A Knight in Shining Armor Read online

  Dougless smiled, her head back against his. He had noticed, she thought. He had.

  When her hair was combed, he toweled it dry, then held up the white terry robe the hotel furnished. “Come,” he said, putting on the other robe.

  He led her downstairs, through the darkened hotel lobby, and into the kitchen.

  “Nicholas,” she said, “we shouldn’t be here.”

  He kissed her to silence. “I am hungry,” he said as though that were excuse enough.

  Being in the hotel kitchen when she knew they shouldn’t be added excitement to this most wonderful night. She looked at the back of Nicholas as he opened a refrigerator door (and felt a little pang that he had learned of refrigerators from someone other than her). Now he was truly hers, she thought, hers to touch whenever she wanted. Holding his hand, she pressed her body against his and put her head in the crook of his shoulder.

  “Nicholas,” she whispered. “I love you so much. Don’t leave me.”

  Turning, he looked into her eyes, and his face was full of longing. He looked back in the refrigerator. “Where’s the ice cream?”

  She laughed. “In the freezer. Try that door,” she said, pointing.

  He wouldn’t let her out of his sight or touch as he pulled her toward the freezer. There were big cardboard vats of ice cream inside. Clinging together like Siamese twins, they went about the kitchen and found bowls, spoons, and a steel ladle. Nicholas scooped out an enormous amount from one vat into each bowl, then slipped the vat back into the freezer. He dribbled vanilla ice cream down the front of her, then licked it off, the ice cream traveling lower, just below his tongue. He licked the last just as it reached her red-gold curls.

  “Strawberry,” he said, making Dougless laugh.

  They sat facing each other, legs crossed, on the eight-foot-long butcher-block cutting table (“Unsanitary,” Dougless said), but she didn’t get down. They ate quietly for a moment, but then Nicholas dropped ice cream on Dougless’s foot and licked it off. Dougless leaned forward to kiss Nicholas and “accidently” dropped ice cream on his inner thigh.

  “I’ll bet that’s awfully cold,” she said against his lips.

  “I cannot bear it,” he whispered.

  She slowly, so that her breasts raked along his bare body, made her way to the splat of ice cream on his thigh, licked it off, and when it was gone, she continued licking. The ice cream was forgotten as Nicholas leaned back against the table and pulled her up to him. As though she weighed nothing, his biceps bulging, he picked her up and set her down on top of him, his hands moving up her body to clutch her breasts as Dougless moved slowly up and down.

  It was a long time before they arched together, Nicholas pulling her down to him to kiss her hungrily and fiercely.

  “I believe, madam,” he whispered in her ear, “that you have melted my ice cream.”

  Laughing, Dougless snuggled against him. “I’ve wanted to touch you for so long,” she said, her hand caressing his chest and shoulders inside the sleeve of the robe that he still wore. “I’ve never met a man like you.”

  She lifted on one elbow and looked down at him. “Were you an unusual man in the sixteenth century, or were they all like you?”

  Nicholas grinned at her. “I am unique, which is why the women—”

  She kissed him to silence. “Say no more. I’d as soon hear nothing more about your women—or your wife.” She put her head down. “I’d like to think I’m special to you, not just one of hundreds.”

  He lifted her chin to look at her. “You called me across centuries, and I answered. Is that not enough to make you ‘special’?”

  “Then you do care for me? At least somewhat?”

  “There are no words,” he said, then kissed her lightly and pushed her head back down, but as he stroked her damp hair, he felt her relax against him and knew she was falling asleep. Closing her robe, he bundled her into his arms and carried her out of the kitchen and up to their room. Once they were inside their room, he removed both their robes, put her into bed, then climbed in beside her. She was already asleep as he snuggled her to him.

  But Nicholas wasn’t sleepy at all. He tried to pull her closer to him, her bare bottom up against his half-swollen maleness, his leg over hers, but she was as close as could be.

  She asked if he cared for her, he thought. Cared for her? She was becoming all to him, his reason for living. He cared what she thought, what she felt, what she needed. He couldn’t bear more than minutes away from her.

  Each morning and afternoon he went to pray for God to return him to his own time, but part of his mind thought constantly of what it would be like to never see her again, to never hear her laugh, to never see her cry again, to never hold her in his arms.

  He ran his hand over her shoulder and tucked the cover closer about her. Never had he met a woman like her. She had no guile, no sense of taking what she wanted, no sense of self-preservation. Smiling, he remembered her protests when he’d first met her. She’d said she would not help him, but he’d seen in her eyes how she couldn’t bear leaving him alone in a strange land. He thought of the women of his own time and knew of no woman who would help some poor madman.

  But Dougless had, he thought. She’d helped him and taught him and . . . loved him. She’d given her love freely and completely.

  Completely, he thought, smiling in memory of this night. No woman had ever responded to him with such complete abandonment as Dougless had tonight. Arabella used to demand. “Here! Now!” she’d say. Other women thought they were granting him a favor. Lettice . . . He didn’t like to think of his cold wife. She lay in bed stiff-limbed, her eyes open, as though challenging him to do his husbandly duties. In four years of marriage he’d not been able to get her with child.

  As he caressed Dougless’s bare arm, in her sleep she tried to move closer to him. He kissed her temple. How could he leave her? he asked himself. How could he go back to his other life, to his other women, and leave her alone and unprotected? She was so soft that it was no wonder she was at the mercy of men like the one he’d pushed out the door.

  Nicholas thought of his mother and his wife. Those two women would be able to take care of themselves no matter what befell them. But not Dougless. He feared that a week after he left, she’d be back with that odious man whom she believed she loved.

  He stroked her hair. How could he leave her alone with no one to protect her? He did not understand the modern world. It was her father’s duty to choose a husband for her, yet the man left his daughter to her own devices. Smiling, Nicholas thought of how Dougless would fare with a man of his time who a father might choose for her. All her childish talk of love would mean nothing against the joining of estates.

  But as Nicholas looked down at Dougless, he knew he was beginning to understand what she meant. Love. Dougless had said that perhaps he’d been sent to the modern world not for honor but for love. At the time, Nicholas had scoffed at the idea. This cataclysmic thing had happened for love and not for honor? Not possible! But they’d found the name of the traitor and Nicholas had not left her world.

  He remembered Dougless saying that everything in the past had turned out all right. All right to her, perhaps. He was remembered as a fool, but then, perhaps he had been a fool. There had been many other women besides Arabella, all of whom he needed when he had a wife like Lettice. It was true that perhaps cuckolding Robert Sydney had been foolish enough to cause his own death, but if he could return, he would right the wrongs.

  If he returned . . .

  What then? He’d still be married to Lettice, and there would be women like Arabella to tempt him. Even if he could free himself from the accusation of treason, would his life change?

  He turned on his back, holding Dougless tightly to him. What if he remained in this century? What if he had misjudged God’s purpose? What if he had been sent forward in time, not to return and change what had happened then, but to do something in this time?

  He remembered the books he and