Swearing, he drew his sword and ran after her.
She screamed again at the sound of his pursuit. Without warning, she left the road, plunging into the impenetrable darkness of the trees.
The little fool! She would break her neck! “Christiane, stop!”
She couldn’t seem to hear him. His shout only made her go faster until she was crashing heedlessly through the undergrowth.
This was no act. She was clearly terrified. Lost and alone and terrified, and she had no idea who was chasing her.
“Christiane, it is Gaston!” He sheathed his sword, breaking through the brush, running faster as she darted away ahead of him. “Christiane!” He was only a few paces behind her now. “Good Christ, woman, stop before you kill yourself!”
She kept fleeing in a wild panic, sobbing with terror, not paying the least attention to him or where she was going. Her slim form was a blur. It was only a miracle that she avoided the low branches and huge oak trunks and gnarled roots that loomed suddenly out of the blackness.
But the trees stopped abruptly a few feet ahead. He saw the danger before she did: the edge of a knoll that dropped away sharply.
“Nay!” With a burst of speed, he grabbed for her cloak. Her name tore from his throat as he missed her by a hairsbreadth. His hand closed on air.
She ran straight off the edge, tumbling into darkness, her scream of sheer terror shattering the forest night.
A sickening thud below cut short her cry.
For one horrible instant, Gaston stood frozen at the top of the knoll, hand still outstretched, unable to move a muscle, his heart pounding wildly. She was dead. Sweet Jesus, the sound of that impact—
Before he could take a breath, he was plunging down the hill, scrambling for purchase as the forest floor fell away beneath him, a steep drop littered with sharp rocks and branches, slick with snow and ice. Only the saplings and evergreens tearing at his garments slowed his descent.
At the bottom, he found himself in a chasm. An ice-frosted river snaked through its center, gleaming silver white in the moonlight. He could see marks in the snow where his wife had landed and tumbled down the hillside as he had. But she was nowhere to be seen.
Then he saw the jagged hole cracked in the thin crust of ice. She had fallen through.
“God’s breath!” He plunged into the thigh-deep water without pausing to think, driven only by the numbing thought that she must already be dead. He tore at the jagged ice with his gloved hands. “Christiane!”
He found her in the darkness almost before her name had passed his lips. She was conscious, clawing at the slippery rocks, fighting the sluggish current as the weight of her clothes tried to drag her under. He pulled her free, hauling her from the water and lifting her in his arms. He staggered to the riverbank, his wet boots slippery on the snow.
“By sweet holy Christ, woman, if you ever attempt such foolishness again ...” He could not say more. He was shaking with fury at the way she had so recklessly endangered her life.
Coughing, sobbing, she clung to him weakly, shuddering with bone-deep cold. He sank to his knees, still holding her in his arms, barely noticing the icy water that soaked his tunic, just holding her, willing his heart to slow down, his breath a white fog in the darkness above her head.
“Are you hurt?” He could hear an odd, unfamiliar edge to his voice. Slowly, carefully, he set her away from him, but she was shaking so badly she couldn’t even kneel without his assistance. He kept one arm around her waist while he quickly ran his free hand over her. She winced when he touched her right side. It must have been there that she had struck the snowy hillside. Fortunately, he could detect no broken ribs.
Other than painful bruises, her worst problem seemed to be that she was not breathing right. She kept coughing up mouthfuls of water, exhaling more air than she was inhaling.
Gaston began massaging her between the shoulder blades. “Breathe, Christiane. You are all right, but you have to breathe.”
She lifted her head, staring up at him with fear-glazed eyes, almost as if she did not recognize him. She looked as if she might faint from pure panic.
“You are safe,” he said firmly, taking her face between his hands. “You are all right now, Christiane. Breathe.”
She did not respond, only stared at him with that wide, blank gaze, taking in naught but the tiniest gasps of breath. Her skin was unnaturally pale.
“You have naught to fear, Christiane.” He gentled his tone, stroking her cheeks. “Calm down.”
“I ...” She shook her head. “I ...”
He tried rubbing her back again. “If you do not breathe, you will faint. Take a deep breath and relax.”
“Ca ...ca ... can’t,” she choked out.