Even better, her room was just down the hall from the bedchamber Gaston had been using the night she arrived. As soon as she figured out how to return to her own time, her window of opportunity—as she had started to think of it—would be just a few steps away.
She pulled the heavy woolen blankets closer, sighing with equal parts hope and misery. The room was not uncomfortable, really. A fire blazed on the hearth, and the homespun cotton sheets felt almost soft against her bare skin.
When the cook had escorted her here, Celine had asked for something to wear to bed, but the woman’s incredulous look told Celine she had made yet another mistake. Medieval people, it seemed, slept in the buff. Too exhausted to debate it, unwilling to sleep in her grubby gown, she had stripped and kicked off her red slippers.
At that moment, an image from The Wizard of Oz had danced through her head: perhaps all she had to do was click the heels of her ruby slippers three times and say, “There’s no place like home.” The crazy thought left her laughing until her sides hurt.
Then she had tried it.
With a wry little smile at the memory, Celine curled up on one side, watching firelight lick at the dark stone walls. She murmured the words again, under her breath. “There’s no place like home.”
She whispered the phrase over and over, until her eyelids drifted closed and sleep finally claimed her.
***
It seemed as if only minutes had passed when Celine felt a hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake, though when she opened one reluctant eye to a slit, she saw that the fire on the hearth had burned almost out. “No,” she groaned, rolling away and pulling a pillow over her head. “Please ... have to ... sleep.”
The hand touched her again.
Tickling her bare shoulder this time.
A large, masculine hand.
“It is time to awaken, my lady wife,” a familiar voice rumbled. “Your many duties await you.”
Celine sat up with an exclamation of surprise—remembering too late that she had gone to bed naked. She gasped and grabbed the sheet to her chin, but not before Gaston, standing beside the bed, had gotten quite an eyeful. “What ... what ...” she sputtered. “What are you doing in my room?”
He smiled down at her, a slow, lazy grin, his gaze lingering on that part of her anatomy she had just concealed with the sheet. “You seem to be forever asking that question of me, Christiane. And my answer is ever the same: the room is mine. I own all that is in this castle.”
His eyes finally rose to meet hers. His quiet, firm voice and the way he had said “all” made her uneasy. The dying embers on the hearth cast his angular features in a faint golden glow. She couldn’t read the expression in his gaze. Celine shivered, and told herself it was because the room had become chilly. “I didn’t mean ... I ...”
Without warning, he sat down on the bed. She forced herself not to flinch away, though he looked particularly large at the moment, a dark presence dressed all in black, blending with the shadows of the room. He wore a tunic that fit him like a glove. The cloth sharply outlined the breadth of his chest and the massive size of his biceps. A second, sleeveless tunic, embroidered with his crest—a crouching lion—hung loosely over the first. A cloak lined with silver fur swept back from his brawny shoulders. It fastened with a heavy chain at his neck.
Celine found her gaze on that spot, his exposed throat: the smooth curve of bronzed skin over muscle, encircled by the chain links. Her own skin tingled, suddenly and unexpectedly, a little rain of sensation that ran from the nape of her neck right down to the soles of her feet. “I-I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you,” she blurted. “I mean ... you appointed Yolande and your squire to be in charge of my work.”
“It occurred to me that I should take a more personal interest in your duties.”
Celine didn’t like the sound of that. And she didn’t like the uncomfortable feelings coursing through her, the intense awareness of how vulnerable she was beneath the white sheet, the way her eyes were slowly drawn to his hands. They rested on the bed. On either side of her legs. He wore black leather gauntlets that matched his cloak. “I ... I only just ... I’ve only had a little sleep.”
She chastised herself immediately for saying that. She had promised herself she would stand up to whatever work he dished out to her. She wasn’t going to be the weak, wimpy female he seemed to expect.
“You may stay abed all day if you wish,” he said, leaning to one side, resting his weight on one elbow. The bed ropes creaked with his movement. “I imagine you must be sore after working through the night.”
Before she knew what he was doing, he had snagged the bottom of the sheet and pulled it up, exposing her bare legs to the knees.