Someone was shaking her.
Ghislaine ignored the gentle shaking, going so far as to shove them away, but she heard someone call her name, softly, and her eyes flew open.
Ghislaine!
There was some light now across the land in the very early dawn as she blinked, having no idea where she was or how she got here until she pulled the skirt of the cote completely away from her head and saw Gaetan bending over her. He looked pale and worried as he gazed down at her.
“Ghislaine?” he said quietly, with concern. “Thank God you are alive. What happened? How did you end up here?”
She blinked. Rolling on to her back and wincing when her right leg pained her greatly at the movement, she stared at Gaetan as if hardly believing what she was seeing. Gaetan! Was she dreaming? Or was he actually here, in her midst? Then, everything came tumbling down on her – the fevered wound, waking up in the smelly dank cell where she’d found herself and, most of all, waking up alone. Gaetan had promised her he would not leave her behind but he had. She was running after him to catch up with him. She must have found him and not even realized it. But now, he was here.
He was smiling at her.
Whack!
A balled fist came up and caught Gaetan right in the mouth and his head snapped back as Ghislaine struggled to sit up. She was mad enough to throw another punch at him but she didn’t want to do it lying on the ground. She might even beat him to death in the process because he deserved it, in her opinion.
Her fury knew no bounds.
“That is for breaking your promise to me!” she bellowed, but there were tears on the surface. “You promised me that you would not leave me behind and you did! I had to come and find you!”
Gaetan was rocked back on his heels, a hand going to his lips and coming away with a smear of blood on them. He remained calm.
“Find me?” he repeated, confused and, frankly, rather hurt that she struck him. “What on earth are you talking about? I came to find you.”
“But you left me! You said you would not and you did! You lied!”
Gaetan was trying to figure out why she was so irate but it occurred to him that she must not have remembered much of the past day. Her fever had wreaked havoc with her mind so there was something going on with her that he did not quite understand. She was confused and making accusations that were simply untrue. He reached out to still her as she finally managed to sit up but she yanked her arm out of his grasp, sliding away from him, not wanting to be too close to him.
In fact, the anger in her expression shocked him. He didn’t like to see that where it pertained to him. “Ghislaine, I did not lie to you,” he said evenly. “Why did you leave the apothecary’s hut? What happened?”
She was furious and feeling ill. Moreover, her leg was killing her. “I do not know what you mean,” she snapped. “I know of no apothecary.”
“The man who tended your leg when you were with fever.”
Ghislaine looked at him, still feeling confusion and distressed, but now she truly had no idea what he meant. Still… she thought back to the town she had fled; she had awoken in a smelly hovel. Was that what he meant? A shaking hand flew to her head, pushing the mussed hair out of her eyes.
“The man who tended my…?” she repeated, bewildered. Then, she looked around, seeing all of Gaetan’s knights looking back at her in various stages of concern. She looked at each and every face, thinking that these did not look like men who had abandoned her. They didn’t have that look about them. Her attention returned to Gaetan as she struggled for calm. “Someone tended my leg? But you tended it. You and Aramis did.”
Gaetan glanced at Aramis, who was standing off to his right. Before he could reply, Aramis took a few steps towards Ghislaine and took a knee beside her.
“That was the first time,” Aramis said patiently. “You began running a terrible fever and we took you in to Worcester where an apothecary cleaned out your wound again. Do you not remember?”
A little more was coming clear now but Ghislaine didn’t remember any of it. It was frightening to realize that she truly had no memory of something that had happened to her. She looked at Gaetan. “Is that why my leg hurts so?” she asked.
Gaetan nodded. “It was full of poison so an apothecary cleaned it out and stitched it up again. You were sleeping after the procedure so we left to go find supper and when we returned, you were gone. Did you truly think we had abandoned you? That I had abandoned you?”
Now, the situation was making so much more sense. Ghislaine sighed heavily, beginning to feel quite foolish and dismayed. “I… I awoke in a strange place and I thought you had left me behind,” she said. “You said that you would not, but when I awoke and you were not there… I was afraid to remain. I had to find you.”
Things were becoming clear to Gaetan, too. He smiled faintly when he realized what had happened. “So you left? With your bad leg, you actually set out to find me?”
Ghislaine nodded, embarrassed. “You promised you would not leave me and I was going to find you and… you truly did not leave me behind?”
Gaetan shook his head. “Nay, little mouse. I told you I would not.”
He had. But she hadn’t believed him. But, as he’d proved to her since the beginning of their association, he was a man of honor. Norman honor. Her feelings of foolishness only increased as she noted the blood on his lip.
“I am so sorry that I struck you,” she whispered. “I… I have no excuse other than I thought you had lied to me.”
Gaetan’s smile grew. Then, he started to laugh, turning to the men behind him who were also starting to chuckle. He wiped at his lip again but there was very little blood.
“It was a good hit,” he admitted. “I supposed I deserved it if you thought I had broken my promise. But I did not, I swear it. We have been looking for you for the past several hours. Cam was following your trail but he got off task a few times when a rabbit or a fox would cross his path. But it was really Cam who helped us find you. Without him, we would still be looking for you and you would still be angry at me.”
Ghislaine smiled timidly, looking at the silly dog who was sitting a few feet away, his wagging tail thumping against the ground when her attention turned to him. She shook her head at the beast.
“He followed me from town,” she said. “I do not even know when he left me because it seemed as if he was always with me.”
“He waited for us on the bridge. Even he knew I would come for you and he waited to show me the way.”
Her smile grew, though it was still sheepish. “Then he is a good dog.”
Gaetan’s smile turned warm, his gaze only for Ghislaine. “Do you still despise him?”