Forever His(16)

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.