Dougless stepped back from him, as a person might step back from a fire that was too hot. She put her hand to her throat, and for a long moment they just looked at each other.
The door flew open and Arabella burst into the room. She was wearing what was obviously a designer-made English outdoor outfit. “Nicholas, where have you been?” She looked from Nicholas to Dougless and back again, and she didn’t seem to like what she saw.
Dougless turned away, for she could no longer bear to look in Nicholas’s eyes.
“Nicholas,” Arabella demanded. “We are waiting. The guns are loaded.”
“Guns?” Dougless asked, turning around, trying to compose herself.
Arabella looked Dougless up and down, and obviously found her wanting. Tall women often seemed to feel like that about small women, Dougless thought, and was awfully glad men didn’t feel the same way.
“We hunt duck,” Nicholas said, but he wasn’t looking at Dougless. “Dickie has promised to show me what a shotgun is.”
“Great,” Dougless said, “go shoot pretty little ducks. I’ll manage.” Hurrying past Arabella, she ran out the door. Later, from an upstairs window, she looked down on the courtyard as Nicholas got into a Land Rover and Arabella drove him away.
Turning away, Dougless realized that she had nothing to do. She didn’t feel free to explore Arabella’s house, and she didn’t want to walk in Arabella’s gardens. She asked a passing servant where Lee was, but was told that he was locked in his room with the letters and had left instructions that he was not to be disturbed.
“But he left a book for you in the library,” the servant said.
Dougless went back to the library and there on the desk was a small volume with a note attached. “Thought you might enjoy this. Lee,” the note read. She picked up the book.
At first sight she knew what it was: it was the diary of John Wilfred, the ugly little clerk who wrote of Nicholas and Arabella-on-the table. The forward said the book had been found hidden in a cubbyhole behind a wall when one of Nicholas’s houses had been torn down in the nineteen fifties.
Dougless took the book and settled down on a big sofa to read it. Within twenty pages she knew it was the diary of a lovesick young man—and he loved Nicholas’s wife, Lettice. According to John Wilfred, his mistress could do no wrong and his master no right. Pages that listed Nicholas’s shortcomings were followed by pages listing Lettice’s glories. According to this drooling clerk, Lettice was beautiful beyond pearls, wise, virtuous, kind, talented . . . On and on he went, until Dougless wanted to throw up.
The clerk had nothing good to say about Nicholas. According to the book, Nicholas spent his time fornicating, blaspheming, and making the lives of everyone around him hell. Other than the snide, spiteful story about Arabella and the table, there were no specific stories about what Nicholas had done to deserve the animosity of all (if Wilfred was to be believed) his household.
When Dougless finished the book, she slammed it shut. Because of the false accusation of treason against Nicholas, his estates had been destroyed, and with them the true story of his life. Lost to the future was the true story of how he’d managed the estates owned by his brother and how he’d designed a beautiful mansion. All tha
t was left of him were the spiteful yearnings of a whining man. Yet people today believed this.
She stood up, her anger making her fists clench. Nicholas was right: he had to return to his own time to right the wrong done him. She’d tell him about the book, and when he returned to the sixteenth century, he could kick ol’ John Wilfred out of his house. Or, Dougless thought, smiling, he could send the ugly little clerk off with the perfect Lettice.
Taking the book, Dougless left the library and asked a servant where Lord Nicholas’s room was. She thought she’d leave the book for him to see. He was beginning to be able to read modern print now, and she was sure he’d have enough interest to read this book.
His room was next to one that a maid said was Lady Arabella’s. It would be, Dougless thought angrily.
Once in his room, her anger left her. It was done in shades of blue, with a four-poster bed draped with rich blue silk. In the bathroom were Nicholas’s toiletries, all the things she’d chosen for him. Putting out her hand, she touched the shaving cream, the toothpaste, and his razor.
Quite suddenly, it hit her how much she missed him. Since he’d appeared they’d been together almost constantly. They’d shared a bedroom and a bathroom; they’d shared meals and jokes. Turning, she looked at the tub, saw that there was no showerhead above it, and wondered how he was dealing with the lack of a shower. Were there other things in his room that he didn’t understand yet had no one to ask about?
As she walked back into the bedroom, she smiled as she remembered the way he would come out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel, his hair clean and wet. Before they’d come to Goshawk Hall, they’d been intimate in such a pleasant way. She’d shared meals with him, kissed him on the forehead goodnight, and even washed out his underwear in the basin. They’d laughed together, talked together, shared together.
There was a Time magazine on the bedside table, and on impulse she pulled open the table drawer. Inside was a little pencil sharpener and three pencils, two of which were now only an inch long, and a stapler and two pieces of paper with about fifty staples in them. There was a toy friction car on top of a colored brochure for Aston Martin cars, and beneath that was the current issue of Playboy magazine. Smiling, she closed the drawer.
She walked toward the window and looked out across the rolling lawns to the trees beyond. It was odd how she had lived with Robert for over a year and had believed herself to be madly in love with him, but when she thought of her life with him, she wondered if she’d ever been as intimate with Robert as she had with Nicholas. She’d spent a lot of her time making an effort to please Robert. But Nicholas was so easy to be with. He never complained when she squeezed the toothpaste tube in the middle. He never whined about how she hadn’t made everything absolutely perfect.
In fact, Nicholas seemed to like her just as she was. In fact, he seemed to accept what was, whether in people or things, and he found joy in them. Dougless thought of all the dates she’d been on with modern men and how they’d complained about everything: the wine wasn’t right, the service was slow, the movie had no deeper meaning. But Nicholas, faced with insurmountable problems, found joy in things like a can opener.
She wondered how Robert would react if he’d suddenly found himself in the sixteenth century. No doubt he’d start demanding this and demanding that, and whining when it wasn’t given to him. She wondered if Elizabethan men were like the cowboys of old and hanged men who were particularly bothersome.
She leaned her head against the cool glass. When would Nicholas leave this century? When he found out who had betrayed him? If Lee mentioned the name at dinner, would Nicholas instantly disappear in a puff of smoke?
It’s almost over, she thought, and suddenly felt her heart yearning for him. How would she deal with never seeing him again? She could barely stand not seeing him for one whole day, so how was she to live the rest of her life without him?
Please come back, she thought. We have so little time left. Tomorrow you might be gone, and I don’t want to miss this time with you. Don’t spend this little bit of time we have left with Arabella.
Closing her eyes, she tightened her whole body as she wished for him to return.