“A man was sitting across the street while I was eating lunch,” she said.“He looked familiar.”
His head jerked up.“Can you describe him?”
“About average height.Blond hair.Pale skin.”
“Where had you seen him before?”
“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.
