“Always? While you live with another woman? Sleep with her? Make love to her?”
He released her hands. “So you do this,” he said, looking at her bare shoulders above the sheet. “You would take yourself from me for all eternity rather than see me with another woman?”
“No, that’s not it. It’s just that Lettice is evil. I’ve told you what she’ll do. Choose another woman.”
He gave a smile that had no mirth in it. “You would allow me another wife? Allow me to touch another woman when I cannot touch you? You are willing to stand to one side for the rest of our lives?”
Dougless swallowed. Could she live in the same house with him while he lived with another woman? What would she do, be a maiden aunt to Nicholas’s children? How would she feel when, each night, he went off to bed with another woman? And how long would he continue to love her if he couldn’t touch her? Were either of them strong enough for a platonic love?
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know if I could stand by and see you with another woman. Nicholas, oh Nicholas, I don’t know what to do.”
He sat on the bed beside her and gathered her into his arms. “I will not risk losing you for a hundred women like Lettice. You are worth all to me. God has sent you to me, and I mean to hold you.”
She put her head on his chest, parting the robe so her cheek was on his skin. In spite of herself, tears came to her eyes. “I am frightened. Lettice is—”
“A mere woman. No more, no less. She possesses no great wisdom, no amulets of power. If you are by me, she can do me or my family no harm.”
“By you?” Her hand went under his robe, touching his skin. “Can I stay by you and not touch you?”
He moved her roaming fingers from inside his robe. “You are sure you will return if I . . .”
“Sure,” she answered firmly. “At least I think I’m sure.”
He held her fingers up and looked at them as a starving man might look at a feast. “It would be much to lose were we to try, would it not?”
“Yes,” she said, sadly. “Much, much too much.”
He dropped her hand. “You must go. I am a man, and you tempt me more than I can bear.”
Dougless knew she should go, but she hesitated. Once again she put her hand on Nicholas’s skin.
“Go!” he commanded.
Quickly, she rolled away from him, then ran from the room. She went back to Honoria’s room and slipped into bed, but she didn’t sleep.
Tomorrow the man she loved, no, more than loved, the man who meant so much that even time could not separate them, was leaving to marry another woman. What was she to do when Nicholas returned with his beautiful wife? (Dougless had heard so much of Lettice’s beauty that she would have hated the woman even if she knew nothing else about her.) Should she curtsy and congratulate her? Something like, “Hope you enjoy him. And I certainly hope he’s as good a lover with you as he was with me.”
Dougless had a vision of Nicholas and his pretty wife laughing together over some private joke. She saw Nicholas sweeping Lettice into his arms and carrying her off to the room they shared. Would they put their heads together over meals and smile at each other?
Dougless slammed her fist into the pillow, making Honoria stir. Men were such fools. They never saw past a pretty face. When a man asked about a woman, all he wanted to know was, was she pretty? No man ever asked if a woman had morals, whether she was honest, kind, did she like children or not? Dougless imagined a beautiful Lettice torturing a puppy in front of Nicholas, but Nicholas not noticing because dear, luscious Lettice had looked at him through fluttering lashes.
“Men!” Dougless muttered, but even as she said it, she didn’t mean it. Nicholas had not allowed himself to be seduced tonight because he was afraid he’d lose Dougless. If that wa
sn’t love, what was?
“Maybe he was saving himself for Lettice,” Dougless said into the pillow, and that’s when she began to cry.
The sun came up and still Dougless cried. It was as though she couldn’t stop. Honoria did everything she could to cheer Dougless up, but nothing worked.
Dougless could see, hear, think of nothing but Nicholas and the beautiful woman he was to marry. When Dougless thought of the hideous non-choices she had, she began to cry harder. She could stay in the sixteenth century and watch Nicholas with his wife, watch them talking together, watch while Lettice was given an honored place in the family as a son’s wife. Or she could threaten Nicholas that he had to give up his wife or she, Dougless, would leave the house. And if she left the Stafford household, what would she do? How could she earn her living in the sixteenth century? Drive a taxi? Maybe become an executive secretary? She was rather good with computers. She’d been in the Elizabethan age long enough to see how well a lone woman would fare without a man. She couldn’t so much as go two miles from the house without fear of being set upon by thieves.
And even if she could leave him, that would mean he’d be left in the hands of the scheming Lettice.
So what could she do if she couldn’t leave and she couldn’t stay? She could work harder at seducing Nicholas; then, after one lovely night of passion, she would be returned to the twentieth century. Without Nicholas. Alone. Never to see him again. She imagined herself at home in Maine, sitting by herself and thinking that she would give all she possessed to see Nicholas, to speak to him just one more time. By that time, she’d be so lonely she wouldn’t care if he were with a hundred women, if she could just see him one more time.
“Women’s lib doesn’t cover this situation,” she said through her tears. The ideal of equality for women said you weren’t supposed to put up with the man in your life having affairs, so she guessed she certainly wasn’t supposed to let him marry someone else.
It was all or nothing. To have Nicholas she had to share him; she’d have to share him physically, mentally, share him in every way possible. To leave him meant absolute, eternal loneliness for Dougless, and possibly death for Nicholas and his family.