Forever His(29)

“There is but one knave in this, and I will see that he answers for what he has done.” Gaston looked into the empty bottom of his cup again, at the play of gold over silver. “And my new wife shall help me.”

Now Royce looked genuinely puzzled. “Help you?”

“Aye,” Gaston said confidently. “She will come to her senses with haste. Within a se’nnight, she will be begging to tell the truth and give her overlord away.”

“But how shall you accomplish this? And in only seven days, milord?”

“Because, Saint-Michel, the lady believes she knows how ruthless I can be. In truth, she has had merely a taste of me.” Gaston indulged in a wicked grin as he rubbed the smooth cup ever so gently between his hands. “She will get her first full draught on the morrow.”





Chapter 5


God, she would kill for a shower. Celine lay on the straw mattress in her bedchamber, too exhausted to sleep, too sore to move a muscle, so tired she couldn’t even think ... except to imagine how wonderful a shower would feel right now: a hot, stinging spray that would tingle on her skin and steam up the room and soothe her muscles until they felt warm and relaxed. She sighed in longing.

A shower. Complete with her favorite herbal shampoo and silky conditioner and perfumed bath gel to wash away all the grit from hours of work after the wedding feast. And then a few minutes in her whirlpool. Just a few. Oh, what she wouldn’t give for that. And a fluffy cotton towel still hot from the towel-warming rack in her bathroom.

And, best of all, her own bed to slide into ... with its satiny-soft, five-hundred-thread-count sheets, her thick eiderdown comforter, her feather pillow ...

Celine moaned softly. God, she wanted to go home.

Her entire body ached, right down to her fingers and toes. And her back. She couldn’t stop worrying about whether the soreness in her lower back was really from the long hours on her feet ...

Or from the bullet fragment.

It might be a relief to be put out of her misery right about now, she thought with black humor. Even the most grueling step-aerobics class had never made her feel this wiped out.

All night she had done everything Yolande had asked, without one complaint. She had scrubbed platters and bowls and knives until her skin was raw from the harsh soap. She had helped move the trestle tables and benches against the walls, cleared the hall of dirty rushes, swept the floor clean, and washed it, using a bucket and brush and more of the strong soap until the stone gleamed.

Then she had gathered new rushes from a storage shed outside, untied the bundles, and spread them out with a sprinkling of herbs. They had made the place smell surprisingly good, as “meadow-fresh” as any room she had ever sprayed with potpourri-in-a-can.

As the evening wore on, the servants had gotten fed up with having to show her how to do every little thing. When darkness fell, she had been assigned to go from room to room lighting the oil lamps and candles that sat on stone sconces jutting out from the walls—but Celine didn’t have the most distant idea how to use the pieces of flint and steel they had handed her.

Her best effort had ended up sending the flint flying in one direction and the steel sailing in the other, bringing laughter even from poker-faced Yolande. The woman had finally relented and sent Celine around with a small torch. Her eyes still felt dry and bleary from all the smoke.

By midnight, when she thought she would surely be allowed to trudge to bed, she had instead been handed over to the cook, to assist in baking breads and meat pies for the next day.

At least she had been able to show some skill there. She hadn’t trained at the Cordon Bleu for nothing. She might not know her way around a cauldron, but she had run one of Chicago’s finest restaurants for a year and a half. She made a pastry crust to die for. All the newspaper reviewers had said so, before she closed her little bistro to pursue a career in modeling.

Celine rolled over, trying to find a comfortable position on the bed, groaning as a muscle in her leg cramped in protest. She rubbed at her calf, laughing to keep herself from crying. If all of this weren’t so awful, it would almost be funny. Like Cinderella in reverse. A rich princess transformed into a servant.

She had never realized until now just how much she was used to living a life of ease, to having people around to take care of life’s bothersome little chores.

People to take care of her.

At least there had been one positive note to the night’s ordeal: Gaston slept downstairs, in his own room, the one he had given up during the King’s stay. Celine slept in one of the small upstairs bedchambers. She hoped that the distance and her duties meant she wouldn’t be seeing much of her surly husband.