And the guard spoke to her, the guard answered her. He called her “milady” in English, as though she bore an English title, and she inclined her head to him as she went past.

Athos, pierced by regret, shock and confusion, remained standing where he was, long enough that the guard-a young man and, as such, brash and full of his own prerogatives and, after all, in his own territory-asked him if he needed anything more and suggested that perhaps he needed to move along.

Moving along was easy-at least physically. Athos allowed his feet to be set one in front of the other, insensibly carrying him away from the Palais Cardinal and towards his own lodgings, his mind benumbed. He’d hanged his wife. Of this he was as sure as he was sure he was alive, breathing, male, and Alexandre, Count de la Fere, now living under the penitent name of Athos. He had married the sister of his curate. She was well beneath his dignity, but so beautiful and seemingly so pure and pious that he couldn’t but fall in love with her.

A week after her elevation to the dignity, they’d been out hunting together. The countess, more eager in the chase, had spurred her horse ahead with such vigor, and charged with such intent blindness that she hit her head, hard, against the low branch of an overhanging tree, falling from her horse in the process.

Coming across his wife, to all appearances dead, the young count had panicked. With trembling hands, he’d cut her dress, to allow her to breathe more freely and perhaps recover consciousness.

They’d been married for a week. He’d enjoyed to the full the pleasures of his conjugal bed. He had not, however, seen his wife naked in the full light of day. Now, on a clearing on his lands, he saw her shoulder-and upon it, though small and very faded with cosmetics-was the brand of a criminal, the fleur-de-lis.

The shock and horror of that moment still made him reel, more than twenty years later. Branded criminals were adulterers, thieves, even murderers who had been branded between condemnation and execution, so that should they escape they would never be safe. It was the brand of infamy. [5]

Athos didn’t think-though it was hard to tell, looking back and trying to judge the feelings of that much younger man-he’d ever experienced anger. He didn’t think he’d ever moved beyond shock and throat-tightening horror. The wife whose position in life, by itself, would have caused Athos’s father to tell him he had besmirched the dignities of his life, had turned out to be yet far more unworthy and in a way that Athos couldn’t explain away by invoking her sweetness or her purity or even her beauty.

The sheer enormity of having picked, as the mother of his future children, a woman depraved enough to deserve that brand upon her shoulder had crashed about his head like a thunderstorm. He could only think of what people would say, should they ever find out. How, for the rest of his life, he would be pointed at and laughed at. How, should he ever marry again, his children too would be tainted with his dishonor, his mind-crushing miscalculation.

Unable to be angry, unable to think, he’d gotten a roll of rope that he kept in his saddle. He’d hanged his wife from a low hanging branch. He’d disposed of his affairs as though he had died. By the time evening fell, he was on his way to Paris with only Grimaud, who had once been his father’s valet and who had watched over Athos from earliest childhood.

Now, in the twilight of late winter, in Paris, twenty years after, he felt a headache forming. How can Charlotte be alive?

He’d hanged her. He remembered that. Though truth be told, he didn’t remember staying around and waiting to make sure she had indeed died. Such was his mental state at the time, that he thought he’d hanged her, then ridden away, disturbed by the last feel of her body in his arms.

Was it possible that as soon as he’d galloped away-if not before-the branch from which he’d hanged her had snapped? She’d been unconscious when he strung her up, so it was quite possible, though perhaps not probable, that she had survived a few minutes. Athos knew that what caused first damage when being hanged-at least when there was no substantial drop to ensure the executed broke his neck in the fall-was the frantic struggle against the rope. Being unconscious might have preserved her life longer, and if either branch or rope had broken shortly after…

He walked through the darkening streets. So suppose Charlotte had survived. Why had she not sought him out? If she were innocent-a possibility he had tormented himself with for so long-would she not have written to him, explained her case, made it known why she’d been branded and which enemy had managed it? If she truly loved him… Wounded though she might be by his having believed the worst about her, would she not have tried to reconcile with him?

Even now, even though he had reason to believe she was truly a criminal, wouldn’t he take her back in a second, if it could be proven to him that she hadn’t been guilty? Wouldn’t he?

He knew from the straining of his heart, from the sting of tears behind his eyes, that he would. But his wife was in town, and she’d not contacted him-she’d not, to Athos’s knowledge, made any effort to see him. In fact, though Athos had recognized her from the turn of the head, the way she stood, from the elegant slimness of her body and that moonlight-blond hair, she hadn’t seemed to notice him at all. She hadn’t seemed to recognize him.

Had he not haunted her mind as she haunted his? Not even in rage or wish for vengeance?

And she had been going into the Palais Cardinal, with every appearance of being well-known there. Surely, if that was true, the Cardinal would have told her about Athos, about who Athos was and what he was doing. She would know exactly how he lived, and anyone who knew him would have good reason to believe how remorse blighted his life.

So he would have to believe that she had not contacted him because in fact she did not love him and never had. He had been a rung on her climb, and his reaction to her perfidy had only meant that she would avoid him in the future.

It was the logical conclusion, and it should have made him feel better. He had, for so long, carried remorse over what he’d done, and doubt over whether it had been needed. Now his question had been answered and he was, in fact, fully justified. So why didn’t he rejoice? Why did he feel as though a band of iron had tightened about his heart?

Looking around, he realized his feet had brought him to his lodgings. He unlocked the door and climbed up to his room, having decided to find some of those bottles that he had hidden from Grimaud’s sometimes astringent searches of his belongings. That Grimaud thought his master drank too much, Athos understood. That the man-who had in large measure helped to raise Athos-thought himself entitled to make it harder for Athos to find liquor when his mind was taken with this fog of grief and hopeless mourning for what hadn’t been nor could ever be, Athos accepted. But he could not-he simply could not-allow Grimaud to keep him from drinking entirely.

Grimaud thought that if Athos didn’t drink, he would be awake and more aware of his surroundings. Athos would agree that was true. But he also knew, with absolutely unflinching certainty, that there was a great anger that lived just beneath the surface of his mind. That anger could be dulled and covered up by drinking. Without it, Athos wasn’t sure what he would do-what he would have done by now.

His lodgings were a tall, narrow slice of a bigger building. There were three floors and a basement, but each barely large enough to contain more than a room. It had a little landing at the bottom of the stairs. The upstairs floor was entirely Athos’s-consisting mostly of his bedroom, but also of a room decorated with an ancestral portrait and sword, and furnished with a number of comfortable chairs. Here he kept a few of the books he had packaged and brought with him, and a few other books he had acquired over the years. Books, like wine, could dull the pain and make him forget the anger, at least for a while. And here he and his friends often met, to discuss what they should do when faced with a dilemma.