Constantine swallowed. “Yes. I will always mourn Chastellet. Many good men died there.”
“You didn’t, though,” she said, staring so intently into his eyes that Constantine felt she was trying to look into the core of his soul.
“Perhaps I am not a good man,” he offered. “My actions have cost me my family, my home, my livelihood. My reputation. That has to stand for something.”
“I find that the more you blame yourself for the actions of Glayer Felsteppe, the more convinced I am that you are a good man,” she said.
“I’m not blameless, Theodora,” he cautioned.
“I never said you were.”
“The reason I refused you at the cottage, why I said such things to you, is that my mind tells me that I must soon set you free,” he said, letting his gaze play over her face as he smoothed a lock of hair from her forehead. “For both our sakes.”
“What does your heart say?” Dori whispered.
He leaned close and kissed her softly.
“My heart says the same thing,” she whispered against his lips.
Constantine pulled her against his chest where she rested her cheek, his arm around her shoulder protectively.
“Close your eyes if you can and rest,” he suggested. “We’ll ride again in a while.”
She didn’t reply, but Constantine felt her body slowly relax, felt the warmth of her breath on the back of his hand where he clasped her forearm.
His duty commanded that he see Glayer Felsteppe’s end.
His heart insisted he must keep Dori and her innocent son safe, protect them, love them, no matter their connection to the man who had destroyed Constantine’s life.
And under that tree, in the bright light of day and while holding the wife of his greatest enemy, General Constantine Gerard at last realized that he wished to honor both requirements.
* * *
Father Simon came down the curving staircase, doing his best to keep his chin up and his feet moving forward despite his urge to collapse against the thick banister in his despair and fatigue. If he stopped to look around him, this house he knew so well, stopped to think about who he had left in the bedchamber above, he would not be able to walk through the door for the final time. Even breathing had seemed to require much more effort than usual since his arrival in the city, as if a heavy, melancholic fog had settled over his chest.
But he could not indulge his sudden weakness of body; there was an important guest of the bishop due to arrive by ship today—the same ship Simon himself would board and depart England on the morrow, never to return. The vessel had been delayed by the torrential rains along the coast, causing the bishop’s guest’s arrival—and Simon’s own departure—to be delayed.
Not that the priest minded. Indeed, he would hold the memory of this day in his heart for the rest of his life. He must; it would be all he had left.
He heard the shouting and clattering commotion swelling outside the house before he’d reached the bottom of the stairs. In the next moment, the double doors on the far side of the entry below burst inward, admitting two footmen carrying the limp body of Lloyd Carmichael, Lord Bledsoe, whose wife Simon had just left.
Ethan Carmichael was on their heels. “Take him upstairs!” he commanded, leaving the doors swinging wide behind him. “The surgeon’s on his way.”
Simon pressed against the railing as Bledsoe was hurried past him. He looked at the man’s gray, slack face, the jowls thin and collapsed against his wrinkled neck where once, years ago, plump, robust flesh had circled. His eyelids were only partially closed, and yet Simon could see nothing but bloodshot whites.
“You.”
The word was shot at him with all the deadly force of an arrow, and Simon looked around to see his beloved Ethan at the bottom of the stair, one fine, decorative boot on the first riser, his fist gripping the banister.
“What happened, Ethan?” Simon asked.
Louisa’s distressed cry echoed faintly above, but neither man looked away from the other.
“He collapsed in the carriage en route from court,” Ethan said. “After he’d received a troubling message while with the king.”
The surgeon came through the open door just then, his heeled boots clicking across the marble beneath his swishing robes as his assistants scurried behind him.
“Lord Bledsoe?” he queried, approaching the stairs without slowing.
