He took her hand, his voice soothing. “No. If that were so, I would not exist when you were not here. But I do. I am not a figment of your imagination.”
“No! You’re a ghost, haunting my dreams. You may have lived once, but you died. Beneto murdered you.”
He frowned. “Beneto? No, that’s impossible.”
“I read it in the diary of Marguerite de Valois. She comforted Giulia and Elisabeta when they heard of your death. Those are your sisters, aren’t they?”
“Yes. But Beneto would give his life for me, and we’re both very much alive. He obviously has not killed me.”
“He will!” Caitlyn exclaimed. She paused and took a breath. “Raphael, this is not real. I am a student in a girls’ school at Château de la Fortune in the year 2011. You died over
four hundred
years ago.”
His gaze locked with hers, powerful even in the moonlight. “Caitlyn. I do not know when you lived or where you came from, but I know that I am alive and you are a spirit. I’ve known you were something not of this world since the day you saved me from the falling stone. You were with me in a locked room, and then you vanished. That’s why I acted so strangely when next I saw you. You’re the only ghost I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t know what to make of you.”
Caitlyn shook her head. “I’m
not
a ghost. I vanished from that room because I woke up.”
“Stay here with me until morning, and I will show you.”
“Show me what?”
“That light passes through you.”
“What?”
She couldn’t believe this. Nothing made sense.
“I don’t know how it is that I can touch you and see you. But light—sunlight, candlelight, firelight—passes through you. The brighter the light, the more transparent you become. And no one can see you but me.”
“That only proves what
you
think and experience. I’m alive. I’m sure of it,” she insisted, even as doubt crept into her voice. “At least, I’m pretty sure. I’m a student at the Fortune School, in the year 2011.”
“Two thousand eleven?”
he asked, the date only now seeming to sink in.
She nodded.
“Two thousand eleven. You can tell me the future of the world?”
“I can tell you
your
future. Beneto is executed for your murder!”
He shook off her words dismissively. “So you were a student at the Fortune School. Caitlyn, can you remember what might have killed you, or why you became a wandering spirit? Were you ill? Was there an accident?”
She shook her head. “Nothing happened, except I fainted and hit my head. But I already knew you by then.”
“The first time you saw me, I was riding in the valley, right?”
She nodded.
“You think you dreamed that.”
She nodded again.
“Caitlyn, what happened to you right before you had that dream?”
“I had it on the trip from the Bordeaux airport to the school. It was just a car ride. Nothing happ—” She suddenly saw the bright headlights of the semitruck coming straight for her through the rain. She heard the blare of the horn, felt the violent jerk of the Mercedes as the driver tried to evade impact. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “We could have crashed.” Panicked disbelief rose in her chest and she squeezed his hands. “I’m dead?” She shook her head in disbelief. “I never made it to the Fortune School? I imagined everything? Amalia, Naomi … But why?”
“Maybe you weren’t ready to die.”
Her breath came in quick gasps. “I’m
not
ready! I have a whole life to live!”
“Then live it here, with me.”
She looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. “But if I died, why did I come here to you?”
“Because I needed you.”
“Ghosts don’t go back in time! I should be haunting people in the twenty-first century, not the sixteenth!”
“What rules are there for what happens after death?”
“Oh my God.” She got up off the bed and began to pace. “
Ohmigod ohmigod
. My mom, she must be devastated. My brothers. My father. My friends. They must all know.” She stopped in front of him. “Why did I come here to you, instead of going to them to say good-bye?”
He shook his head, having no answer.
Her heart ached with the sudden panic of loss. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Will they miss me?”
He reached up and gently brushed the hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Yes.”
“I was going to go to college. What am I going to do now?” she cried.
“Stay here with me.”
“
Can
I? Or am I going to vanish?”
He pulled her across his lap and into his arms, cradling her against his chest. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “We’ll find a way to keep you here. There’s a purpose to your presence. You were sent to me.”
“I don’t understand how I could have imagined everything at the Fortune School. It seemed so real. Madame Snowe, Brigitte, and that story about Thierry and the
gouffre
. The painting of Bianca de’ Medici. I thought Bianca was haunting me. Why did I think that?”
His hands that had been stroking her hair stopped. “Bianca was haunting you?”
“She showed me her death, and Beneto taking the heart from the ashes of her pyre. I don’t know why she showed me that, or why I sometimes hear it beating. Is she trying to scare me away from you?”
His fingers tightened in her hair. “No.”
“What does she want of me?” Caitlyn asked.
“I think she wants your understanding. And I think she brought you here for me.”
“To help you?”
“Yes. But that’s not all.”
“What else?”
“I think she meant for you to be my bride.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-six
Caitlyn stuttered, astonished, “You, you think … You think Bianca was playing matchmaker with us?”
“She used to tease me that she knew who my soul mate was, but that I wouldn’t believe her if she told me. She said I’d love this woman so strongly that even death could not keep us apart. The only hint Bianca would give to this mystery woman’s identity was that she would have skin pale as the moon and hair black as midnight. She called you my Dark One.” He touched Caitlyn’s cheek. “ It’s you.”
Caitlyn’s breath caught in her throat. Hope, fear, and disbelief all fought within her. She couldn’t take it all in, or find an answer that made sense. She didn’t know what was real. Was she alive or dead? Dreaming or awake? Had she ever been to the Fortune School, or was all that no more than the dreams of a restless spirit?
A cold wash of shock flowed down her body as an image came to mind: a skeleton in black armor, riding a white horse. Death.
Her mother had predicted this. Her words during the tarot reading came back to Caitlyn.
Death is the force that will create your new life. It is the mechanism of transformation. Welcome it.
Oh God. It
was
true: she was dead. She had died in a car crash, just like her mother. Everything that happened at the Fortune School had been a dream. When she had seen Château de la Fortune in person for the first time, and felt the sense of belonging, of coming home, it was because she had seen the place her spirit would haunt for eternity. She hadn’t left the castle since that day.
She was dead.
Dead.
She looked at Raphael and felt her heart ache with the strength of her bond to him. He was her only reality, now. She had no existence beyond him. “If I’m a ghost, how is it that we are together?” she whispered, seeking reassurance.
“I don’t know, but here you are. I understand now why Bianca said I wouldn’t believe it.”
Caitlyn shook her head. “Why would she choose a dead girl for you?”
“She only saw the future, Caitlyn. She didn’t control it.”
Caitlyn struggled to think through her shock, to find a meaning for everything she thought had happened at the Fortune School. “If Bianca brought me here to you, then maybe she was also part of everything I thought I learned at the Fortune School.” She looked at him with fresh urgency. “Raphael, your mother may have meant for me to tell you that Beneto would kill you.”
He shook his head in sharp denial. “I can’t accept that. Beneto was devoted to my mother and has been like a second father to me. He thought Bianca’s existence upon this earth was a miracle, not an evil.”
“Marguerite’s diary—”
“You said he was executed for my murder, right?”
She nodded.
“That doesn’t mean he was guilty. It means he was a scapegoat. Someone else is responsible for trying to kill me.”
Caitlyn didn’t believe it, but she didn’t know what to believe about anything, at that moment. “Then maybe it’s Philippe,” she said. “Did you ever check the hidden cabinets in his room?”
“Beneto did. He discovered that Philippe is a bit more than a spy for Catherine.” Raphael grinned, his teeth shining in the moonlight. “His true loyalty is to Henry of Navarre, the very man whose Huguenot supporters Catherine sent him here to keep tabs on.”
“So you don’t think he’s the one trying to kill you, either?”
Raphael shook his head.
“Even if it’s not Beneto,” Caitlyn said, her throat tight, “whoever is trying to kill you will succeed.”
Raphael stood, clearly agitated, and stirred the fire to life with a poker. Caitlyn waited, watching the emotions run like water over his features. He threw a piece of wood on the fire and turned to her. “My mother said that even death would not keep you and me apart. If I’m murdered, we’ll still be together.”
“Where? I have seen no afterlife.”
He shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Together.” He held out his hand to her. She took it, and he gently pulled her to her feet. He bent her hand over his, raised the back of it to his lips, and kissed it. He looked up at her from under his brows, his head still bent over her hand. “Tell me you’ll be mine, Caitlyn. Forever.”
She met his eyes and felt the fear and shock give way under the love in his gaze. There was no other world but the one she shared with him. Her heart had belonged to him since long before she saw him riding in the Dordogne Valley and recognized him as her Knight of Cups. All her life she had known he was somewhere, waiting for her, just as she waited for him.
Yes, she would gladly give up her life to be with him. “I’ll be yours, Raphael. Until the end of time.”
He gathered her close in his arms and held her. Caitlyn closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest. It still felt like she was in a dream, but now that she knew she had Raphael’s heart, she didn’t ever need to wake. They would face whatever came, together.
“There’s something we need to do before whoever is out to kill me succeeds,” he said, releasing her.
“What’s that?”
“Find the Templar treasure and entomb Bianca’s heart within it, as she requested before she died. It’s more important than ever: we may need Bianca’s power to stay together, beyond the limits of death. If the heart is destroyed and, along with it, the last remnants of her power … ,” he trailed off, obviously unwilling to complete the thought.
“Death might have the strength to separate us, after all,” Caitlyn finished for him. The threat lit a fire under her determination to find the Templar treasure. It was her own future that now depended upon it. “The scallop shell. It’s the next clue.”
“You found the shell, too?”
“With my friend Naomi.” She frowned. “Imaginary friend Naomi? Anyway, we found it above the statue of Mary. It’s the symbol of Saint James, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “And where did that send you?”
“Along Saint James’s way, to the
gouffre
in the woods.”
His eyes widened. “The
gouffre
?” He laughed. “No, you were right about Saint James’s way, but not about the path in the woods. Come, I’ll show you.”
He dressed and led her out of his room and down through the castle to a large empty room that had windows looking directly out over the valley of the Dordogne. A fireplace dominated one wall, and dark wooden beams spanned the ceiling ten feet above their heads. Caitlyn turned around in the middle of the room and imagined it filled with leather couches, Oriental carpets, desks, and a painting of Fortuna.
“It’s the Grand Salon,” she said in wonder. “I stayed up late here to study most nights, and to talk with Naomi. Or at least I thought I did.”
“Did you ever take note of this?” He lowered a candle so that it illuminated the painted tile floor upon which they stood.
It took her a moment to make sense of the design. “It’s a map!” she said in surprise. “I only ever saw this room with its floor covered in carpets.”