A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggart #15)

Dougless could see that Lady Margaret was considering this. “I can be very useful,” Dougless said quickly. “I have lots of cold tablets, and I have all sorts of interesting things in my bag. And I . . .” What could she do? “I can tell stories. I know lots of stories.”

“Mother, you cannot consider keeping her here,” Nicholas said. “She is no better than a flirt-gill.”

Dougless guessed that that was a lady of ill repute. She turned angry eyes on him. “Look who’s talking. You and Arabella Sydney can’t keep your hands off one another.”

Nicholas’s face turned purple, and he took a step toward her.

Lady Margaret coughed to cover laughter. “Nicholas, fetch Honoria to me. Go! Now!”

With one more look of anger at Dougless, he obediently left the room.

Lady Margaret looked at Dougless. “You amuse me. You may remain in my care until a messenger can be sent to Lanconia to ask after your uncle.”

Dougless swallowed. “How long will that take?”

“A month or more.” Lady Margaret’s eyes were shrewd. “Do you recant your story?”

“No, of course not. My uncle is king of Lanconia.” Or will be, Dougless amended to herself.

“Now the tablet,” Lady Margaret said, leaning back on the pillows. “Then you may go.”

Dougless got a cold tablet from her bag but hesitated. “Where am I supposed to sleep?”

“My son will tend to you.”

“Your son locked me in a hideous little room, and there were bugs in the bed!”

Judging from the look on Lady Margaret’s face, she didn’t seem to see anything wrong with what her son had done.

“I want a proper room and some clothes that won’t make people stare at me, and I want to be treated with the respect due to . . . to my station in life. And I want a bath.”

Lady Margaret looked at her with cold, dark eyes, and Dougless saw where Nicholas got his imperious manner. “Beware you do not amuse me too much.”

Dougless tried to keep her knees from knocking. Once, as a child, she’d seen a wax museum that showed a medieval torture chamber. Now she remembered the instruments of torture too well. The rack. The Iron Maiden. “I mean no disrespect, my lady,” she said softly. “I will earn my keep. I will do my best to continue to amuse you.” Like Scheherazade, she thought. If I don’t amuse this woman, tomorrow it’s off with my head.

As Lady Margaret studied her, Dougless knew her fate, her very life, was being decided in this single moment. “You shall attend me. Honoria will—”

“That means I can stay? Oh, Lady Margaret, you won’t regret this, I promise. I’ll show you how to play poker. I’ll tell you stories. I’ll tell you all of Shakespeare’s stories. No, I better not do that, it might upset things. I’ll tell you about . . . ah, The Wizard of Oz and My Fair Lady. Maybe I can remember some of the words and music.” Dougless, who had always refused to sing out loud, began to sing, “I Could Have Danced All Night.” Funny what the threat of being burned alive could make one do.

“Honoria!” Lady Margaret said sharply. “Take her, clothe her.”

“And food and a bath,” Dougless added.

“The tablet.”

“Oh, sure.” Dougless handed the cold tablet to Lady Margaret.

“Let me rest now. Honoria will see to you. She will stay with you, Honoria.”

Dougless hadn’t heard the other woman enter. She looked to be the same woman who had been in the room last night, but Dougless couldn’t see her face as she kept it turned away. Dougless followed Honoria from the room.

She felt better now knowing that she had some time before Lady Margaret found out she wasn’t a princess. Was lying to a lady punished by death or merely torture? Or torture then death? But perhaps if Dougless could entertain Lady Margaret well enough, she wouldn’t care whether she was a princess or not. And, too, perhaps a month was long enough to do what she must.

Clasping her travel bag tightly to her, Dougless followed Honoria to her room, which was next to Lady Margaret’s. It was about half the size of Lady Margaret’s room, but, still, it was large and very pretty. There was a white marble fireplace on one wall, a big four poster bed, some stools, two carved chairs, and a chest at the foot of the bed. Sun came in through a window that had small diamond-shaped panes of glass.

Looking about the pretty room, Dougless was beginning to relax somewhat. She had managed to keep herself from being thrown into the streets.

“Is there a bathroom around here?” she asked the back of Honoria.

Turning, the pretty woman gave Dougless a blank look.

“A privy?” Dougless explained.

Nodding in understanding, she pointed to a small door in the paneling. When Dougless opened the door, she saw a stone seat with a hole cut in it; the little room was the equivalent of an outhouse indoors. And it stunk to high heaven. Beside the seat was a stack of paper, thick, hard paper that had writing all over it. She held one piece of paper up. “So that’s what happened to all the medieval documents,” she murmured. Quickly, she used the privy and left it.

When she went back into the room, she watched as Honoria opened a chest, pulled clothes out, laid them on the bed, then left the room. When she was alone, Dougless walked about, exploring. This room had no silver or gold ornaments as Lady Margaret’s had, but everywhere were embroidered fabrics. Dougless had seen a few examples of Elizabethan embroidery in museums, but they had been old and faded. Here the cushions were brilliant, undimmed by time or use, and the colors were wondrous!

She walked around the room touching everything, marveling at the brightness of all of it. New antiques, she thought as she scratched furiously at bites on her back.

After a while the door opened, and two men came in bearing a big, deep wooden tub. The men wore red, tight-fitting wool jackets, puffy shorts like those Nicholas wore, and black knitted hose. Both men had strong, muscular legs.

There are things to be said for the Elizabethan age, Dougless thought as she admired the men’s legs.

Behind the men came four women bearing buckets of steaming hot water. They wore simple, long wool skirts, tight bodices, and little caps on their heads. Two of the women had smallpox scars on their faces.

When the tub was half full of steaming water, Dougless began to undress, and Honoria held out her hands to help, but then stepped back, her eyes wide, when she saw Dougless needed no help in undressing. In other circumstances, Dougless would have been modest, but not when she was as filthy as she was. When she was down to her bra and panties, and Honoria was staring at her in speechlessness, Dougless held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Dougless Montgomery.”

Honoria didn’t seem to know what to do, so Dougless picked up her hand and clasped it. “So, we’re to be roommates.”

Honoria gave Dougless a puzzled look. “Lady Margaret has requested that you remain with me, yes.” She had a soft, pleasant voice, and Dougless could see that she was quite young, maybe only twenty-one or two.

Dougless stripped off her undergarments and stepped into the tub while Honoria picked up the modern clothes, examining each carefully, unabashedly curious.

Dougless took the soap the servants had left beside the tub, but it felt like a harsh version of Lava and it lathered about as well as a stone. “Would you hand me my bag, please?” she asked Honoria. Looking quite hard at the nylon of the bag, Honoria set it on the floor by Dougless, then watched as she unzipped it. Dougless withdrew a cake of soap—she was always saving the pretty, scented bars from hotels—and began to wash herself.

Honoria was making no attempt to hide her curiosity as she watched Dougless wash.

“Would you tell me about this place?” Dougless asked. “Who lives here? Tell me about Kit and Nicholas, and is he engaged to Lettice, and is John Wilfred here, and what about Arabella Sydney?”

Honoria sat on a chair and tried to answer questions as she watched in awe as Dougless used the marvelous soap, then shampooed her hair.

As far as Dougless could tell from Honoria’s words, she’d been transported back in time early enough that only Nicholas’s engagement had taken place. Nicholas had not yet made a fool of himself on the table with Arabella, and John Wilfred was insignificant enough that Honoria didn’t know who he was. Honoria would give Dougless any facts she wanted, but would not give an opinion. And she absolutely refused to gossip.

After Dougless had bathed and washed her hair, Honoria handed her a coarse, rough towel of linen, and when she was damp-dry, and her hair combed, Honoria began to help her dress.

First went on a long nightgown-like garment, very plain, made of finely woven linen. “What about underpants?” Dougless asked.

Honoria looked blank.

“Knickers. You know.” Dougless picked up her own pink lacy briefs from the chest top where Honoria had put them, but Honoria still looked blank.

“There is nothing below,” Honoria said.

“My goodness,” Dougless said, wide-eyed. Who would have thought that underpants were a recent invention? “When in Rome . . .” she murmured, and tossed her briefs aside.

Dougless wasn’t prepared for the next layer of clothing. Honoria held up a corset. Dougless’s experience of corsets was seeing Gone With the Wind and Mammy pulling Scarlett’s laces, but this corset was . . .

“Steel?” Dougless whispered, holding the thing up to look at it.

The corset was made of thin, flexible strips of steel, covered with fine silk, with steel hooks down one side, and since the corset wasn’t new, rust was showing through the silk. When Honoria buckled her into it, Dougless thought she might faint. Her rib cage could not expand, her waist was about three inches smaller than it was naturally, and her br**sts were pressed flat.

Dougless steadied herself against the bedpost. “And to think that I used to complain that panty hose were uncomfortable,” she murmured.

Over the corset went a voluminous, long-sleeved linen shirt, the ruffled collar and sleeves embroidered prettily with black silk thread.

Around her waist was tied a half slip of linen that had wire sewn inside it so that it stood out in a perfect bell shape. “A farthingale,” Honoria said when asked, giving Dougless an odd look for not knowing this simple fact.

“This is getting heavy. Is there more?” Dougless asked.

Honoria next put a half slip of lightweight wool over the wired farthingale.

Over this petticoat went another one, this one of emerald green taffeta. Dougless began to cheer up. The taffeta rustled when she moved and the fabric was beautiful.

Honoria picked up a dress of rust-colored brocade with a huge abstract design of black flowers. The dress was not easy to get into. Over Dougless’s shoulders was a crisscross network of silk cords, a pearl at every joint. The front of the bodice was fastened with hooks and eyes that looked strong enough to hold army tanks together. An embroidered band concealed the closure.

There were no sleeves on the dress, but Honoria attached them separately, pulling them up over the long sleeves of the linen shirt underneath. At the shoulder the sleeves were big and puffy; then they tapered to the small wrists. The sleeves weren’t solid fabric but strips of hemmed emerald taffeta, fastened every few inches by a gold square set with a pearl.

Dougless touched the pearls while Honoria hurriedly and efficiently went around Dougless with a long hatpin type of instrument pulling bits of the white linen out the cuts in the sleeves.

By now it had taken Honoria an hour and a half to put these garments on Dougless and she wasn’t finished yet.

Next came the jewels. A belt of gold links with rough-cut square emeralds went around Dougless’s now-tiny waist. An enameled brooch with pearls around it was pinned in the middle of the bodice, and two gold link chains went off to either side, fastening under her arms. Honoria picked up a collar that was a limp ruffle of linen, put it around Dougless’s neck and tied it in back. (Later, Dougless found out that in 1564, Nicholas’s ruff had been stiff with yellow starch, but, now, a mere four years earlier, no one had heard of starch.) To conceal where the ruff joined the dress, Honoria slipped a third belt of square gold links about her neck.

“You may sit,” Honoria said softly.

Dougless tried to walk, but she was wearing somewhere around forty to fifty pounds of clothing and the steel corset was preventing her from breathing.

Stiffly, her head up off the scratchy ruff, Dougless made her way to a stool and collapsed. She did not, however, slump. One does not slump when wearing a steel corset.

Dougless sat rigidly while Honoria combed Dougless’s thick auburn hair, then pulled it back from her face and braided it. Then, using bone pins, she fastened the braids up. Over the braids, on the back of Dougless’s head, she fastened a little cap that was like a hair net, but again, pearls were at each joint.

Honoria helped Dougless stand up. “Yes,” she said, smiling, “you are most beautiful.”

“As pretty as Lettice?” Dougless asked without thinking.

“Lady Lettice is most beautiful also,” Honoria said, her eyes cast downward.

Dougless smiled. Tactful, very tactful.

Honoria had Dougless sit on the edge of the bed, then put out her leg, and Honoria slipped fine, hand-knit wool stockings up to Dougless’s knees; then she tied them with pretty ribbon garters embroidered with bumblebees. She slipped cork-soled, soft leather shoes on Dougless’s feet, then helped Dougless to again stand up.

Slowly, Dougless walked toward the window, then back. The clothes were ridiculous, of course. They were heavy, unwieldy, terrible for your lungs, and yet . . . She put her hands to her waist. She could practically encircle it with her hands. She was wearing pearls, gold, emeralds, satin, and brocade, and in spite of the fact that she could barely breathe and her shoulders were already aching from the weight, she’d never felt so beautiful in her life.

When she twirled about, the skirts belled out from her prettily. She looked up at Honoria. “Whose dress is this?”

“Mine own,” Honoria said softly. “We are near the same size.”

Dougless went to her and put her hands on her shoulders. “Thank you very much for lending it to me. It was very generous of you.” She kissed Honoria on the cheek.

Confused and blushing, Honoria turned away. “Lady Margaret wishes you to play for her tonight.”

“Play?” Dougless was looking at the sleeves of her gown. Real gold, not fake. How she wished she had a full-length mirror! “Play what?” Her head came up. “You mean like play an instrument? I can’t play anything.”