“Alone?”
Nicholas walked to the table and picked up a letter. “My mother’s hand,” he said.
At the tone in his voice, Dougless forgot her jealousy. “I can’t read them.”
“Oh?” he said, lifting one eyebrow. “I might teach you to read. In the evenings. I believe you could learn.”
Dougless laughed. “Okay, you’ve made your point. Now sit down and read.”
“And him?” Nicholas pointed with his sword at the sleeping Lee.
“He’s out of it for the night.”
Nicholas put his sword across the table and began to read the letter. Since Dougless could be of no help, she sat quietly and watched him. If he was so in love with his wife, why was he jealous when another man looked at her, Dougless? And why was he fooling around with Arabella?
“Nicholas?” she said softly. “Have you ever considered what would happen if you didn’t return to your time?”
“No,” he answered, scanning a letter. “I must return.”
“But what if you don’t? What if you stay here forever?”
“I have been sent here to find answers. A wrong has been done my family as well as me. I have been sent here to right that wrong.”
Dougless was playing with the hilt of his sword, rolling it so the jewels reflected in the table lamp. “But what if you were sent here for another reason? A reason that had nothing to do with your being accused of treason?”
“And what would be that reason?”
“I don’t know,” she said, but she thought, love.
He looked at her. “For this love you speak of?” he asked, almost reading her mind. “Perhaps God thinks as a woman and cares more for love than for honor.” He was making fun of her.
“For your information, there are many people who believe God is a woman.”
Nicholas gave her a look that let her know how absurd he thought that idea was.
“No, really,” Dougless said. “What if you don’t go back? What if you find out what you need to know, but you still stay here? Like say for a year or more?”
“I will not,” Nicholas said, but he looked up at Dougless. Four hundred years had not changed Arabella, he thought. She was the same. She still wanted one man after another in her bed, still had a heart of stone. But this girl who made him laugh, who helped him, who looked at him with big eyes that showed everything she felt, this woman could almost make him want to stay. “I must return,” he said sternly, then looked back at the letters.
“I know that what happened to your family is fiercely important, but then it did happen a long time ago, and, all in all, everything seems to have worked out all right. Your mother married a rich man and lived out her days in luxury. It wasn’t as though she were tossed out in the snow. And I know your family lost the Stafford estates, but, really, who was left to inherit them? You said you had no children, and your brother died childless, so who did you deprive? The estates went to Queen Elizabeth and she built England into a great country, so maybe your money helped your country. Maybe—”
“Cease!” Nicholas said angrily. “You do not understand honor. My m
emory is ridiculed. Arabella says she has read about me, and your world remembers only what a clerk recorded. I know that man. He was ugly and no woman would have him.”
“So he wrote about you. Nicholas, I’m sorry, but it really is done. It’s over. Maybe history can’t be changed. I was just wondering what you’d do if you had to stay, if you weren’t called back.”
Nicholas didn’t want to think about that. Would he tell Dougless that he’d marry her and run with her to bed? He didn’t want to tell her that Arabella, once so very, very appealing, was now a bore to him.
“Montgomery, do you fall in love with me again?” he asked, smiling at her. “Come, we will take these letters to my bedchamber. I will let you make love to me.”
“Drop dead,” Dougless said, rising. “Stay here and read. I don’t care what happens to you, whether you stay in the twentieth century or go back to the sixteenth century, or to the eighth, for all I care.” She left the room, shutting the door so hard Lee stirred on the bed.
Falling in love with him, indeed, she thought as she made her way back to her dreadful little room. She might as well fall in love with a ghost. He had about as much substance as a ghost. And, besides, if he did stay in the twentieth century, he’d be a great nuisance. Always, she’d have to explain things to him. Imagine trying to teach him to drive a car! Horrendous thought. And if he did stay, what would he do? What could he do? All he seemed capable of was riding mean horses, handling a sword, and . . .
And making love to women, she thought. He seemed to be awfully good at that.
As she made her way downstairs to her dreary little room, she told herself she’d be quite glad to get rid of him. His poor wife. She had a great deal to put up with. Arabella was the only one of his women Dougless knew about. There were probably hundreds of women the poor ugly little clerk had known nothing about, so the twentieth century knew nothing about all those women.