He paused and met her eyes, looking for signs of doubt or fear; any indication that she was not completely committed to the path they would take, both literally and figuratively.
“Well? What are we waiting for?” she demanded.
Constantine kicked at his horse’s sides. “Hah!”
He led them swiftly as the sun rose in the sky, their speed making conversation impossible, even if either of them had been wont to speak. Constantine knew that seeking the king before killing Felsteppe might be suicide for him.
But he also knew it was the best option he had of securing Dori and her child’s safety. Once the king saw that she lived and heard her tale, there could be no doubt in Henry’s mind of Felsteppe’s inherent evil.
What the king would choose to do about it—if anything—Constantine could not say.
They stopped to rest the horses and themselves once the sun was bright and fully in the sky, eating what food they had beneath the shade of a beech tree. Their backs were against the wide trunk, their shoulders nearly touching.
“You’re worried, aren’t you?” Dori asked, glancing at him as she pulled a piece of bread from the hunk in her hands. The breeze caused the upturned ends of her hair to dance and shadows of the leaves overhead to flutter over her gamine face in such a way that Constantine felt he was in the presence of fae royalty despite her peasant attire.
He wouldn’t lie to her. “There’s no telling Henry’s mind after so many years. He’s been against me for many of them, believing in the tower of lies Felsteppe has constructed. I can’t say how he will react to our arrival.”
She huffed a breath of laughter. “I should think two dead people appearing suddenly at his court and begging an audience will at least gain his attention.”
Constantine’s mouth curved while he chewed and swallowed. “I was once party to a woman pretending to be a corpse in order to escape detection. A pattern, perhaps?”
Dori’s face turned toward him, her fine, arched brows raised. “Did it work?”
He shrugged and looked away to take a drink from the skin. “I don’t know. I left before they could return.” The silence settled around them for several moments.
“I’m worried.”
He turned to look at her, but her gaze was for the bright yellow fields glowing in the sun beyond the perimeter of their shady, breezy retreat.
“He won’t know who I am.”
Constantine frowned. “The king?”
“My son.” She looked at him. “I’ve never held him; never fed him. I don’t know anything about caring for an infant.”
“It’s largely instinct, isn’t it?” Constantine offered, returning things to his satchel.
“Hmm. I suppose.”
When he was finished, he looked back at Dori, who hadn’t moved from her contemplative pose, and he was surprised to see tracks of tears on her cheeks.
“What if we’re already too late?” she asked, her easy tone belying the glistening trails of sorrow on her face.
“Then that will forever be a burden across my own shoulders, not yours,” Constantine said, turning her face toward him. “Theodora, you’ve done everything you could on your own.”
“Do you mourn Chastellet?” she asked suddenly.
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.
“Yes, above,” Ethan said, standing aside so that the man might pass.
Simon waited for the man to ascend to the upper floor before turning back to Ethan. “Is there anything I can do?” He came away from the banister and stepped down one level toward the young man who was ascending the stairs slowly.
Ethan reached inside his t
unic and withdrew a wad of parchment. When he was on the same riser as Simon, he shoved the crumpled page into the priest’s chest so hard that Simon slammed back into the railing.
“This is the message that was delivered to him,” Ethan hissed.
Simon looked down and smoothed the paper with trembling fingers, fingers that soon lost all their sensation as he read the words scrawled boldly there.
The declaration was signed by none other than Glayer Felsteppe.
He swallowed as his chest constricted painfully against his next breath and then looked up at the young man whose eyes stared into Simon’s at exactly the same height.
“You blasphemous son of a bitch,” Ethan snarled, and then grasped Simon’s cassock in his left fist, drawing back his right. “You mocked the friendship—”
“Ethan, what on earth are you doing?” Louisa shouted from the top of the stairs, and both men turned to look up at the woman standing there, still in her thick, embroidered chamber robes. “Come up immediately! He’s awake and asking for you.”
Ethan sent the woman a glare but released Simon’s cassock and ripped the parchment from his hands before leaning close to Simon’s face.
“I’m not finished with you, Priest,” he growled and then took the stairs two at a time, sweeping past his mother without a further glance.
Simon looked up at her stricken face, her pale hand at the neck of her gown, the elegant gray at her temples, the starburst of creases at the outer corner of her eyes—folds from her years of gentle smiles. Now her pale lips pressed together in a grimace of fear for the man who might be dying in her chamber. A searing pain seemed to be weaving itself through Simon’s chest, growing stronger on the loom of his ribs.
“Simon,” she said in a strangled voice, and he knew it was taking all her considerable will to remain calm. “The bishop’s guests . . .”
Simon nodded. “I’ll meet them.”
“They were to stay with us, but—”she broke off and glanced behind her.
“I’ll take them to the palace,” he suggested. “Give them over to the cardinal.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, then seemed to hesitate.
“Go, Louisa,” Simon ordered, fighting to make his words even and gentle. “Bledsoe needs you.”
She brought her fingertips to her lips and sent him a kiss.
Simon tried to smile, but the attempt crumbled when she turned away and was gone down the corridor. He clutched at the banister as he made his way to the marble entry, turning and grasping the handles to pull the double doors closed behind him as he left the house.
Simon walked to Bledsoe’s carriage, still waiting before the doors.
“Good day, Father Simon,” the driver called out with a surprised smile. “Haven’t seen you in an age. ’Tis a miracle you’re here—the lord’s in a bad way.”
Simon only nodded as he grasped the handle and opened the carriage door. “I’m to fetch the bishop’s guests from the docks. We’ll be taking them to the palace.”
“Aye, Father.”
Simon pulled the carriage door shut and then collapsed against the seat as the conveyance began to rumble and sway. It smelled of fear inside. And anger. Simon should know; it had been his own personal scent for two years now.
. . . to inform you of the base indiscretions of your priest, Simon, who had carried on blatant infidelities with Louisa Carmichael, Lady Bledsoe, which I have both personally witnessed and heard the confession thereof by the adulterer’s own voice.
Now the worst had happened. Actually, worse than the worst—the secret had been exposed, and Bledsoe was perhaps on his deathbed because of this revelation. Simon withdrew the elegantly shaped cask of wine from the side wall of the carriage and uncorked it, helping himself to some of Bledsoe’s famous grapes. From the smallest estate Bledsoe had set aside for Ethan to run.
Poor Ethan. The lad would take it hard should Bledsoe die, being the youngest. The rest of the children would as well of course; and Louisa. And well they should—Bledsoe was a good man.
Simon stared out the window as the carriage bore him slowly through the narrow, twisting, smelly streets toward the docks, forced to yield to people and goods, small flocks being herded down the crowded avenues. Deep down, Simon must have known Glayer Felsteppe wouldn’t so easily turn loose anyone who knew so many of his filthy secrets. It had likely been the fiend’s plan all along to reveal his and Louisa’s complicated relationship, ruin and discredit him after he’d used him for every vile service he could wring out of him.
After all he’d done to try to protect them . . .
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment against the hot, angry flood of tears that threatened, and his chest constricted even further, seemed to stick there.
Simon certainly couldn’t stay in England now. Once the bishop learned the truth—if he hadn’t already—he would see him excommunicated, ruined. Possibly imprisoned.
And yet, how could Simon abandon those he loved to bear the worst fury of the aftermath of the scandal, which had the potential to destroy not just the life of Louisa—the woman for whom he’d forsaken his vows for forty years—but also the lives of her and Simon’s seven children?
He hadn’t come to any good conclusion by the time the carriage rocked to a halt, and Simon blinked with a bit of surprise as he realized he’d arrived at the docks. He pushed the door open and climbed out slowly, feeling as though he’d aged a score of years in the brief ride.
“They’ll have trunks,” Simon called up to the driver halfheartedly, rubbing at his chest with the heel of his hand as he turned to walk down the sloping quay toward the milling crowd gathered before the tall-masted ships docked in the water.
“I’ll keep me eyes sharp for your signal, Father,” the driver called out after him.
Simon raised a hand in acknowledgment and threaded his way into the fringe of the stinking tapestry of merchants and sailors, prostitutes and travelers.
He caught glimpses of a flowing cassock coming down a gangplank through the crush of individuals hurrying to and fro on the ship. Simon pushed his way to the end in time to see a priest and the two monks who followed him come ashore. The skinny, balding superior seemed to scan the crowd, perhaps seeking Lady Bledsoe, as the pair of brethren behind him—looking almost identical—jostled a trunk between them.
“You must let me carry the trunk, Brother.”
“No, I insist that you conserve your strength.”
The priest’s profile turned toward Simon at last, causing his already lurching heart to leap painfully into his throat.
“Victor?” he whispered. And then, louder, “Victor! Victor!” Simon ignored the drawing pain in his arm and shoulder to wave above the crowd.
Victor turned at the sound of his name and his eyes widened, his face brightening, as he saw who had hailed him. He pushed his way forward.
“Simon?” he said in happy disbelief, his kind face—so much older now—split into the smile Simon remembered from his youthful studies.
The two priests met with a clasp of arms and then a full embrace, laughing.
“Simon!” Victor repeated in his soft accent, noticeably lessened now, as he leaned back and beamed into his old friend’s face. “You’ve no idea how glad I am to see you. This is Brother Ladislav and Brother Vladislav—they’ve come to assist me on some special abbey business.”
Simon nodded to the monks and tried to swallow down the painful lump that had manifested at the base of his throat. “Good day, Brothers.”
“Good day to you, Father,” the robed men spoke over each other.
Victor drew his attention once more. “But what are you doing in London? The last news I had of you, you had retreated to the countryside. I’d thought to have need to beat bushes to find you.”
“It’s only temporary,” Simon said, rising up on tiptoe to look over the crowd and signal the driver, who began maneuvering the conveyance farther down the quay to meet them. “I’ve come on Lady Bledsoe’s behalf
; the lord suddenly took ill. I’ve just left them at the manse.”
“Is it serious?” Victor asked as they moved slowly through the crowd.
Simon cleared his throat with some effort. The lump was growing thorns and spreading further behind his shoulder blades. “I’m afraid it looks that way.”
“My sympathies to you, Simon,” Victor said earnestly. “I know how devoted the three of you have been to one another these many years.”
Simon couldn’t bring himself to comment further and so only nodded in acknowledgment as he led the way to the carriage. But as the twin monks argued over who would lift the trunk to the top of the coach, Simon took the opportunity to grasp Victor’s sleeve and lean in, speaking while he could; the pain in his chest seemed to be stealing his breath, and sweat poured down his temples.
“Did you receive a woman at Melk in early spring?” he asked, hearing the breathiness of his own voice. “A dark-haired woman, perhaps a boy with her?”
Victor frowned. “A woman? But—”
“Yes, a woman,” Simon insisted. “She was in trouble. I—I sent her to you.”
The abbot grabbed for Simon as his knees threatened to buckle. “A boy as well, you say?”
“Yes, a blond English boy. Orphaned by a fire at one of the estates. I was looking out for him. I’m worried something happened to him. To both of them.” He gritted his teeth against the cry of pain as his left side seemed to spasm.
Victor called out to the bickering monks in his own language, but Simon couldn’t concentrate on the words enough to translate what the priest was saying. In a moment, the burly twins had helped him into the carriage and followed him in. Victor called up to the driver before joining them, shutting the door firmly and turning toward Simon as the two brethren fought over who should pour the wine.
“We’re taking you with us to the bishop’s palace,” Victor said, and Simon didn’t have the strength to argue against it for his own well-being. He was too busy fighting off the waves of pain Victor’s confused look had brought.
Constantine Page 23