Chapter Nineteen
“Madelaine, wake up. Madelaine.”
Lainie gasped. Her eyes flew open to stare at a dark ceiling dappled with moonlight. No trees looming above her, no rocks digging into her back. No fingers circling her neck and choking the life from her. A ceiling in Christien’s home. In France.
Tears traveled into her hairline and onto her pillow. Terror seized her in its hideous grasp.
Christien gathered her stiff body in his arms. “’Twas a dream, mon couer. Only a dream.”
She struggled to catch her breath and tame her runaway heart. Her knee ached, like she really had fallen on it. Her throat hurt to swallow, like someone really had strangled her.
A sob rushed through her, shaking her body and breaking the numbing paralysis.
She clung to Christien, fisting her hands on his bare chest. Giselle’s face loomed in front of her, her eyes furious. Lainie cringed from the image and Christien pulled her tightly to him. But even Christien’s strong arms would never dispel the image of what happened in that forest.
She pulled away from Christien. “She was strangled. That’s how she died, isn’t it?”
“Strangled? By Lucien?”
“Not Lucien. In my dream it was Giselle, but that can’t be right.”
“Giselle?” he whispered.
“Of course it wasn’t Giselle.” Lainie ran a hand through her tangled hair and laughed, but the laugh was weak. “I’ve been thinking about my project at work and my mind probably stuck Giselle in my dream.”
“Are you sure it was her?”
“I’m sure I dreamt it was her, but she wasn’t the one who killed Madelaine.
That would make her something like seven hundred years old or reincarnated.
Like me.” She tried to infuse some levity into her voice, making a joke out of something not all that funny, but it failed miserably.
Instead her voice wobbled and the statement came out more a question.
But Christien didn’t seem to be listening.
“Tell me everything. Everything you saw in your dream,” he said.
Her mind shied from the visions that wouldn’t let her go.
She didn’t want to relive Madelaine’s fear and grief.
Nor her death or terrifying things Lucien said to her at the end.
Already her heart was galloping, as if she really had run through the forest. She heard the baying dogs, her ragged breaths, the swish of her skirts through the underbrush.
Like her other dreams, this one was so real she felt as if she’d been there.
“I’m sorry, ma chérie, but I need you to tell me. It’s important.”
She took a deep breath and clutched Christien’s hand like it was her last tie to this earth. “They were so sure Lucien would go after Madelaine, and he did, but not in the way they thought.”
Christien and Madelaine hadn’t died together. They never found their happiness. Stupid of her to think they would when so much had been stacked against them. But she’d hoped. She’d really hoped.
“She’d discovered she was pregnant with the count’s baby.”
Christien’s fingers flexed in hers and he drew in a sharp breath.
“She went to the garden, to the spot where she met Christien that one night. Lucien was there. He was talking to…” She frowned.
“A woman. A woman who looked like Giselle. She heard them talking about King Philip and a letter he’d sent telling the king that Simon of Flandres was sympathetic to the Templar’s cause and he was trying to free the Grand Master. ”
Christien didn’t move. He barely even breathed. “What happened?”
“I ran away. I was scared.” The words came faster. Her chest heaved with the effort to slow them down. She barely realized she was speaking in the first person. “So I ran.”
Christien rubbed his thumb along the top of her hand, back and forth, anchoring her.
“Lucien and…Giselle followed. They had an argument. Lucien claimed…” She couldn’t even speak the blasphemous things Lucien had said to her. The ravings of a madman. That was all it was.
“Tell me, Madelaine. I need to know.”
She took a deep breath and looked into Christien’s eyes. “He told me he had to steal the Templar treasure. He said if he broke the seals then he would have the power of one of the four horsemen.”
Madelaine’s terror came rushing back but Lainie wasn’t sure it was Madelaine’s anymore. It felt all too real when she thought of the books on Christien’s bookshelf that referred to the Book of Revelation.
“What happened next?” he asked urgently.
Lainie brushed the tears off her face. “Giselle was furious. She hit Lucien with a tree branch and knocked him out. Then she strangled… She killed Madelaine.”
She cried, deep sobs that robbed her of breath and shook her body. Christien held her, rocked her, rubbed her back and murmured soothing words until the tears subsided and she pulled away.
“I think I knew she wasn’t going to live long.
It’s just…” She dragged in a deep breath.
“It still shocked me.” She tried to pull herself together, to stop the endless tears, to stifle the clawing fear.
“What is this all about, Christien? Why would Lucien think he could break the seals and become a horseman?”
Christien stood and pulled her up with him. “Come, Madelaine, let’s get dressed. There is something you must see.”
“Now?” She looked out the window where the dark sky was slowly turning a deep purple. A new day dawning, yet Lainie felt as if it were the end rather than another beginning.
“Trust me, love. You need to see this.”
Lainie hesitated but eventually nodded. She did trust Christien. As bizarre as this was, one thing remained steady—her trust and her love for this man.
They dressed silently. A pall hung between them, a sadness that would never be easily erased.
She’d lived with this other Madelaine for weeks, experienced her terror, her joy, watched her fall in love with her dark knight.
To witness her death, with no warning, horrified her and left her empty and sad.
Once they were dressed, Christien took her hand and led her out of the house, through the countryside and over rolling hills covered with purple lavender. The air was so fresh and even though her grief pressed down on her, she still felt as if she’d come home. This is where I was meant to be.
She didn’t know how long they walked—ten minutes? twenty?—when they entered a line of trees. Lainie hesitated, the terror of her last memory rearing its ugly head. Christien looked back at her, his heart in his eyes. Her trust in him outweighed the fear and urged her forward.
After a few minutes the trees thinned out, giving way to a small clearing shrouded in the shadows of the waning night. In the middle of the clearing was a cemetery surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence.
The gravestones were old, some so worn the lettering was almost nonexistent. Many were centuries old, but one in particular looked brand-new.
Christien stopped in front of it and bowed his head, his shoulders curving as if the responsibilities of the world rested on them. Lainie read the epitaph.
Madelaine, Countess of Flandres
1288-1307
There is nothing love cannot face;
there is no limit to its faith,
its hope, and its endurance.
“I brought her body here after I purchased her family home.”
Lainie’s gaze flew to Christien. She pictured the imposing house high on a hill with the surrounding countryside spread before it.
With turrets, crenellations and arrow slits, it was more a castle than house. Built as a weapon of war, a stronghold and a place to retreat to for safety. Now she understood why it looked so familiar, why she was able to walk through it without losing her way and why she felt safe within its walls.
She hadn’t dreamed of it, but she knew as deeply as she knew she loved Christien that this was where she grew up. There had been additions, renovations and improvements over the years but the heart of the castle remained the same.
“Why?” She wasn’t sure which question swirling through her brain she was asking. Why did he own Madelaine’s home? Why was her grave here?
He looked at her through the shadows of the dawn, sadness burning in his eyes. “She needed to be here, where she was happiest.”
“She was happiest with Christien.” Lainie touched the cold stone, damp from the dew. “I can’t imagine his sorrow when he returned to find her…gone.”
“He was devastated. Beyond grief. I… He returned to the castle too late to save you.” He pressed his fingers into his eyes.
Stunned, caught in his grief and rage, she touched his arm, not knowing what else to do. His muscles were tense, rock hard.
He drew in a deep breath. “They told me you had fallen off your horse and broke your neck but I doubted the story. However events were unfolding swiftly. King Philip was experiencing heavy financial losses and wanted to acquire the Templar’s wealth by accusing us of heresy and witchcraft.
Our leader, deMolay, had already been arrested.
My fellow brothers were being rounded up, questioned, tortured, accused of heinous crimes.
I was ordered back to Paris to meet with deMolay.
There had been no time to inquire further into your death.
I thought when I returned I would look into it.
But it was not to be. In Paris I was given a…
task. I had to travel to Scotland right away.
I had no choice.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat, still staring at the stars.
Scotland. That explained the Celtic cross tattooed on his chest. A tattoo he said he received in Scotland a long time ago.
Puzzle pieces were starting to fall into place, but her mind shied from the picture forming.
Certainly what she was thinking was impossible.
And yet hadn’t she at one time thought reincarnation was impossible?
“I was operating on sheer force of will and the desperate need to protect the Templar treasure.” He looked at her. “The same treasure Lucien was promised if he took it from me.”