Forever His (6 page)

Celine’s mind was spinning, but not so much that she missed what he had said. “New century?”

“Aye, the first day of the year of our Lord 1300.”

Celine stiffened.

Her heart pounded so hard she couldn’t breathe.

The darkness, the cold, the strange furnishings, the straw on the floor, his unusual speech, his old-fashioned name—

“What did you say?” she sputtered, pulling out of his arms.

“
Chérie
, mayhap it is you who drank overmuch last night, if you have forgotten already the reason for the feast. This day is the first of January, 1300.”

Celine stumbled away from him, barely aware of the pain in her ankle, gasping for breath as she felt her way to the far wall, over to the left, to the window.

Or where the window was supposed to be.

She found a pair of wooden shutters.

“Are you unwell,
chérie?
” Gaston asked, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice.

Celine tore open the shutters. The stained glass was there. She yanked it inward on its hinges and a blast of cold air poured into the room, along with a spill of silver light. The moon above looked normal, clear, full—

But the city was missing.

Celine stared, opened her mouth, couldn’t utter a sound. Cold dread knotted her stomach.
The town of St. Pol had vanished!
Where there had been buildings, paved streets, people, motor scooters, neon, noise—there was now only silent forest.

Her gaze fell on the courtyard below. The Lamborghinis and Mercedes and Aston Martins were gone. The neatly plowed circular drive was gone. The guest villas. The tennis courts. The swimming pool. One entire wing of the chateau was missing!

There was only the stone keep. A smooth blanket of new-fallen snow. The moat. The wall—which didn’t look crumbling and ancient, but solid and new.

The first day of January, 1300.

This couldn’t be happening! It was a dream! A nightmare!

“Chérie?”

Celine turned at the soft query.

It wasn’t a dream. And the man coming toward her out of the shadows was certainly no nightmare.

As he stepped into the shaft of moonlight that framed her from behind, she saw him from the ground up: first his feet, then a pair of strong, lean legs sprinkled with dark hair, then heavily muscled thighs, then ...

God!

Cheeks scalding, she immediately lifted her gaze to a broad, deep chest, matted with that same dark hair, impossibly wide shoulders ... and she felt smaller and more fragile than she ever had in her life as he came completely into the light, the moon illuminating a full six sinewy feet of bronzed, taut, hard male.

His face was every bit as powerful and chiseled as the rest of him. Handsome in a rough way, with that bristly five-o’clock shadow, a mane of tousled hair as dark as his voice, and eyes that ... She had never thought of anyone having potent eyes before, but that’s what they were. Potent. Made for sending seductive glances across crowded, smoky rooms. He stopped just inside the edge of the light, smiling at her, a dazzling smile that crinkled the corners of those thickly lashed, hypnotic, coffee-hot eyes.

“Demoiselle, if you keep running out of my arms that way, you are going to greatly damage my confidence as a lover.”

Celine swayed dizzily. “Did you say you were ... but you couldn’t be ... not
that
Gaston!”

“Sir Gaston de Varennes,” he confirmed, a note of pride in his voice. His smile widened. “Did you not realize that you were about to make love to the lord of the chateau?”

Celine felt the blood drain from her face. She clutched at the wooden shutter, but felt herself sinking to her knees.

Gaston was at her side in an instant, moving in that quick, silent way. “
Ma petite
, what is it that upsets you?” His voice was husky with concern as he helped her to her feet.

Celine looked up at him, but as he saw her face closely in the light for the first time, his expression changed. His smile disappeared. He stared at her eyes, at her hair.

Suddenly, his hand came up to touch the loosened chignon at the nape of her neck—and this time his fingers were faster than they were gentle. He had it unknotted in seconds. Her hair fell freely in its natural, chin-length blunt cut.

Just as quickly, he released her and stepped back. His eyes narrowed with disbelief.

“You are the Fontaine woman!” He snapped the words more like an accusation than a question.

Celine blinked, confused by the sudden change in his attitude—but at the same time relieved. At least he knew who she was. She was not losing her mind. Maybe there was some explanation for this after all.

“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, of course—”

He cut her off with a particularly short, nasty-sounding oath. “I should have
guessed
Tourelle would attempt such treachery as this!” He grabbed her by the arm.

“Wait a minute!” Celine cried in astonishment. “What are you doing? I don’t understand! What’s going
on?
”

“Do not pretend ignorance, demoiselle. You know your purpose here,” he replied sharply. “You are to become my wife this day.”

“H
ow did Tourelle spirit you into my chamber?” Gaston demanded, tightening his hold on the Fontaine girl’s wrist, glaring down at her in the moonlit darkness. “What was his plan? Why did he wish me to bed you when he wants this match no more than I?”

She seemed unable to speak, or move, or do anything but stare at him, wild-eyed and trembling. She almost crumpled, but he held her upright—and tried to ignore the fact that his body felt heavy and hard with wanting her. He could not cool the desire she had roused in him.
Damn
her.

By nails and blood, apart from her burnished red hair, his unwanted bride was not at all what he had been told to expect. She looked naught like a convent-raised innocent; she looked like a fallen angel, created to sate a man’s needs, to fire a man’s body with hell’s own heat and heaven’s own pleasure. She had appeared out of the darkness like a fantasy plucked from midnight dreams and sent floating in on a ray of moonlight.

He ground out an oath, struggled to right his thoughts—and instead found his gaze fastened on the indecent garment she wore. It shimmered over lush curves, concealing and revealing and tantalizing. Her tall, slim form fitted to his perfectly. Her kisses still burned on his mouth, on his memory.

The urge to carry her to the bed and lose himself in her heat almost overpowered him. Almost made him forget his vow to leave this girl untouched. If he compromised her, it would make their betrothal binding and an annulment impossible.

Which would end his plans for vengeance and justice.

“Answer me, woman,” he ordered in a low, taut voice, fighting the desires that threatened his control. “How did you steal past my guards?”

“I ... I’m ... I ...” She gasped for breath, then started sobbing. “Oh, God, I’ve finally lost it! I’m having a nervous breakdown! This can’t be happening!
It isn’t real!
”

It was difficult for him to understand her words—especially when she was crying and talking at the same time. From what he could make out, she seemed to doubt his identity. “I assure you, I am as real as our betrothal, Lady Christiane.” He tightened his grasp to underscore his point.

“But you can’t be! I can’t—Chris
who?
”

“Do not think to play games with me,” he warned sharply, walking her backward into the stone wall. “You have already admitted to being the Fontaine woman. Now you claim not to recognize your own name?”

“I am not ‘Lady Christiane’! I’m not Lady anybody. My name is Celine. Celine Fontaine. I’m from America. From Chicago! There’s been a mis—”

“Lies will not save you,” he snapped. “You are Lady Christiane de la Fontaine, ward of the Duc de la Tourelle. You were to arrive last week from a convent in Aragon for our wedding. We thought the snows had delayed you.”

She gaped at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue, then started shaking her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know any
duc
and I’ve never been in a convent and I don’t even know where Aragon is! I am
not
Christiane—”

“Then how do you explain your hair?” His hand came up to touch her short red tresses—and before he could stop himself, he had buried his fingers in the silken strands, hating himself for wanting to feel it, hating her for making him want to feel every inch of her. “What woman but a novice would cut her hair off in such a way?” he growled. “And what of your speech? If you are not from Aragon, then explain your strange accent. And how did you come to be in my chamber, in my
bed?
Wearing
this!
” He touched the plunging bodice of the shameless bit of silk. She gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, shuddering as if terrified that he meant to do more.

Gaston clenched his jaw. Tourelle obviously had had time to think and plan during his long, cold journey to Aragon; he had evidently decided it would be well to have a marriage tie to the Varennes lands as well as the claim through his mother’s line. The girl could protest her innocence until her last breath, but the garment she wore was clearly intended for seduction—even if she had lost her nerve and decided to run when the moment was at hand.

“Explain yourself, demoiselle,” he taunted, sliding his hands under the slim ribbons that held the garment up. He could snap them both with one flick of his fingers.

Her long lashes fluttered upward and a shiver coursed through her, whether from fear at being discovered or in response to his touch he knew not. Her tongue darted out nervously to wet her lips and a newly sharpened blade of desire speared through him. Her slender form stiffened. He knew she could feel his body’s response to hers. The mutual awareness only intensified his physical hunger for her—and his anger.

His scowl made her drop her gaze from his. “I—I can’t explain how I got here because I don’t know how it happened,” she whispered after a moment. “You have to believe me—I know this sounds insane ... m-maybe I
have
gone insane ... but when I stepped into this room to go to bed,
the year was 1993
.”

Gaston exhaled through his teeth, willing away the havoc her lithe body and soft voice wreaked upon his senses. “Do you mistake me for a fool?” He glowered at her with a look he usually reserved for enemies on the battlefield. “What I believe, demoiselle, is that you are every bit as treacherous and cunning as your overlord.”

 Her expression reflected an almost painful mingling of fear and confusion. “I don’t
have
an ‘overlord’! I’m not who you think I am! I don’t know what I’m doing here or how I got here or—” She shut her eyes again. “Oh, God, this can’t be happening! It’s got to be a dream.
It’s got to be a dream!
”

Tears suddenly spilled onto her cheeks, tiny drops of shimmering crystal in the moonlight. Gaston released her before he could give in to the mad impulse that seized him ... a tender urge to take her in his arms and comfort her.

He spat an oath and spun away, forcing aside the foolish, gentle feeling, along with the fierce desire she had ignited. Stalking to the far side of the room, he snatched up his clothes from where he had dropped them the night before, donning them by feel in the darkness.

He could not allow this wench to ply her feminine wiles on him. Nay, he knew himself too well. Women besotted him as easily as gaming and drink. They bewitched him, rendered him senseless. He had counted on Tourelle’s ward being a dull, naive little novice, easy to resist—not this stunning, sensual creature.

Pulling his woolen leggings on with impatient motions, he devised a plan. He would
not
be forced into marriage with this lying red-haired beauty. Her feigned madness was no doubt part of some scheme she had devised with her overlord.

Or mayhap the wench
was
insane, as she had claimed. He jerked his fur-lined surcoat over his head, picked up his belt, and fastened it with a yank. Saints’ blood, she certainly raved like a madwoman. Mayhap that was why her family had banished this girl to a distant, foreign convent at such a young age. To rid themselves of a lunatic.

By nails and blood, sane or not, he was not going to take the wench to wife—not now that he had evidence of Tourelle’s treachery. He shoved his boots on, picked up his knee-length woolen tunic, and turned toward Christiane again.

She had fallen to the floor. She knelt in the rushes beneath the window, crying, one hand over her eyes, the other braced upon the stone as if she needed something solid to hold her up.

Unbidden feelings struck him with a suddenness that was like a fist in the gut. She looked so small and pale in that ribbon of bright moonlight, fragile as a snowflake that would melt at a single harsh word. She roused confusing, conflicting instincts in him, urges to ravish and protect, to—

He strangled every single emotion he felt.

Every bit of weakness.

He flung the tunic at her feet. “Garb yourself, woman.”

She flinched and raised her head. Their gazes locked and burned across the brief distance between them. A second later she snatched up the garment and held it against her, as if realizing only then how indecently clothed she was. How naked to his eyes. How much intimacy they had shared a moment ago.

How close they had almost come to sharing the deepest intimacy a man and a woman could know.

“Do you believe me?” she asked hopefully. “Will you help me?”

It took a moment before Gaston could tear his eyes from her parted lips long enough to answer. “What I believe, demoiselle,” he said harshly, “is that you would say or do anything to save yourself, now that you have been discovered. But it is too late for your pleas. You are the evidence I needed that Tourelle is a lying viper who intends not peace but treachery by this marriage.”

He crossed the chamber until he stood towering over her. “And as soon as I present you to the King, he will end this farce of a betrothal. Let us go and awaken him.”

***

Celine’s heart pounded so hard she couldn’t hear anything over the roar of her own pulse. Gaston barely gave her two seconds to put on his heavy, scratchy shirt before he pulled her out into the hallway. He grabbed a torch from an iron sconce on the wall and took a firm grip on her upper arm as he headed into the darkness.