Forever His (30 page)

“A
month
?” she cried. “But that’s—”

“I had planned to move there permanently in the spring. But the worst of the season’s snows are past, so there is no reason to delay. We shall leave with a few guards, and the servants will follow when they have packed the furnishings.”

Celine’s jaw fell inch by inch as he said all this.
Permanently?
She remembered overhearing a few servants talking about moving in the spring, but she hadn’t paid much attention to it.

Since she had expected to be long gone by then.

“But ... you mean we won’t be coming back here at all?”

“Nay.” He gave her a nudge.

She remained rooted to the step. “But I can’t—I mean I have to—”

“Move,
ma dame
.”

His granite-hard tone left no room for argument. She turned and started upward again, feeling like she was being marched off to her own execution. “Gaston, please, I know you don’t like me to keep saying this, but I’m not who you think I am, and—”

“I know.”

Startled, she stopped and turned again, unable to believe her ears. “You know what?”

He shifted the torch to his other hand and leaned one muscled shoulder against the stone wall. “I spoke with the sisters from Aragon after supper last night.” His voice was mild, but his eyes were piercing. “They said they knew naught of you ever being called Celine by anyone. Or of the silver on your teeth. Or the strange foods that you have been cooking. They said you had always been useless in the convent’s kitchen, unable to so much as boil a chicken. And I showed them some of the odd devices you have invented. They had never seen aught like them. In the convent or anywhere in Aragon.”

Celine felt hope well inside her. “So you know that I—”

He cut her off. “But all of that could merely have been a ruse, intended to mislead me and make me drop my guard. The nuns are of the opinion that it is all somehow related to your supposed brain-fever, but I tend to believe that you deliberately planted these clues to make me think you were someone other than Christiane, Tourelle’s ward.”

She made a sound of frustration through her teeth. “You are
the
most suspicious, mistrustful man ever to set foot on the face of the earth.”

“A virtue that has kept me alive through many years and many enemies.”

That sounded like his last word on the subject. Celine would have turned and started climbing the stairs once more, except that his eyes held her captive.

His potent gaze burned into her as he spoke again, his voice dropping low and deep. “But they said that you had no scar on your back. There was no accident. No mark. Ever.”

Hope blazed through her heart all over again. She could see him struggling with it, see him almost believing the unbelievable, his face cast into harsh angles, his jaw rigid.

He stared at her, as if he could know her true thoughts once and for all if he just looked long and hard enough.

She swallowed with effort, whispering, “My scar couldn’t be related to any sort of brain-fever. And it’s not something I could have faked. It’s not a clue, it’s the truth. It’s a bullet wound—from a weapon in the future.”

Her voice broke whatever spell held him there. He tore his gaze from hers, glancing upward as if pleading with God, then down at the stone beneath their feet. “Madness,” he muttered under his breath. Stepping around her, he led the way up the stairs. “We are leaving, wife. Follow me. Unless you wish to be carried.”

Celine followed. There was nothing more she could do to fight him. Or convince him. She had said all there was to say. He would have to believe her or not, trust her or not ... care about her or not.

But he would have to make those choices for himself.

She caught up with him and they walked in silence to the bailey, side by side. Celine squinted in the blinding light of the winter morning as they left the keep. Two dozen well-armed men awaited, some mounted, some leading packhorses. Etienne stood holding the reins of a dappled gray mare.

“I have made certain all your belongings are here, milady,” he said, patting the bundles tied to the saddle. “Gabrielle finished packing for you.”

“Thank you, Eti—oof!” Celine was caught unaware by Gaston’s hands closing around her waist. He lifted her into the saddle without looking at her. His touch didn’t linger a second longer than necessary. As soon as she was securely seated, he turned and stalked to the head of the line, leaving her to deal with a flush of sensual heat that warmed her body and a wildly erratic pulse. He swung into the saddle of his huge black destrier.

Royce saluted him from beside the gate. “Farewell, milord. Godspeed.”

“Keep a sharp eye upon your neighbors,” Gaston suggested dryly. “I am entrusting this keep to you, Royce—and I expect to find it in the same condition when next I see it.”

“The same or better,” Royce assured him with a rakish grin.

Acknowledging his captain’s salute, Gaston nudged his mount forward. The clatter of hooves and the jangle of weapons created metallic thunder as the riders crossed the drawbridge.

Just on the other side, Gaston turned in the saddle, taking one last, quick backward glance at the keep.

Celine felt a tug at her heart. Even from her position a few horses behind his, she could see in his eyes, in the tense set of his jaw, that he did not want to leave this place.

She had seen almost the same look moments ago, when he had gazed up at her on the stairwell.

But it lasted only a second before he turned forward and set his heels to his horse, his back rigid.

As her mare trotted along in the middle of the line, Celine noticed a sound coming from one of the baskets tied to her saddle. She unlaced the top and made a little exclamation of surprise when Groucho batted at her hand.

She bestowed a grateful smile on Etienne, who rode beside her. “Thank you, Etienne. That was very thoughtful of you.”

He nodded toward the head of the line and spoke in a whisper, as if revealing something he was not supposed to reveal. “It was not I who thought to bring along your kitten, milady.”

Celine followed his glance, warmth tingling through her as she studied the dark knight who was leading them into the forest, his black hair glistening in the sun.

But even while his kind gesture pleased her, she couldn’t shake the certainty that every mile they were about to travel would not take them farther from trouble, but deeper into it.

And God only knew what Tourelle was going to do when he found out they had left.

***

Trying to supervise both the preparations for supper and the moving of furnishings, Yolande had her hands full. Especially since a holiday mood had descended upon all and sundry once word came that they were moving to their grand new home earlier than expected.

At least the upper chambers were almost emptied. She bustled through the door of the last one, at the end of the corridor, past a man who was carrying out the footboard from a bed.

“Step careful, there,” she instructed. “I will not have any marks on milord’s fine goods.”

“Yolande, have you the key to this?” Gabrielle asked from the far corner of the chamber. She was kneeling beside a trunk that had been pushed against the far wall.

“Oh, aye, that is a heavy one, is it not? We shall have to take out some of the silver before it can be moved below.” Yolande walked over, looking for the key among the dozens on the iron ring that hung at her waist. “I think this is the one.”

She inserted the small key, opened the trunk’s lock, and lifted the lid.

But silver was not all they found inside.

“My oath, what is
that?
” Gabrielle asked in wonderment.

“I do not know. I have never seen aught like it in my life.” Yolande picked up the odd object that sat atop the pile of plates and goblets and candlesticks.

It was like a leather pouch, but square in shape, and made of a very strange sort of leather—with a texture like fish scales, in a garish pink color Yolande had never seen before. And it had no drawstrings, but handles. And what looked to be a seam on top, with a scrap of metal attached.

“Why would someone make a pouch and then sew the top closed?” Gabrielle wondered, lifting the bit of metal to examine the seam.

“I do not think we should—”

Even as Yolande pulled the odd pouch away, Gabrielle’s hold on the metal scrap caused the seam to open with a soft ripping sound.

“Fie, Gabrielle. Look at what you have done.”

“Nay, Yolande, I think it is
meant
to open in that way. Look!” She pulled on the bit of metal again and the seam closed, making the same sound. She opened and closed it again and again. “See how quickly and smoothly it works? How clever!”

“This must be some strange treasure that milord purchased.”

“But why would he place it in here? He has trunks for valuables in his own chamber.”

“Aye,” Yolanda agreed, puzzled. “We keep only dented or damaged pieces of silver in here, the ones not fit for display. And I have not opened the trunk in months. I thought I had the only key.”

“So how could this have come to be in a locked trunk?” Gabrielle toyed with the fastening again. “And what
is
it?”

She opened it, peeked inside, glanced up at Yolande. Then curiosity got the better of them both. They could not resist examining the contents.

The pouch contained a jumble of wondrous strange things that made them gape in astonishment. There was an elongated square of the same pink leather, wrapped about a neatly trimmed sheaf of the whitest parchment Yolande had ever seen. A hat, made of unfamiliar slippery-shiny material, blue with a red letter on it. A small book, bound in paper rather than leather, with no illuminations—but it had impossibly tiny, neat lettering on its pages. A ring of small, flat objects that almost could have been keys. Two circles of what looked like black glass, joined together, with long, slender side pieces that folded in and out on ingenious tiny hinges. A heavy black box no larger than Yolande’s hand, impregnated with shaped bits of glass, with a strap attached. And a number of things she could not even begin to identify.

At the bottom of the pouch was another elongated square of the same pink leather, fatter than the first. It had a simple gold fastening rather than the seam-that-was-not-a-seam.

Gabrielle picked it up and opened it, eyes alight. Inside, tucked into slits, were neat rows of flat, elongated metal squares—except that they were not metal. They were hard and flexible and shiny, but they were not metal. They had more of that impossibly tiny, neat writing on them. One had a silver square in the corner—with a rainbow trapped inside it!

“Mercy of Mary, Yolande, what
are
these?”

“I do not think we are meant to be looking at this,” Yolande said, trying to take it from her friend’s hands.

“But look at this one!” Gabrielle pulled out one of the squares, thinner than the rest. It had a miniature portrait in the lower left corner—a miniature smaller than any Yolande had ever seen, of incredible lifelike detail, painted with such skill that it was impossible to see the brush strokes.

And although the painter had made his subject look too pale, and her hair was in disarray, and her garb most unusual, her identity was unmistakable.

It was Lady Celine.

H
e did not wish to stop here. He would not be welcome. Nor did he welcome the memories this place held. Gaston slowed Pharaon to a walk, shifting uncomfortably in the saddle as he caught sight of the sprawling chateau that loomed out of the forest an arrow’s flight away. He had planned never to set foot here again. But he had someone other than himself to think of and no other choice for a place to rest.

He reined his stallion to a halt, waiting for the others to catch up with him, shrugging out of his cloak. The evening was unseasonably warm. The setting sun cast the keep’s turrets and battlements in shadows and darkness, a brooding contrast to the pleasant breeze that rustled through the trees, carrying the first scents of spring and rebirth: wet grasses and melting snow and swollen streams.

That there should be such life in this place of death seemed a bitter jest. Even the towns and fields they had passed through, so ravaged by Tourelle’s forces last autumn, had been swiftly rebuilt, repaired, renewed. All was as it had been.

Yet it would never be the same again.

The injustice of it gnawed at his gut. The cold indifference of fate galled him. All his life he had indulged every whim, emptied every cup, tumbled every willing wench, fought for every greedy lord willing to pay his price. Never had he given one thought to the future. Not one. Profit had been his ruler, pleasure his muse. By all rights, he should have been killed two dozen times over.

Yet here he was, hale and hearty, sitting before one of the finest new chateaux in all of France. As its lord.

While the one who had built it, invested every year of his life and every fiber of body and soul in creating it, the one who had earned it, his brother, Gerard ... was gone.

Pharaon whickered softly and turned his head, ears pricked. A moment later, Gaston heard the sounds of hoofbeats, of tired horses blowing, and the creak of saddle leather as weary riders stretched and yawned. He moved his mount to the side of the familiar path in the gathering darkness.

Marcel rode in the lead. Gaston spoke to him briefly, then sent him and the rest on ahead. He waited while they rode slowly past. He would bring up the rear, in case the keep’s lone occupant was harboring more hostility toward him than he guessed.

Riding in the middle of the line, his wife kept her eyes straight ahead as she passed. She did not glance at him, did not even acknowledge his presence—as had been her habit the entire month they had been traveling. She ignored his very existence.

He should be pleased about that, should find it a welcome relief from the arguing and defiance and chattering he had been subjected to for so long.

But he was not pleased, and it was not a relief ... and he missed her chattering. Her indifference bothered him almost as much as the bone-tired, fragile look of her: she hunched over her palfrey, clinging to the saddle with one hand, to the horse’s mane with the other.