Forever His (27 page)

“Excellent. Tell Royce to make our
guest
comfortable. I will join you below in a moment.” The news sent a shot of satisfaction through Gaston. At last, he would have this resolved. He closed the door and turned to inform Celine, but she was already hurrying toward him.

“They’re finally here?” she asked excitedly.

“Aye.” He eyed her warily, still unable to sort out all she had told him. “Why does that please you?”

“Because now you’ll finally meet the real Christiane! And you’ll have to believe me!” She rushed past him as if she were going to run right out the door.

He caught her, hooking a finger in the back of her silk garment. “Not so quickly, my headstrong lady. You are not going below garbed in that. In fact, you are not going below at all. You will stay in your chamber until I summon you.”

“But—”

“Do not argue with me. I will not risk letting Tourelle within ten yards of you until I talk to my men and have the truth of his plans.”

Not giving her time for further protest, he escorted her down the hall to her room and sent her inside, unable to resist a solid, possessive little pat on her derriere. She called him something most unladylike as he closed the door, and he went below with a grin. He rather liked her unladylike ways.

He entered the great hall to discover a noisy crowd of his guards, unfamiliar knights, and nuns in their black habits, all of whom were talking at once.

“Sir!” one of his men shouted gratefully from amid the melee. “We could not find you—”

“You will not believe this, milord.” Royce appeared at his side, still wearing his travel garb and looking as if he had endured a hard ride. “Nor will you like it—”

“You will pay for this, Blackheart!” That was shouted above all the clamor, and Gaston recognized the voice, though he had not heard it in months. He turned to find Tourelle, his arms held by two of Gaston’s men, an ugly sneer on his face. “You will pay for your treacherous misdeed with your lands and your
life!
”

Gaston gave him a sardonic stare. “Which misdeed do you speak of, Tourelle?”

“Do not pretend ignorance!” Tourelle snarled. “Tell me what you have done with my Christiane. She disappeared on the eve of the new year, in the middle of the night. Vanished without a trace!”

W
hat the heck was taking so long?

Celine needed no more than five minutes to wash up and get dressed. After that, she sat perched on the edge of her bed, waiting to be summoned below, wearing a velvet gown in deep sapphire blue with silver embroidery on the scoop neck and long, fitted sleeves. Pride and something more made her want to look especially good for this long-awaited moment. The moment when Gaston finally realized just how wrong he’d been about her.

She pictured him looking at her with understanding and trust and ... maybe even that gleaming darkness swirling in his eyes, the expression she had glimpsed once or twice in unguarded moments. The thought made a warm glow settle through her.

Maybe he would even apologize to her, though that didn’t really matter. What she wanted was his trust. Once he gave her that, he might let go of this ridiculous idea that pleasure was all that mattered, that caring and compassion were feminine and weak. Maybe he could even admit that he cared for her, at least a little.

She felt so sure that he did.

And they had so little time left together, only weeks before she had to return home. That is, if she didn’t—

No
, she wasn’t going to think about that. She would make it. With Gaston by her side, she would be strong.

But the minutes dragged by and no one came.

Maybe he was in shock. Meeting the real Christiane and realizing that Celine had been telling the truth all along would be quite a stunner.

Several more minutes dragged by. She couldn’t wait any longer. Leaping up from the bed, she started for the door, trying to think of what excuse she could offer for ignoring his orders. A resounding knock sounded just as she was reaching for the iron latch.

She pulled the door wide, unable to suppress a smile. “You rang?”

Royce stood in the dark hallway holding a torch, looking haggard and tired and not at all amused.

No doubt this was his version of shock.

“Sir Gaston would see you below, milady.”

“Yes, of course,” she said happily, breezing past him out the door.

He practically had to run to keep up with her as she hurried into the darkness, rushed down the spiral stairs that led below, and opened the door into the great hail.

A noisy crowd filled the room, all shouting at one another. There were a half-dozen nuns in long black robes, and Gaston’s guards, and a few men she hadn’t seen before, and various servants who had no doubt been roused from their beds by the tumult, and Gaston, who was having a heated argument with an expensively dressed stranger.

She glanced from one feminine face to another, trying to pick out Christiane.

Standing at her side, Royce cleared his throat loudly, twice. Everyone finally quieted and turned toward her.

A gasp went through the crowd.

Celine looked at Gaston with a tentative smile. “Well, where is she?”

The riot that erupted made the clamor before seem like silence by comparison. Before she had even finished her question, Celine found herself surrounded and practically knocked off her feet by a flock of chattering nuns, all of whom seemed intent on hugging her at the same time. They bombarded her with joyful cries and questions.

“Dear, sweet girl, you are unhurt!”

“Why did you disappear so suddenly?”

“You gave us
such
a fright!”

“How
did
you travel here?”

“How could you leave us that way without a word?”

Caught in the confusion of questions and hugs and pats and squeezes, Celine couldn’t force a word in edgewise. With all of them talking at once, she could hardly even understand what they were saying—but the little she could make out made no sense. “What do you mean? Please stop shouting at me.
Please!
”

She barely managed to disengage herself from the smothering little group when the stranger Gaston had been talking to forced his way forward through the crush and pulled her into his arms, holding her so tight she couldn’t take a breath.

“God’s blood, Christiane, we thought we had lost you!” His voice shook. “Are you all right?” He set her away from him, holding her by the shoulders and looking her up and down. “This cur has not harmed you, has he? How did he spirit you away from us? Tell me what happened!”

Celine stared at the man. A sick dread twisted her stomach.

He had called her Christiane.

But how could they think
she was Christiane?

“W-what are you talking about?” she choked out. “I don’t know you! I’ve never met you before!” With his red hair and blue eyes, he bore a striking resemblance to one of her uncles. She guessed he must be the hated Tourelle.

He clasped her to him again. “Poor, sweet maid. Was he telling the truth of it, then? Did you suffer some sort of blow to your head that stole your memory?”

Celine wrenched herself out of his embrace, backing away from him, from all of them, shaking, the fringes of panic starting to close in. “What ... what is this? Some ... some sort of ... awful joke? Where’s the real Christiane?”

She looked to Gaston for an explanation, but he only regarded her with a hard stare, not a sliver of emotion showing on his rigid features. He stood apart from the crowd, watching them. Watching her.

One of the nuns began to explain. “You disappeared,
ma chère
, just after the great blizzard we encountered. We were bringing you here for your wedding when the storm struck and forced us to take refuge in a forest. We last saw you on the eve of the new year, when you went to sleep in your tent. The next day, when Arlette came to fetch you for morning prayers, you were gone. There were only your footprints in the new snow, leading a few paces from the opening—and there they stopped. It looked as if a great bird had swooped down and carried you off.”

 “You frightened us terribly!” another put in.

“We spent days searching for you, milady,” one of Tourelle’s men added. “We feared that you had become lost in the snows. What happened to you?”

Celine couldn’t answer. She just stared at all of them, thunderstruck. Her shock quickly gave way to fright as the unbelievable truth sank in. Disappeared. Christiane had
disappeared on New Year’s Eve
. The same night she had been brought here from 1993. Which meant ...

What? What did it mean for her chances of getting home? Would the two of them have to switch back the same way? At the same time?

Was that why the eclipse hadn’t worked?

Her mind reeling, she turned blindly to Gaston, instinctively seeking comfort and safety in the one place she might find it with the world spiraling out of control. But the little group around her had closed in so tightly that she couldn’t move toward him.

And he made no move toward her.

“Gaston, you ... you have to believe ...” Celine began, though she barely believed it herself. “She must have been ... struck by the light from the lunar eclipse. Just like I was. She must have been ... sent to the future. I don’t know how this happened, but we ... we’ve traded places somehow!”

His rigid features shifted only slightly, his lips tightening into a hard, cynical line.

He didn’t believe her. He would never believe her. Not now. His expression revealed exactly what he was thinking: that she was Christiane and had been all along. That everything she had told him up until now had been one enormous lie.

“No!” She whirled back to the strangers gathered around her, desperately turning from one concerned face to another. “I’m not Christiane! Can’t you tell? Don’t I look different? Don’t I sound different? I’m
not
Christiane!”

A couple of the women looked at each other, shaking their heads sadly. They clearly thought she had lost her marbles.

“Did Christiane speak English?” Celine demanded. She proceeded to tell them who she was and where she was from and how she had gotten here—all in her best Chicago-accented American English.

“She speaks in tongues!” one nun said, crossing herself.

Another came forward cautiously, as if approaching a wild animal that might bite. “All will be well, Christiane,” she said soothingly. “I have cared for people with terrible injuries and strange brain-fevers before, in the convent’s infirmary. It is possible your mind will return in time.”

 “There’s nothing wrong with my mind!” Celine yelled at them, shifting back to French. She clenched her fists, shaking with helpless frustration. “Don’t you see that this doesn’t make any
sense?
How could I possibly have gotten all the way here from wherever you were camped? And how could I have done it so fast? Even If I
were
Christiane?”

“But you
are
Christiane, dear,” one of the women insisted. She came to stand right in front of her, speaking loudly and distinctly, as if Celine were half deaf or mentally impaired. “Your ... name ... is ... Christiane ... de... la ... Fontaine.”

“I am
not
crazy! Look! Look at this!” Celine opened her mouth and pointed to her teeth. “Did your Christiane have fillings? Did she have a scar on her back?” She was tempted to tear off her dress and show them the mark. Instead she spun to face the crowd, looking for her friends. “Ask Yolande and Gabrielle! Ask them about my scar. And about the strange foods I’ve been cooking and the devices I invented for them and the fact that I’ve had everyone calling me Celine and that I don’t know anything about your way of life in this time. Ask them! Ask Gaston!”

She looked at him again, silently begging him to believe her, to help her.

In return she got only that stoic stare.

His eyes condemned her as a liar. A cunning, skillful liar. The cool contempt in his dark gaze hurt worse than any words, worse than a physical blow. It ripped through her with the same agony and numbing shock as the bullet she had been shot with so long ago. Whatever tiny, fragile spark of trust and caring he might have felt for her was gone.

 Gone.

Snuffed out. Destroyed before it had ever had a chance to burn a little brighter and cast even a small light into the black shadows that cloaked his heart.

He stood there, judged her, and found her guilty. He looked at her the same way he had when she first arrived here.

As an enemy.

A sound of pain escaped Celine’s lips. One of the nuns put an arm around her. “You are overwrought, poor lamb.”

“Aye, it would appear you
are
suffering some strange brain-fever,” Tourelle concurred in that same patronizing, infuriating tone everyone else was using. He stroked her short hair. “But you are most definitely my ward, Christiane. It is true that I do not understand how you came to be here so quickly, though. Do you not remember?”

Celine hung her head, looking at the rush-strewn floor, feeling all the staggering events of the past few hours crushing down on her. The eclipse had failed, Christiane had disappeared into the future, and now she herself was trapped in the past. Trapped in the identity of her ancestor. Trapped in a marriage with a man who looked at her like he hated her.

And she might never be able to get home.

A choking wave of defeat and despair rose in her throat. “No, I can’t,” she whispered. “God help me, I can’t explain what’s happening to me.” She covered her face with her hands.

At the first sign of tears, she was instantly surrounded again by clucking nuns, who patted her cheeks and offered comfort.

“You must be honest with us, my dear,” Tourelle said quietly. “Has Varennes hurt you in any way?”

Had he hurt her?

Celine was so racked with pain that she couldn’t even speak.

But she knew that wasn’t the kind of hurt Tourelle meant, and she would not give him any ammunition to use against Gaston. She shook her head silently.

“There is no shame in admitting the truth,” Tourelle urged. “The fault would not be yours. He claims he has not forced himself on you, or bedded you even once. Is that true?”