A Knight in Shining Armour (12 page)

He nearly dropped the woman he was holding when the landlady turned a knob above the tub and out poured water. A fountain
inside
the house! Nicholas thought, his eyes wide in disbelief.

“It’ll be hot in a minute,” the landlady said. “You should get her undressed and put her in the tub while I get fresh towels. And you look like you could use a soak too,” she said as she left the room.

Nicholas had understood enough of what the landlady said to consider the idea. He looked down at Dougless with interest.

“Don’t even think about it,” Dougless warned. “You’re to leave this room while I take a bath.”

Smiling, he set her down and looked about. “What manner of room is this?”

“It’s the bathroom.”

“I see the bathing pot, but what is this object? And this?”

Dougless stood there
in her cold, wet clothes, and looked at him. She’d thought he’d made a major slip up in his disguise when he’d pretended to know so little about Robert Dudley, but as he’d said more, Dougless knew he’d been right. She’d have to call her father for the dates, but she knew without asking that in 1564, the year this man said he’d last been in, Robert Dudley had not yet been made the earl of Leicester.

So now this man was standing there in wet clothes that clung to his beautiful body, and he was asking her what a toilet and sink were. She had to restrain herself from asking what he’d been using if he didn’t know what a toilet was. But of course he knew, she told herself. However, he must have been studying very, very hard to have forgotten something so basic. She demonstrated the basin; then, with a face red with embarrassment, she explained the toilet. She demonstrated seat up and seat down. “And you never,
never
leave the seat up,” she said, feeling as though she were doing her part for womankind in teaching one man this simple thing.

They were interrupted when the landlady returned with more towels and a flowered cotton robe. “I noticed you didn’t have much luggage,” she said, her tone hinting that she wanted to know why. “Usually, Americans show up with so much luggage.”

“The airlines lost it all,” Dougless said quickly, and wondered if she thought Nicholas was also American. Was his accent odd to an English person?

“I thought it was something like that,” the landlady said. “I’ll get your tea and leave it on the table in the hall, if that’s all right with you. So, good night.”

“Yes, thank you,” Dougless said as the door closed, leaving her alone with Nicholas, whom she dismissed quickly. “You can go now. I won’t be long.” Smiling as though he was enjoying Dougless’s nervousness, he left the bathroom. When she was alone, Dougless slipped into the hot water, lay back, and closed her eyes. The water stung her scraped knees and elbows, but already the hot water was beginning to warm her.

How had he found her? she wondered. After she’d left him at the B and B, she’d wandered all over the village trying to find a place to stay for thirty pounds, but there was nothing. All the less expensive places were full. She’d spent six pounds on a meal in a pub, then started walking. She thought perhaps she could make it to another village before night and find shelter there. But the rain had started, it’d grown dark, and all Dougless could find was a leaky shed set in the middle of a field. At first she’d curled up on some dirty straw and gone to sleep, but she awoke sometime during the night to find herself crying—but then, crying seemed to be her normal state over the last twenty-four hours.

While she’d been crying, he had appeared—and, the truth was, she hadn’t been surprised to see him. In fact, it had seemed perfectly natural that he’d known where to find her and that he’d come out into the rain for her. It had also seemed natural when he’d picked her up in his strong arms.

When the water grew cold, Dougless got out of the tub, dried herself-off, then put on the flowered robe. A glance in the mirror showed her to have on no makeup and her hair . . . The less thought about that the better. There was nothing she could do about her appearance as she didn’t have so much as a comb.

Shyly, she knocked on the half-open bedroom door. Nicholas, wearing only his still-wet trousers, flung it open. “The bathroom is yours,” she said, trying to smile and trying to act as though the situation was normal.

But now there was no softness in his face. “Get into that bed and stay there,” he ordered. “I do not intend to go bat-fowling again.”

She only nodded at him as he passed her on the way to the bathroom. On the table was a tray of food and a pot of tea. “Bet he didn’t leave me any,” she muttered at the same time she was thinking that she didn’t deserve any more kindness from him. She
had
been a pest to him. But he’d left enough in the pot for her to have a cup of tea and he’d left a chicken sandwich for her. Gratefully, Dougless ate and drank it all; then, wearing the thin robe, she slipped under the comforter of the second bed. When he returned, they would talk, she thought. She would ask him how he found out where she was. How had he found her in the dark in the pouring rain?

She meant to talk to him when he returned, but she closed her eyes for a moment, and the next thing she knew it was morning. Warm sunlight was hitting her full in the face, and slowly, groggily, she opened her eyes.

There was a man standing before the window, his back to her, and he was wearing only a small white towel fastened about his hips. As though in a dream, Dougless noticed that he had a muscular back that tapered down to a small slim waist, and his legs were heavy with muscle.

Slowly, Dougless came awake enough to remember who this man was. She remembered everything, their first meeting in the church when he’d drawn a sword on her, to last night when he’d found her and carried her through the rain.

When she sat up, he turned to look at her.

“You are awake,” he said flatly. “Come, get up, as there is much we must do.”

As she got out of bed, she saw that he, too, meant to get dressed . . . in front of her. Grabbing her own wrinkled clothing, she went to the bathroom to dress. When she had her clothes on, she looked into the mirror and nearly started crying again. She looked awful! Her eyes were still red, and her hair was a tangled, frizzy mess—and she knew she had no way to repair the damage. As she looked into the mirror, she thought that if all women had to confront the world with the face God gave them, there would be a great increase in female suicides.

Putting her shoulders back, she left the bathroom, where she almost ran into Nicholas, as he was waiting for her in the hall.

“First we eat; then, madam, we talk,” he said as though his words were a dare.

Dougless merely nodded as she went ahead of him down the stairs to the little dining room.

Dougless smiled when they entered the room, and she remembered something she’d read in a guidebook. It had stated that there are two meals that should be eaten in England: breakfast and tea. When she and Nicholas were seated at a small table, the landlady began bringing in platters full of food. There were fluffy scrambled eggs, three types of bread, bacon that was like the best American ham, grilled tomatoes, fried potatoes, golden kippers, cream, butter, and marmalade. And in the middle of the table was a large, pretty porcelain pot of brewed tea that the landlady kept filled throughout the meal.

Ravenous, Dougless ate until she could hold no more, but she couldn’t come close to competing with Nicholas. He ate nearly all the food that was set on the table. When Dougless finished eating, she caught the landlady watching Nicholas curiously. He ate everything with his spoon or his fingers. He used his knife to cut the bacon while holding it in place with his fingers, but he never once touched his fork.

When he had finally finished eating, he thanked the landlady, then took Dougless’s arm in his and ushered her outside.

“Where are we going?” she asked as she ran her tongue over her teeth. She hadn’t brushed them in twenty-four hours, and they felt fuzzy. Also, her scalp itched.

“To the church,” he said. “There we will conceive of a plan.”

They walked quickly to the church, with Nicholas stopping only once to gawk at a small pickup truck. Dougless started to tell him about eighteen-wheelers and cattle trucks, but thought better of participating in his game.

The old church was open and empty, and Nicholas led her to sit on a pew that was at a right angle to the tomb. In silence, she watched him as he looked at the marble sculpture for a while, then ran his hands over the date and name.

At last he turned away, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace. “As I see it, Mistress Montgomery,” he said, “we need each the other. It is my belief that God has put us together for a reason.”

“I thought I did it with a spell,” she said, meaning it as a joke, but, actually, she was glad that he at last seemed to realize that she was not a witch.

“It is true that I believed that at first, but I have not slept since you called me into the rain and I have now had time to consider more thoroughly.”

“I
called
you?” she said in disbelief. “I never even thought about you, much less called you. And I can assure you that there weren’t any telephones in that field, and I certainly couldn’t shout loud enough for you to hear me.”

“Nonetheless, you did call me. You woke me with your need.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, starting to get angry. “We’re going back to your belief that I somehow, through some sort of hocus-pocus, brought you here from your grave. I can’t take this anymore. I’m leaving,” she said as she started to stand up.

But before she could move, he was in front of her, one hand on the high arm of the pew, the other on the back, his big body pinning her to her seat. “It matters not to me whether you believe or not,” he said, his face near hers, his eyebrows drawn together. “Yesterday morn when I woke it was the year of our Lord 1564, and this morn it was . . .”

“Nineteen eighty-eight,” she whispered up at him.

“Aye,” he said, “over four hundred years later. And you, witch, are the key to my being here and to my returning.”

“Believe me, I’d send you back if I could,” she said, her mouth a hard line. “I have enough problems of my own without having to take care of—”

He leaned so close to her face that his nose nearly touched hers, and she could feel the heat of his anger. “You could not dare to say that you must care for me. It is I who must pull you from fields in the dead of night.”

“It was just the one time only,” Dougless said weakly, then sat back against the pew. “Okay,” she said with a sigh, “how did you hear my . . . need, as you call it?”

He dropped his arms from the pew, then went back to look down at the tomb. “There is a bond between us,” he said quietly. “Mayhap it is an unholy bond, but it is there. I was awakened during the night with your calling of me. I did not hear words, but nonetheless, I heard you calling me. The . . . feel of the call woke me, so I followed it to find you.”

Dougless was silent for a moment. She knew that what he said had to be true because there was no other explanation for how he’d found her. “Are you saying that you think there’s some kind of mental telepathy between us?”

Turning back to her, he gave her a puzzled look.

“Mental telepathy is thought transference. People can read each other’s thoughts.”

“Perhaps,” he said, looking back at the tomb. “I am not sure it is thoughts as much as it is . . .” He trailed off for a moment. “Need. I seem to hear your need of me.”

“I don’t need anyone,” Dougless said stubbornly.

Turning back, he glared at her. “I do not understand why you are not still in your father’s house. I have yet to see a woman who needs care more than you.”

Again, Dougless started to stand up, but a look from Nicholas made her sit back down. “All right, you heard me ‘call,’ as you say. So what do you think that means?”

Again, Nicholas put his hands behind his back and began to pace. “I have come to this time and this fast, strange place for a reason, and I believe you are to help me find the answer as to why I am here.”

“I can’t,” Dougless said quickly. “I have to find Robert and get my passport so I can go home. The truth is that I’ve had all the vacation I can stand. Another twenty-four hours like the last ones, and somebody better start carving
my
tombstone.”

“My life and death are a jest to you, but they are not so to me,” Nicholas said quietly.

Dougless lifted her hands in frustration. “You want me to feel sorry for you because you’re dead? But you aren’t dead. You’re here; you’re alive.”