Dougless’s mind raced. If Nicholas hadn’t had Arabella on the table yet and tomorrow Arabella left, then this had to be the day. She had to stop it!
Suddenly, she doubled over, her hands on her stomach, and began to groan.
“What ails you?” Honoria asked, concerned.
“Something I ate. I must return to the house.”
“But—” Honoria began.
“I must.” Dougless gave a few more groans.
Quickly, Honoria went to Lady Margaret and returned in a few minutes. “We have permission. I will accompany you with one groom.”
“Great. Let’s just go fast.”
Honoria looked confused as Dougless hurried toward the horses. As a groom helped her onto the saddle, Dougless didn’t look at all ill.
Dougless would have thrown her leg over the idiot sidesaddle, but there was no stirrup on one side, so she tightened her leg around the big protrusion in the front, took a little riding crop, and applied it to the horse’s flanks. Leaning forward, she hung on as the horse thundered down the rutted, dirty road.
Behind her came the groom and Honoria, doing their best to keep up with her.
Twice Dougless had to make the horse jump, once over a wagon tongue, once over a small wooden wheelbarrel. She reined in sharply as a child ran across the road and managed to miss him. She ran through a flock of geese that set up a terrible clatter.
When she reached the house, she leaped from the saddle, tripped on the heavy skirts, and fell face forward. But she didn’t waste a moment as she got up and began running, flinging open the gate, then running down the brick walk and up the stairs, across the terrace and in through the front door.
Once she was inside the house, she stopped and stared up at the staircase. Where? Where was Nicholas? Arabella? The table?
To her left came voices, and when she heard Kit, she ran to him. “Do you know where there’s a table, about six feet long, three feet wide? The legs are turned in a spiral.”
Kit smiled at the urgency in her voice—and at the wild look of her. Her face was running with perspiration, her cap was half off, and her auburn hair was falling about her shoulders. “We have many such tables.”
“This one is special.” She was trying to remain calm, but she couldn’t quite do it. And she was trying to breathe, but the corset was constricting her lungs. “It’s in a room Nicholas uses, and there’s a closet in the room, a place big enough that two people can hide in it.”
“Closet?” Kit said, puzzled, and Dougless realized that a closet in Elizabethan England wasn’t a place to hang clothes.
An older man behind Kit whispered something to him, and Kit smiled. “The chamber next to Nicholas’s bedchamber has such a table. He often—”
Dougless didn’t hear the rest. Tossing her skirt and petticoats over her arm, she ran up the stairs. Nicholas’s bedroom was two rooms down on the right and next to it was a door. She tried the handle, but it was locked. She ran into his bedroom, and through it, but the connecting door was also locked.
She banged on the door with her open palms. “Nicholas! If you’re in there, let me in. Nicholas! Do you hear me?”
She could swear she heard sounds inside the room. “Nicholas!” she screamed as she pounded and kicked the door. “Nicholas!”
When he opened the door, he had a lethal-looking dagger in his hand. “Is my mother well?” he asked.
Dougless pushed past him. There, against the wall was the table she’d seen in the Harewoods’ library. It was four hundred years younger, but it was the same table. And sitting on a chair, trying to look innocent, was Lady Arabella.
“I will have your—” Nicholas began.
But Dougless cut him off when she flung open a little door to the left of the window. There, huddled against the shelves, were two servants. “This is why I wanted you to open the door,” she said to Nicholas. “These two spies would have seen everything you two were about to do.”
Nicholas and Arabella were gaping at her, speechless.
Dougless looked at the two servants. “If one word of this gets out, we’ll know who told. Do you understand me?”
In spite of Dougless’s odd speech pattern, they did indeed understand her. “Now get out of here,” she said.
As quickly as mice, they scurried from the room.