“Nay,” he said. “I would the two of us stayed here.”
He had that look in his eye, that soft, sexy, hooded look that promised he would make Dougless glad she stayed.
“No,” she said, even as she bent down to kiss him.
“A woman’s ?
?no’ pleases me much,” Nicholas said softly, his uninjured arm moving up to her hair.
Their lips didn’t meet.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Dougless said sternly. “Up! I mean it, Nicholas, get up. You aren’t going to sweet-talk me into doing whatever you want while your arm turns to gangrene. We’re going back to the house and clean up the wound; then we’ll get Honoria to sew it back together.”
“Honoria?”
“She can sew better than anyone else.”
He frowned. “The arm does pain me some.” Slowly, reluctantly, he lifted his head from her lap, but, as he moved past her lips, he planted a quick, sweet kiss on them.
They rode slowly back to the Stafford house, and as they approached, Dougless tried to straighten her spine and her clothing. But her dress, torn and bloody, was beyond repair. In the wild ride, she’d lost her little pearl-studded cap. As they drew nearer to the house, Dougless remembered running past Lady Margaret and not speaking, and, too, practically before the lady’s face, she’d kicked the gate open. And now here she was, looking like something off the streets, riding astride, her skirts up to her calves.
“I don’t think I can face your mother,” Dougless said to Nicholas.
He gave her a puzzled look, but turned away when he heard a shout. One of the guards had ridden ahead, so the news of Kit’s near-death had reached the household. Lady Margaret and all her ladies were waiting to greet them. At the sight, Dougless swallowed in fear. Would she again be accused of witchcraft?
As soon as Kit dismounted, Lady Margaret clasped her eldest son to her; then she turned to Dougless.
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” Dougless said, “for my appearance. I—”
Taking Dougless’s face in her hands, Lady Margaret kissed her on both cheeks. “You are beautiful to me,” she said, her voice full of her gratitude.
Dougless felt her face grow pink with embarrassment, but also with pleasure.
Turning to Nicholas, Lady Margaret glanced at his bloody arm, then yelled, “Leech!”
At that, Dougless put herself between mother and son. “Please, my lady, may I see to his arm? Please,” she whispered. “Honoria will help me.”
Lady Margaret seemed to be torn. “Do you have a tablet for wounds?”
“No, just soap and water and disinfectant. Please, let me care for him.”
After a look over Dougless’s shoulder to Nicholas, Lady Margaret nodded.
Once upstairs in Nicholas’s bedchamber, Dougless gave Honoria a list of things she’d need. “The strongest, harshest soap you have, something with lye in it; then I want a kettle for boiling water, and I’ll need needles—silver needles—white silk thread, beeswax, my tote bag, and the cleanest, whitest linen in this house.” Three maids scurried to do her bidding.
When she was alone with Nicholas, she had him soak his bandaged arm in a long copper pan of boiled water she had taken from the kettle over the fireplace. He was bare from the waist up, and as efficient as Dougless tried to be, she could feel his hot eyes on her.
“Tell me of what we once were each to the other.”
Dougless put more water on to boil. “You came to me in my time.” Now that he was ready to listen, she found herself reluctant to talk. The Nicholas who accused her of witchcraft had no power over her, but this Nicholas, who looked at her with sparkling eyes, made her toes curl.
When she went back to him, she saw that the dried blood had softened away from the bandages. Propping his arm on the pan, she took small sewing scissors and began to snip away the encrusted bandage.
“Were we lovers?” he asked softly.
Dougless’s breath drew in sharply. “I cannot do this if you don’t hold still.”
“I did not move, you did,” he said, then watched her for a while. “Were we together long? Did we love much?”