Forever His(78)

He clasped her to him again. “Poor, sweet maid. Was he telling the truth of it, then? Did you suffer some sort of blow to your head that stole your memory?”

Celine wrenched herself out of his embrace, backing away from him, from all of them, shaking, the fringes of panic starting to close in. “What ... what is this? Some ... some sort of ... awful joke? Where’s the real Christiane?”

She looked to Gaston for an explanation, but he only regarded her with a hard stare, not a sliver of emotion showing on his rigid features. He stood apart from the crowd, watching them. Watching her.

One of the nuns began to explain. “You disappeared, ma chère, just after the great blizzard we encountered. We were bringing you here for your wedding when the storm struck and forced us to take refuge in a forest. We last saw you on the eve of the new year, when you went to sleep in your tent. The next day, when Arlette came to fetch you for morning prayers, you were gone. There were only your footprints in the new snow, leading a few paces from the opening—and there they stopped. It looked as if a great bird had swooped down and carried you off.”

“You frightened us terribly!” another put in.

“We spent days searching for you, milady,” one of Tourelle’s men added. “We feared that you had become lost in the snows. What happened to you?”

Celine couldn’t answer. She just stared at all of them, thunderstruck. Her shock quickly gave way to fright as the unbelievable truth sank in. Disappeared. Christiane had disappeared on New Year’s Eve. The same night she had been brought here from 1993. Which meant ...

What? What did it mean for her chances of getting home? Would the two of them have to switch back the same way? At the same time?

Was that why the eclipse hadn’t worked?

Her mind reeling, she turned blindly to Gaston, instinctively seeking comfort and safety in the one place she might find it with the world spiraling out of control. But the little group around her had closed in so tightly that she couldn’t move toward him.

And he made no move toward her.

“Gaston, you ... you have to believe ...” Celine began, though she barely believed it herself. “She must have been ... struck by the light from the lunar eclipse. Just like I was. She must have been ... sent to the future. I don’t know how this happened, but we ... we’ve traded places somehow!”

His rigid features shifted only slightly, his lips tightening into a hard, cynical line.

He didn’t believe her. He would never believe her. Not now. His expression revealed exactly what he was thinking: that she was Christiane and had been all along. That everything she had told him up until now had been one enormous lie.

“No!” She whirled back to the strangers gathered around her, desperately turning from one concerned face to another. “I’m not Christiane! Can’t you tell? Don’t I look different? Don’t I sound different? I’m not Christiane!”

A couple of the women looked at each other, shaking their heads sadly. They clearly thought she had lost her marbles.

“Did Christiane speak English?” Celine demanded. She proceeded to tell them who she was and where she was from and how she had gotten here—all in her best Chicago-accented American English.

“She speaks in tongues!” one nun said, crossing herself.

Another came forward cautiously, as if approaching a wild animal that might bite. “All will be well, Christiane,” she said soothingly. “I have cared for people with terrible injuries and strange brain-fevers before, in the convent’s infirmary. It is possible your mind will return in time.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mind!” Celine yelled at them, shifting back to French. She clenched her fists, shaking with helpless frustration. “Don’t you see that this doesn’t make any sense? How could I possibly have gotten all the way here from wherever you were camped? And how could I have done it so fast? Even If I were Christiane?”

“But you are Christiane, dear,” one of the women insisted. She came to stand right in front of her, speaking loudly and distinctly, as if Celine were half deaf or mentally impaired. “Your ... name ... is ... Christiane ... de... la ... Fontaine.”

“I am not crazy! Look! Look at this!” Celine opened her mouth and pointed to her teeth. “Did your Christiane have fillings? Did she have a scar on her back?” She was tempted to tear off her dress and show them the mark. Instead she spun to face the crowd, looking for her friends. “Ask Yolande and Gabrielle! Ask them about my scar. And about the strange foods I’ve been cooking and the devices I invented for them and the fact that I’ve had everyone calling me Celine and that I don’t know anything about your way of life in this time. Ask them! Ask Gaston!”