He pulled his face away from her, looking puzzled. She touched the hair at his temples, ran her fingertips down his cheeks.
“I thought I had lost you,” she whispered. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“You may see all of me that you wish,” he said, smiling; then he put his hand under her knees and carried her to his bed. He stretched out beside her and Dougless closed her eyes as his hand went under her robe, then untied the neck of her gown. He kissed her ear, nibbling at her lobe, then ran his tongue down the sensitive cord of her neck while his hand slipped inside her gown to touch her breast.
As his thumb rubbed the peak of her breast, as his breath was on her ear, he whispered, “Who has sent you to me?”
“Mmm,” Dougless murmured. “God, I suppose.”
“What is the name of the god you worship?”
Dougless could barely hear him as he slipped one leg over hers. “God. Jehovah. Allah. Whoever.”
“What man worships this god?”
Dougless was beginning to hear him. She opened her eyes. “Man? God? What are you talking about?”
Nicholas squeezed her breast. “What man has sent you to my house?”
She was beginning to understand his motive in making love to her. She pushed away from him, and sitting up, she tied her gown and robe. “I see,” she said, trying to control her anger. “This is how you always get what you want from women, isn’t it? At Thornwyck all you had to do was kiss my arm and I’d agree to do whatever you wanted. So now you’ve decided that I’m up to no good, so you’re going to seduce a confession out of me.”
She got off the bed and stood glaring at him. But Nicholas lounged on the bed, not at all upset by the revelation of his devious actions. “Let me tell you something, Nicholas Stafford, you’re not the man I thought you were. The Nicholas I knew was a man who cared about honor and justice. All you care about is the number of women you can bed.”
She stood up straighter. “All right, I’m going to tell you who sent me and why I’m here.” She took a deep breath. “I’m from the future, the twentieth century actually, and you came to me there. We spent several lovely days together.”
His mouth dropped open and he started to speak, but Dougless put up her hand. “Hear me out. When you came to me the time here was September of 1564, four years from now and you were sitting in a prison awaiting your execution for treason.”
Nicholas’s eyes began to twinkle in amusement as he rolled off the bed and picked up his tankard. “I see why my mother has taken you to amuse her. Tell me more. What treason had I committed?”
Dougless clenched her fists at her side. It was difficult to be caring toward a man who was smirking in derision. “You hadn’t. You were innocent.”
“Ah, yes,” he said patronizingly. “I would be.”
“You were gathering an army to protect your lands in Wales, but in your haste, you didn’t petition the queen for permission to raise the army. Someone told her you were planning to use the army to take her throne.”
Nicholas sat down and looked at her, his eyes filled with amazement. “Pray tell me, who lied to the queen about these lands I do not own and this army I do not possess?”
She was so angry at his attitude that she wanted to leave the room. Why bother to try to save him? Let the history books record that he was a wastrel. He was a wastrel. “They were your lands and your army because Kit was dead, and Robert Sydney and your beloved Lettice had lied to the queen.”
Nicholas’s face changed to cold rage. He advanced on her. “Do you enter this household to threaten my brother’s life? Do you think to cast your spells on me so that I feel all that you do in the hopes that I will take you to wife and make you a countess? Do you stop at nothing? You besmirch the name of my betrothed as well as my cater-cousin to gain your desires?”
She backed away from him, afraid of him now. “I can’t marry you because my life doesn’t belong in this century. I certainly can’t go to bed with you because if I did I’d probably disappear, and if I disappeared now, I’m sure nothing would be changed. And besides that, I don’t want to marry you. Okay, so I came back to give you a message and that’s it. So now maybe I’ll get lucky and disappear. I hope I do. Truthfully, I hope I never have to see you again.”
She grabbed the door handle, but he slammed the door shut and wouldn’t let her leave.
“I will watch you. If my brother has one pain, I will know it is caused by you and you will pay.”
“I left my voodoo doll on the plane. Now, will you let me out or do I scream?”
“Heed me, woman.”
&
nbsp; “I understand you perfectly, but since I’m not a witch, I don’t have any fears, do I? Now open the door and let me out of here.”
He stepped back, and Dougless, with her head high, left the room. She was all the way down the corridor to the room she shared with Honoria before she started crying. She thought she’d lost Nicholas when he’d returned to the sixteenth century, but that hadn’t been as complete as this. Now he wasn’t even the same man she’d known and loved such a short time ago.
She didn’t return to Honoria’s bedroom, but went to the Presence Chamber to curl up on a window seat. The tiny diamond-shaped panes of glass were too thick and rippled to see out of, but Dougless didn’t care about seeing out. How many times was she going to lose the man she loved? Was the Nicholas who came to her in the twentieth century the man who’d just kissed her? Other than looks, the two seemed to have nothing in common.