Forever His (8 page)

The King spun on his heel, his eyes full of fury. “You tread upon the limits of my patience, Varennes. One step more and I will call it treason! The
cost
of your vengeance may be all that you hold dear.”

“Excuse me!” Celine finally managed to interrupt the masculine bluster. “But you both seem to be forgetting something. I am
not
going to marry anybody.”

The two men turned to her with looks of surprise, as if the chair or the table had just spoken.

“Milady, you have no voice in the matter,” the King stated in a patient tone one might use with a child. “The decision has been made by your overlord.”

“By my—my—” Celine stuttered, a wave of feminist pique overwhelming the fear and confusion and everything else she felt. “For the last time, I don’t
have
any overlord! I’m not Christiane and I’m
not
going to marry him!”

“I would not force the lady against her wishes,” Gaston offered gallantly.

“You will
both
do as your King wishes! We shall end this foolishness once and for all. Go, both of you, and garb yourselves properly for your wedding.”

***

She never had a chance to get away.

No chance to run.

And she wasn’t sure
where
she would run if she did. Into the forest? In the snow and freezing cold? She had no idea how many miles it might be to the nearest town. How would she survive? She had never exactly been the L. L. Bean type. Her family had always teased that Celine’s idea of roughing it was a hotel without cable TV.

And even if she could get away, what kind of people might be out there? What might they do to a woman found alone?

Those thoughts chased round and round through her head as she stood at the entrance to the chateau’s small chapel, shivering and alone, facing row after row of unfriendly faces.

This wasn’t a great choice—but it was her only choice.

The animated hum of voices, all speaking that stilted-sounding old French, died down as she stepped forward.

She wore a faded yellow velvet gown, grudgingly loaned to her by one of the maids who had helped her dress. It was too tight and too short, and more than one pair of eyes dipped to look disapprovingly at her immodestly displayed figure, at her ankles, and at her red silk slippers.

They clashed with the dress, but they were the only ones big enough that the women had been able to find.

Or maybe the women had just told her that. She suspected they had done it on purpose, to let her know exactly how unwelcome she was.

She didn’t have a hat or a veil or anything in her hands. No one had offered so much as a single dried-out flower; she had nothing to hold onto to steady her shaking fingers. Her head pounded as hard and as painfully as her rapid heartbeat. She stood there, unable to move, staring at the man who waited at the end of the aisle.

This unpredictable knight who hours ago had touched her, kissed her, caressed her in a way that still made her tremble, then sworn he would never do so again.

This dark lord who despised her.

This man she was about to marry.

A shaft of morning sunlight streamed in through the stained-glass windows behind him, bathing his tall, angular form in swirling jewel tones. The brightness only made him look all the more shadowy and forbidding.

She took a step. One tentative step toward the raven-haired warrior dressed all in black, with a black lion embroidered on his tunic and his black mood showing clearly in his hard features. His eyes—those potent, smoky eyes—captured hers, willing her away, wishing her to drop through the floor and disappear.

On that, she thought desperately, they were in total agreement.

She took another step, trying again to think of some way out of this. A few minutes of wild pleading with the serving women had made her realize that she had better stop sounding like a lunatic. She had no way to prove she was from the future—and no idea what people in this time might do to someone they considered mentally unstable. Images of being carted off to some medieval asylum or burned at the stake as a heretic finally made her shut up.

Everyone from the King to the page boys believed her to be Christiane. For now, she had decided, she had better keep quiet and play along. She had no choice. While she couldn’t begin to figure out how the lunar eclipse had landed her here, some part of her sensed that she might have to go
out
the same way she had come
in
—through the window in Gaston’s bedchamber upstairs.

At least she wouldn’t have to sleep with him. She was grateful for that. He was adamant that he had no intention of consummating their vows.

All she had to do was get through this for a few days, she told herself, taking another step forward, then another, her throat dry as a dust storm.

All she had to do was hold out until the
real
Christiane showed up—which should be any minute now, from the sound of it—and they would discover what a huge mistake had been made. By then, she would have figured out some way to convince them who she really was. Then they would help her find some way to get home. Until then ...

Until then, she was on her own. She would have to rely completely on herself.

For the first time in her life.

She reached the end of the aisle and knelt beside Gaston, feeling the heat—and the resentment—radiating from his large form. The ceremony was a blur, an endless drone of Latin interrupted only by everyone’s impatience when the priest had to repeat each word she was supposed to say, one at a time.

She barely remembered Latin from her lessons in private school, but she was quite sure one of the words she said had something to do with “obedience.”

She grated it out and told herself it didn’t matter, that this was a temporary arrangement and she wasn’t really Christiane so it didn’t really count.

The next thing she knew, Gaston was taking her left hand and slipping a ring on her finger. The gold band felt hot from being held in his hand. Her skin tingled with sensitivity where he had touched her for even that brief second. The weight of the ring seemed awkward and unfamiliar. Heavy.

The mass went on endlessly, until her entire body ached with stiffness and she was sure her knees had rubbed permanent hollows in the stone floor. Everyone in the chapel was joining in a responsive prayer when a harsh whisper from Gaston startled her.

“You have not won yet.”

“What?” she whispered back.

Not moving his head, he slanted her a steely glance. “You and Tourelle have not won yet. I promise you, wench, you will regret your part in this if you do not cooperate with me. I mean to have done with you anon and I
will
marry Lady Rosalind.”

The name arrowed straight into Celine’s memory. Lady Rosalind.

Lady R.

The woman whose initial he would someday carve with his above the chateau doors. Celine surprised herself by whispering her thoughts aloud. “The woman you love.”

“Love?” he replied scathingly. “Love is a weakness for fools who know no better. Whatever I may feel for Rosalind, it is certain what I feel for
you
. Contempt.”

Whether it was something in his voice or something in her, Celine felt another unexpected emotion welling up from the tangled knot inside her. Jealousy. “As if you’re Sir Perfect,” she muttered under her breath. “If you’re so chivalrous and devoted, what were you doing seducing some unknown woman last night?”

“You will find I take my pleasure where I will—a habit which I have no intention of changing. Ever.”

“Fine. I don’t care. It will keep you away from me,”

“On that we are agreed. I intend to apply for an annulment with haste. And you, my deceitful little wife, will help me obtain it. If you do not, I vow that you will discover for yourself why some call me Blackheart.”

Before Celine could reply, the priest cleared his throat.

Only then did she realize the prayer had ended. Everyone must have overheard the last part of their conversation. Her face burned.

“Sir Gaston,” the priest repeated patiently, shifting to French. “You have been pronounced man and wife. It is time to kiss the bride, to seal your vow.”

Gaston turned her to face him, his dark eyes blazing, his fingers burning right through the worn velvet of her yellow gown. As his mouth brushed over hers, Celine couldn’t help the quick clenching of her heart, the heat swirling through her, or the uncomfortable question flitting through her mind.

Which vow?

T
his wasn’t exactly the kind of medieval pageantry she had always imagined.

Celine felt queasy as she stared down into the plate before her—a “trencher,” everyone called it. A square, stale piece of bread that soaked up juices from the chunk of half-charred meat a servant had plunked on it. Beside it sat a bowl of thin soup with bits of something unidentifiable floating on top, and a platter with two partridges, roasted whole.

At least she
thought
they were partridges. She didn’t want to guess what other sort of birds they might be.

The greasy smells alone were enough to make her stomach clench, never mind the tense, stultifying silence that held the room captive.

The great hall overflowed with people celebrating the wedding feast, but only the occasional clink of a knife on a metal platter, the splash of more wine being poured, or a hushed request for salt broke the tomblike quiet. The hearth crackling at her back was the loudest sound in the chamber—and the only warmth.

Celine and her new
husband
—she had to force herself  even to think the word—had been sitting beside each other on a dais, not speaking, for what felt like hours. Gaston slouched in a huge carved chair next to hers, satisfying his apparently ravenous appetite, occasionally glowering at her over the edge of his battered metal goblet.

She mostly kept her eyes on her trencher, thinking about what the King had said before he departed. His Majesty had left for Paris after wolfing down only a few mouthfuls of food, offering one last warning to the newlyweds: they were to do no harm to each other, “lest the offending parties forfeit their holdings.”

Celine wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but it sounded ominous.
Do no harm?

She darted a nervous glance at Gaston.

He was tearing into his partridge, using his knife and bare hands to rip it to pieces with quick, brutal efficiency.

A shudder ran through her. He wouldn’t actually
harm
her, would he? A few hours ago, she hadn’t thought so ... but as she watched him make short work of that poor little bird, his blade flashing in the firelight, she again questioned her sanity in agreeing to this marriage.

But it was too late for second thoughts.

Swallowing hard, she turned her gaze to the people sitting at trestle tables arrayed below the dais. They ate with their fingers or knives, wiping their hands on the tablecloths. Forks apparently had yet to be invented. Huge, wolfish-looking hounds wandered among the tables, snarling over scraps, bones, and other refuse that littered the rushes.

The noise of slobbering, fighting dogs killed whatever was left of Celine’s appetite. She tore off a corner of her trencher, squishing it between her thumb and forefinger into a little cube. As she toyed with her food, she became aware of the stray glances and whispers being cast her way. It looked like she was the main topic of interest among the velvet-garbed guests.

They were no doubt discussing her unusual height, her odd accent, the way she had stumbled through her vows during the wedding ceremony, her decidedly un-nunlike attitude. All of it seemed to be explained away by other guests, however, with knowing looks and a single mouthed word: “Aragon.”

Wherever it was, Aragon was apparently as distant and foreign as Borneo to these people.

Or about as distant and foreign as this place was to her.

She couldn’t help wondering whether the awful food was intended to make her feel unwelcome, like the faded yellow dress and scarlet shoes she wore.

Celine dropped her gaze to her lap, feeling heat prickling at the back of her eyes. What if she were stuck here? What if she couldn’t get home?

What if she didn’t
live
long enough to get home?

In that moment, she would’ve given anything to hear her mother call her “darling, darling.” To have Jackie tease her. To be smothered by parental lectures about her impulsive, flighty ways. Would she ever see them again? They must be frantic over her sudden disappearance. By now they probably had the CIA, the FBI, Interpol, and the French Sûreté all out searching.

But the best cops in the world wouldn’t be able to track her down here. There wasn’t going to be any daring rescue. Not unless she rescued herself.

Blinking back the tears, she sat up straighter. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of getting depressed. She had to focus on making it through this and going home. It was a race against time—and she had no idea how much time she had. How many days or weeks before the bullet fragment in her back shifted enough to kill her.

But she knew the clock was ticking.

“Our wedding feast is not to your liking, my lady wife?”

Startled by Gaston’s low voice, Celine dropped the piece of bread she had been toying with. She turned a wary glance on him. “The food is ... not what I’m used to,” she whispered, mindful of how her voice carried.

He stabbed the little partridge again and ate a chunk of meat from the tip of his knife. “You were accustomed to finer fare at your convent in Aragon?” he asked with a skeptically raised eyebrow, chewing.

She hesitated, trying to imagine whether nuns would have better food, guessing the answer by his attitude. “Uh ... no,” she said after a moment. “I mean ... not really.” She had been playing her role for only a few hours, yet she was already finding it wearying, having to constantly think of what the real Christiane would say, what she would do. “This is just ... different from what I’m used to at home.”

Gaston poured himself more wine from a nearby flask. “Do you miss your home already? I would think a wench such as you would be pleased to escape an impoverished cloister for the comforts of a chateau.”