You are too silent, brother,” Kit said, smiling at Nicholas. “You should come and make merry. Dougless is to teach us a card game called poker this night.”
Nicholas looked away from his brother. Something had happened tonight, he thought, something he couldn’t understand. At supper he had bitten into one of the chocolate cakes the woman had prepared and he’d known, quite suddenly, without words, that she was not his enemy.
Even as he handed her his ring, he told himself he was being a fool. Often, when it came to this woman, he was sure he was the one sane person in his household. He was the only person who did not believe her to be a gift from God. And if her good works did turn out to be treachery, he would be the only one who was able to see her as she truly was.
But this evening, as he’d eaten that wonderful cake, images had flashed across his mind. He saw her with her hair loose, her legs bare, and sitting on an odd two-wheeled metal frame of sorts. He saw her with water pouring down over her beautiful, nude body. And he saw her clutching his emerald ring to her breast and looking at him with love. Without a thought, he had slipped the ring from his finger and given it to her, because, somehow, the ring seemed to belong to her.
“Nicholas?” Kit was saying. “Are you well?”
“Yes,” Nicholas said absently. “I am well.”
“Do you join us in this new game?”
“Nay,” Nicholas murmured. He didn’t want to be near the woman, didn’t want her to cause him to see images of something he knew had not happened. It was better for him to stay away from her. If he spent time with her, perhaps he would begin to listen to her, even begin to believe her absurd stories of past and future.
“Nay, I do not go,” he said to Kit. “I work this night.”
“Work?” Kit asked, his voice teasing. “No women? When I think on it, have you had a woman to your bed since Lady Dougless arrived?”
“She is no—” Nicholas began. He suddenly had another image of her smiling down at him, of her hair soft and full about her shoulders.
Kit laughed knowingly. “It goes that way, does it? I cannot blame you; the woman is beautiful. Do you mean to make her your mistress after your marriage?”
“Nay!” Nicholas said forcibly. “The woman is naught to me. Take her away with you. I wish never to see her again, never to hear her voice. I wish she had never come into my life.”
Kit stepped back, still smiling. “So the thunderbolt has hit,” he said, obviously enjoying Nicholas’s agony.
Nicholas came out of his chair, ready to do battle over his brother’s smirking, knowing tone. But Kit backed toward the door, and when Nicholas came close, Kit left the room, laughing loudly as he shut the door in his brother’s face.
Nicholas sat down at the table again and tried to give his attention to the accounts before him, but all he could think of was the red-haired woman. He knew that she was laughing now, amused at what she was doing. He knew that, somehow, he’d feel it if she wasn’t happy.
He walked toward the window, turned its latch, opened it, then looked down into the garden. Unwanted, an image came to him. In his mind’s eye, he saw another garden. It was night, and it was raining, and the woman was calling to him. He saw lights, strange, purple-blue lights on poles, and he saw himself in the rain, clean-shaven and wearing strange clothes.
Pulling away from the window, Nicholas slammed it shut, then rubbed his hands over his eyes as though to clear the vision. He would not let this woman ensorcell him. He must not let her control his mind!
Leaving the office, he went to his bedchamber, poured himself a tall goblet of sack, then downed it. Only after he’d downed a second and third helping as quickly as possible, did he feel the warmth of the wine coursing through his veins. He would drown his images of her. He would drink until he couldn’t hear her, see her, smell her . . . or remember her.
For a while the wine worked and he was able to still the images in his head. Content, feeling calm, Nicholas stretched out on his bed and was asleep instantly.
But then the images came again, this time in the form of dreams.
“You must tell me if Kit has shown you the door,” he heard the woman saying. “Tell me if you cut your arm.” “Kit died and you caused it.” “What if you are wrong?” The woman’s voice grew louder, urgent. “What if you are wrong and Kit dies because you won’t listen?”
Nicholas awoke sweating, and the rest of the night he lay with his eyes open, afraid to go back to sleep. Something had to be done about the woman if she wouldn’t let him sleep. Something had to be done.
