Chapter Nine #3
“That’s the thing. I’m not even sure I have. I just had the feeling I’ve seen him before.”
He unclenched his other hand to reveal the diamond-and-silver key, looking small in his scarred palm. He’d been holding it so tightly it left an imprint. “There are…people…who would like to see me fail.”
The blood rushed out of Lainie’s face, leaving her light-headed. She swallowed her rising fear. “And how does this involve me?”
Stormy gray eyes searched her face. “You don’t know?”
She shook her head, her mouth dry.
“You are my Achilles heel, Madelaine, and they know it. To get to me, they’re going through you.”
For several moments she couldn’t speak, suddenly afraid, but not for the obvious reasons. Not because someone was out to hurt her, or because Christien might be in danger, but because of what he was trying to tell her. She meant something to him. She was important to him.
“We barely know each other,” she whispered.
“You know more about me than you think.”
“We just met—”
“Your dreams aren’t dreams, Madelaine. They’re memories of us.”
She shook her head, fighting the pain. “I’m Madelaine Alexander, born to a farming family in the twentieth century. I’m not some…some French countess who lived in a castle in the fourteenth century.”
Christien knew he’d frightened her. The expressions on Madelaine’s face turned from confusion to fear. Her shoulders pressed into the pillow. Not only did she not believe him, she thought him mad. Crazy. Who could blame her? Right now he was all of those things.
Inside he was shaking with fury, using every bit of his self-control to hide it from her.
When he received the call that she’d been hurt, he’d rushed to the hospital, his heart in his throat.
He couldn’t lose her after just finding her.
When he discovered she was alive, his relief had been so great he’d had to sit down to compose himself.
When she told him she’d been pushed, the anger returned ten times stronger than what it had been.
He’d been right all along. She was caught in the middle of this dormant war that suddenly wasn’t dormant anymore.
Someone was making a move and to Christien’s horror, the move was made against Madelaine.
All along he’d thought she was sent as a distraction when in reality she was in more danger than he. He should never have let her walk away, but he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. He would protect her because she was his to protect. He’d come far too close to losing her again.
Her hand touched his arm, bringing him out of his thoughts enough to push the anger to the dark recesses of his mind where he would let it fester. He’d need the anger soon to face what he had to face.
She looked up at him, her amber-colored eyes wide and filled with pity. Inside he blanched at the look of pity.
“I’m sorry, Christien. But I’m not that Madelaine.”
“Of course you’re not the same,” he said softly, placating her. He had to go slow when all he wanted to do was run away with her. But running away would solve nothing. He had to be more vigilant than he’d ever been before.
She blew out a relieved breath and offered him a shy smile.
By agreeing with her, he felt as if he were denying everything that happened so long ago, everything they meant to each other, everything that ever mattered to him.
A hollowness opened inside him. The crushing loneliness he’d lived with for so long came surging in, leaving him wounded and weary once again.
It had taken decades to move through the grief of losing her and centuries more to go a full day without thinking of her. He tried to convince himself she couldn’t possibly be the Madelaine he loved and lost. A figment of his imagination. A hope. A dream. But certainly not real.
Ever since their conversation on Sunday, he knew she was very much real and was the same woman he’d loved. These days apart from her felt as if someone reached down his throat and squeezed his heart.
That she did not remember him tore at his soul. That she refused to believe him was like dying a thousand deaths.
He looked into her eyes, frustration and anger at the injustice of it all churning inside him. He’d loved her with all his heart, all his soul, with every fiber of his being and she didn’t remember it.
He stood. Her fingers slid against his bare arm and away from him.
The anger swelled, more forceful this time, and directed at her.
Centuries ago they’d been forbidden to each other—because he was a lowly knight and she a countess.
They’d loved deeply, but had not been allowed their love.
Doomed to never live together, to never celebrate their feelings publicly they’d nurtured their love in the only way they were able. Secretly.
When he looked into those cinnamon-colored eyes, he saw the memories pushing to be released and her desperate struggle to contain them. If she would just open up and let the memories come, she would understand what this connection was between them. She’d know.
And that’s all Christien wanted, for her to remember him. Because he was living in hell, knowing she’d come back to him but unable to push past her defenses to unlock her memories.
“We met on April fourteenth, in the year of our Lord 1307. You were sitting next to your husband, Count Flandres, when I first saw you from across the hall. You watched me from beneath your lashes.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth went slack. She was pale before but now she was positively gray. Don’t do this to her. But for once he ignored his gut.
“You know this because I told you about the dream. This doesn’t prove anything,” she whispered.
Christien ignored her, his anger taking over his good sense.
“I saw your fear of him, especially when he approached us.”
Tears pooled in her eyes but still he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He needed her to remember. “Even though you experienced his wrath that night, you still came to the keep the next morning to see us off. You hid in the shadows, but I knew you were there. Even then we had this connection.”
She pressed a fist to her mouth, the tears rolling over her knuckles. This part she hadn’t told him and they both knew it.
“Rest assured, my lady, I was as drawn to you as you were to me. Certainly a mad choice on both our parts, but you couldn’t stay away and neither could I.”
“Please,” she whispered around her fist. “Please, stop.”
Her plea didn’t penetrate his anger. Nothing could at this point.
“Do you believe me now, Madelaine?”
“How do you know this? How do you know what I’ve been dreaming?”
“Because they’re not dreams, Madelaine. They’re memories of our life together.”
“Stop this!” Her cry echoed through the quiet hospital room. “They’re not memories. They’re dreams. Caused by stress.”
He looked down at her. Unable to resist, he touched her cheek, her jaw, the hollow at the base of her throat where her necklace had once lain. “Do you always feel a lover’s touch in your dreams?”
She jerked back, hissing in pain. “Enough. What you’re saying can’t happen.”
“It is happening,” he said softly. “But you continue to deny it. We were in love, Madelaine.”
“We weren’t! They were!” Her breathing was erratic, the fear coming off her in waves, but it was the look in her eyes that stopped him short.
Fear he could handle. Fear he could assuage.
He would slay her demons for her, travel to hell and back if it would make her happy. But fear of him made him sick inside.
“I’m not mad,” he said softly.
“I didn’t say you were.”
He raised a brow. “No? You were certainly thinking it.”
“What? You can read minds as well as know a person’s dreams?”
He shook his head sadly. “No, Madelaine. I know you.”