A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggart #15)

A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggart #15) Page 41

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 there 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 at 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.

Once outside the gardens, she ran as fast as she could.

Nicholas, his arm swathed in a bloody bandage, was sitting on a horse and watching her progress toward him.

“Kit!” Dougless screamed, still running. “We have to save Kit.”

Dougless didn’t say any more because a man swooped her into his arms and dumped her onto a horse, and, oh, thank all that was holy, it was a man’s saddle. She jammed her feet into the stirrups, grabbed the reins, and looked at Nicholas.

“We ride!” he shouted as he kicked his horse forward.

The wind in her eyes stung and her arm still hurt, but most of Dougless’s concentration was on following Nicholas. Behind them thundered three men trying to keep up with them.

They ran across plowed fields, through gardens of cabbages and turnips. They ran through the dirty, barren yards of peasants, and for once Dougless gave no thought to equality as their horses’ hooves destroyed crops and even once, a shed. They ran into the woods, tree branches low overhead. Dougless put her head down on the horse’s neck and kept going. Leaving the trail, Nicholas headed into the forest. Even though there was no path, the forest floor was clear of deadfall, for even twigs were needed for firewood, so, except for the overhanging branches, their way was unhampered.

Dougless never thought to question how Nicholas knew where Kit was, but she was sure he did know. Just as he’d known she would come when he hurt his arm, he knew where his brother was.

They broke through the trees into a clearing, and ahead, surrounded by more trees, sparkled a pretty, spring-fed pond. Nicholas was off his horse while it was still running, and Dougless followed him, tearing her heavy, long skirt when it caught on the saddle.

When she reached the pond and looked down, what she saw chilled her. Three men were carrying Kit’s nude, lifeless body out of the water. Kit’s body was facedown, his long dark hair falling forward, his neck limp and lifeless.

Nicholas was staring at his brother. “No,” he said, then, “NO!”

Shoving past Nicholas, Dougless went to the men holding Kit. “Put him down here,” she ordered. “On his back.”

Kit’s men hesitated.

“Obey her!” Nicholas bellowed from close behind her.

“Pray,” she said to the man nearest her as she straddled Kit. “I need all the help I can get. Pray for a miracle.”

Instantly, the men went to their knees, their hands clasped, their heads bowed.

Nicholas knelt before Kit’s inert body and placed his hands on Kit’s wet head. When he looked at Dougless, his eyes showed that he trusted her in whatever she did to his beloved brother’s inert body.

Dougless pushed Kit’s head back to make a straight line of his air ducts, then began to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Nicholas’s eyes widened as he watched, but he did not try to stop her. “Kit, please,” she whispered. “Please live,” then she again forced air into his lungs.

When she was ready to give up hope, Kit coughed, then was silent.

Nicholas’s head came up as he looked at Dougless. “Come on, come on,” she said. “Breathe, damn you!” With Nicholas’s help, she pushed Kit onto his side.