Constantine Page 10

“I did,” she said, and those two words seemed to place the final details together in a neat, snug bundle with the rest of the tragedies that had led to this day.

  Even though the facts as he’d known them had now been nothing worse than confirmed, Constantine’s mind was a whirl of bitter regrets, and his black, angry thoughts buzzed around his head like hornets. For although the decision to wed Felsteppe hadn’t been her own, Constantine could not allow himself further kindness to Glayer Felsteppe’s wife.

  “Please don’t go to Thurston Hold without me,” she said at his side, and Constantine could hear the plea in her voice, although he refused to turn to look down at her waiflike face. “I know you hate me, and I understand why. But I swear to you that once my son is safely away from Glayer Felsteppe, I will do everything in my power to help you. Anything you ask of me, from this point forward, until you release me of my debt. I swear it.”

  “I don’t need your help, Theodora.”

  “Perhaps not,” she allowed. “But we need yours.”

  We. Theodora and her infant son—Glayer Felsteppe’s infant son.

  “And perhaps, just perhaps,” she interrupted his dark thoughts, “we will prove useful to you yet.”

  At her strange tone, he did look down at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, and although Constantine wouldn’t have acknowledged it aloud, her gaze as she stared up at him was clear and without any hint of subterfuge. Guileless, like the young girl she likely had been before being forced to parent her ill father; before Glayer Felsteppe had corrupted her mind with his games and her body with his child.

  Constantine felt his principles struggling against some faint whisper of intuition.

  “Perhaps I could start by preparing the meal tonight? It’s true that I have no experience as a cook, but I doubt even I could ruin boiled fish.” Her wide mouth curved up the tiniest bit.

  His own lips wanted to return her ghost of a smile at the absurdity of her suggestion, but the moment was interrupted by the abrupt barking of a dog, and Constantine looked over Theodora’s head in the same moment that she turned to behold the long-legged gray animal bounding down the riverbank toward them, sounding its deep, staccato alarm.

  And coming right along behind the animal was a rotund village man, his arm already raised in greeting.

  Constantine looked around for a brief moment, considering their options for flight—the river, the woods, or back to the ruin. With the river they’d be swept away; to the wood, the dog would only give swift chase. Should they retreat to the ruin, the man would gather whatever reinforcements there were to be had in the village before searching the rubble.

  Theodora turned back to look up at him, the panic clear in her pale face. “Should we run?”

  Constantine looked back to the man walking ever closer to them, what appeared to be some small traps across his back, his long stick helping his waddling progress. The dog was nearly upon them now, his wiry coat flinging water with every leaping stride.

  “Constantine,” Theodora insisted. He glanced at her again and saw that she had picked up her pathetic, ragged skirts in one fist and now her hand lay on his chest. “Do we run?”

  He shook his head. “I’m finished running.” He took her elbow and pulled her from the rock behind him as he made his own way down. Constantine turned just as the dog gave a final whining bark and leaped at him.

  Chapter 10

  The prow of the skiff nodded wildly through the thick mist above the choppy water in the bay. It was dawn, but only barely, and the fog made it seem as though night still surrounded the small boat bounding through the waves with each pull of the oars.

  “Careful, there,” Adrian said, half-rising to place a steadying hand on Christian’s shoulder when the boy would have been tossed into the air. “Hold to the underside of the seat, lad.”

  Constantine’s son looked back at him with a grateful if uneasy smile. “Yes, sir.”

  Adrian sat fully next to Maisie once more and turned to her as she slid her fingers into his hand and leaned her mouth closer to his ear. “He’s nae going anywhere, Adrian. You fuss like a mother hen.”

  “He’s my responsibility until we hand him over to his father,” Adrian argued, not the least bit perturbed by his wife’s teasing.

  “I think we all share in that responsibility,” Maisie said. “At least Valentine and Roman feel they do. You are being too selfish with the boy.”

  Adrian now turned to look past the oarsman and their belongings behind him and found the smoky outline of the second boat, carrying the other two couples. Satisfied that they weren’t lost in the mist, he faced forward once more, smiling to himself as he caught sight of Christian leaning this way and that, trying to see ahead through the fog.

  “I don’t intend to disparage their sense of obligation,” he said. “But I will behave as I see fit. As far as I’m concerned, I am Christian’s guardian. Stan would want it that way.” Although he hadn’t intended the statement to have such connotations, a chill made its way up his spine, as if a finger of the damp fog had found a way beneath his heavy cloak and tunic.

  Maisie only squeezed his hand, and so he knew she’d heard the worry in his words. What if they were too late? What if they returned to England only to find that Constantine had achieved what he had set out to do, not knowing that his son lived, and had met his own death in seeking his revenge of Glayer Felsteppe?

  But Constantine could not be dead, not now. Not when Adrian was bringing to him the person he’d loved most in this world and thought lost forever. No, Adrian would not allow that possibility to enter his mind. Or Christian’s.

  “Adrian,” Christian said, pointing his arm through the mist. “Look!”

  The black hull slowly emerged as the skiff strained through the waves, the larger vessel itself bowing and rising deeply in the water.

  “Is that our ship?” Christian asked, and Adrian could hear the uncertainty in the boy’s voice.

  “I do doubt any others are anchored so far from the docks, even in this chop,” Maisie muttered wryly.

  The boy glanced around with a worried frown. “The merchant ship I sailed on was much larger. This seems too small a vessel to take on passengers.” He looked back at the swarthy oarsman suspiciously before turning sideways on the seat and leaning over precariously to whisper, “We could be led into a dangerous situation, Adrian. Brigands of some sort. Perhaps even pirates. It’s a scheme of theirs to lure unsuspecting passengers out to open water under the excuse of securing passage. They rob them before tossing them all into the sea.”

  Adrian smiled. “It’s all right, Christian. We aren’t unsuspecting in the least.”

  “Aye, lad,” Maisie said. “Unfortunate though it may be, we know exactly the sort that lie in wait of us.”

  An ear-piercing whistle sounded from the oarsman, causing Christian to startle and frown doubtfully once more at the dark-complexioned man before raising his fair eyebrows at Adrian and his wife.

  “Certain about that, are you?”

  Adrian only laughed.

  Christian shook his head and turned forward on his seat in the skiff just as the Azure Skull began to emerge fully from the fog. Adrian saw Christian’s head tip back as he caught sight of the man standing on the rail of the ship, one hand grasping the rigging as he leaned out over the roiling waters. He swept his plumed hat from his head in a merry greeting.

  “Welcome! Welcome, my friends!” Francisco Alesander called out with a broad smile. “Let us hurry you aboard and raise anchor before the fog is gone, yes? I have managed to fit in a bit of work before your arrival and I would hate to delay your voyage with a battle at sea.”

  “Or by getting you out of the jail,” Valentine called out from the skiff behind them, causing Christian’s head to whip around, his eyes like an owl’s.

  Roman’s laugh echoed over the water. “Val, I think we all know that although your talents are many, orchestrating prison escapes is not o
ne of them.”

  Francisco brought his elaborate hat to his chest to cover his heart. “They have no yet constructed a cage capable of containing La Ave Mortal, cousin.”

  Back and forth Christian looked between the two men before his wide gaze went to Adrian. “Are we . . . are we going home on a pirate ship?”

  “Would that please you, young Christian?”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I would suggest that you turn ’round and take hold of the rope dangling there before you,” Adrian said, motioning past the boy with his finger.

  Christian spun around and was scrambling from his seat in the next instant, swiping at the swaying knot and causing Adrian to stagger to his own feet to prevent the boy from being pitched into the breach between the two vessels. He grasped the rope and held it steady while Christian took hold and then wrapped his arm around the boy’s middle, hoisting him up to stand on the knot while, above them, two of Francisco’s mates began to pull, lifting Constantine Gerard’s son through the air.

  Adrian stood with one hand braced on the edge of the pitching skiff, watching closely while the boy was helped over the railing. Christian spun around and leaned against the wooden rail, looking down at Adrian with his face split in a wide grin.

  He gave a high-pitched whoop with a little jump and then drummed his palms on the rail. “Come on, Adrian!”

  A second rope had been dropped to the left of their dinghy and Adrian glanced over to see Lady Mary and Valentina being carefully lifted into the air. Adrian thought the look on Valentine’s wife’s face closely matched that of young Christian’s.

  “I’ll join you in a moment, lad,” Adrian shouted up to the boy as he took hold of the rope once more and motioned for Maisie to come to him.

  “I should have at least tried to summon a crawler,” she muttered as he lifted her high enough to gain a foothold.

  “Hold on.” He grinned at her and then let her go as she rose above the water.

  Adrian himself was aboard The Azure Skull in time to help the crew haul up the massive form of Roman Berg as well as the belongings of the friends. The two oarsmen didn’t bother waiting to be pulled on the ropes, ascending with the expertise of swarthy spiders, leaving the oars in the bottoms of the skiffs that were already drifting away from the pirate ship. Adrian looked questioningly up to Valentine, whose boots had now taken the place of his Spanish cousin’s upon the railing.

  “Those weren’t even Francisco’s boats, were they?”

  Valentine shrugged a shoulder and gave Adrian a grin. “Something makes me think they were no.”

  Adrian shook his head and turned toward the center of the small ship, which was alive with festive movement even as the vessel itself began to turn in the fog. The crew scattered across the deck and rigging at their tasks, save for an old man seated upon a squat barrel, whose sole responsibility, it appeared, was to play the slender pipe in his hands. A merry, birdlike song flavored the sea air with the bright promise of an English spring only days away.

  Roman had replaced the falcon on his shoulder with Christian, and they stood on the upper deck next to Isra and Lou, and behind Lady Mary, who appeared to have taken control of the wheel of The Azure Skull while a particularly brutish-looking fellow bounced Valentina on his arm. Maisie was presently at the opposite rail from Adrian, holding a long cylinder to her eye under the close guidance of Francisco, who seemed to be directing her gaze over the choppy gray waves.

  If he hadn’t known the man was completely devoted to Valentine’s lovely sister, Teresa, Adrian might have been jealous.

  But as it were, he turned back to the railing alone. Although the fog was still thick over the water, he could see the far-off hills of the countryside.

  “Good-bye,” he whispered, although precisely to whom or what he was bidding farewell, he couldn’t have said. Perhaps to dear Victor and Melk and all the brethren they had come to know so well. Perhaps to the wretchedness and sorrow, the death and injury he had known. Perhaps to the man he had been upon his arrival there so many years before.

  But he suspected that, more than anything else he could be leaving behind, it was to Constantine Gerard himself. For even if they found Constantine alive in England, Adrian doubted he would be the same man he had come to know and to love as a brother. No longer the general; no longer the earl of his estate. No longer the man nearly broken by his imprisonment in Damascus or devastated by loneliness and despair once he’d learned of the tragedy at Benningsgate. He feared Constantine could only be the man he’d been the night he’d left Melk without so much as a note for the friends he’d left behind.

  Adrian had been that man once, not so very long ago. And so he knew the depths of apathy and how deceivingly benign it could appear to the casual observer. He knew how it could consume a heart whole, tinging even the act of inhaling and exhaling with bitterness.

  As Adrian watched the continent fade away, he remembered Constantine praying aloud while chained to the wall of a Damascene dungeon by his neck. He remembered lying on the floor of the prison, his body—filled with fever and maggots—slowly dying but still feeling such scornful pity for his friend, who had resorted to superstitious nonsense in his desperation.

  Christian’s laugh echoing over the decks brought Adrian back from that wretched past. And then Adrian closed his eyes and prayed.

  * * *

  “There you are, there you are,” Glayer said as he handed the baby to Eseld, who had already taken her seat in the carriage. He was not in the habit of allowing the old woman to be seated before him—especially not in the grand conveyance that would carry them all to London—but it was important to Glayer that he arrive at Henry’s castle as a family. A wealthy widower lord and his infant son. A valuable ally now for the king and a ready source of financial and political support. Once Henry scratched his back by allowing Glayer to purchase Benningsgate at an outrageously inflated price, Glayer would be more than happy to acquiesce to a politically beneficial marriage.

  He’d need a wife to tend his home and child, after all. And Glayer was especially good at persuading those who would have their women relatives cared for to do as he suggested.

  Little Glander whimpered at the separation. “Papa shall be along directly,” Glayer assured the infant and then gestured to the door with a flick of his eyes so that the footman closed it. He then turned to the reason for his delay in alighting as Simon came to a stop before him.

  The old priest had been looking quite raggedy of late; Glayer supposed the winter had been harsh on the fool. And he’d seemed to take disposing of Theodora Rosemont rather personally. She must have fought with amazing strength for a woman nearly bled to death on her childbed and poisoned to her very eyeballs with pennyroyal and nightshade. Old Simon had staggered back to Thurston Hold full of mud and with a broken arm.

  But the spring air following the torrential rains seemed to have enlivened the man—or perhaps it was the task Glayer had recently set the priest to. Was it possible that the once-holy Simon was now fully loyal in his duties to the lord of Thurston Hold?

  “What is it?” Glayer demanded of the man. “Can’t you see I’m leaving?”

  “Why, I’ve only come to bid you farewell, my lord,” Simon said. “And to bless your journey.”

  Glayer raised an eyebrow at the man. “Really?”

  “No,” the priest said in an emotionless voice. “Everything had been arranged.”

  “Very well,” Glayer said. “When do you depart?”

  “Perhaps a week.”

  “A week?” Glayer repeated with a frown. “Why the delay?”

  “I’ve need to secure provisions for the orphans left at the rectory, my lord. They will need looking after until my return.”

  “Oh,” he said, not caring to keep the distaste from his tone. “Well, I suppose that is necessary, for I certainly don’t wish the charge of them. Very well. But you must be on that ship when it sails.”

  Father Simon gave a shallow
bow.

  Glayer would have rebuked him for such a paltry display of homage, but he let the slight go. He would consider it the priest’s going-away present.

  Glayer glanced at the door again and the footman opened it at once. He ducked into the plush interior and was closed into its hushed opulence with the old woman, who had at least managed to secure more appropriate garments befitting the nurse of his son. The carriage began to rumble and sway as it circled in the yard and Glayer pulled off his gloves in order to take the baby onto his own lap.

  What a devoted father he was.

  “Will we be long away from Thurston Hold, milord?” Eseld asked, and although he did not like it when she questioned him on any matter, her tone was one of curious deference and so he thought to oblige her. Also, it made him happy to relay his brilliant plans. Plans that he could execute or not at his very whim, with all the fortune of the estate growing only marginally smaller as the fine carriage whisked them down the road.

  “As long as it takes for Henry to sign the documents granting me Benningsgate Castle,” he replied mildly, nestling the boy in the crook of his arm and pulling the heavy curtain aside with the back of his hand so that Glander could watch the misty countryside of his father’s realm roll by. “He hardly remembers my petition lest I am beneath his very nose, and his court is a proper circus on any given day. This time I shan’t leave until the deed is in my hand. I daresay my stalwart presence shall be a breath of sanity to our harried monarch.”

  “We’ll surely return to the keep before Father Simon, though, will we not?”

  Glayer looked to the old woman with a sigh. It irritated him so when she acted as though she had a brain inside her wizened raisin head. “I’ve no idea, and I really couldn’t care less. Glander and I shall not be rushed. We will have a leisurely journey to the city, and while we are there, we will avail ourselves of Henry’s every courtesy. Even if Simon survives the journey, it shall likely be no fewer than two months before his feet touch English soil again. Why on earth would it possibly matter?”

  “My confidence in the man has been shaken,” she said with a dreary frown. Everything about the woman was dreary, as if she’d steeped so long in sheep dung that it had flavored her very person. Glayer fancied he could still smell the filth on her, the same smell that had been soaked into the dirt floor of the single thatched room that had been his childhood home, turning his thoughts decidedly dark even as Eseld seemed to be expressing concern for the worn-out Simon.