“Nicholas!” Dougless said sharply in her schoolteacher voice.
When Nicholas turned to look at her, she saw that his eyelids were lowered, and he had that sleepy look she’d seen only when he’d made love to her.
Dougless drew in her breath.
When he saw her, Nicholas’s expression changed to anger, and he dropped the woman’s skirt.
“I think you’d better leave,” Dougless, her body shaking with anger, said to the woman.
The woman, looking from Nicholas to Dougless as they glared at each other, hurried out of the arbor.
Nicholas looked Dougless up and down, and the anger on his face almost made her retreat, but she held her ground.
“Nicholas, we have to talk. I have to explain to you who I am and why I’m here.”
When he stepped toward her, this time she did step back. “You have charmed my mother,” he said in a low voice, “but you do not charm me. If you come between me and my actions again, I will take a batlet to you.”
He shoved past her so hard that Dougless nearly fell against the wall, and she watched with a heavy heart as he strode angrily down the path and out through the door in the wall. How was she supposed to accomplish anything if he wouldn’t listen to her? He wouldn’t even spend ten minutes in her company. What was she supposed to do, lasso him? Right, she thought, tie him up and tell him she was from the future and she had come back through time to save his neck—literally. “And I’m sure he’ll believe me,” she whispered.
Honoria returned with a wooden lap desk, big feathers that she expertly trimmed into pens, ink, and three sheets of paper. She plucked out the notes of the songs, and asked Dougless to write the music. Her opinion of Dougless’s education was further lowered when she found out that Dougless could neither read nor write music.
“What is a batlet?” Dougless asked.
“It is used to beat the dust from the clothes,” Honoria answered, writing the notes down.
“Does Nicholas . . . ah, fool around with all the women?”
Honoria stopped playing and looked at Dougless. “You should not lose your heart to Sir Nicholas. A woman should give her heart only to God. People die, but God does not.”
Dougless sighed. “True, but while we’re alive, people can make living worthwhile or not.” Dougless started to say more, but she glanced up, and standing on the terrace of the house, she saw someone’s head, and it looked like . . .
“Who is that girl?” Dougless asked, pointing.
“She is to marry Lord Christopher when she is of age. If she lives. She is a sickly child and not often out.”
The girl, from this distance, looked just like Gloria, just as fat, just as petulant. Dougless remembered Lee saying that Nicholas’s older brother was to marry a French heiress and that was why he’d refused Lettice’s offer of marriage.
“So, Nicholas is to marry Lettice, and Christopher is engaged to a child,” Dougless said. “Tell me, if that girl were to die, would Kit consider marrying Lettice?”
Honoria looked taken aback at Dougless’s casual use of Christian names. “Lord Christopher is heir to an earldom, and he is related to the queen. Lady Lettice is not of his rank.”
“But Nicholas is.”
“Sir Nicholas is a younger son. He does not inherit the estates or the title. For him Lady Lettice is a good match. She also is related to the queen, but distantly. Her dowry, though, is not large.”
“But if Lettice married Nicholas, then, say, Christopher died, Nicholas would be the earl, right?”
“Aye,” Honoria said, and stopped writing notes. Looking up at the terrace, she saw the fat, spotty, sickly French heiress go back into the house. “Sir Nicholas would become the earl,” she said thoughtfully.
TWENTY - THREE
By the time Dougless climbed into bed beside Honoria that night, she was exhausted. No wonder she’d seen so few fat people and the women had such tiny waists. Between the steel corset and the constant activity, fat didn’t have a chance to settle on a person’s body.
She and Honoria had left the garden to attend a service in the pretty little chapel on the ground floor of the house. They’d listened to a richly dressed minister and they’d spent a great deal of time on their knees. Dougless couldn’t pay attention to what the minister was saying for looking at the stunning clothes of the men and women around her: silk, satin, brocade, fur, jewels.
It was in the chapel that she had her first glimpse of Christopher. He looked like Nicholas, but not so young or handsome. But there was a quiet strength coming from him that made Dougless stare at him. When he glanced across at her, there was so much interest in his eyes that Dougless looked away, blushing. She didn’t see Nicholas watching the two of them and frowning.
After chapel was supper, which Dougless took in the Presence Chamber with Lady Margaret, Honoria, and four other women. There was vegetable beef soup, a nasty bitter beer, and fried rabbit. A man, who Honoria said was the butler, had to chip cinders from the crust of a loaf of bread before he served it to them, and thereby explained the holes in the crust of Dougless’s earlier loaf.