Forever His (24 page)

He nodded in acknowledgment, but kept gazing at Celine. “What are you cooking this night, wife?”

One of the crepes picked that moment to dislodge itself from the ceiling. It landed at her feet with a plop as if on cue.

“Crepes.”

She kept a straight face and tried to look like this was the normal way to make crepes.

Why
on earth was he always around when she was doing something embarrassing and stupid, like thinking she was being chased by a bear, or running off a cliff, or having a panic attack, or ruining her best dress and wreaking havoc in his kitchen?

He frowned down at the flattened piece of pastry. “I see.”

Neither of them said anything more for a long moment. He didn’t look up. She didn’t move. She felt frozen—no, not frozen.
Electrified
. Stunned breathless merely because they were in the same room together for the first time in days.

Finally he turned away without looking at her again. “
Bonsoir.
”

Once he was gone, logical thought returned, gradually. And with it a fresh flood of hurt and outrage.

“So it’s Isabeau tonight?” Celine wondered aloud. “He’s been retiring to his chamber with a different girl each night this week, hasn’t he?”

She had heard some of his men chuckling about the way their lord passed his nights by “playing tables with pretty wenches.”
Is that what they call it in these times?
she had thought, something inside her clenching in a painful little twist. She had tucked the term away in her mental medieval dictionary, along with “se’nnight” and “raiment” and “destrier” and “trencher.”

Yolande hung her skillet on an iron hook beside the hearth. “Milady,” she said gently, “it is the way he has always been, and men find it difficult to change—”

“None of his others are half so fair as you, milady,” Gabrielle said staunchly. “Mayhap, in time, he will come to realize how fortunate he is to have you as his wife.”

In time
, Celine thought. “Yes, I’m sure,” she said numbly.

Yolande came to Celine’s side, her stern features softened by a warmth and sadness Celine hadn’t seen before. “Lady Celine, do not let it hurt you. Men speak oft of loyalty but give little to their wives. They have naught but stone where their hearts should be. It is the way with
all
of them.”

The older woman’s eyes were glistening with sympathy and, Celine sensed, a pain that was both old and deep.

“It’s all right.” Celine said with a shrug. “He’s free to do all the wenching he wants. I don’t care.”

Yolande shook her head. “You are most generous and forgiving, milady. Mayhap too much so. A woman with a heart so tender cannot help but have it hurt ... if she entrusts it to a man.”

“I have
not
entrusted anything to anyone.”

Gabrielle expressed her opinion more plainly, darting a glance at the door and speaking in a whisper. “Even so, you deserve better treatment than such as our lord has offered, milady. He has not given you a fair chance.”

Celine’s head and heart were swirling with confused thoughts and feelings, and Yolande’s and Gabrielle’s support only added one more: she never would have believed it when she first arrived here, but Gaston’s loyal retainers had started to give her their respect. Even their friendship.

But she didn’t have a speck of either from their lord. And never would.

And the truth was that she wanted both ... and so much more.

She felt a rush of heat prickling behind her eyes. “I’m sorry, but would either of you mind if we ... we finish our lesson another time? I’m tired. I think I’ll go up to bed.”

“Of course, Lady Celine,” Gabrielle said. She dropped into a deep curtsy.

It was a gesture of honor and regard that she hadn’t used before.

“Sleep well, milady.” Yolande curtsied as well, as low as if she were bowing before a queen.

Celine wanted to hug them, but she didn’t trust herself to linger. She barely managed to make it to the door before tears started to slide down her cheeks.

And as she dashed through the darkened great hall, she realized that she had just made yet another mistake: she had thought for a moment that they really could finish their cooking lesson another day—but she had just seen Yolande and Gabrielle for the last time.

And Gaston.

And the lesson would remain unfinished forever.

Because tonight was the night.

***

Celine wished she had a wristwatch. Even a wrist-sundial would do. But that wouldn’t work at night. Maybe a wrist-moondial? It was next to impossible to tell time here, and she had to get this exactly right. Down to the split second.

To keep calm, she kept busy: snuggling Groucho one last time; writing a note to Yolande to ask her to take care of him, hoping someone would be able to make sense of her handwriting; changing into her amber-colored silk-and-lace teddy. Her palms were sweating. She started breathing deeply, in to the count of four and out to eight, in to eight and out to sixteen.

Over the past few days, Celine had started paying attention to the church bells that rang throughout the countryside, marking the divisions of the working day:
prime
sounded at six A.M. to urge people from their beds for prayer and work;
nones
at noon, when the day’s main meal was eaten; and
couvre-feu
at eight, time to bank the fire and go to bed.

She and Yolande and Gabrielle usually started their cooking lessons after
couvre-feu
, and she had been going to bed at about ten—not that she was exactly sure it was ten, but it felt like ten. Which was why, at the moment, she was pretty sure it was about eleven.

For someone who was used to digital clocks and watches with second hands and last-minute plane flights and thirty-minute workouts and overnight mail service and two-minute microwave meals and faxes and modems and the dizzying pace of life in Chicago and New York and Paris and London, it was frustrating and weird to never know exactly what time it was.

On the other hand, it was kind of nice.

She set Groucho down in front of the hearth, folding her note and tucking it beneath the pillow he had been using as a bed. As she stood and picked up her cloak, she felt a painful tug at her heart. It was going to be hard to leave her kitten behind. And her hats. She glanced at the lovely little collection she had gathered, stacked on a trunk at the foot of her bed, all in wonderfully outlandish shapes and colors.

And Yolande and Gabrielle. She would miss them, too. It was surprising how attached she had become to this place and its people in only a matter of weeks. She would miss Etienne, with his youthful enthusiasm and wide-eyed hero worship. And Captain Royce and his sense of humor ...

And Gaston. Who was she kidding? Fool that she was, she would miss Gaston. More than she had ever missed anything or anyone in her life.

With a resolute shake of her head, she forced that feeling to the smallest, deepest, most secret reaches of her heart. Putting on her cloak to conceal the teddy she wore, she picked up a candle and tiptoed out into the hall, toward the guest room a few doors away—and her “window of opportunity.”

Her mental clock was already ticking past eleven.

When she opened the door, the first thing she noticed was the light of the waning full moon seeping through a crack in the shutters. She blew out the candle in her hand, welcoming the darkness—because darkness prevented her from seeing the bed, remembering how she had first awakened in it, nestled in Gaston’s arms. The way he had teased her. Their first kiss ...

She moved past the bed to the window, trying to think of every detail of what she had been doing in 1993 when she had been sent here: standing just a few inches from the glass, looking at the lights in the town below, when the moonlight struck her and she fell backward into—

The year 1300. She stepped closer to open the shutters, but found a trunk in her way, beneath the window right where she needed to stand. That damned trunk again. She remembered it from before. She had knocked her knee against it very painfully when she had scrambled out of Gaston’s arms. Well, it was in the way and it would have to go.

She bent over and tried to push it, but it didn’t budge. “What’s in this thing?” she wheezed. “Bricks?”

She decided it might be easier to move if she took out some of the heavy contents. Unfortunately, she discovered it was locked.

She muttered one of Gaston’s favorite medieval curses under her breath. All she could do was throw her entire weight against the trunk, so she did, straining with the exertion. Slowly, the heavy object began to inch along the wall. The clank of metal against metal helped her guess what was in it: probably plates and candlesticks and other valuables, of silver or gold. Without banks, she had learned, medieval tycoon types relied on safe, portable investments that could be melted down.

With the trunk out of the way, she opened the shutters. Moonlight spilled into the chamber, making her blink in the brightness. The eclipse had already begun, a small slice of black eating into one edge of the moon’s surface.

Breathing hard, she let her cloak slide from her shoulders, and waited for midnight. Her heart started pounding. Had she thought of everything? She couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

When she lifted her hand to dab at perspiration on her upper lip, a sparkle in the moonlight caught her eye, and she realized she hadn’t thought of everything.

Her wedding ring. She was still wearing the gold band Gaston had placed on her finger when they said their vows.

With shaking fingers, she took it off, stepped away from the window, and set it on the trunk. She had to duplicate exactly the moment she had been sent here from 1993. She could not let anything medieval hold her back.

Turning again to the window, she waited, breathing, thinking of home. Of all the reasons she desperately wanted to go
home
. To have her operation. To be safe again. To see her family, her overprotective mom and dad, and Jackie, and her brother-in-law, Harry, and sweet little Nicholas. She thought of her friends, her fiber-arts studio, her car. Movies. Television.
Chocolate
. Her condo with its central heating and well-stocked fridge. Was someone taking care of her cats?

Suddenly a ray of eclipsing moonlight glanced off the stained glass, showering her in blinding brilliance. The same breathless tingle she had felt on New Year’s Eve swept over her

And then came the dizzying feeling of the floor shifting out from beneath her.

“G
ood night, milord. I thank you.” The dark-haired beauty picked up her slippers and delicately covered a yawn as Gaston escorted her out the door of his bedchamber.

“Nay, it is I who thank you, Isabeau.”

“The pleasure was mine, milord.” She smiled shyly. “Though upon our next meeting, I cannot promise to succumb to you so easily. At least not so many times.”

He grinned. “I am sorry if I was ruthless with you tonight. And that I allowed the hour to grow so late. I did not realize I had kept you occupied so long.”

“‘Twas a most pleasant occupation, sir. Whenever you wish another match, please seek me out. This was so much more enjoyable than an evening at my loom.”

“Mayhap I shall.” He nodded absently as he led her through his solar, then bade her farewell at the door that led into the great hall. “Sleep well.”

“I am certain I shall.” She curtsied. “Our games have worn me out completely.”

Gaston closed the solar’s door as she departed, resting his forehead against the smooth wood, shutting his eyes. After a moment, a low groan of pure wretchedness slipped out of him.

Day by day, hour by hour, he was slowly going mad.

No matter how many nights he spent this way, with how many different women, none of it took the edge off his restlessness. He guessed the hour to be near midnight, but he was not even tired.

Straightening, rubbing his hands over his eyes, he walked back into his bedchamber, closing the door behind him. He went to the table before the hearth, picked up the wooden game board, and slid the ivory and black playing pieces back into their leather pouch, along with the dice. It was useless to keep trying to pass the nights this way.

The rounds of tables with pretty company distracted him barely a whit. None of the women raised his interest in the least. In truth, his favorite game merely served to make him agonizingly aware of what he would rather be doing, and with whom.

For three weeks now he had thrown himself into all manner of activities, but he could not wear himself out no matter how he tried. The days he spent at hunting, hawking, sword practice. And the nights ...

The nights were unendurable.

All because of that one night in the forest snows when he had watched his wife blaze so gloriously in his arms.

That reckless encounter had set free a simmering need and an irksome tangle of unwanted
feelings
that made all the days and nights that had followed pure torment.

To his annoyance, he had discovered that even food and wine had lost their appeal. What he needed was a long, cool draught of Christiane.

He opened the trunk at the foot of his bed and tossed the game board and pouch inside, letting the lid fall with a thwack. Saints’ blood, why did she have to be so damnably stubborn in refusing his offer to stay with him? It was a perfectly reasonable offer. He would take care of her, protect her. She would want for naught.

To think of the passion and pleasure they could share, if only she would relinquish her misguided loyalty to Tourelle and her naive, false notions about love. The image of her in his bed made him want to shout his longing from the parapet of his highest tower.

She was his, by God.
His.
She belonged to him in a way that had naught to do with kings or vows or laws or so foolish a female notion as love. They were a match, a pair, bound together by a far stronger force, one forged of mutual desire and a potent attraction deeper than any he had ever felt. It was the sort of bond a man could depend upon, unlike something so vague and fleeting as emotion.