“Because he wanted further proof of my bad behavior?” she rejoined, but her words were without bile. Indeed, she sounded subdued, resigned. “‘Spoiled, rude Theodora. Never made to mind her manners. Treated as a princess, with her every whim granted. The ruination of her father, God rest his poor, weary soul.’ I wouldn’t want to disillusion him into considering I actually am one of his betters.”
Constantine heard her words against the backdrop of his destroyed life as she spoke them from her weak and battered body, her costume worse than rags.
“Everyone envied me for some reason or another,” she went on, and still her voice was flat, lifeless. “Usually something ridiculous, like my hair or my father’s station. How many horses I had to ride at my pleasure. As if I had any control at all over those things. As if I had control over anything.”
“Patrice mentioned several times that everyone thought you’d marry royalty,” Constantine spoke the memory aloud before he could think better of it.
Theodora huffed a mirthless laugh. “And look at me now. I’m supposedly dead. Everything has been taken from me: my health, my beauty, my fortune, my family, my home. My son. Even the basest slave has more to boast of than I. Theodora Rosemont, who had every freedom, is now little more than a ghost. A hated ghost.”
Her tone caused Constantine’s defenses to rise. “Was I supposed to defend you to my loyal man, who served my family and knew me well?”
Her eyebrows raised. “I don’t know. Were you?” she challenged him.
“You’re twisting this into some lack of chivalry or honor on my part,” he accused her. “Before coming back to Benningsgate, I hadn’t seen you since you were a girl in short skirts. You came to my wedding with your father. You’d never even met my son.”
“I’ve said nothing of chivalry or honor,” she replied coolly and then rose. “And to my knowledge, after your wedding to Lady Patrice, you were not in residence at Benningsgate for a length of time such as would allow a visit from my father or anyone else. So perhaps it is your own conscience you hear berating you rather than me. Are you ready?”
He was frowning in earnest now. He had come back to the ruin from the river intent on doing that which he hadn’t known was still necessary, and he didn’t need Theodora Rosemont trailing after him like the sickly, pathetic waif she was, her big eyes holding him responsible for all the wrongs that had perhaps been done to her, even as he wanted to denounce her for his own trials.
“Ready for what?” he snapped.
“For me to show you through to the hall,” she said, looking into his eyes. “That’s where you want to go, isn’t it?”
Constantine’s stomach became an icy pit. “You know a way?”
“I could see your reaction to the loyal Jeremy’s slip that no one had been able to reach Lady Patrice or your son after the stones had cooled enough to attempt a retrieval. You thought they had received a great ceremony befitting the noble house of Chase, did you not?”
Constantine could only stare at her and nod his head once, sharply.
Theodora Rosemont shook her own head to the negative, and he thought he saw a spark of anger in her dark eyes. “Patrice was marked as a traitor in league with you—as hiding one of your co-conspirators within Benningsgate and refusing to divulge your whereabouts. The king ordered the ruin abandoned, the village emptied, until such evidence as to your guilt or innocence could be provided.”
Constantine continued to stare at her until his vision blurred and he was forced to look away. His rage was so great that he felt as though his mind and body had been enveloped in a white-hot haze, buffering him from the earth, burning him inside this fiery cocoon.
“Show me,” he rasped.
She turned without further word and began walking toward the tilted stair that led to the wall walk and Constantine followed her, his heart screaming in his chest, his footfalls so heavy he thought it a wonder they didn’t leave chasms in the twisted overgrowth of the ward.
They gained the walk and Theodora went to the most intact wall of the keep. Hugging it close, she stepped on to the stones that had fallen against its south side, forming a sort of bridge. Constantine thought they looked more than a little loose, but none of them so much as shifted under Theodora’s slight weight. If they did, she would tumble down into the ward atop the pile that had already met that same fate long ago, becoming buried herself.
As if she heard the unspoken warning, she turned her face back toward him. “Step lightly.” And then she was gone around the far side of the charred remains.
Constantine followed, the stones beneath his boots sighing and groaning, whispering to one another as he made his careful way after the woman. Perspiration sprang out along his forehead, both from the exertion of keeping his footing and the nightmare into which he was heading. Part of his heart was screaming at him to stop, go back. He didn’t want to see.
But he reached the hidden corner of the keep that appeared from below to be collapsed. It largely was, the wall cracked in a long seam along the stones of a doorway lintel and shoved back as a whole, revealing a partially collapsed gap inside, filled with stone and what appeared to be a long, oiled piece of finely turned wood.
“I’m not going in,” she said, drawing his agitated attention.
“I didn’t invite you,” he snapped.
Her pale face regarded him for a long moment. “If it collapses around you . . .”
“Lucky for you,” Constantine said.
“I didn’t do this, Lord Gerard,” Theodora said, and the sadness was back in her eyes once more. “I’m sorry you think me your enemy. I’m not.” She paused. “Be careful.”
Then Theodora Rosemont braced her hands on the collapsed walls and moved around him, back along the treacherous path of the fallen stones to leave him to his miserable discoveries or his painful end, whichever he might be more determined to find.
Constantine lowered himself carefully into the chasm, reaching one booted foot upon the conspicuous piece of hewn wood. It wobbled and flipped under his weight, obviously no good foothold, and he spilled to his knees, sliding sideways into the wall with a shout of alarm. But his fall was arrested and he turned over onto his stomach to take hold of the piece of wood that had caused his slip.
