Forever His (23 page)

Celine closed her eyes, feeling more humiliated and lost and stupid than she ever had in her life. He
had
proved his point, in no uncertain terms: proved that he could make her respond to him with one kiss or a single touch, with no words of love between them.

He didn’t care about her. And he didn’t believe she was from the future. Speaking her real name moments ago had merely been a slip of the tongue.

He felt nothing for her. Nothing but what he felt for other women, all women, any woman. Lust.

While she ... she felt such a confusing clash of emotions for him that she couldn’t begin to put a name to them.

Except, at the moment, raw hurt.

But she couldn’t let him know that.

“You haven’t proved anything,” she said hotly, opening her eyes, blinking back tears. “There’s more to life than pleasure, Gaston. More than you’ll ever know. All you’ve proved is that we’ll be a whole lot happier without each other.”

He cast her an irritated expression, stood, and stepped around her to douse the fire. “Cling to your childish fancies if you wish. But it appears that you are now warm, and it is time for us to return to the chateau.”

Time.

She sat there feeling alone and helpless as he went to gather her drying clothes from the low-hanging branches.

Time.

She had to go home. As soon as the lunar eclipse occurred in three weeks. Because if she stayed here, she would die.

Either from the bullet in her back, or from the pain that was slowly sinking talons into her heart.

A
huge hearth dominated the castle’s kitchen, large enough for roasting an ox whole, the massive logs inside it generating a steady heat that made the entire room feel summer-hot, even the brick floor. Standing at the oak-planked table in the center of the chamber, Celine paused to brush a strand of hair from her damp forehead.

Her heart skipped a nervous beat when she noticed how warm she was. Was it a fever?

No. No, it was the hot
room
, not a symptom. She was fine. Her imagination had been running away with her ever since she returned to the castle three weeks ago. For a couple of days she had experienced an odd sensation in her lower back—a twinge above her right hip—but it had disappeared just as suddenly.

It might have been nothing. A pulled muscle, from the physical exertion of her run through the forest, her icy dip in the river, and ...

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, to the count of eight. She was all right. She had to be. And soon she’d be even better. Because tonight was the night.

Tonight she was going home.

Her hand shaking, she returned to her task, beating a bowlful of coarse flour, eggs, salt, and sugar, using her latest secret creation: a rotary egg beater, made with a little help from the armorer.

“Lady Celine, I do not understand why you do this.” Gabrielle handed her a goblet of milk, then a copper pan brimming with butter that she had melted over the fire. “I do not understand why you continue to cook when milord has granted you the freedom of the castle and said you no longer need work as a servant.”

Celine stirred in the milk bit by bit, then the butter, before setting the bowl aside. “I enjoy teaching you,” she said a bit too brightly, wiping her flour-covered hands on her skirt. “And I like feeling helpful.”

That was true, at least partly. She also wanted to keep busy, wanted to keep her mind off things.

Lots of things.

“I believe I am almost ready, Lady Celine,” Yolande said from beside the hearth, where she was heating a long-handled copper skillet.

“I will see if I can find some honey for our ‘midnight snack.’ “ Gabrielle hurried off in the direction of the larder, the cool-storage area that filled a separate room attached to the kitchen.

“Yolande, I think we should let this batch sit and thicken up a bit before we try it,” Celine said.

“Mayhap that would be best,” the older woman agreed sheepishly.

Most of the first batch of crepes had dripped into the fire or slid onto the floor. One had ended up on the ceiling. Celine couldn’t help but smile as she looked up at it. Her two French-chefs-in-training were nothing if not enthusiastic. Each night for the past three weeks, after the servants had finished their daily duties and the kitchens were empty, she and Gabrielle and Yolande had gathered for a cooking lesson.

They didn’t have the faintest idea how to dislodge that sticky little pancake up there, though, so the three of them had decided to leave it for one of the men to worry about in the morning.

Celine leaned back against the waist-high table, watching Yolande at her task. Slowly, her gaze was drawn to the flickering flames. It had been nice, these past weeks, to hear everyone use her real name. Not that she had tried to convince anyone else that she was from the future; they had merely accepted her explanation that it was a nickname from her convent in Aragon, one that she preferred to “Christiane.”

Gaston was the only one who refused to use her “nickname.” He wasn’t buying a single word she said, and he wouldn’t call her Celine. Not that he had called her much of anything lately.

He had avoided her completely since that night in the forest. That disastrous, foolish, humiliating night.

Celine’s eyes burned as the firelight brought it all back in painful detail. The two of them had barely spoken to each other all the way back to the castle. Gaston had held her in his lap, and insisted that she wear his cloak, even when she had tried to give it back to him. He had been gentle and protective and she had almost thought that he ...

That he might care about her, just a little. That he might regret what he had said. Her hope had strengthened when they arrived here and he had abruptly declared both her imprisonment and her servitude ended. Though he said he didn’t believe she was innocent in Tourelle’s plot, he no longer seemed to consider her a threat to his people.

But after that, he had simply avoided her. He was finished with her. Finished trying to persuade her to do what he asked, finished trying to use her to attain his goal. He had instead sent search parties out on the roads leading from Aragon, with orders not to come back until they found Tourelle.

None of the men had reported in yet. Celine was disappointed about that; she had hoped to see Gaston’s face when he met the real Christiane. She wanted to hear him admit that he had been wrong. Just once.

Once before she left.

Without Christiane, nothing short of running her husband over with her Mercedes was going to convince him that she was Celine Fontaine from 1993. And until he believed her, the cool distrust he felt for her wouldn’t begin to change. The chasm between them had only grown wider.

It hurt her to realize just how badly she
wanted
to bridge that dangerous emptiness, wanted him to feel something for her. A flicker of caring, a rough, masculine shadow of the emotions she felt.

Emotions that she had only begun to admit after many sleepless nights. Feelings that made her pulse unsteady whenever she saw him or heard his voice. Even when he kept his distance. She couldn’t control them—and couldn’t erase them, even when she was utterly furious with him.

And it wasn’t just his kiss or his touch that moved her. It was something about
him
. Everything about him. That scoundrel’s grin. The warrior’s courage that let him face any danger without flinching. The way he protected and cared for his people. His strength. His intelligence. He had more passion and confidence than any man she had ever met.

And she cared about him. God help her, she cared. It frightened her to think about just how much. And she wanted ...
something
in return from him. More than the cold, calculating offer he had made in the forest.

Stay with me
, he had said, and her heart had swept skyward.

As my mistress
, he had finished, and she had crashed to earth with broken wings.

But why had she expected him to say anything else? She knew what he was. To wish for deep feeling from a tough, battle-hardened, macho type like Gaston, a man who had never known love from anyone and had never felt love for anyone, was hopeless. Impossible. And it always would be.

Even if she weren’t leaving tonight.

She had heard Gaston’s men speak of him as The Black Lion, a name that resounded with pride and courage. But she wondered whether it had been a woman who first dubbed him Blackheart.

“Lady Celine?”

“Sorry?” Celine tore her gaze from the fire, suddenly aware that Yolande had been speaking to her.

“Shall we begin with the new batch?” Yolande repeated, walking over with the skillet. She looked Celine up and down, smiling. “Before you are wearing any more of it, milady?”

Celine glanced down at her dress, realizing she had gotten carried away with her enthusiasm for cooking. She always did—but at the moment, she wasn’t wearing easy-care cotton-lycra off the rack from Marshall Field’s.

It was a gown of velvet in a burnished rust shade. Yvette the seamstress had specially dyed the material to complement Celine’s coloring. And now the bodice and skirt were splashed with egg and melted butter and smudged with sugar and flour.

“Oh, no,” Celine groaned. Reaching up reluctantly, she found her cheeks splotched with ingredients, her hair tumbling from the plaits Gabrielle had pinned in place, and her rust-colored, cone-shaped hat thoroughly speckled with batter. “What have I done?”

“Do not concern yourself, milady.” Yolande shook her head with a bemused expression. “Both you and the gown will look as lovely as ever with a bit of attention. Shall we use the pan while it is still hot?”

Celine nodded with a sigh. She wouldn’t have minded the mess so much, except that today was the first time she had worn this new outfit. And she had worn it with the secret hope of seeing Gaston. A silly impulse.
Naive
, he would say.
Childish. Foolish.

She had wanted to look elegant and sophisticated and gorgeous—to knock his socks off while appearing completely disinterested in him. A final show of strength and pride before she left. Celine’s Last Stand.

No such luck. They hadn’t crossed paths once, and now the beautiful dress was all but ruined.
Naive, foolish
...

Turning, she scooped up a spoonful of the crepe mixture. It was too late now to worry about the gown.

Too late for a lot of things.

She swirled the batter across the hot skillet. It sizzled and smelled buttery and sweet. “Careful, Yolande. Keep moving it. Just let the edges get brown ... that’s right.” She stepped back. “Fill all the little holes, and then flip it. No,
wait
—”

She winced as another crepe ended up on the ceiling.

“Drat,” Yolande muttered.

Gabrielle appeared from the larder, triumphantly holding up a small earthenware jar sealed with a cork: “We have honey!”

“But naught to eat with it,” Yolande moaned. “It appears we shall have to scrape our ‘midnight snack’ from the rafters.”

Gabrielle glanced up and shrugged. “No matter. It will complement the ‘caramel cream’ we had to scrape from the wall yestereve.”

She started laughing. Yolande and Celine couldn’t help but join in, and in seconds all three fell into a fit of giggles. Celine could just picture her Cordon Bleu instructors surveying this situation with a mortified twitch of their mustaches. She didn’t remember ever having heard instructions on the handling of runaway crepes. Especially runaway crepes stuck to a flying buttress in a medieval kitchen.

“Yolande,” she said when she had caught her breath, “the movement is side to side, not up and down.”

Gabrielle giggled. “It is up and
gone
in this instance.”

“I will master this yet,” Yolande declared, marching back to the fire with her skillet and a determined expression on her face.

“And I will stir the batter.” Celine raised her spoon in salute, a general marshaling her forces. She applied herself to the bowl, smiling in admiration at her students’ refusal to quit.

A second later, Gabrielle’s giggling stopped abruptly. Celine glanced up.

Gaston filled the doorway, his slightly perplexed gaze fastened on her.

She felt the spoon slide from her fingers. Had he come to see her? Her heart dropped to her toes, then started to pound. What did he want? Why would he seek her out after three weeks apart? Why
now
when it was her last day and she had hoped to see him and then she hadn’t seen him and—

Oh, God, she must look like a mess! An eggy, floury mess, from her skewed hat and tumbling hair to her dirty face and ruined gown. The one she had worn to impress him with her cool elegance.

He didn’t say anything, just stood there looking ... tall, dark and
gorgeous
. His blue tunic and leggings set off his jet-black hair and dark eyes and outlined every solid, muscled inch of him. Even with half a kitchen between them, she was aware of even the most minute details: the stiffness of his back, the darkness that his five-o’clock shadow added to his angular cheeks and jaw, the casual power of his hand resting on the hilt of his knife.

To her chagrin, Celine started trembling, thinking about the easy strength and grace of those hands. Trembling with memories of how he had touched her, so intimately, that long-ago night. Vivid memories that made it feel like minutes ago instead of weeks.

She remembered, too, how he was capable of compassion and tenderness—and how he completely disdained such feelings as feminine and weak. He didn’t believe there
could
be anything beyond a physical connection between men and women. Pleasure was all he wanted. All he would accept. Or give. It made her feel so confused and frustrated and angry that she couldn’t speak.

“Milord?” Gabrielle asked meekly from beside Celine when she remained silent. “Was there aught that you wished?”

“I was looking for ...” His voice trailed off. He didn’t take his eyes from Celine. “Isabeau,” he finished at last.

“She is weaving at her loom in her chamber, milord,” Yolande supplied a bit stiffly. “As she normally does at this hour.”