Tonight he must tell her, he thought. Tonight he had to tell Dougless of his impending marriage. He could put it off no longer.
THIRTY - ONE
You can’t marry her,” Dougless said quite calmly.
“My love,” Nicholas said, walking toward her, his hands outstretched.
He had asked her to go riding with him, then had taken her to a neighboring estate where there was a mature maze in the garden. The hedges were twelve feet tall, and the way in and out was complicated. He knew she didn’t know her way out of the maze and therefore she was less likely to run from him when he told her what he had to.
“I must marry her,” Nicholas said. “It is my duty to my family.”
Dougless told herself to remain calm. She told herself that she had a job to do, and that she must explain to Nicholas why he couldn’t marry Lettice. But when faced with having the man she loved tell her he was going to marry another, logic fled.
“Duty?” she said through her teeth. “No doubt it’s a great hardship for you to marry a beautiful babe like Lettice. I’ll just bet you’re dreading it. And I guess you want me too. Is that it? A wife and a lover? Only I can’t be your lover, can I?” She glared at him. “Or maybe I can be. If I went to bed with you, would that keep you from marrying that evil woman?”
Nicholas was moving toward her, trying to take her in his arms, but he halted. “Evil? Lettice is greedy perhaps, but evil?”
Dougless’s fists were clenched at her side. “What do you know of evil? You men are all alike no matter when you were born. All you can see is the outside of a person. If a woman is beau
tiful, she can have any man she wants, no matter how rotten she is inside. And if a woman is ugly, nothing else matters.”
Nicholas dropped his hands; his eyes were angry. “Aye, that is all that interests me. I care naught for duty or family or for the woman I love. Tearing the clothes from Lettice’s divine body is all that interests me.”
Dougless gasped, feeling as though he’d slapped her. She wanted to leave the maze, but she knew she didn’t know the way out. She turned back to him. Anger was holding her upright, but, quite suddenly, the anger left her. She collapsed on a bench, her face in her hands. “Oh, God,” she whispered.
Nicholas sat beside her and pulled her into his arms, holding her while she cried against his chest. “The marriage is something I must do. It has been arranged. I do not wish it, not now, not since I have you, but it is what I must do. Were something to befall Kit, I would be earl and it is my duty to produce an heir.”
“Lettice can’t bave chilled,” Dougless said against his chest.
He pulled a handkerchief from inside his slops. “What?”
Dougless blew her nose. “Lettice can’t have children.”
“How do you know of this?”
“Lettice was the one who caused your execution. Oh, Nicholas, please don’t marry her. You can’t marry her. She will kill you.” Dougless was calming somewhat, and beginning to remember what she must tell him. “I was going to tell you, but I thought we would have more time together. I wanted you to trust me more before I told you. I know how much you love Lettice, and—”
“Love her? I love Lettice Culpin? Who has told you this?”
“You did. You told me she’s one of the major reasons you wanted to return to the sixteenth century, because you loved her so very much.”
Pulling away from her, he stood up. “I came to love her?”
Dougless sniffed and blew her nose again. “When you came to me, you’d been married to her for four years.”
“It would take more than four years to make me love that woman,” Nicholas muttered.
“What?”
“Tell me more of this love I bore for my wife.”
There was a knot in Dougless’s throat, so she had difficulty speaking, but she did her best to explain all that he’d said to her. He questioned her thoroughly, asking about their last days together. Dougless held on to one of his big hands with both of hers while she answered his questions.
At last he put his fingertips under her chin and lifted her face. “When I was with you before, I knew I must return. Perhaps I did not want to cause you pain when I left. Perhaps I meant to prevent your loving a man who would not stay.”
Dougless’s eyes widened, tears sparkling. “You said that,” she whispered. “On our last night together, you said you wouldn’t touch me because I’d grieve too much for you.”
Smiling at her, he smoothed a damp tendril of hair away from her face. “I could not love Lettice were I to live with her a thousand years.”