Forever His(102)

Never again would he take advantage of the naive feelings his wife had for him. He could not be both lover and warrior. Not now and not ever.

***

For once, Celine didn’t argue when a servant came with husbandly orders from on high. She had barely finished getting dressed, only minutes after Gaston left, when he sent word that he wanted her to gather her things and be ready to leave within the hour. No explanation. No word of why it was imperative for them to leave so suddenly. Just do it. Typical.

But she didn’t complain. She simply thanked the servant and sent him on his way, then found her slippers where she had kicked them off the night before. That was all the “readying” of her things she needed to do. All the rest was still packed, since they had arrived only yesterday.

Then she sat on the bed and waited for the servant to come back. She had no emotional energy left for arguing with Gaston’s orders.

When she had wakened this morning to find his warmth no longer beside her, she had felt disappointment, only to have it instantly replaced by hope and uncertainty when she saw him. He had not run from her room at the first opportunity. She dared think that what they had shared might have affected him, as strongly as it had affected her. That it might have unlocked something inside him.

But when she had blurted her fears, any flicker of optimism she might have felt had been ground out. I warned you that you would hate me. God, some vulnerable, naive part of her had actually thought he would deny it. But his leaden silence had said far more than words ever could.

And all she had been able to do was sit there going numb, thinking, I love you.

Did he even remember that she had said that last night? If he did, it obviously didn’t matter. For a man of so few words when it came to emotions, he had expressed himself quite clearly. He thought himself trapped. How had he put it? Shackled.

He didn’t feel anything about what they had shared last night. Except regret. So much regret that he had burned the evidence. The fire still blazed and crackled in the hearth, turning their passion to ashes.

She sat on the bed, blinking, still dazed by her own stupidity. How could she have deluded herself into thinking that he cared for her? That he had had any other goal last night than pure male lust?

He had been right about her. She was naive and foolish. And he didn’t care anything more for her than he did for the countless other women he had taken to bed. The awful truth of it brought an actual, painful ache to her chest. She choked on a humorless laugh. That was all he had left her with: an ache, and a throbbing awareness of him, in that soft place between her thighs where his hard body had briefly become part of her.

Someone knocked at the door, but the sound barely registered. She didn’t respond until the knock was repeated twice.

“Come in.”

She expected the servant, coming to help take her things below.

Instead it was Gaston.

She inhaled sharply, her gaze fastened on his, her fists crumpling the bedclothes on either side of her. She hastily erected an iron gate around her heart; she wasn’t going to keep hurting herself by declaring her feelings for him. Not when he didn’t return them in the least.

His eyes were glazed with an odd look. She thought it must be the effect of his hangover.

“The servants ... they are—are arrived,” he stuttered.

“Fine. I’m ready to go. Why didn’t you just send one of them up to fetch me?”

“Nay, not Avril’s servants. Our—my servants.” He lifted his hand. She finally tore her gaze from his face long enough to look at what he had carried in with him.

She stopped breathing.

“They arrived at ... Chateau de Varennes some days ago,” he continued in that stumbling, disbelieving tone, “and when they did not find us there, Yolande and Gabrielle rushed here, to give me this. They arrived this morn. They ... thought it might be important ...”

Celine barely heard what he was saying. There was a ringing in her head that blocked out all other sound. She could only stare at the bright pink object he held, something so out of place in his hand, in this time, that it took a dizzying moment for her to identify it.

And then she was up off the bed, running forward. “My purse. My purse! Where—how—my God, have they been hiding it all this time?” she asked incredulously.

He let her take it. “Nay, they found it while moving furnishings. In a trunk.” He exhaled a harsh sound, as if he were having trouble breathing. “A locked trunk. In the room where—”

“Where I appeared in your bed on New Year’s Eve!” Celine said breathlessly, clasping it to her. “But how did it ...” Her mind raced back to the moment she had tumbled through time. “I was standing in front of the window. Looking for an aspirin. And I had my purse in my hand. But then the moonlight hit me and I dropped it ...”