Forever His(36)

Every minute of the day’s labor was etched permanently into her aching back and frozen feet and raw hands. She never wanted to see another feather as long as she lived. As soon as she got home, she was going to have every down pillow and comforter she owned replaced with polyester. Good old-fashioned polyester.

Leaning on a trestle table for support, she blinked at Yolande in weary confusion, not sure she could keep her eyes open much longer. “My bedchamber?” she echoed.

“Aye, milady. Sir Gaston left specific instructions.” Yolande’s round face, as usual, betrayed no emotion. The woman carried out her duties with all the warmth of a drill sergeant.

She turned to lead the way upstairs, and Celine followed without further questions. One foot in front of the other. It was all she could manage. She had no energy left for anything so demanding as an intelligent reply.

All she could feel was dread, heavier and colder than the frost-encrusted cloak she wore. What new tasks had her relentless husband thought up to bend her to his will? Emptying and refilling every mattress in the place straw by straw? Scrubbing the blackened hearth in her room until it gleamed? Dangling out the window on a rope and scraping ice off the castle walls?

You win. She ached to say it with every trudging step down the darkened stone corridors. You win, you win, you win. But she couldn’t say that. He asked for the impossible. She couldn’t give it to him. This battle between them wouldn’t end until she escaped to her own time.

If she could escape to her own time. If she lived that long. Was the ache in her back really from the grueling work, or from something she didn’t want to think about? She could almost hear a clock ticking in her head, ominous, relentless. Precious minutes, hours, days slipping away. Tick, tick, tick. Like the timer on a bomb—and she had no idea when it might go off.

She hadn’t had two spare minutes to figure out how the lunar eclipse had sent her here and how she could get home. And it didn’t look like she would be getting a day off anytime soon.

When they finally stopped in front of her door, Celine almost sank to her knees in supplication. A little rest. An hour’s sleep. Just an hour ... Yolande stepped into the room, but Celine stood swaying in the doorway, gazing with bleary longing at the bed.

“Thank you, Gabrielle,” Yolande said. “I see we are almost ready.”

Celine forced her eyes fully open and glanced to her left, where a young serving girl was pouring buckets filled with water into ...

A tub.

A huge wooden tub, filled with water so hot that a fog of steam rose above it. Celine’s reddened nose only now caught the scent of fragrant herbs and dried flowers rising on the tendrils of heat: lavender and thyme and roses.

“I ... I don’t understand.” Celine couldn’t let herself take a step toward that luscious paradise of warmth and water. It was a mirage, an illusion, a trick. Gaston was purposely tormenting her. “So who’s getting a bath?” she asked in a shaky voice. “I suppose I have to help scrub the backs of half the household?”

“Nay, the bath is for you alone, milady. By Sir Gaston’s order.” Yolande held out a small cake of soap. The serving girl finished with the buckets and went to hang a length of thick white linen on a rack before the fire.

Celine felt like crying. It was too good to be true. She stayed where she was, suspicious. “Why would he allow me a bath, after everything he’s put me through?”

Yolande frowned, which gave her stern features an even more dour expression. “In truth, I wondered as much myself, but it was not my place to question. Mayhap he does not wish to be accused by the King of mistreating you.” She shrugged, holding out the soap. “Hurry, milady, before the water grows cold.”

Celine didn’t know why Gaston was granting her the bath he had teased her about this morning. Maybe he genuinely regretted making her work so hard all day. Maybe he was as chivalrous as Etienne claimed.

Maybe he really was capable of kindness. Even to her.

Shaking her head in disbelief, she took one tentative, uncertain step into the room ...

Then she went for the tub like a bargain hunter heading for the clearance table at Neiman-Marcus. The wooden edge, worn smooth by years of use, came up to her waist. A veritable garden of rose petals floated on the surface. She grasped the side, leaned over, and inhaled a deep breath of scented steam. Sighing, she slanted a look at the towel warming before the fire.

How could he have known what she wanted, down to every detail? If she had any sense, she would be worried about that. The man had practically read her mind. But she was too tired, and the steam was already starting to defrost her stiff muscles—and as the feeling returned to her limbs, so did every little ache and pain.