A Knight in Shining Armor Read online

  The woman, looking from Nicholas to Dougless as they glared at each other, hurried out of the arbor.

  Nicholas looked Dougless up and down, and the anger on his face almost made her retreat, but she held her ground.

  “Nicholas, we have to talk. I have to explain to you who I am and why I’m here.”

  When he stepped toward her, this time she did step back. “You have charmed my mother,” he said in a low voice, “but you do not charm me. If you come between me and my actions again, I will take a batlet to you.”

  He shoved past her so hard that Dougless nearly fell against the wall, and she watched with a heavy heart as he strode angrily down the path and out through the door in the wall. How was she supposed to accomplish anything if he wouldn’t listen to her? He wouldn’t even spend ten minutes in her company. What was she supposed to do, lasso him? Right, she thought, tie him up and tell him she was from the future and she had come back through time to save his neck—literally. “And I’m sure he’ll believe me,” she whispered.

  Honoria returned with a wooden lap desk, big feathers that she expertly trimmed into pens, ink, and three sheets of paper. She plucked out the notes of the songs, and asked Dougless to write the music. Her opinion of Dougless’s education was further lowered when she found out that Dougless could neither read nor write music.

  “What is a batlet?” Dougless asked.

  “It is used to beat the dust from the clothes,” Honoria answered, writing the notes down.

  “Does Nicholas . . . ah, fool around with all the women?”

  Honoria stopped playing and looked at Dougless. “You should not lose your heart to Sir Nicholas. A woman should give her heart only to God. People die, but God does not.”

  Dougless sighed. “True, but while we’re alive, people can make living worthwhile or not.” Dougless started to say more, but she glanced up, and standing on the terrace of the house, she saw someone’s head, and it looked like . . .

  “Who is that girl?” Dougless asked, pointing.

  “She is to marry Lord Christopher when she is of age. If she lives. She is a sickly child and not often out.”

  The girl, from this distance, looked just like Gloria, just as fat, just as petulant. Dougless remembered Lee saying that Nicholas’s older brother was to marry a French heiress and that was why he’d refused Lettice’s offer of marriage.

  “So, Nicholas is to marry Lettice, and Christopher is engaged to a child,” Dougless said. “Tell me, if that girl were to die, would Kit consider marrying Lettice?”

  Honoria looked taken aback at Dougless’s casual use of Christian names. “Lord Christopher is heir to an earldom, and he is related to the queen. Lady Lettice is not of his rank.”

  “But Nicholas is.”

  “Sir Nicholas is a younger son. He does not inherit the estates or the title. For him Lady Lettice is a good match. She also is related to the queen, but distantly. Her dowry, though, is not large.”

  “But if Lettice married Nicholas, then, say, Christopher died, Nicholas would be the earl, right?”

  “Aye,” Honoria said, and stopped writing notes. Looking up at the terrace, she saw the fat, spotty, sickly French heiress go back into the house. “Sir Nicholas would become the earl,” she said thoughtfully.

  TWENTY - THREE

  By the time Dougless climbed into bed beside Honoria that night, she was exhausted. No wonder she’d seen so few fat people and the women had such tiny waists. Between the steel corset and the constant activity, fat didn’t have a chance to settle on a person’s body.

  She and Honoria had left the garden to attend a service in the pretty little chapel on the ground floor of the house. They’d listened to a richly dressed minister and they’d spent a great deal of time on their knees. Dougless couldn’t pay attention to what the minister was saying for looking at the stunning clothes of the men and women around her: silk, satin, brocade, fur, jewels.

  It was in the chapel that she had her first glimpse of Christopher. He looked like Nicholas, but not so young or handsome. But there was a quiet strength coming from him that made Dougless stare at him. When he glanced across at her, there was so much interest in his eyes that Dougless looked away, blushing. She didn’t see Nicholas watching the two of them and frowning.

  After chapel was supper, which Dougless took in the Presence Chamber with Lady Margaret, Honoria, and four other women. There was vegetable beef soup, a nasty bitter beer, and fried rabbit. A man, who Honoria said was the butler, had to chip cinders from the crust of a loaf of bread before he served it to them, and thereby explained the holes in the crust of Dougless’s earlier loaf.

  The other women, Dougless learned, were Lady Margaret’s gentlewomen and chamberers. As far as Dougless could tell, everyone in the household had a specific rank, and servants had servants who had servants. And, to her surprise, they also had specific duty hours. Her knowledge of servants was based on what she’d read of Victorian households, where the servants worked from very early to very late, but she learned from questioning Honoria, there were so many servants in the Stafford household that no one worked longer than about six hours at a time.

  At supper, Dougless was introduced, and the ladies eagerly asked about her country of Lanconia and her uncle the king. Dougless, squirming with the lie, muttered replies, then asked the ladies about their clothes. She received some fascinating information on the Spanish style of dress, the French, the English, and the Italian fashions. Dougless became very involved in this, and soon found herself planning a gown in the Italian style that had something called a bum role under the skirt instead of a farthingale.

  After supper, servants cleared the tables, then moved them against the wall, and Lady Margaret asked to hear Dougless’s songs. What followed was an energetic and laugh-filled evening. With no TV and professional performances ever seen, no one was shy about singing or dancing. Dougless knew she was terrible compared to the people she’d heard on the radio and on records, but before the evening was over she found herself singing solos.

  Christopher came to join them, and Honoria taught him “They Call the Wind Maria,” which he played on the lute. Everyone seemed to play an instrument, and before long Lady Margaret and all five of her ladies were playing the melodies on oddly-shaped, strange-sounding instruments. There was a guitar of sorts but shaped like a violin, a three-stringed violin, a tiny piano, an enormous lute, several kinds of flutes, and a couple of horns.

  Dougless found herself drawn to Kit. He was so much like Nicholas, the Nicholas she’d known in the twentieth century—certainly not this sixteenth-century Nicholas who went from one woman to another. She sang “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and Kit quickly picked up the melody. In no time they were all singing the funny song.

  At one point she saw Nicholas standing in the doorway glowering. He refused to enter even when Lady Margaret motioned to him.

  It was only about nine o’clock when Lady Margaret said it was time to retire. Kit kissed Dougless’s hand, and she smiled at him; then she followed Honoria off to bed.

  Honoria’s maid came to help the two women undress. Dougless took several lovely, deep breaths after the steel corset was removed; then, wearing the long linen undergarment she’d worn under her dress all day and a little cap to protect her hair, she climbed into bed beside Honoria. The sheets were linen and scratchy and not too clean, but the mattress was of goose down and as soft as a whisper. She was asleep before she’d pulled the coverlet over her.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when she awoke. She felt as though someone was calling her, but when she lifted her head and listened, she heard no one, so she lay back down. But the feeling that someone wanted her would not go away. Although the room was silent, she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she was needed by someone.

  “Nicholas!” she said, coming bolt upright.

  After a glance at the sleeping back of Honoria, Dougless crept out of bed. She put on a heavy brocade robe that was at the