Constantine Page 13

  “Excuse me,” Dori said, “but you seem to have forgotten that you’re addressing a lady.”

  “You’re not my lady,” he said snidely. “And this ain’t your house, so . . . ?” He gave her a pointed look. “Where is my lord?”

  “I might not be your lady but neither am I your servant to be ordered about or inquired of in such a rude manner,” she said. “So you can find him yourself.”

  “Ah,” he said with an air of interest. “So that’s how it’s to be, is it?”

  “I suppose it is,” she said with a lift of her nose and turned away from him.

  They stayed like that in the ward, not looking at each other or speaking for the better part of a half hour. Dori eventually found her way back down onto the stone, but she turned her head sharply as she sensed the gray beast sidling through the grass to attempt to lay at her feet.

  At her narrowed gaze, his advance stopped, but neither did he retreat.

  Behind her, Jeremy cleared his throat. “Lord Gerard didn’t attempt to gain the interior of the ruin, did he?”

  Dori didn’t so much as twitch.

  “My lady,” he added, it sounded, to Dori, through gritted teeth.

  She turned her head only enough to glance at him. “He did.”

  “But there’s no way in,” Jeremy argued, and she could hear the concern in his voice. “How could you allow him to go, you daft woman? He could be trapped!”

  Dori gained her feet and spun around, stepping first onto then over the rock to bring herself nose to nose with Jeremy.

  “If you speak to me in an untoward manner once . . . more,” she warned, her finger under the nose that still bore the evidence of their first meeting, “you will soon find out whether I am as bloodthirsty and vicious as the rumors you seem so eager to perpetrate purport, do you understand me?” she demanded. “I’ve not survived thus far because I’m some spoiled, weak ninny who’s been waited on hand and foot, and you will show me the respect I’m due if only owing to the fact that, one, I’m not dead, and, two, I haven’t exercised my completely justifiable urge to take a switch to you and your ill-mannered, smelly beast!” She paused, and when there was no response, she leaned even closer to his face, looking at him sideways and bringing her finger up level with her own nose. “Do you understand or not?”

  Jeremy’s own eyes narrowed. “Aye. I understand, milady.”

  Dori stood aright from the man. “There is a way into the keep. I found it.” She paused. “And Lord Gerard has been away for several hours. I do feel it would be best if we could perhaps determine his safety, but the only way into the keep is treacherous.” She glanced up at the birds swooping expertly through a window facing the ward. “Unless you can fly, that is.”

  Jeremy looked thoughtfully at the remnant of the tower for a moment. “I can’t fly,” he said at last and then looked at her with his arms crossed over his chest. “But I know where there is a ladder in the village.”

  “High enough to reach the window?”

  He nodded. “From the outside, aye. But . . .”

  Dori’s eyes narrowed again. “What?”

  “My form is too . . . muscular to attempt to gain such a height.” He turned to face her. “You’ll have to climb it.” He said it as if it were a challenge.

  She shrugged. “Bring a length of rope as well. A long length.” She paused. “Two of them.”

  Jeremy hesitated. “I’m not your servant, lady.”

  “No, but you are Lord Gerard’s, by your own passionate vow,” she reminded him and then gave a sigh. “Please.”

  He turned on his heel and headed across the ward to the threshold in the wall. “Back in a thrice,” he said.

  “Don’t let anyone see you!” she called out.

  He raised an arm over his head but did not reply.

  Dori stood on her tiptoes and cried, “You forgot your dog!”

  Jeremy stepped over the threshold and was gone.

  She looked down at the dog who, at her first glance, gained his feet and wagged his tail enthusiastically.

  “What?” she demanded of him.

  The tail slowed to a stop.

  Dori sighed and looked back to the keep, wondering what she would find when she dared climb to the window and look inside. Constantine Gerard’s body broken or crushed in the rubble? Or perhaps clutching the charred bones of his family?

  Dori shuddered, wondering if his predicament could very easily become hers did she not return to Thurston Hold soon and save her own son. But first she had to help Constantine Gerard, whether he thought he needed her or not.

  Chapter 13

  Thirst seemed to eat at Constantine’s throat from the inside out even while perspiration poured from his skin, but he did not slow in his labors. If anything, his irritation grew with every stone he moved, as it seemed the rubble refused him any downward progress.

  He chose to focus on his memories of Patrice and the last time he’d seen her—here, in this very keep. Her beautiful face had been tear-streaked, although she had kept her composure while they’d said their farewells over their son’s head. Her bloodshot, shadowed eyes had spoken louder than any words she might have repeated, continuing to beg him, as she’d done late into the night, to stay. Stay. Please, stay.

  Christian had just recently turned four years old. And so he hadn’t understood the idea of Papa going away for so long a time. Constantine could now see what a fool he had been—it was so clear to him here atop the destruction he had wrought. Regardless of Patrice’s betrayals outside of their marriage, Constantine had punished everyone he loved by going away. The brave general, so full of pride. So sure of himself. He’d acted little more than a child himself.

  Yes, Glayer Felsteppe had given the command for his family to be killed, but that wouldn’t have been possible if Constantine had been where he belonged the entire time—at his home, protecting those he loved. For he had loved Patrice, even though her infidelity had changed that love. He had remained faithful to her, after her betrayals and even in faraway Syria. It was a duty he had sworn to after all.

  But God had determined that Constantine deserved neither his wife nor his son and had taken them both away.

  He paused in his labors and let his palms—dirtied and bloodied— rest on his filth-caked chausses as he stared into the shallow depression before him.

  “My lord,” a woman’s voice called, and a chill raced up his spine as his body stiffened. “Lord Gerard.”

  It sounded as if the voice was coming from the sky.

  “Would you shut up? Please? Yes, I do see him. Constantine!”

  He turned his head slowly and looked up to find Theodora Rosemont’s gamine face looking at him through the tall window.

  “All right down there?” she asked, as if they were perfectly ordinary activities the two were engaged in.

  He nodded dumbly. “Yes,” he called up, realizing she might not see the movement from such a height. And then he appreciated that she was thirty feet above him. He wasn’t actually surprised at her appearance—he was beginning to suspect Theodora Rosemont usually got what she set out for. But he was curious. He cleared his throat. “How are you up there?”

  “Jeremy stole a ladder from the village,” she said and then turned her head to look behind her. “It doesn’t belong to you, does it? Fine.” She looked back down at Constantine. “He borrowed a ladder. It shall be growing dark soon, my lord—do you think you might want to come out now?” He could tell she had tried to make the statement matter-of-fact, but Constantine could hear the gentleness of her tone, a quality he’d not noticed in her voice before.

  He thought of the crucifix atop the rubble.

  Constantine gained his feet with a groan and rested his hands on his hips as he glanced up toward the collapsed doorway through which he’d entered. He was surprised at the indigo shadows that indeed now painted the inside of the keep. He looked back to where Theodora Rosemont watched him from the window.

  “I don’t think
I can return the way I came,” he said. “And there are no handholds to reach the window.”

  “All right,” she said with a shrug. “Never mind, then. Good night.” Then she actually grinned at him before she threw down a long coil of rope that unfurled and swung and slapped against the stones.

  He wasn’t certain which he needed most in that moment—her levity or the rope—but he suspected both.

  “Shall I stay to cheer you on?” she teased.

  Constantine looked back to the pathetic progress he’d made. I’ll be back on the morrow, he vowed silently, realizing with a glad heart that Theodora Rosemont had supplied the means of ingress and egress for him to return.

  Then he dusted his hands together and limped over the broken rubble toward the rope. He stood at the bottom and looked up at the window, where Theodora rested her forearms and leaned over to look down at him.

  “It’s a long climb,” he admitted, his hands on his hips once more, thinking of the weariness in his arms, the pain in his knee.

  “Sooner begun . . .”

  He gave a sharp nod. “Right.” Constantine approached the rope, reached up with both hands, and gave it a jerk. “What’s it tied off to?”

  “The most substantial thing in the ward—Jeremy.”

  Constantine thought he heard a muffled bit of words on the wind, but Theodora only glanced over her shoulder with a grin before looking back down at Constantine.

  “Pardon me—muscular.” Her expression became pointed. “Lord Gerard, my slippers are thin and the rungs are hard.”

  Constantine grasped the rope firmly and stepped the bottoms of his boots onto the wall.

  * * *

  Dori knew something was wrong before Constantine was even halfway up the wall. Each time he placed his right leg higher to move his left, his grimace grew deeper, his strides shorter.

  He must be injured.

  Now his right foot slipped altogether and the tawny-haired man gave a growl of pain as he placed his boot back against the stones forcefully. He paused to look up at her, and she saw that sweat ran down his face.

  “My knee,” he explained.

  Dori knew a shiver of unease. She licked her lips and leaned farther into the opening of the window, making a show of looking beyond him to the shadows that were now roiling like a dark ocean along the rubble of the keep.

  “It’s half of it, either way you go,” she said matter-of-factly. “But if you don’t move soon, you’ll likely have the decision made for you when you fall.”

  He gave a guttural shout and adjusted his feet on the wall. She could see the seams of his tunic over his biceps straining and she thought about how tired he must be physically after his exertions; how tired mentally the chore had made him. He was a strong man, true, but even the strongest men had breaking points, and most of the time they were not failures of their bodies.

  “You’re wasting time, Constantine,” she said sharply. “Move!”

  He tried to raise his right leg again, but this time, it fell from beneath him, causing his left boot, too, to lose its grip. Constantine’s body went vertical to the wall, swinging out, spinning and then returning to collide with the stones.

  Dori only just contained her gasp, expecting the rope to slide through his hands until the friction of it caused him to release it and collapse onto the jagged debris below. Her heart pounded in her chest.

  “What happened?” Jeremy demanded, likely having felt the jerk on the rope in his hands even though it was also looped around a stone pillar.

  She waved a hand behind her, putting him off, not wanting to take her eyes from the man dangling below her even for a moment. Constantine looked up at her, his face red, his mouth pulled in a wide grimace as he tried to work the rope in a spiral around his left leg. His eyes met hers.

  “Come on,” she encouraged.

  He began to climb. Hand over hand, so slowly that Dori feared she would go mad. After what seemed like an hour, he was so close to the window that Dori could have reached out and touched his topmost hand. But she daren’t, knowing that she hadn’t any strength to lend him.

  “Almost there,” she said quietly instead and backed down one rung on the ladder, her legs shaking, the ladder trembling.

  He was breathing forcefully through his nostrils when he threw his right forearm over the thick window ledge. His left followed and he heaved his chest onto the stone casing with a growling shout, lying there for a moment. Dori knew what desperate strength he had mustered would leave his muscles wobbly soon, throwing him off balance.

  “Don’t stop now, Constantine,” she said and backed down another rung. She had a moment’s mad fear that the ghosts buried inside the keep would suddenly decide to claim ownership of the man struggling to escape, and she would see Constantine’s arms slide back into the blackness before hearing his body hit the stones.

  “Come along!” she insisted. “It’s getting dark and . . . and I’m hungry. And my feet pain me.” Her voice was shrill, demanding. She sounded the same as she had so many times with her father, making a fool of herself in her desperation to extricate him from whatever trap was laid in his path.

  She saw Constantine’s head appear as he raised himself up onto the ledge with his hands. Dori backed down another step as he drew his right knee into the opening and then dropped his foot along the outside of the wall, straddling the sill and leaning his back and head against the stone casement with his eyes closed and his chest heaving.

  Dori let her breath out of her mouth in a long, low whoosh, and when he rolled his head against the stones to open his eyes and look down at her she couldn’t help her relieved smile.

  Constantine Gerard looked at her thoughtfully, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in a bemused, weary grin, and it flustered Dori unreasonably.

  She felt her eyebrows draw together. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea to go in there.”

  “That you did.” He looked beyond her and lifted his hand, Dori assumed to Jeremy, but she didn’t trust her own balance at this point to turn to make certain.

  She looked down at her own skirts falling through the rungs and carefully began stepping down the ladder, one slow rung at a time, grateful that her downward-directed gaze would hide the tears prickling in her eyes.

  * * *

  Jeremy acted as though nothing untoward had gone on the past hour as he wound the rope around his arm and walked alongside Constantine, and for that he was doubly grateful to the man. Erasmus expressed his usual enthusiasm, nearly taking Constantine’s legs from beneath him a second time that day.

  “I’ve brought the things you asked for, milord,” he said, motioning behind him and then glancing twice at the empty ward. He turned back to Constantine with an irritated expression. “I suppose you know where she’s gone?”

  Constantine hadn’t noticed Theodora leaving either, but she was so small and dark in the rapidly approaching dusk that he really wasn’t surprised.

  “I do,” he admitted. “Although I’m surprised Erasmus didn’t think to follow at her heels. You have my thanks.”

  “The lady probably kicked at him or some other such cruelty,” the man said. “Any matter, it was my pleasure, milord. I should be able to lay hand to more when you have need. Perhaps even going to the village at Thurston Hold for what I can’t procure here.” The man waggled his eyebrows as he met Constantine’s gaze.

  Constantine nodded, grateful for Jeremy’s willingness to be of assistance; the man’s cooperation had already helped save Constantine from almost certain injury.

  Although he knew there was one even more deserving of his gratitude than the girthful villager before him.

  “I’d best be getting back before I’m missed,” Jeremy said, tossing the large coils of rope behind a fallen stone before moving the ladder to the weeds nearby. “With so few of us in the village, anyone’s absence is noticed. I’m in the wood most fair days, if you have need of me before I return.”

  Constantine grasped Jeremy’s ha
nd and then gave Erasmus a rub behind his ears before watching the pair disappear through the wall into the dusk. Then he turned toward the low tumble of stones and limped across the long grass toward the hidden door.

  It took him a little longer than usual to reach the lower level of the corridor where the oratory was located, but he felt a queer sense of peace and welcome at the open door and the light shining from within—someone waiting for him. It was an odd feeling he hadn’t experienced in years. Even odder that the feeling would have been prompted by the presence of Theodora Rosemont.

  He stepped to the doorway and waited, watching her as she unpacked the bundle Jeremy had brought with eagerness clear on her face. The glance she gave him upon noticing his arrival didn’t cause her enthusiasm to fade as had typically been the case since their meeting, and that made Constantine glad. She’d said she was hungry after all.

  “A pot!” she said with a half smile. “And a portion of oats! Oh, my mouth does water at even the feel of them in my hand. There’s a roast of venison as well. And what’s this?” She pulled up a long length of muddy-colored cloth and shook it out over the floor in front of her. “An apron?” She turned to lay it on the bench before swinging her faded cloak from her shoulders. Then she slipped the apron over her head.

  The thing was a tent on her slight frame, and when she looped the strings crossed over each other and around her middle twice, Constantine couldn’t help his breath of laughter.

  Theodora turned toward him with her arms out, looking down with satisfaction at her new, humble garment. “It’s quite sturdy, isn’t it?” she said. “And there’s even a bit of embroidery here at the bottom.” She looked up at him. “I doubt anyone would take me for a missing lady in it. But then again, I’m not supposed to be missing, am I? I might not look quite as dead in it any matter.”

  It sounded as though she was becoming more flustered by the moment, although Constantine could not tell if it was from the ordeal they’d just come through or her discomfort with the items Jeremy had brought. He doubted Theodora Rosemont had worn anything even resembling an apron in the whole of her life.