“Go,” he said again. “Stand away from me.”
Obediently, too limp to disobey, Dougless walked a few feet away, then stood in silence looking at him. Never to see him again, she thought. Never to hold him, never to hear him laugh, never—
“The name!” Nicholas demanded, his eyes never leaving Dougless’s. When he left this world, he wanted his last sight to be of her.
Lee was bewildered by all that was going on. “The man was named—”
Everything happened at once. Dougless, unable to bear the thought of Nicholas’s leaving, made a flying leap at him. If he was going, she was going too.
“Robert Sydney,” Lee said as Nicholas and Dougless went sprawling on the floor at his feet. He looked down at them. “Both of you are crazy,” he said, then stepped over them as he left the room.
Dougless kept her head buried against the silver-coated steel of Nicholas’s armor, her eyes tightly shut.
When Nicholas recovered himself, he looked down at her, amused. “We have arrived,” he said.
“Where? Are there cars outside or donkey carts?”
Chuckling, he lifted her face in his hands. “We remain in your time. I said you were to stand to one side.”
“Well, I . . . ah, I . . .” She rolled off him to sit up. “I just thought it might be a wonderful experience to see Elizabethan England firsthand. I could write a book, and you know, answer all the questions that people really want to know, like was Elizabeth bald or not? How did you men really treat the women? What did—”
Nicholas sat up and kissed her mouth most sweetly. “You cannot return with me.” He put his hand to his back. “You are hard on my armor. There are scratches from when you last struck me down.”
“You were about to step in front of a bus.”
Standing, he held out his hands to lift her, but when Dougless stood up, she wouldn’t release his hands. “You’re still here.” She breathed at last. “You know the traitor’s name and yet you’re still here. Robert Sydney. Sydney? But wasn’t it Arabella Sydney that you . . . That you and she . . .”
Nicholas put his arm about her shoulders and walked to the window. “He was Arabella’s husband,” he said softly. “But it is not easy to believe he would lie to the queen about me. I always thought of him as a good man.”
“Damn you and that table!” Dougless said fiercely. “If you hadn’t been so . . . so overzealous and had Arabella on the table, her husband might not have hated you. And what about your wife? She must have been pretty upset too.”
“I was unmarried on that occasion when I took Arabella.”
“On that occasion,” Dougless muttered. “Maybe Sydney got mad for all the other times too.” She turned to look at him. “If I went back with you, maybe I could keep you out of trouble.”
He pushed her head down on his armored chest. “You cannot return with me.”
“Maybe you won’t return. Maybe you’re going to stay here forever.”
“We must go to Ashburton, where my tomb lies. Now that I know what I came to find, I needs must go there and pray.”
She wanted to say more, wanted to say something that would make him give up the idea of returning, but she knew there were no words that could change his mind. His family, his name, and his honor were very important to him. “We’ll leave today,” Dougless said softly. “I can’t see that you need to see any more of Arabella.”
“Have you no more calculators or televisions to distract me?” he asked, smiling.
“I was saving the stereo for tonight.”
He turned her around to face him, his hands on her shoulders. “I will pray alone,” he said. “If I return, I go alone. You understand me?”
She nodded. Borrowed time, she thought. We are now on borrowed time.
SIXTEEN
Dougless sat on the twin bed in the bed-and-breakfast and looked across at Nicholas in the other bed. The early morning light made his face above the light cover dim and indistinct, but it was enough for her to see him. They’d known the name of the traitor for three days now, and every minute of those three days Dougless was sure he was going to disappear. Every morning he went to the church and spent two hours on his knees praying before his tomb. He spent another two hours in the afternoon praying.
And each time he went inside the church, Dougless stayed outside and held her breath. She was sure that each time he stepped inside it would be the last time she ever saw him again. At ten A.M. and four P.M. she would tiptoe into the church, and when she saw that he was still there, sharp tears of relief and joy came to her eyes. She would run to him, and her heart went out to him when she saw the sweat on his face and body. He prayed so hard each day that afterward he was limp with exhaustion. Dougless would help him stand, as his knees would be painful and stiff from two hours of kneeling on the cold stone floor. The vicar, feeling pity for Nicholas, had put out a cushion for him, but Nicholas refused to use it, saying he needed the pain of his body to make him remember what must be done.
Dougless didn’t ask why he needed a reminder of his duty because she didn’t want to jinx the growing seed of hope that she was beginning to cherish. Every day when she went to him in the church and she saw that he was still with her, there seemed to be a light in his eyes. Maybe he wouldn’t return, Dougless was beginning to think. She knew she, too, should pray for his return. She knew that honor and a family name and the future of many people were more important than her selfish wants, but every time she saw him still kneeling in the church, sunlight on his big body, she whispered, “Thank You, God.”