Forever His (49 page)

“It’s all ... right, Gaston ... I’m not ... afraid to die,” she gasped, her lashes lifting partway.

“You are not going to die,” he said fiercely.

“When ... you were on the ... battlefield ... the joust—”

“Shh, do not think of what is past. Think only of our future.”

“When I woke ... up in your ... pavilion,” she continued insistently, “I got down on my ... knees and prayed. M-made a bargain with God ... that he should take me ... instead of you ... if you were allowed to live, I would ... die willingly.”

Her words sent a chill down Gaston’s spine. The admission seemed to take what little strength she had left. Her lashes lowered and she fell silent, her breathing short and shallow.

“A noble gesture, milady,” he said hoarsely, “but I have first claim to such a bargain. I offered the same prayer—when I was in Tourelle’s dungeon and knew not what had befallen you.”

Her eyes opened again, wide, shining, impossibly dark against her pale skin. “But you ... survived the ... joust,” she whispered.

The chill he felt became a sleet of anguish. Rage. Fear.

Could God exact so terrible a price for his victory over Tourelle?

“Grateful ...” Her lashes drifted downward, the barest trace of a smile touching her pale lips. “Had the chance ... say ... good-bye.”

“Never!”
he said forcefully.
“That is a word I will never say to you.”

“Will ... wait for you ... until our ... souls reunited. I love ...”

She did not complete the sentence.

“Roussette?”
His voice was a strangled sob.

“Lady Celine!” Brynna laid her hand alongside Celine’s neck. “I cannot find her heartbeat. I cannot ... nay, there it is! She lives,” Brynna said shakily. “She lives.”

Gaston tenderly stroked his wife’s cheek, his tears falling, hot and unchecked. “Heaven will not be enough, my Lady Roussette. I will
not
surrender you. Not for a day. Not for one sweet hour. I will not let you die. I mean to have you in
this
life as well as the next.”

Celine lay silent, still, deathly pale.

“Is there no one who can help her?” he demanded raggedly, not knowing if he was pleading with God or himself or the mystic woman. “No surgeon? No physician skilled enough?”

Brynna shook her head. “I know of none, milord. None who would dare attempt such a task. Not even the barber-surgeon who was in Tourelle’s employ—the man who assisted you—and he is the most skilled I know of in all the region.”

Gaston’s entire body shook with helpless fury. His wife needed him. She was lying there helpless and she needed him and he could not help her.

Think.
He had to think.

Brynna rose and went to the table in the corner, where she had placed her sack of curatives. “I may at least be able to ease her pain if she awakens again.” She poured a cup of wine and carefully began mixing various dried herbs into it.

Gaston swore. He rose from the bed, pacing again, toward the window and back. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, trying to force his thoughts and heartbeat under control. Trying to summon all his powers of reason and logic and cunning. Herbs and wine would not help her. A barber-surgeon would not help her. Celine needed a physician of skill enough to try to save her. Where could they hope to find such a man?

It was an impossible question. There was no answer. She needed a physician of her time. A surgeon of the future.

Dropping his hands in frustration, Gaston turned on his heel, stalking toward the window. There was no way to—

He stopped dead in the middle of the chamber, in the midst of the shaft of moonlight that spilled in through the panes.

That brilliant, silver moonlight. It blinded him, dazzled him. Not an enemy, but an answer from above. Why had he not thought of it before?

The moon
.

The image tumbled through his thoughts and meshed with another, one that had been prickling at the back of his mind for days. He spun toward Brynna, watched her stirring the herbs into the goblet.

The goblet of wine.

Wine
. Which could be used to cleanse wounds. To prevent infection. But only by those who had the knowledge.

And he had met only two people in his life who had that knowledge.

The moon ... and the wine.

“Brynna,” he said abruptly, the idea gaining speed in his head like a charging destrier, “you said that you knew of no other time-travelers—that my wife was the first you ever encountered?”

“Aye, milord.”

He came around the bed so fast she nearly dropped the cup. “But you said that your father knew of
others
.”

“Aye. But, milord, my father has been dead for—”

“But he knew of others.” He grabbed the goblet from her hand, staring at the wine. “
Dozens
of others, you said.”

“Aye.”

“And these people from the future—if they were unable to return home, if they lost any of the belongings they arrived with—”

“As happened often,” Brynna said, her face brightening as understanding dawned, “if we are to judge by my father’s notes—”

“If these people could not go back to their own time ... would they not still be here?”

The question hung like a glittering star in the silence of the night. For one breathless moment, Gaston thought he could feel his heart and Celine’s beating as one, strong and steady.

He shoved the cup back into Brynna’s hands, spun to the bed, placed his hands on either side of his wife’s slender form, kissed her. “Heaven will not be enough, my Lady Roussette!”

“Milord—”

He was out the door even before Brynna had a chance to begin her question.

Celine would not live long enough for a safe return to the future.

But there might be time enough to bring the future to her.

“T
here seems to be much internal bleeding.”

“Progressive circulatory shock. She’ll need a transfusion, Arnaud. By our experiments, you’re type O. Universal donor. You’re elected. Mrs. Varennes?”

“Give me a needle, Thibault, quickly.”

“Mrs. Varennes?”

The strange voices floated in and out of Celine’s dreams ... so loud ... so distracting. She ignored them, floating back down into the comfortable darkness, toward a light that shone so near, beckoning her. A pure white light that drew her in like a loving embrace, to a place filled with gentler voices, with peace, with—

“You have to wake up, Mrs. Varennes.”

A pungent smell waved under her nose yanked her upward, away from the light. She groaned in pain, in protest, wanting to sink back into the numbing blackness. The smell forced her to awareness. She opened her eyes—into light so bright it hurt. Brilliant light, but not the same that had tempted her moments ago. This glare seemed to come from lanterns overhead.

Glass lanterns.

Someone was speaking to her. Shapes moved around her. People. Three. She could make out only their shadows looming around her, like a movie out of focus. But then her eyes adjusted, and the outlines shimmered and resolved into—

Doctors.

They wore masks over their mouths. And coverings like tight white bandanas over their hair. Aprons. And thin gloves ... like surgical gloves. She could hear the metallic clatter of instruments on a tray.

She was hallucinating. She was dead.

But she still felt the pain in her back. So intense she started to cry. She wasn’t dead ... she was in the same bedchamber she had been in before. But not in the bed. She was on a table, draped with sheets.

Where was Gaston?

The same man who had spoken before tried again, leaning closer. “Mrs. Varennes, we’re going to try to help you.”

He had shifted to English.

American English.

“I don’t have any X-rays to go by, ma’am, and I need you to tell me something. Was the bullet fragment lodged near the lumbar artery or the radicular artery? Do you remember what your doctors told you?”

He had a Texas accent.
This was a dream.
Had he said X-rays?
A hallucination. It had to be. She felt a pain in her left arm—a needle puncture. She was too weak to lift her head, to see what was happening, but she recognized the man on her left. From where? Her pain-dazed mind would not supply a name. But the face—

He was the barber-surgeon who had worked on Gaston.

“Mrs. Varennes,” the Texan said insistently, “this is very important and there’s not much time. I’ll be able to locate that fragment much faster and easier if you can help me.”

She struggled to speak. To question them. Her mind was a fog of confusion and pain. Who were they? How did they get here?

Or was she the one who had come to them?
Had she returned to her own time?

She remembered saying good-bye to Gaston. She had said good-bye and that she loved him and then—

“Her pulse has just become very fast, Dr. Ramsey.”

“Was it the lumbar or the radicular?” the Texan demanded urgently. “Did they tell you?”

Yes. Yes, of course they had told her. Her doctors had reviewed her medical condition so many endless times that she had wanted to scream at them and cover her ears.

“The radicular,” she whispered. “W-where ... when—”

“Everything’s going to be all right, ma’am.” He shifted back to French. “Thibault, get ready with suction—the glass pipette there with the inflated leather bulb on the end. Put her out, Arnaud.”

One of them put a cloth over her nose and mouth. A cloth soaked with a strong-smelling liquid.

“Count with me, milady,” the barber-surgeon on her left said. “One hundred ... ninety-nine ... ninety-eight ...”

She had been through enough surgeries to know what the countdown meant. Anesthetic. It was anesthetic.
No!
She didn’t want it. Didn’t want to sink back into the darkness, never knowing if she would awaken again. Not knowing if she had seen Gaston for the last time. Where was—

“Ninety-seven ... ninety-six ... ninety-five ...”

A soft black fog enveloped her.

***

A snore.

The sound she heard was definitely a snore.

It invaded the sea of strange thoughts that drifted lazily through her head. Floating to consciousness, pleased that she had finally identified the sound, Celine tried to focus on it ... grab it ... use it as an anchor.

She felt so woozy. Light-headed. Weightless. Like she had had far too much champagne ... like she was hanging suspended at the peak of a roller coaster, in that no-gravity moment before it plunged down the other side.

Not that the feeling was unpleasant. It was better than the blank nothing she had felt for a long time. In fact, it was rather ... dreamy. Like she was floating around in a warm ocean, safe, letting the tide carry her where it would.

But for some reason, she felt that it was important to open her eyes. Someone had been asking her to do that. A male voice. A very deep, familiar voice, alternately commanding and coaxing softly. She hadn’t been able to respond, though she had wanted to. She couldn’t remember when that had been.

In fact, she couldn’t remember how long she had been asleep.

Curious, confused, she fought her way through the muzzy feeling that clouded her head, up, toward that snore.

Her senses began to clear a bit. Her mouth felt dry, like she hadn’t had anything to drink in a long time. She almost unconsciously braced herself, waiting for pain ... but there was no pain. Only an uncomfortable soreness. In her back. She opened one eyelid just a bit, experimentally.

She was lying in a bed, on her stomach. That made sense somehow, but she couldn’t remember why. She felt weak. As if she would float away if it weren’t for the heavy blankets covering her. Why did she feel so weak?

She opened both eyes, blinking. The first thing she saw was the shaft of bright morning sunlight streaming across the room ... shining ... almost like a halo ... on a tousled dark head just a few inches away.

Gaston.

She smiled. Though it seemed to require an incredible amount of effort to smile. So he was the one snoring.

Strange, she thought sleepily, that he was sitting on a chair. Only his shoulders and head rested on the mattress, one arm beneath his bearded cheek, his other hand clutching a handful of her pillow. The position looked very uncomfortable. He was going to have one heck of a kink in his neck when he woke up.

She moved her hand, reaching toward him, though that, too, seemed to take a huge amount of work. Slowly ... so slowly ... she managed to bridge the distance, and rested her hand lightly over his.

He looked very tired. She hated to wake him up.

She decided not to. It made her feel inordinately happy just to touch him.

After a moment, though, he stirred, his hand moving beneath hers. He squeezed her fingers, murmuring something in his sleep.

Then he went still.

His hold on her hand tightened.

After a second, he lifted his head, the movement so gradual it looked almost reluctant. His dark hair tangled over his forehead, half falling into his eyes.

Those potent, movie-star eyes. They met and held hers.

“Good ... morning,” she whispered, wanting to sit up and kiss him, frustrated that she didn’t have enough strength.

He didn’t say anything for a second. His expression was one of disbelief. He seemed to be holding his breath. He looked exhausted. Haggard. From his rumpled tunic to his tousled hair to the deep lines that bracketed his mouth and eyes.

She blinked at him, still feeling confused, like her head was stuffed with fuzz. “You ... look ... terrible.”

A grin broke across his hard features. It broadened into a smile. Then he laughed. “Aye, Roussette, I am certain that I do.” Raising her hand to his lips, he kissed it soundly, laughing so hard it brought tears to his eyes. “A ride of twelve hours to Agincourt and back followed by three days without sleep oft has a most dire effect upon my beauty.”

“You were ... snoring,” she accused drowsily.

“It was
that
which awakened you?” He closed his eyes, pressing her hand to his bearded cheek, breathing so hard he could barely talk. “I should have thought to try it from the beginning.” He was laughing and crying at the same time. She could feel his warm tears on her skin. “Thank you, God,” he choked out. “Thank you, holy, merciful God in Heaven.”