A handful of days and she had spent most every one of them wondering what she might have done differently. How she might have kept Bonacieux from crossing paths from the assassin who had murdered him. Guilt stabbed too sharply for her to lay the blame entirely on that woman who had played at being the Princess Louise, the mess she had made of her marriage too great to forget that he had been at the Louvre for her. No matter how she had tried so hard to keep from hurting him and managed only to hurt both d'Artagnan and herself, or however shocked she had been when he had struck her, she had never expected the outcome of that day they had come to.

"No," she replied, almost reluctant to give up an ounce of her guilt for all that it slipped like poison in her veins. Constance did not know why it seemed to be so integral that she carry that guilt, but she was found herself clinging to it all the same. "I wished to be free," it was a confession in echo of the words she had given d'Artagnan, that day Marmion had threatened them all, "I told him I was leaving. That I loved d'Artagnan and wanted to have a life with him, and he would not hear of it."

It seemed as if once she had gotten started, it all poured out of her. "He came for me, thinking I was still at the Palace, but I had gone to the Garrison." There were details she had to carefully skirt, concluding, "He would not have been there if not for me."