“You shall go to my family,” Honoria said firmly. “They will love your games and songs. They will care for you.”
Dougless managed a bit of a smile. “That’s very kind of you, but if I can’t stay with Nicholas, I don’t want to stay here at all.”
Honoria’s face whitened. “Suicide is against God.”
“God,” Dougless whispered and tears came to her eyes. “God did this to me, and now it’s all going wrong.” She closed her eyes. “Please,” she whispered, eyes closed. “Please, Nicholas, don’t marry her. I beg you, please.”
Concerned, Honoria went to Dougless and felt her forehead. “You are warm. This day you must remain in bed. You are ill.”
“I am past ill,” Dougless said as she allowed Honoria to push her down on the bed. She barely felt Honoria’s hands unfastening the front of her dress as she closed her eyes.
Hours later she opened her eyes to see a darkened room. She was in Honoria’s bed wearing only her linen gown, her hair down. Her pillow was wet, so she knew she had been crying while she slept.
“Nicholas,” she whispered. Married now. Married to the woman who would kill him, who would eventually kill all the Staffords. Dougless closed her eyes again. When she awoke next it was night outside and the room was very dark. Honoria was asleep beside her.
Something is wrong, Dougless thought. Very wrong. She remembered Lady Margaret telling her that she must leave the Stafford family, but there was something else.
“Nicholas,” she whispered. “Nicholas needs me.”
She got out of bed and went into the hall. All was quiet. Barefoot, she went down the stairs, her feet moving about under the dried river rushes on the floor. She went out the back toward the garden, following where instinct and some indefinable pull led her.
She went across the brick terrace, down the stairs, along the raised walk, then turned into the knot garden. There was only a quarter moon, so it was very dark, but she didn’t need to see, for she had an inner sight.
As she approached the garden, she heard the fountain splashing, the fountain where she had showered each morning until Nicholas left. She had not been outside since Nicholas rode away.
There, standing in the fountain, his body nude, covered in soap lather, was Nicholas.
Dougless didn’t think, and certainly used no reason. One minute she was outside the fountain, and the next she was in Nicholas’s wet arms, holding him, kissing him with all the desperation and fear that she felt.
Everything happened too suddenly for her to stop and think. She was in his arms; they were on the ground; she was nude. They came together with a clash of pent-up desire that made Dougless cry out. Nicholas, not gently, no, not gentle at all, bent her body backward over a stone bench and rammed into her with blinding force. Dougless held on to his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin, put her legs about his waist, and held on.
Fast, furious, frantic, they tore at each other. Their bodies, covered with sweat, stuck together as they rose and fell together, again, again, again.
When at last they finished, Nicholas put his strong hands under her and lifted her to meet his final deep, deep thrust. Dougless cried out as the world darkened and her body stiffened as she found release.
It was a while before she recovered herself and could see again, think again. Nicholas was grinning at her, his teeth white. Even in the darkness she could see his happiness.
But Dougless was beginning to think. “What have we done?” she whispered.
Nicholas unwrapped her legs from his body and pulled her to stand before him. “We have just begun.”
She was blinking at him, trying to make her mind work, because her body was trembling at the touch of him. The tips of her breasts were touching his chest and they were tingling. “Why are you here? Oh, God, Nicholas, what have we done?” She started to sit on the bench, but he pulled her into his arms.
“Later there will be time for words,” he said. “Now I will do what I have much wanted to do.”
“No,” she said as she pushed away from him. She was fumbling about for the remnants of her gown. “We have to talk now. There will be no time later. Nicholas!” Her voice was rising. “We will have no more time!”
He pulled her back into his arms. “You do still insist you will disappear? Here, look you, we have tasted—merely tasted—of one another, yet you do remain.”
How could she tell him? She collapsed on the bench, her head down. “I knew you were here. I felt you. And just as I knew you needed me, I know that this is our last night together.”
Nicholas didn’t speak, but after a moment he sat down on the bench beside her, very close, but their
nude bodies were not touching. “I have always felt you,” he said softly. “This night you heard my call, but it has always been so with me. After I left I . . .” He paused. “I felt your tears. I could hear nothing but your weeping. I could not see Lettice for seeing you in your tears.”
Putting out his hand, he took hers. “I left the woman. I said naught, not even to Kit. I took my horse and rode. When I should have been saying vows, I was riding to you. It took until now to reach you.”
This is what she had wanted, but now that it was here, the enormity of what he’d done scared her. She looked at him. “What will happen now?”