On the other side of a night and a door from their conversation, Athos' words still had weight on her memory. Not simply for his urging that she confess to d'Artagnan the unspoken truth that hung between them, unknown to him, on the matter of her marriage and what future they might have together, but for his insistence that she not allow her guilt to consume her. She would not remake the mistakes Athos had spoken of. She would not give up the happiness laid out before her in clinging to the past until her bones ached with the strain of it.

"Have you forgotten that you tried to take on all three of the others, the day we met?" Constance could have painted the scene from memory, that sight that had stood in front of her when she had stepped into the garrison and found Athos, Porthos, and Aramis all with their swords at his throat. Where she did not forget the way Athos had lifted his sword at her entrance and insisted immediately that they had not been about to kill the young Gascon, neither did she forget Aramis' flippant comment immediately after.

She did not mention the fact that he had never asked her how she had known Athos, nor that the moment she had met d'Artagnan had been ended once with her knee aimed at a sensitive location in repayment for his manhandling, and then ended a second time when he had done what might have generously been described as a 'manly swoon.' Perhaps something of that sentiment showed on her face, all the same.