Forever His(85)

She pulled out of his arms the instant she was feeling even a little better. “Th-thank you.”

He let her go, turned away stiffly, retrieved his torch. “These attacks seem to come over you whenever you try to run from me. Mayhap it would be better if you stayed close.” It sounded like he was trying to be sarcastic but it didn’t quite come out that way. His voice lost its bite as he said the word “close.”

“I—I can’t. I shouldn’t. You know I shouldn’t.”

“I will not begin that discussion again. Not after enduring it yesterday from dawn until dark.” He glanced around the small chamber as if he had developed an intense interest in his wine collection, looking everywhere but at her. “What exactly did you think you were doing down here?”

She dropped her gaze to the dirt floor, feeling foolish. “Trying to hide.” The idea sounded even more ridiculous spoken aloud, but she was not going to lie to him anymore, even to save her pride. “I thought maybe you would ... leave me behind.”

“And now that you realize your mistake, wife, it is time to go. You have caused your measure of trouble for the day.” He motioned for her to proceed him up the steps. “And you have cost us a good deal of daylight.”

With an exasperated sigh, she walked past him and started ascending the spiral stair. If she kept fighting him, he would no doubt haul her out of here like one of the sacks of grain. “You haven’t even told me where we’re going,” she complained.

“To the chateau that belonged to my father, in the north.”

Celine stopped and turned. “But that’s not safe for you! Tourelle will guess where you are before too long.”

“I am not running from him, Christiane—I am getting you away from him. The fact that you hid from me makes you look all the more suspicious, ma dame,” he said ominously. “Do you truly wish to remain here so badly? To stay near him and plan further treachery?”

Celine just stared at him, mute with chagrin. He wouldn’t believe the truth. He had already jumped to the wrong conclusion and found her guilty.

“If Tourelle comes seeking a fight,” Gaston continued in that same tone, “he will get it. Chateau de Varennes is much larger than this keep, and far better defended. And it is more than a month distant from here and his murderous schemes.”

“A month?” she cried. “But that’s—”

“I had planned to move there permanently in the spring. But the worst of the season’s snows are past, so there is no reason to delay. We shall leave with a few guards, and the servants will follow when they have packed the furnishings.”

Celine’s jaw fell inch by inch as he said all this. Permanently? She remembered overhearing a few servants talking about moving in the spring, but she hadn’t paid much attention to it.

Since she had expected to be long gone by then.

“But ... you mean we won’t be coming back here at all?”

“Nay.” He gave her a nudge.

She remained rooted to the step. “But I can’t—I mean I have to—”

“Move, ma dame.”

His granite-hard tone left no room for argument. She turned and started upward again, feeling like she was being marched off to her own execution. “Gaston, please, I know you don’t like me to keep saying this, but I’m not who you think I am, and—”

“I know.”

Startled, she stopped and turned again, unable to believe her ears. “You know what?”

He shifted the torch to his other hand and leaned one muscled shoulder against the stone wall. “I spoke with the sisters from Aragon after supper last night.” His voice was mild, but his eyes were piercing. “They said they knew naught of you ever being called Celine by anyone. Or of the silver on your teeth. Or the strange foods that you have been cooking. They said you had always been useless in the convent’s kitchen, unable to so much as boil a chicken. And I showed them some of the odd devices you have invented. They had never seen aught like them. In the convent or anywhere in Aragon.”

Celine felt hope well inside her. “So you know that I—”

He cut her off. “But all of that could merely have been a ruse, intended to mislead me and make me drop my guard. The nuns are of the opinion that it is all somehow related to your supposed brain-fever, but I tend to believe that you deliberately planted these clues to make me think you were someone other than Christiane, Tourelle’s ward.”

She made a sound of frustration through her teeth. “You are the most suspicious, mistrustful man ever to set foot on the face of the earth.”