“Females! Naught but scheming, untrustworthy, unmanageable little bundles of trouble,” he complained, grateful for an audience that did not argue with his opinion. “Especially beautiful, intelligent, reckless females.”
When he returned to the place where he had left Christiane, she was still dressed in her wet garments, still standing in the same spot—and shivering so badly in the wintry breeze, she could barely stand.
“By nails and blood, woman, must you disobey every order I give you?” He dropped Pharaon’s reins and stalked toward her. “If you refuse to follow this particular command, I will assist—”
“You’re going to believe me eventually,” she said, backing away from him as he advanced, her eyes bright with sparks of defiance. “I’m telling you the truth. I’m from the future. When the real Christiane shows up, you’ll have to believe me—”
“And when, pray, might that be?”
“Any day now, I’m sure, now that the roads are clearer.”
“So you do know where Tourelle is,” he accused.
“No, I don’t! I don’t know anything about him. I don’t even know what he looks like. But I know that whenever the real Christiane gets here, you’ll be eating your words. That I can’t wait to see. You need a few humbling experiences in your life—”
Her back came up against a tree trunk and she seemed to forget the rest of her speech. He stopped with less than an inch between their bodies and planted a hand on either side of her head.
“Mayhap, milady, I shall be humbled someday as you predict. But at the moment, I intend to make certain you are still alive to verify that I have not mistreated you, when Tourelle is found. You will take off those wet clothes, ma dame.”
“I’ll ... I’ll bet that ... when the real Christiane shows up,” she said in a small but insistent voice, “you’ll find out that she’s not even involved in any plot. She’s probably completely innocent. She is my ancestor, after all. We Fontaines have always been known for honesty and fortitude. She’s probably just a helpless girl caught up in a stupid battle between two men—”
He started to unfasten her cloak.
“Wait!” She reached up to stop him. “I can do that.”
Her hand covered his and he felt the contact strike deep and sudden, blazing through him like a blow from a hot blade. He did not say a word. His gaze locked on hers, he stood as still as one of the massive oaks around them, his fingers resting at the hollow of her throat.
“Then see that you do,” he said at last.
Shoving himself away from her, he stalked off into the black night, drew his sword, and hacked a few low-hanging branches from nearby trees. Stripping the dead leaves, he added them to what dry kindling he could find.
He kept his back to her, but no matter how hard he tried to ignore her, to distract himself, he was keenly aware of her every movement, every intimate sound she made as she peeled the wet garments from her body in the darkness.
First she slid her cloak from her shoulders. Then she kicked off her boots. Then—he swallowed hard—she pulled her tunic over her head, voicing a shivery little gasp. He imagined it must be from the shock of the cold air against her damp, nude breasts.
He shut his eyes, gripped the hilt of his sword with painful force, tried to shut out the vivid picture of her rosy nipples pinched to taut peaks by the touch of the breeze.
Then he heard her remove her leggings. He could almost feel them clinging to every curve of her hip and thigh, knee and ankle, as she wrestled them off.
His mouth felt dry. At that moment a battle began, there in the forest in the midst of the snowy winter night. A war against the most challenging adversary he had ever faced, fought not with cold steel and brute force, but with hot passions and ungentle desires.
And the enemy was himself.
A pool of heat settled low in his belly, a searing ache that tortured him. Yet he knew that the gathering storm of longings must never be allowed to break free.
It was, he thought cynically, as if he were being punished for a lifetime of pleasurable indulgence. Of all the women he had ever known, wanted, bedded ... the one he desired most, with a hunger beyond all hunger, the one who truly belonged to him by rule of Church and King, was forbidden to him.
Forcing himself to move, he concentrated on building a fire, his every move sharp and taut with the growing tension within him. He had a blaze burning in a matter of minutes, flames leaping into the night.
Spreading a ground covering of evergreen branches beside it, he made a soft, dry place for her to sit. Then he removed Pharaon’s saddle and the padded woolen square beneath, placing the wool atop the evergreens and adjusting the saddle so she could use it as a backrest.