“Oh, Nicholas,” she said and found to her shame that tears were again coming to her eyes. “It wasn’t like that. You came to me for a reason. You had been found guilty of treason, and you came to my time because Lady Margaret’s papers had been found. You and I researched to find out who had betrayed you.”
Slowly, she began to peel strips of linen off his arm.
“Did we find the truth?”
“No,” she said softly. “We did not. I found out the truth after you went back, after you . . .” She looked up at him. “After you had been executed.”
Nicholas’s face was changing, losing its look of sex. He could no longer continue to not listen to the woman. She had known about the servants in the closet when he and Arabella had been fumbling on the table. And she had known about Kit. His heart hammered in his chest when he thought how close he had come to losing Kit. If the woman had not been there, Kit would have died.
And it would have been Nicholas’s fault, he thought. His own fault and no one else’s, because he’d lied when she’d asked him about the cabinet at Bellwood. She had said that Kit showed Nicholas the cabinet a week before his death, but Nicholas had not listened. He had heard only that she spoke of his handsome brother. His jealousy had nearly cost his brother’s life.
Nicholas leaned back against the pillows. “What more do you know?”
She opened her mouth to tell him of Lettice, but she couldn’t, not yet. It was too soon and he didn’t yet trust her enough. She knew he loved Lettice deeply. He had so much wanted to leave the twentieth century—and Dougless—to get back to his beloved wife. It would take more time before she had his trust enough that she could talk to him about his beloved Lettice. Certainly, now was not the time.
“I will tell you everything later,” she said, “but now I must see to your arm.”
Dougless continued pulling the bandage from his wound until she at last saw the deep slash. She’d never been good with bloody wounds, but years of teaching elementary school had taught her to look at chipped teeth, blood-dripping wounds, and broken limbs while remaining cheerful for the child’s sake. She knew Nicholas’s wound needed a doctor, but she also knew that now she was the best that was available.
When Honoria and the maids returned with all Dougless had ordered, she set them to work. Honoria did not allow the maids to question anything Dougless told them to do. The four women removed their outer sleeves, rolled up the linen sleeves above the elbow; then Dougless had them scour their hands and arms while she boiled needles and silk thread.
The only sedative-type pills she had in her tote bag were what she took to calm her nervous stomach. She wished she had good ol’ Valium, but she didn’t. She gave Nicholas two pills and hoped they’d make him drowsy.
They did, and within minutes, he was asleep.
When all the equipment was as clean as she could get it, Dougless set Honoria to sewing Nicholas’s arm. Honoria blanched, but Dougless insisted because Honoria’s stitches were fine and accurate.
Dougless wasn’t sure exactly how to do it, but she directed Honoria to sew the gash in Nicholas’s arm in two layers. The inside stitches would have to remain in his arm forever, but Dougless’s father had a steel plate in his leg from his time in the military, so she guessed Nicholas could live with some silk inside his arm. Dougless carefully held Nicholas’s skin together while Honoria sewed it.
When Nicholas’s wound was sewn together, Dougless wrapped his arm in clean linen. She told the maids she wanted them to boil linen to be used the next day, and when they touched the linen, their hands were to be very clean. Honoria said she would see to it.
Finally, Dougless dismissed all of them; then she sat down on a chair by the fire and proceeded to wait—and to worry. If Nicholas developed a fever she had no penicillin, no oral antibiotics, nothing but a few aspirin. She told herself she needn’t worry because she knew Nicholas’s future, but today she had changed history. If Kit didn’t die, then perhaps Nicholas would. Would she go back to the twentieth century and find that Kit had lived to a grand old age, but his younger brother had died from an infected cut on his arm? History, or in this case, the future, was d
ifferent from now on.
Hours later, Dougless was dozing in the chair when the door opened and Honoria entered. In her arms was a beautiful gown of deep purple velvet, the color of an eggplant, with wide, trailing sleeves of soft white ermine, the little black tails sewn on at intervals.
“Lady Margaret sends this to you,” Honoria whispered so as not to disturb Nicholas. “It will have to be fit to you, but I thought you might see it now.”
Dougless touched the soft velvet. It wasn’t like modern rayon velvet or heavy cotton velvet, but this was all silk and glistened as only silk could. “How is Kit?” Dougless whispered.
“Sleeping. He says someone tried to kill him. When he swam out to the girl, someone, or maybe two of them, came from under the water, caught his legs, and pulled him under.”
Dougless looked away. In Lady Margaret’s account found in the wall, she said she believed that Kit had been murdered, that his drowning had not been an accident.
“If you had not known how to raise him from the dead . . .” Honoria whispered.
“I didn’t raise anyone from the dead,” Dougless said sharply. “There was no magic or witchcraft involved.”
Honoria gave her a hard look. “Your arm no longer pains you? It is well?”
“It’s fine now, just a dull ache. It’s—” Breaking off, she refused to meet Honoria’s eyes. Yes, there was magic involved. Her feeling the pain of Nicholas’s cut arm was the least of the magic, but Honoria didn’t need to be told that.
“You should rest now,” Honoria said. “And change your gown.”
Dougless glanced at Nicholas, still asleep. “I must stay with him. If he wakes, I want to be here. I can’t risk his having a fever. Do you think Lady Margaret would mind if I stay here?”
Honoria smiled. “Were you now to ask for deeds to half the Stafford estates, I do not believe Lady Margaret would deny you.”