Forever His (7 page)

She had no choice but to go with him, limping, barefoot, the stone corridor cold beneath her feet, her hair a wild tangle that clung to her tear-dampened cheeks. He walked quickly, making her keep up with him.

Her mind and body had gone almost numb with confusion and fear. But beneath the terror, some part of her brain was still working. She was vividly aware of her surroundings: the biting cold of the air, the heat of the torch in Gaston’s hand, the rough cloth of the shirt she wore, the tangy, masculine scent of him that clung to the fabric.

All her senses told her in no uncertain terms that this wasn’t a dream.

But if it wasn’t a dream, then what in the name of God was it?

She was still in Manoir La Fontaine—but she wasn’t. There were too many things missing from the hallway. Things that had been there only hours before—moments before?—when she had walked to her room.
Things that couldn’t have just disappeared.
The brilliantly colored tapestries. Paintings and statues and gilt-framed mirrors. Carpets. Lights. The letters G and R carved over the doorways. Antique tables. A phone. All vanished.

At the end of the corridor, Gaston thrust open a door and led her down a spiral stair. One that hadn’t been there before. It made her feel disoriented and dizzy all over again. She stumbled on the smooth stone steps, but Gaston held her upright and kept moving downward. Then her memory supplied the reason she had never seen these stairs before: the chateau had been bombed in World War II and this section had been destroyed.

The steps beneath her feet, connecting the upper floors to the ground level of the chateau,
hadn’t been there since 1942
.

The thought sent her mind and senses reeling. Anxiety knotted in the back of her throat and choked off her breath. If Gaston hadn’t been firmly in control, she would have tripped and fallen. Her lungs burned for air, but she couldn’t even manage to inhale.

When they reached the main level, Gaston turned abruptly, opened another door, pulled her into a shadowed room lit by torches. He finally stopped. Celine’s eyes widened.

She gasped a shuddery throatful of air—then started to hyperventilate.

It was a cavernous chamber. A ... a huge ...
great hall
. Like something out of a movie. Camelot. Robin Hood. As they stepped inside, there was a sudden din of dogs barking and men rousing themselves from sleep.

A fire burned in an enormous hearth at one end. Huge axes and swords hung on the walls. There was straw all over the floor. Long wooden tables and benches were strewn about. And people were strewn about, sleeping on pallets along the walls. On the floor. On the benches and tables. All of them wearing clothes like Gaston’s. And there were metal mugs and wooden plates and food scraps and discarded bones scattered over the floor. And dogs sleeping next to and half on top of people. It was cold and damp and drafty and it smelled like smoke and beer and roasted meat and it was all unmistakably ...

Real.

Celine felt her legs give way and a dark gray fog closed in from the edges of her vision. She almost fainted, but Gaston kept her on her feet, shifting his grip to hold her up with an arm around her waist.

“Do not think a display of feminine weakness will sway me, demoiselle,” he said coldly. “You will face your King and explain yourself to him.”

Celine didn’t reply. She couldn’t. All she could manage in that moment was to focus on just ... drawing her ... next ... breath. Gaston’s arm around her felt solid and strong, and she couldn’t keep denying what she was seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, breathing. She was standing there ...
not
dreaming,
not
crazy.

In the year 1300.

Gaston let her go and she swayed unsteadily. He threaded his way through the sleeping people. Many had already heard their lord’s arrival and were getting to their feet. Others sat up at the sound of Gaston’s voice, groaning, looking groggy. He shook some of them by the shoulders. “Awaken!” His words echoed off the distant ceiling. “Our guest from Aragon is arrived at last!”

Celine found herself almost instantly surrounded by men and women rubbing the sleep from their eyes and looking at her with bleary—and decidedly hostile—stares.

“Royce, Marcel,” Gaston said to two of the men as he pushed his way back to her side through the gathering crowd. “Rouse the guards and search the grounds. It seems our friend Tourelle has some scheme in mind, for he sent his beloved Christiane in alone. The cur no doubt lies in wait nearby to see whether his ruse has succeeded. Find him.”

The men hurried off, and others with them. Celine realized with a sinking feeling that the faces of the people surrounding her had become even less friendly. She tried to get her careening mind and wild heartbeat under control. She had to pull herself together. She had to get these people to believe her!

“W-wait a minute,” she said, forcing words past her dry throat at last. “I’m not who you—”

“Save your lies.” Gaston took her arm again. “Mayhap they will amuse the King. Let us see what he thinks of your sudden arrival, my
innocent
Lady Christiane.” Pulling her with him, he turned and headed toward the rear of the chamber, his people moving aside to clear a path.

A strapping blond teenager ran ahead to open a door on the far side of the hall, near the hearth. Celine’s panic meshed with a fresh wave of shock as the significance of what Gaston had said sank in.

The King?

As in the
King of France?

He led her through the door into a side chamber. This one had a smaller fireplace, a large glass window on one side, and two men sitting on stools in front of yet another door. They were dressed differently from everyone else, in white-and-blue velvet tunics. Both were dozing but scrambled to their feet when Gaston entered.

“Milord?” one of them queried. They blinked at her, looking her over from short hair to bare toes with curious expressions.

“My betrothed is arrived,” Gaston said dryly. “And as you might tell from the state of her garb, all is not well. I would speak with the King.”

“Please, please listen to me!” Celine’s voice was as thready as her pulse. She tried to unfasten herself from Gaston’s hold. “I am
not
your betrothed!”

None of the men paid any attention to her. The guards were obeying Gaston’s request. One opened the door behind their stools and disappeared, while the other shooed out the throng of whispering, uneasy people who were trying to crowd in from the great hall.

When the room was emptied and the door closed, Gaston finally let her go, leaning against a nearby trestle table. He smiled at her, a smile that was predatory, triumphant—and much more unpleasant than the openly hostile stares the people in the hall had given her. Somehow, that one look made her feel more alone and afraid than any of the other mind-numbing blows she had suffered tonight.

“Stop looking at me that way! Please, you don’t understand! I’m not—”

The door on the other side of the chamber suddenly swung open and Celine turned to find herself facing a tall, fair-haired man not much older than Gaston. Only the velvet shirt and leggings he wore set him apart from the rumpled, weary bunch in the hall. His blue eyes narrowed as they fastened on her. “Lady Christiane?”

“Sire, I ask pardon for disturbing you at this hour.” Gaston stepped forward and dropped to one knee. When Celine didn’t move, he yanked her down beside him. “Apparently, my liege,” he continued, slanting her an irritated glance, “this
innocent
is so unschooled in worldly ways that she does not know enough to bow before her liege.”

“Leave us.” The King motioned curtly to his guards. He kept studying Celine as Gaston rose. She was trembling too hard to get up until the King took her hand and helped her to her feet. “Milady, what strange garb is this you wear?” He turned his gaze to Gaston. “And where is Tourelle?”

“Precisely what I would wish to know, sire,” Gaston said darkly, not giving Celine a chance to speak. “I have my men searching for him even now. I awoke not an hour ago to find my betrothed in my bed, wearing a garment so shocking I will not shame her by forcing her to show it to you. Tourelle obviously thought to trick me into compromising her.”

Celine felt a cold lump in her stomach as she found herself the object of yet another angry glare, this one more regal and intimidating than any of the others.

“Is this true, Lady Christiane?” the King demanded.

She summoned what shreds of courage she could. “I’m ... I’m
not
Lady Christiane. My name is Celine and I—”

“She feigns madness, sire. She claims to be from a place called ‘Chicago’. But she admitted to me that she
is
the Fontaine girl. She cannot explain how she came to be in my bed. And one has only to look at her and hear her to know her identity.”

“Aye,” the King agreed, nodding. “She looks most like the description I received. But why would Tourelle wish you to bed her? He was as much opposed to this marriage as you.”

Celine tried to get a word in, but they talked right over her.

“True, sire—or so we believed. He obviously had time to devise a plan while journeying here from Aragon. Had he managed to overcome my vow not to bed her, the betrothal would have been binding and an annulment impossible.” Gaston folded his arms over his chest. “My new wife would inherit all, were some untimely fate to befall me. Tourelle no doubt intended to bide his time and make it seem accidental, to avoid your wrath. He probably promised the wench some reward for her role in it.”

Celine gaped at him as he related his theory. At least now she understood why he had so suddenly turned furious at finding her in his bed! Because he had sworn
not
to make love to her—to Christiane, that was. He thought she was involved in some enemy’s plot against him.

Both men looked at her expectantly.

“Well?” Gaston prompted when she didn’t say anything. “Do you still insist on your deception? Do you still claim you are from this place that does not exist?”

She glanced from one glowering male to the other, her heart hammering. She was finally being given a chance to squeeze a word in edgewise and explain—but how could she?

How could she explain the way she had suddenly appeared in Gaston’s bed? She didn’t understand it herself! She could only guess that it had something to do with the lunar eclipse. That ray of blinding moonlight had somehow snatched her world from beneath her feet and landed her here.

But how could she make them believe she was from almost
seven hundred years in the future?
She had no proof. No way to convince them. No one to back up her wild-sounding story.

Swallowing hard, she dropped her gaze to the rush-strewn floor, looking at her bare feet. “No ... I-I mean ... yes ... I ...” Her voice dissolved into a whisper as the full truth of her predicament hit home. “I’m ... I’m from a country that won’t even be discovered for almost ... two hundred years.”

It overwhelmed her to think about it. She had no idea how to get home. No way to get help. No way to get in touch with her family. She was in a time when there were no phones, no electricity, no cars, no planes. No refrigeration, no running water, no sanitation, no technology, no medicines—

Celine started to hyperventilate again.

No doctors.

At least no neurosurgeons.

And if she didn’t get home fast, she was going to be in far worse trouble than she was in now.

Her mind reeled. How long did she have? Months? Weeks? How long before the bullet fragment in her back shifted enough to kill her? If she didn’t return to her own time and have the operation she needed ...

She was going to die.

“Do you see, sire?” Gaston asked with satisfaction when she didn’t say anything more. “She is caught in her scheme and cannot admit to it. Tourelle does not want peace. He wants my blood. Since you have prevented him from getting it by war, he will be equally happy to obtain it by treachery—using her as his weapon.”

“I am not so sure, Gaston,” the King replied. “Lady Christiane, how did you come to be here? Where is the rest of your traveling party?”

“I ... I don’t know. I don’t know how I got here or anything else.” She raised her head, tears sliding down her cheeks. “Except that I’m not who you think I am. I’m not Christiane. My name is
Celine
Fontaine. Please, you must believe me. I’m from ... from a place that’s far away and I
have
to get home.”

“Hmm.” The King raised one eyebrow. “Gaston, there is a possibility you have not thought of. Mayhap it was not the snow that delayed her arrival—their caravan might have encountered some misfortune along the roads. She acts most like one whose memory has been affected by a blow to the head.”

Gaston’s expression revealed what he thought of that idea. “If that is true, sire, how did she find her way here alone? Nay, she must have had someone instructing her.”

The King sighed heavily. “It is no matter. The bride is arrived and the wedding will proceed.”

Celine inhaled so sharply the cold air hurt her lungs. “No! I can’t—”

“My liege!” Gaston protested. “You cannot ask me to marry her now! Knowing that there is at least suspicion—”

“It is mysterious how she came to be here, aye. But there is no point in delaying. You are here, your betrothed is here, does it matter how you came to be together?”

Celine blushed furiously and Gaston grimaced at the King’s choice of words. “But, sire, surely we should await Tourelle’s arrival to have the truth of the matter.”

“The truth of how she came to be here will not change what I have decreed shall be,” the King replied hotly. “All is in readiness and I must return to Paris this day. Before I leave, I would see peace assured. The wedding shall take place as planned this morning.” He turned to go back to bed.

“My liege!” Gaston said in a rough-edged voice. “I will wed this girl as you command, but I vow to you again that I will not consummate the marriage. I will expose Tourelle for the murdering bastard he is—and then I will have an annulment. I
will not rest
until I have both vengeance and justice. At any cost!”