A Knight in Shining Armor Read online

  “One night,” she whispered, moving her face close to his.

  Nicholas reacted instantly. His arms were around her, his lips on hers; he was drinking of her, taking of her, as he’d wanted to do for so long. The fabric of her nightgown tore away as his hands and his lips were on her breasts, his face buried in them.

  “This one night for your promise,” Dougless was saying, her head back. She was trying to remember what she had to do before Nicholas’s lips and hands drove all thoughts from her mind. “Swear to me,” she said.

  “All that I have is yours. Do you not know that?” he said, his lips moving lower on her body, down her stomach. His hands were on her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh.

  “Then do not go tomorrow,” she said. “This one night for tomorrow.”

  Nicholas’s strong hands were lifting her hips up, and the remains of the gown were sliding farther down. “You may have all my tomorrows.”

  “Nicholas, please.” Dougless was trying to remember what she meant to say, but Nicholas’s touch was making her unable to think. “Please, my love. I do not believe I will be here after tonight, so you must swear to me.”

  After a moment Nicholas raised his head and looked up at her, up past her lovely body to her face. His mind was reeling with the sensations of touching this woman who had come to mean so much to him, but he was beginning to hear her. “What would you have me swear to you?” he asked in a low voice.

  Dougless lifted her head. “I will spend tonight with you if you’ll swear not to marry Lettice after I’m gone,” she said evenly.

  For a long moment Nicholas looked at her, his bare body poised over her half-nude body, and Dougless held her breath. She had not come to this decision easily, but she knew that, even if it meant losing Nicholas forever, she had to stop this marriage.

  He rolled off of her and the bed in one smooth motion, pulled on a loose robe, then went to stand before the fire, his back to her. When he spoke, his voice was low and husky. “Do you think so little of me to believe I would risk the loss of you for one night’s pleasure? Do you think so little of yourself to sell yourself to me for a promise?”

  His words were making Dougless feel very small. She pulled her torn gown up over her shoulders. “I couldn’t think of any other way,” she said as an excuse. “I’d do anything to stop your marriage.”

  He turned to look at her, his eyes dark with emotion. “You have told me of your country and of your ways. Do you think yours is the only way? This marriage means naught to me, yet it means all to you.”

  “I can’t have you risk your life for—”

  His eyes blazed. “You risk our life for her!” he said angrily. “You tell me again and again that you cannot come to my bed. Yet you are here now, dressed as a . . . as a . . .”

  Dougless pulled the sheet over her bare shoulders, feeling like a strumpet. “I only meant to try to get you to promise you wouldn’t marry her,” she said, feeling near to tears.

  He went to the bed, looming over her. “What love is this you bear for me? You come creeping to my bed, appealing to me like a whore. Only you do not want gold, nay, you want me to dishonor my family, to put aside what means most to me.”

  Dougless put her hands over her face. “Don’t, please. I can’t bear this. I never meant—”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her hands away. “Do you have any idea how much I dread the morrow? That I dread the woman who I must make my wife? Were I free, were I in your time, I could freely choose where I love. But here and now, I cannot. Were I to marry you, I could not feed you. Kit would no longer give me a place to live, food to eat, clothes to—”

  “Kit’s not like that. Surely there would be a way for us to live. You help Kit with the estates, so he’d not throw you out. He’d—”

  Nicholas’s hands tightened on her wrists. “Can you not hear? Can you not understand? I must make this marriage.”

  “No,” she whispered. “No.”

  “You cannot stop what must be. You can only help me.”

  “How? How can I help you? Can I stop an axman’s blade?”

  “Aye,” he said. “You can. You can stay by me for always.”

  “Always? While you live with another woman? Sleep with her? Make love to her?”

  He released her hands. “So you do this,” he said, looking at her bare shoulders above the sheet. “You would take yourself from me for all eternity rather than see me with another woman?”

  “No, that’s not it. It’s just that Lettice is evil. I’ve told you what she’ll do. Choose another woman.”

  He gave a smile that had no mirth in it. “You would allow me another wife? Allow me to touch another woman when I cannot touch you? You are willing to stand to one side for the rest of our lives?”

  Dougless swallowed. Could she live in the same house with him while he lived with another woman? What would she do, be a maiden aunt to Nicholas’s children? How would she feel when, each night, he went off to bed with another woman? And how long would he continue to love her if he couldn’t touch her? Were either of them strong enough for a platonic love?

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know if I could stand by and see you with another woman. Nicholas, oh Nicholas, I don’t know what to do.”

  He sat on the bed beside her and gathered her into his arms. “I will not risk losing you for a hundred women like Lettice. You are worth all to me. God has sent you to me, and I mean to hold you.”

  She put her head on his chest, parting the robe so her cheek was on his skin. In spite of herself, tears came to her eyes. “I am frightened. Lettice is—”

  “A mere woman. No more, no less. She possesses no great wisdom, no amulets of power. If you are by me, she can do me or my family no harm.”

  “By you?” Her hand went under his robe, touching his skin. “Can I stay by you and not touch you?”

  He moved her roaming fingers from inside his robe. “You are sure you will return if I . . .”

  “Sure,” she answered firmly. “At least I think I’m sure.”

  He held her fingers up and looked at them as a starving man might look at a feast. “It would be much to lose were we to try, would it not?”

  “Yes,” she said, sadly. “Much, much too much.”

  He dropped her hand. “You must go. I am a man, and you tempt me more than I can bear.”

  Dougless knew she should go, but she hesitated. Once again she put her hand on Nicholas’s skin.

  “Go!” he commanded.

  Quickly, she rolled away from him, then ran from the room. She went back to Honoria’s room and slipped into bed, but she didn’t sleep.

  Tomorrow the man she loved, no, more than loved, the man who meant so much that even time could not separate them, was leaving to marry another woman. What was she to do when Nicholas returned with his beautiful wife? (Dougless had heard so much of Lettice’s beauty that she would have hated the woman even if she knew nothing else about her.) Should she curtsy and congratulate her? Something like, “Hope you enjoy him. And I certainly hope he’s as good a lover with you as he was with me.”

  Dougless had a vision of Nicholas and his pretty wife laughing together over some private joke. She saw Nicholas sweeping Lettice into his arms and carrying her off to the room they shared. Would they put their heads together over meals and smile at each other?

  Dougless slammed her fist into the pillow, making Honoria stir. Men were such fools. They never saw past a pretty face. When a man asked about a woman, all he wanted to know was, was she pretty? No man ever asked if a woman had morals, whether she was honest, kind, did she like children or not? Dougless imagined a beautiful Lettice torturing a puppy in front of Nicholas, but Nicholas not noticing because dear, luscious Lettice had looked at him through fluttering lashes.

  “Men!” Dougless muttered, but even as she said it, she didn’t mean it. Nicholas had not allowed himself to be seduced tonight because he was afraid he’d lose Dougless. If that wa