Forever His(25)

“My friends and loyal retainers,” he began, lifting his silver goblet, “I wish to offer a salut to my new bride.” He turned to Celine, his eyes piercing. “Short may her stay be, and swift her departure.” He drained the cup and thrust it back down onto the table so hard that a reverberating clang sounded and the metal edge marked the wood.

An uncomfortable silence deepened in the hall.

“She is not to be trusted,” Gaston continued, his hand still on the goblet. “Nor is she to be left alone at any time. Etienne!”

A tall youth came forward from one of the tables—the blond teenager Celine had noticed last night. He dropped to one knee before the dais. “Sir?”

“I appoint you to keep watch over my wife. Whatever she may be planning, we will not make it easy for her to carry out.”

“Aye, milord.”

“And while she is here—however blessedly short a time that may be—she will fill some useful purpose. She will work as a servant.”

A gasp went through the hall. Apparently the thought of a knight’s wife—enemy or not—being forced into menial labor was utterly shocking.

Celine felt her cheeks grow hot. She bit her tongue to keep her pride in check. Let him try to humiliate her. Let him make her work like a dog. She wasn’t going to get upset.

Gaston glared down at her, as if expecting some protest. She looked back at him mutinously and tried not to feel the sting of this treatment, tried to tell herself he had every reason to be suspicious of her.

He gestured with the metal goblet. “You will do whatever Yolande”—he pointed to a slender, dark-haired serving woman of about forty—“bids you to do.”

Celine remained silent. Didn’t even nod.

He leaned down until his face was only inches from hers. “I mean to keep you well busy, my lady wife—too exhausted to venture anywhere near my bed. You will come begging for quarter anon. Are you certain you do not wish to reconsider your stubborn loyalty to Tourelle? Will you not go before the King and admit the truth?”

“I can’t tell the King anything because I don’t know anything,” she insisted. “That is the truth.”

He shrugged. “The battle is joined, then.” Filling his cup, he turned back to his people and raised it again. “I promise you all, mark me, that this marriage will be ended as swiftly as possible, and that Lady Rosalind will soon be mistress of this castle!”

Everyone seemed to brighten at this. A few people were barely able to restrain applause. As for the looks directed at Celine, the ones that had been hostile since her arrival, they subtly changed.

Now they were both hostile and smug.

Gaston snagged a flask of wine and stepped off the dais, leaving her alone at the high table. “Bonsoir, ma dame. Sleep well this night—if your conscience so permits.” His boot heels echoed dully on the rush-strewn stone floor as he exited the chamber.

Celine sat frozen, smothered by the ensuing silence in the crowded, cavernous room. Her conscience? How could he talk about her conscience when he was the one being so awful? Everyone stared at her with wide eyes, clearly expecting her to burst into tears or race after her husband and beg for mercy.

Slowly, silently, she unfastened her fingers from the folds of her skirt, pushed herself back from the table, and stood, looking from one expectant face to another.

Then, chin high, she began clearing the dirty dishes.

***

Alone in his solar, the private audience chamber off the great hall, Gaston looked glumly into the bottom of the goblet he had emptied many times over the past hours. He swirled the cup with a flick of his wrist, watching the last few drops of golden ale shimmer over the silvered metal in the hearth light.

He had finished the entire flask of wine sometime after the sun had set, then switched to a stronger mead in an attempt to lose himself in drink. It did not succeed.

He had built up too great a tolerance over the years. Years he had spent fighting in hostile lands. Fighting as a mercenary here at home. Fighting to take and hold this castle. Sometimes it seemed his entire life was made of naught but blood and blades.

‘Twas difficult to believe that he was now a landed lord, with many chateaux and men at his command, and influence that reached all the way to Paris.

Gaston de Varennes. The Black Lion. The mercenary called Blackheart. The younger son, who had cheated and fought his way to every bit of glory he had ever possessed, now had more wealth, more power, more duty, and more responsibility than he had ever imagined in his life.

He kept hearing Tourelle’s words to the King echoing through his head: Varennes is not capable of managing such holdings. Nor is he deserving of them.