Chapter Seven
Present Day
Christien looked down at Madelaine fast asleep on his couch.Her knees were curled to her chest and a hand was tucked beneath her cheek.
His knees buckled and he sank to the floor beside her.Who was playing such a cruel joke on him?Who knew of the one person who could breach his defenses and leave him powerless?
Slowly he uncurled his fingers and pushed a strand of hair off her cheek.Her lids fluttered but did not open, and his heart turned over.
The warrior in him told him to let her go.To take her home and expel her from his life.Her appearance did not bode well for him or for the treasure he was sworn to protect.At best she was a distraction.At worst she was the catalyst that could start the war to end civilization.He shook his head at the thought.All these centuries he’d wondered when it would begin, when evil would make its move on good.Never in all that time had he imagined his Madelaine would come back to life and be caught in the middle of it.He closed his eyes, the pain too great to bear.But bear it he must.He had to look on her as his enemy until he could prove otherwise.
She sighed, drawing his gaze back to her.The key around her neck caught his attention.’Twas no more than two inches long but beautifully made, wrought in silver with small diamonds surrounding the bow.He sat back on his heels, his mind suddenly racing.
“Only the key will open it.”
His gaze returned to the necklace.Coincidence that she was wearing a key about her neck?Christien didn’t believe in coincidences.
His jaw clenched in indecision.How had Lucheux found her?
His eyes narrowed.If Madelaine had approached Lucheux with this plan that meant she had prior knowledge of the treasure and what she meant to Christien.Theirs had been a great love and even though he was cynical by nature he could not imagine her using their love against him.Which made him wonder if someone else had conceived of the notion to cross Madelaine’s path with Lucheux’s.
He stood swiftly, frustrated by the questions piling up and the lack of answers.
He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the guest bedroom.Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.He wouldn’t take her home tonight.He would keep her close and when she awoke in the morning he would get the answers he needed.
At least that was what he told himself.Yet when he laid her on the bed his heart beat a little harder, the blood rushed through his veins a little hotter and his mind wasn’t thinking of her as an enemy, but as the woman he loved long ago.
She blinked and looked up at him with sleepy eyes.“Christien.”
“Yes, my love?”
She sighed and her eyes drifted closed.“Just Christien.”
His heart turned over and he knew if he discovered she was consciously using him to get to the treasure it would destroy him.
Madelaine cried out, ripping Christien from a sound sleep.He rolled from his bed, instinctively reaching for a sword that hadn’t been at his side for several hundred years.He was down the hall before he realized where he was and in her room before the sleep cleared from his brain.
She was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes wild with fright, her body shaking so hard it made her teeth chatter.
“He’ll find us.”She turned wide, blank eyes to him.
She was in the grip of a nightmare.
He rounded the bed, cautiously advancing on her.“Who will find us?”
She put her hands on his chest and pushed.The action didn’t budge him.“You must go,” she whispered desperately.
He froze, belatedly realizing she was speaking Norman French.The breath rushed out of him and for a moment he didn’t move.He hadn’t heard his native tongue in many, many years.Hearing it now plunged his mind into the past so fast it made him dizzy and his pulse beat harder.
She spoke the language fluently, with no hesitation.At first he wondered if Lucheux had coached her in it, but her fluency convinced him otherwise.She wouldn’t speak a newly learned language while immersed in a nightmare.
Automatically he answered in the same language, the words he hadn’t used in centuries rolling off his tongue as if he spoke it every day.“Why must I go,chérie?”
She muttered under her breath, a disjointed prayer spoken in Latin.He’d heard her murmur this same prayer one other time.A night etched in his memory of a garden and a woman sobbing over a child that was not to be.
Her head whipped around as if something behind her had startled her.
“Madelaine.”
