She turned off the water and soaped him. She loved looking at him, touching him. There was a birthmark on his left hip, shaped like a figure eight. There was a scar on his right calf. “Fell off a horse,” he murmured, eyes closed. There was a long scar on his left forearm. “Sword practice the day . . .” Dougless knew that the rest of the sentence was, “the day Kit died.” There was an odd oval scar on his shoulder. Nicholas smiled, his eyes closed. “A fight with Kit. I won,” he said.
She came back to his head. “I’m glad to see no woman has left a mark on you.”
“Only you, Montgomery, have marked me,” he whispered.
Dougless wanted to ask him about his wife. Did he care for her, Dougless, as much as he loved his beautiful wife? But she didn’t ask, as she was too afraid of the answer she’d hear.
Nicholas turned her around, turned the water back on, then rinsed them both. When they were clean, he pulled her out of the shower and began gently combing her hair. Dougless wanted to put on her robe, but Nicholas wouldn’t allow it.
“I have dreamed of you this way,” he said, looking at her in the mirror. “You have fair driven me mad. The smell of you.” He stopped combing and slid his hands down her arms. “The clothes you wear . . .”
Dougless smiled, her head back against his. He had noticed, she thought. He had.
When her hair was combed, he toweled it dry, then held up the white terry robe the hotel furnished. “Come,” he said, putting on the other robe.
He led her downstairs, through the darkened hotel lobby, and into the kitchen.
“Nicholas,” she said, “we shouldn’t be here.”
He kissed her to silence. “I am hungry,” he said as though that were excuse enough.
Being in the hotel kitchen when she knew they shouldn’t be added excitement to this most wonderful night. She looked at the back of Nicholas as he opened a refrigerator door (and felt a little pang that he had learned of refrigerators from someone other than her). Now he was truly hers, she thought, hers to touch whenever she wanted. Holding his hand, she pressed her body against his and put her head in the crook of his shoulder.
“Nicholas,” she whispered. “I love you so much. Don’t leave me.”
Turning, he looked into her eyes, and his face was full of longing. He looked back in the refrigerator. “Where’s the ice cream?”
She laughed. “In the freezer. Try that door,” she said, pointing.
He wouldn’t let her out of his sight or touch as he pulled her toward the freezer. There were big cardboard vats of ice cream inside. Clinging together like Siamese twins, they went about the kitchen and found bowls, spoons, and a steel ladle. Nicholas scooped out an enormous amount from one vat into each bowl, then slipped the vat back into the freezer. He dribbled vanilla ice cream down the front of her, then licked it off, the ice cream traveling lower, just below his tongue. He licked the last just as it reached her red-gold curls.
“Strawberry,” he said, making Dougless laugh.
They sat facing each other, legs crossed, on the eight-foot-long butcher-block cutting table (“Unsanitary,” Dougless said), but she didn’t get down. They ate quietly for a moment, but then Nicholas dropped ice cream on Dougless’s foot and licked it off. Dougless leaned forward to kiss Nicholas and “accidently” dropped ice cream on his inner thigh.
“I’ll bet that’s awfully cold,” she said against his lips.
“I cannot bear it,” he whispered.
She slowly, so that her br**sts raked along his bare body, made her way to the splat of ice cream on his thigh, licked it off, and when it was gone, she continued licking. The ice cream was forgotten as Nicholas leaned back against the table and pulled her up to him. As though she weighed nothing, his biceps bulging, he picked her up and set her down on top of him, his hands moving up her body to clutch her br**sts as Dougless moved slowly up and down.
It was a long time before they arched together, Nicholas pulling her down to him to kiss her hungrily and fiercely.
“I believe, madam,” he whispered in her ear, “that you have melted my ice cream.”
Laughing, Dougless snuggled against him. “I’ve wanted to touch you for so long,” she said, her hand caressing his chest and shoulders inside the sleeve of the robe that he still wore. “I’ve never met a man like you.”
She lifted on one elbow and looked down at him. “Were you an unusual man in the sixteenth century, or were they all like you?”
Nicholas grinned at her. “I am unique, which is why the women—”
She kissed him to silence. “Say no more. I’d as soon hear nothing more about your women—or your wife.” She put her head down. “I’d like to think I’m special to you, not just one of hundreds.”
He lifted her chin to look at her. “You called me across centuries, and I answered. Is that not enough to make you ‘special’?”
“Then you do care for me? At least somewhat?”
“There are no words,” he said, then kissed her lightly and pushed her head back down, but as he stroked her damp hair, he felt her relax against him and knew she was falling asleep. Closing her robe, he bundled her into his arms and carried her out of the kitchen and up to their room. Once they were inside their room, he removed both their robes, put her into bed, then climbed in beside her. She was already asleep as he snuggled her to him.
But Nicholas wasn’t sleepy at all. He tried to pull her closer to him, her bare bottom up against his half-swollen maleness, his leg over hers, but she was as close as could be.
She asked if he cared for her, he thought. Cared for her? She was becoming all to him, his reason for living. He cared what she thought, what she felt, what she needed. He couldn’t bear more than minutes away from her.
Each morning and afternoon he went to pray for God to return him to his own time, but part of his mind thought constantly of what it would be like to never see her again, to never hear her laugh, to never see her cry again, to never hold her in his arms.
He ran his hand over her shoulder and tucked the cover closer about her. Never had he met a woman like her. She had no guile, no sense of taking what she wanted, no sense of self-preservation. Smiling, he remembered her protests when he’d first met her. She’d said she would not help him, but he’d seen in her eyes how she couldn’t bear leaving him alone in a strange land. He thought of the women of his own time and knew of no woman who would help some poor madman.
But Dougless had, he thought. She’d helped him and taught him and . . . loved him. She’d given her love freely and completely.
Completely, he thought, smiling in memory of this night. No woman had ever responded to him with such complete abandonment as Dougless had tonight. Arabella used to demand. “Here! Now!” she’d say. Other women thought they were granting him a favor. Lettice . . . He didn’t like to think of his cold wife. She lay in bed stiff-limbed, her eyes open, as though challenging him to do his husbandly duties. In four years of marriage he’d not been able to get her with child.
As he caressed Dougless’s bare arm, in her sleep she tried to move closer to him. He kissed her temple. How could he leave her? he asked himself. How could he go back to his other life, to his other women, and leave her alone and unprotected? She was so soft that it was no wonder she was at the mercy of men like the one he’d pushed out the door.
Nicholas thought of his mother and his wife. Those two women would be able to take care of themselves no matter what befell them. But not Dougless. He feared that a week after he left, she’d be back with that odious man whom she believed she loved.
He stroked her hair. How could he leave her alone with no one to protect her? He did not understand the modern world. It was her father’s duty to choose a husband for her, yet the man left his daughter to her own devices. Smiling, Nicholas thought of how Dougless would fare with a man of his time who a father might choose for her. All her childish talk of love would mean nothing against the joining of estates.
But as Nicholas looked down at Dougless, he knew he was beginning to understand what she meant. Love. Dougless had said that perhaps he’d been sent to the modern world not for honor but for love. At the time, Nicholas had scoffed at the idea. This cataclysmic thing had happened for love and not for honor? Not possible! But they’d found the name of the traitor and Nicholas had not left her world.
He remembered Dougless saying that everything in the past had turned out all right. All right to her, perhaps. He was remembered as a fool, but then, perhaps he had been a fool. There had been many other women besides Arabella, all of whom he needed when he had a wife like Lettice. It was true that perhaps cuckolding Robert Sydney had been foolish enough to cause his own death, but if he could return, he would right the wrongs.
If he returned . . .
What then? He’d still be married to Lettice, and there would be women like Arabella to tempt him. Even if he could free himself from the accusation of treason, would his life change?
He turned on his back, holding Dougless tightly to him. What if he remained in this century? What if he had misjudged God’s purpose? What if he had been sent forward in time, not to return and change what had happened then, but to do something in this time?
He remembered the books he and Dougless had looked at. There were books of houses from around the world, and they had intrigued him. Dougless had talked about something called architecture school where he could learn to design houses. To learn to be a tradesman? he thought in wonder. But, truthfully, “having a profession,” as she called it, did not seem to be something bad in this century. Instead, men like Harewood who were mere landowners were looked down on—by Americans anyway, Dougless had explained.
America, he thought, this place that Dougless talked about constantly. She said they could go to America and “set up housekeeping” and he could go to school. School at his age? he’d asked disdainfully, not letting her see how the idea intrigued him. To live with Dougless in this modern world and design buildings? Was this the reason he had been brought forward? Perhaps God saw Thornwyck, liked it, and so had decided to give him another chance, Nicholas thought with a smile, laughing at the idea of God being so frivolous.
But what did he know of God’s purpose? Obviously, he hadn’t been sent forward in time to find out who betrayed him. He’d found that out days ago, yet he was still here. So why had he been sent to the modern world?
“Nicholas!” Dougless cried out, sitting up with a jolt.
As he pulled her back into his arms, she clung to him. “I dreamed you were gone, that you weren’t here, that you’d left me,” she said, blinking back tears and holding him so tightly his ribs were close to cracking.
He stroked her hair. “I will not leave you,” he said softly. “I will remain with you for always.”
It took a moment for his words to reach Dougless. She lifted up to look at him. “Nicholas,” she said slowly, questioning.
“I . . .” He took a breath. The words were hard for him. “I do not wish to return. I will remain here.” He looked at her. “With you.”
Dougless buried her face in his shoulder and began to weep softly.
As he stroked he°]UÈeUhe couldn’t keep from laughing. “Are you sad that I do not leave you so that you may return to this Robert who gives diamonds to children?”
“I’m just so happy.”
He took a tissue from a box beside the bed. “Here, stop your weeping and tell me more of America.” He gave her a sideways look. “And tell me of your uncle who is king.”
Dougless blew her nose, then smiled at him. “I didn’t think you heard that.”
“What is a cowboy? What is a passport? What is the Grand Canon? And do not move so far from me.”
“It’s canyon,” she said, moving back into his arms as she began to tell him of America, of her family, and of her uncle who’d married a princess and was now king of Lanconia.
As the dawn light came into the room, they began to make plans. Dougless would call her uncle J.T. and explain as best she could that she needed a passport for Nicholas so he could go to America with her. “Knowing Uncle J.T., he’ll want you to go to Lanconia so he can inspect you first. But he’ll like you.”
“And his queen?”
“Aunt Aria? Well, she can be a little intimidating at times, but she used to play baseball with us kids. They have six kids of their own.” She smiled. “And she has this weird friend named Dolly who runs around the castle wearing blue jeans and a crown.” She looked at Nicholas, at his black hair and blue eyes, and thought of the way he walked, the way he sometimes had of looking at people that made them shrivel. “You’ll fit in in Lanconia,” she said.
They had breakfast served in their room, and over the table, Nicholas said, “I’d rather have strawberry ice cream.”
In another moment they were on the floor, rolling about exuberantly as they tore at each other while they made love. Afterward they filled the tub and sat at opposite ends as they planned more of their future life together.
“We’ll go to Scotland,” Dougless said. “While we’re waiting for the passport, we’ll stay in Scotland. It’s a beautiful country.”
Nicholas had his foot on her stomach, kneading her flesh. “Will you wear the heeled shoes to ride a bicycle?” he asked.
Dougless laughed. “Don’t make fun of me. Those shoes got me what I wanted.”
“And I too,” he said, looking at her from beneath his lashes.
After the bath they dressed, and Dougless said she’d call her uncle J.T. right away.
Nicholas turned away. “I must return to the church for one last time,” he said quietly.
Dougless felt her entire body stiffen. “No,” she whispered, then ran to face him, her hands gripping his arms.
“I must,” he said, smiling down at her. “I have been often and naught has happened. Dougless, look at me.”
She lifted her head, and he smiled. “Are you onion-eyed yet again?”
“I’m just frightened.”
“I must pray for forgiveness for not wanting to return to save my name and my honor. Do you understand?”
She nodded mutely. “But I’m going with you and I don’t let go of you. Got that? I don’t wait outside for you this time.”
He kissed her. “I mean to never again release you. Now we will go to the church for my prayers, then you will call your uncle. Does Scotland have trains?”