did her in. Now, may I go?”

She watched the emotions running across Nicholas’s face, the anger, the confusion, and Dougless felt sympathy for him. “I know that what I’m saying is impossible to believe. When you came to me, I didn’t believe you either, but, Nicholas, I’m from the future and I’ve been sent back in time to try to prevent the ruin of your entire family. Lettice—”

His look cut her off. “Do you accuse an innocent woman? Or are you jealous of all women I touch?”

Dougless’s vow to control her emotions flew out the window. “You vain peacock! I couldn’t care less how many women you bed. It’s nothing to me. You aren’t the man I once knew. In fact you’re half the man your brother is. I was sent back in time to right a wrong, and I’m going to do the best I can, no matter how hard you try to thwart me. Maybe if I can prevent Kit’s death,
that
will save the Stafford estates, then nobody will have to try to change you from being a randy satyr. Now, let me out of here.”

Nicholas didn’t move from in front of the door. “You speak of my brother’s death. Do you mean to cast—”

Dougless threw up her hands and turned away. “I am
not
a witch. Can’t you understand that? I’m a regular, ordinary person who’s been caught in very strange circumstances.” She turned back to him. “I don’t know all of what happened when Kit died. You said you were at sword practice and you cut your arm, so you couldn’t go riding with him. He saw some girl in a lake and went after her. He drowned. That’s all I know.” Except that Lettice might have been responsible, Dougless thought, but she didn’t add that.

He was staring at her, his eyes hostile.

Her voice softened. “When you came to me, I didn’t believe you either,” she repeated. “You told me several things that weren’t in the history books, but I still didn’t believe you. Finally, you took me to Bellwood and showed me a secret door that held a little ivory box. No one, in all the years of the many different owners of the castle had found the door. You said Kit showed you the door the week before he died.” She didn’t like to think of Kit dying.

Nicholas gaped at her. She
was
a witch, for, just recently, Kit mentioned a hidden door at Bellwood, a door he had not yet shown his younger brother. What had she done to Kit to persuade him to tell her of this door that by right should be known only to family members?

In truth, what was she doing to his family and his household? Yesterday he’d heard a stableman singing some absurdity of a song called “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Three of his mother’s women now applied paint to their eyelids that they said came from “Lady” Dougless. His mother—his sane, level-headed, wise mother—took medicine from her hand with the trust of a child. And Kit watched the red-haired wench with the intensity of a bird of prey.

In the few days she had been in the Stafford house, she had upset everything. Her songs, her outrageous dances, the stories she told (lately the castle folk had been talking about some people named Scarlett and Rhett), even how she painted her face was affecting everyone. She was a sorceress, and she was gradually putting everyone under her spell.

Nicholas was the only person who made any attempt to resist her. When he tried to talk to Kit of the power the woman was gaining, Kit had laughed. “Of what consequence are a few stories and songs?” Kit had said.

Nicholas didn’t know what the woman wanted, but he did not mean to so easily fall under her spell as the others had. He meant to resist her no matter how difficult that might be.

Now, glaring at her, he knew that resisting her would never be easy. Her auburn hair was about her shoulders, and she held the little pearl cap in her hands. Never had he seen a woman as beautiful as she. Lettice, perhaps, was more perfect-featured, but this woman, this Dougless, who enraged him, had something more, something he could not name.

From the first moment he’d seen her, it had been as though she had some secret hold over him. He liked being in control with women, like kissing them and feeling them melt against him. He liked the challenge of winning a difficult woman, and he liked the sense of power it gave him when he walked away from her.

But from the first this woman had been different. He watched her far more than she did him. He was aware of every time she looked at Kit, of every glance she gave some handsome servant, of every time she smiled or laughed. Last night in his room his awareness of her had been to the point of pain, and this awareness had made him so angry he could barely speak or think coherently. Her effect on him enraged him. After she left, he had not slept because he knew she wept. The tears of women had never bothered him before. Women always cried. They wept when you left them, when you would not do what they wanted, when you told them you did not love them. He liked women like Arabella and Lettice who never cried for any reason.

But last night this woman had spent the night weeping, and even though he could neither hear nor see her, he had felt her tears. Three times he had almost gone to her but he’d managed to restrain himself. He had no intention of letting her know she had power over him.

As for her story of past and future, he did not so much as consider it. But something about her was strange. He did not for a moment believe she was a Lanconian princess—nor did he think his mother believed her, but Lady Margaret liked the odd songs and the woman’s strange manner of speaking. His mother liked the way this woman acted as though everything were new to her, from the food to the clothes to the servants.

“ . . . you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

Nicholas stared at her; he had no idea what she’d been saying. But suddenly a wave of such desire for her flooded his veins that he stepped back against the door. “You will not bewitch me as you have my family,” he said as though he meant to convince himself.