“How did you know I planned this for Thornwyck?”
“I told you. When you came to me, it was four years from now and you’d already done it. Actually you’d only started it. It was never finished because you . . . you . . .”
“Were executed,” he said, and for the first time he really thought about her words. “I wish you to tell me all.”
“From the beginning?” Dougless asked. “It will take a long time.”
“Now that Kit is safe, I have time.”
Until Lettice gets hold of you, she thought. “I was in a church in Ashburton, and I was crying,” she said, “and—”
“Why did you weep? Why were you in Ashburton? And you cannot stand and tell me this long story. No, do not sit there. Here.”
He patted the empty half of the bed beside him.
“Nicholas, I can’t get in bed with you.” Just the thought of being so near him made her heart beat faster.
Opening his eyes, he smiled at her. “I saw a . . . a dream of you. You were in a white box of sorts, water was pouring on you, and you wore no clothes.” He looked her up and down, as though he could see through the voluminous robe. “I do not believe you have always been so shy of me.”
“No,” she said hoarsely, remembering being in the shower stall with him, the “white box” of his dream. “One night we were not shy of each other, and the next morning you were taken away from me. I’m afraid now that if I touch you, I’ll be returned to my own time, and I can’t go yet. There is more for me to do.”
“More?” he asked. “You know of others who die? My mother? Is Kit not yet safe?”
She smiled at him. Her Nicholas. Her lovely Nicholas who thought of others before himself. “You are the one who is in danger.”
He smiled in relief. “I can care for myself.”
“In a pig’s eye you can! If I hadn’t been here, you’d probably have lost your arm or died from the wound. One of those idiots you call a physician had only to touch that cut with his filthy hands and presto! you’re a goner.” Of course that hadn’t happened the first time he’d cut his arm, but . . .
Nicholas blinked at her. “You do talk most strangely. Come, sit by me and tell me all.” When Dougless didn’t move, he sighed. “I swear to you on my honor I will not touch you.”
“All right,” she said. Truthfully, she felt that she could trust him more than she could trust herself. Moving to the other side of the bed, she climbed up on it, for it was a few feet off the floor, then sank into the feather mattress.
“Why did you cry in the church?” he asked softly.
If Dougless could say nothing else about Nicholas, he was a good listener. He was more than a good listener, since he pulled from her things that she didn’t want to tell him. In the end, she told him everything about Robert.
“You lived with him without marriage? Di
d not your father kill him for abducting you?”
“It’s not like that in the twentieth century. Women have free choice, and fathers don’t tell daughters what to do. Men and women are more equal in my time.”
Nicholas snorted. “It seems that men still rule, for this man had all of you he wanted, but he did not make you his wife. He did not share his goods with you or demand his daughter respect you. And you say you chose this freely?”
“I . . . Well . . . It’s not like you make it sound. Most of the time, Robert was very good to me. He and I had some good times together. It was only when Gloria was around that it was awful.”
“Were a beautiful woman to give me all and in return I was only to give her, what do you say, a ‘good time,’ I, too, would be most grateful. Do all women of your time give themselves so cheaply?”
“It’s not cheap. You just don’t understand. Nearly everyone lives together before they get married. It’s to see if we’re compatible. And, besides, I thought Robert was going to ask me to marry him, but instead, he bought—” She stopped. Nicholas was making her feel as though she thought very little of herself. “You just don’t understand, that’s all. Men and women are different in the twentieth century.”
“Hmmm. I see. Yes. Women no longer want respect from a man, they want a ‘good time’.”
“Of course they want respect; it’s just that . . .” She didn’t know how to explain her living with Robert to a sixteenth-century man. In fact, now, living in the Elizabethan world, she could see that living with a man had cheapened her. Of course marriage was no guarantee that a man was going to respect her, but why hadn’t she stood up to Robert and said, “How dare you treat me like this?” or, “No, I will not pay for half of Gloria’s plane fare,” or, “No, I have too many things to do to pick up your dry cleaning?” Right now she couldn’t remember why she’d let him walk over her that way.
“Do you want to hear this story or not?” she snapped.
Smiling, Nicholas lay back against the pillows. “I wish to hear all of it.”