You’re away for months at a time and I am left alone!
I am lonely, Constantine. Will you not at last make a life with me at Benningsgate?
You have a son now; we need you. The estate needs you.
I’m finished being nothing more than a battle trophy for you! Of waiting for you to return!
You forced my hand, Constantine. And this time I am not sorry.
He knew the vile things that had been said about Patrice. But that was only through her growing lack of discretion and poor choices of companions. Few men could resist boasting of having possessed a woman of such beauty. But even though the rumors spread through her own fault, what had driven her to such scandalous behavior was Constantine’s own lack of attention.
He came to the edge of the weeds and stepped one foot onto a large outcropping of rock on the bank and looked over the churning water. He should have listened to her. Patrice’s actions had grown more outrageous the longer and more frequently Constantine had been away, and he could see so clearly now, so obviously, that her imprudence had been nothing more than a desperate bid for his attention. He should have stayed home and been thankful day and night for the blessings of such a grand estate, such a beautiful, noble wife. Such a strong, handsome son, who did, indeed, favor Constantine, despite the vilest of the rumors.
But accepting the commission at Chastellet had in part been Constantine’s way of punishing Patrice. He would give up the sword, yes, but not until this last tour. On his terms. And now his wife was dead. His son was dead. His home was destroyed. His life was over.
Neither he nor Patrice had gotten what they’d wanted.
He heard Theodora coming down the slope as if she was a herd of goats, her breathing choppy and loud as she scrambled over the wall. Stan waited a moment, composing himself before he turned.
She slipped and skidded to a halt on the wet grass above him, the air so thick and humid that her breath steamed. Theodora’s hood had fallen back, her short hair flipped up like a dark cherub’s. Her eyes were still shadowed, her cheeks still thin, but now a flush of life bloomed on her pale face. Her thin, dark brows were wrinkled together and he wondered what she would rail about now.
“I said I was sorry,” she all but shouted.
“And I heard you the first time,” he said. “What do you want, Theodora?”
She paused, as if considering the question. “I came to make certain you weren’t going ahead to Thurston Hold.”
“I told you I was going fishing.”
She held up her palms toward him and looked him up and down pointedly.
Constantine felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “I was getting around to it.”
Theodora dropped her hands back to her sides. “My father didn’t know who I was when he died.” The abrupt admission caused Stan’s eyebrows to rise. The lady continued. “For nigh a year he had grown increasingly confused. Combative. I had to follow him about on his business and sit in on his meetings so he didn’t say something ridiculous, and so I could remind him of things he had agreed to, or conversations that had already taken place. I often had to interrupt negotiations of one sort or another with hysterics to save him from some ignoble trick to part him from his wealth or land. People began to speak of me as being unreasonable, spoiled, demanding. They blamed me for his odd behavior. It wasn’t obvious when he didn’t recognize a servant or a villager, but when he began to ask people who I was when I walked into the room, they attributed his words to some form of humiliation for the embarrassment I was causing him. Sometimes he thought I was my mother.”
She paused here to swallow, and Constantine made no comment. “Felsteppe knew, though. He had heard the rumors and knew my father was ill. And my father agreed to the betrothal in order to get rid of the daughter everyone seemed to suddenly find so difficult and disrespectful. I begged him to recant, but he had me removed from his chamber, calling me a trespassing adolescent village brat. I would usually return to him later when he had such a fit of delusion, but that night he had hurt me, humiliated me so deeply, I didn’t. I stayed in my chamber and fumed. That was the night he left the keep, walked into the river—this river—with nary a stitch of clothing on.” Her chin lifted the slightest bit. “And he drowned.”
The rain had slowed so gradually while Theodora spoke that Constantine hadn’t noticed its cessation until she looked at him with her lips pressed together and her chin lifted, her dark lashes wet with the very air. The roar of the river behind him seemed to have come alive now, knowing what he did about the lord of Thurston Hold’s death. Was it difficult for her, he wondered, standing on its sodden bank, listening to its hungry rumble? Did she think of her father’s last moments, perhaps struggling for his breath in its wet embrace?
“You had no recourse for the marriage agreement after his death,” Constantine realized aloud.
Theodora shook her head.
Constantine turned back toward the river, bringing both his boots to the outcropping of rock and crossing his arms over his chest as he gazed at the overgrown, misty fields on the far side of the rushing current. He felt more than saw Theodora Rosemont join him on the perch he’d claimed, and he had to force himself not to glance down, extend a hand in case she should happen to lose her footing on the wet, mossy rock.
“I’d hoped you would tell me Glayer Felsteppe killed your father,” he said. “Perhaps then we could have enjoined to Henry in a common plea.”
“As much as I hate to disappoint you in that my father wasn’t murdered,” she said wryly, “there were many witnesses to the goings-on at Thurston Hold the night he died. And Felsteppe had been in the Holy Land for weeks by then.”
He had perhaps been feeling the beginnings of sympathy for her before she’d reminded him. “You went to him there.”
“Yes.”
“Did he send for you? After receiving word of your father’s death?”
Theodora was quiet for several moments, and Constantine thought perhaps there was something—anything—about her actions that could redeem her in his eyes.
“I went of my own accord.”
