Forever His(94)

But that was ridiculous. It couldn’t be true. She wasn’t meant to be here. Not with a bullet in her back. Not with a husband who didn’t trust her.

Or care for her.

Him again. Invading her thoughts at every turn. With a groan of frustration, she got out of bed and put her gown back on, not bothering with the laces. A breath of fresh air might do her some good. The night was warm for March. She crossed to the far side of the room, toward the door that Avril had said opened onto a terrace.

She peeked out, then stepped outside. An actual terrace. Definitely odd-looking in a castle, but there was an entire network of them, encircling the chateau’s tallest tower, one outside every bedchamber. They were supported by massive buttresses, but otherwise looked surprisingly delicate, with onion-shaped roofs, gracefully sweeping arches, tile floors, and walls and ceilings inlaid with ivory and lapis sparkling in the light of the full moon.

It was one more bit of Moorish influence—an especially romantic touch that Avril said Gerard had included to surprise her. Celine ran her hand over the smoothly curving edge of the rounded, waist-high stone railing. This was not the work of a rigid, unfeeling man.

How could two brothers be so different?

From what she could glean, Gerard hadn’t always been that way. Avril said their marriage had been arranged, and at first he had been very much like Gaston: high-handed and arrogant and coolly unemotional. They had had terrible arguments, and she had spent most of her first weeks as a new bride crying and wanting to return to her home by the seashore in Brittany.

And then slowly, so subtly that neither one of them had realized it was happening, he had fallen in love with her, and she with him. It had been, Avril whispered softly, mostly a matter of time.

Time. Celine leaned out over the railing, looking down at the castle walls far below, the bailey, the moat, the moon-silvered treetops beyond, bare branches that would soon be green with new buds. She felt very close to tears.

Time. She was just exhausted. That was all it was. She should go back inside and at least try to get some rest, even if she couldn’t sleep. Pacing and wandering and trying to come to terms with her troubling thoughts were making her feel worse, not better.

She turned to go in but stopped in mid-stride when a small object fell past her terrace, right out of the sky. She rushed to the far railing, just in time to see whatever it was land in the moat with a splash. Puzzled, she glanced up to see where it had fallen from—then gasped.

Gaston sat perched on the onion-shaped roof of the terrace adjacent to hers. From six feet away and ten feet up, he glanced down and gave her a lopsided grin. His beard had grown in during their weeks on the road, and it made him look all the more like a complete rogue and a disheveled reprobate. “Good eventide, wife. Come to enjoy the view as well?”

Her throat had closed off so tightly that she couldn’t say anything for a moment. He was wedged precariously between the curving roof and the tower. One wrong move and he would fall. “What do you think you’re doing up there?” she shouted at him, terrified.

“Enjoying the view,” he replied, as if it should be obvious, his words slurring. “And a flask or two of my brother’s excellent Castilian wine.” He lifted the object in his hand.

“You look like you’ve had a flask or ten of your brother’s excellent Castilian wine.” Her words were angry, but it was fear that made her fingers tighten around the wide stone railing. However in the world he had gotten up there, there was no way he could get down safely. Not drunk.

“Two. Ten. No matter.” He let his head fall back against the stone tower, making a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “In truth, it is my excellent Castilian wine now.”

The liquor that muddled his voice couldn’t quite hide the anguish that lay beneath his words. Celine felt his pain so suddenly and so deeply that it made her hurt inside. How could she not have recognized it before? She hadn’t given a thought to his grief. It had to be torment for him to stay here, in this place so full of memories.

His brother and father were all the family he had ever had—and now they were gone. Both taken from him at once. And despite his claim that he had felt only respect for them, their bond obviously went much deeper than that. Gaston might not be able to use the word, but he clearly was capable of feeling the emotion ...

He had loved them.

Celine felt a wave of sorrow and tenderness steal through her. Her rugged, unyielding, formidable husband would never admit it, but he did know what love felt like.

“Gaston,” she said quietly, trying to keep his mind and her own on the problem at hand, “how did you get up there?”