Marrying the Musketeer (34 page)

Courtney said a quick prayer that God would not abandon her.
 
“Get your nightgown back on and get back into bed.
 
I will deal with them if they come here.”

Suzanne was shaking with fear.
 
“Won’t they recognize you?”

She could only hope not.
 
With more confidence than she felt, she shook her head.
 
“They are looking for a man and a Musketeer.
 
I am a woman and a mother.
 
At the worst, they may suspect that we are harboring their quarry or hiding him, but they cannot prove a thing.
 
We are quite safe as long as we keep our nerve and do not let them bully us.
 
They will never find what they are looking for.
 
Now off you go into bed.
 
Let me just see my son and I shall join you.”

Her son was sleeping quietly in his cradle, snuffling gently as he breathed in and out.
 
She held the candle up so that a soft beam of light fell on him.
 
He lay on his back, his eyes shut tight and a small smile playing over his face.
 
Her heart swelling with love for him, she bent down to kiss his smooth cheeks.
 
He mumbled a little in his sleep and waved one chubby fist in the air.

Poor, fatherless boy that he was.
 
She had sacrificed Pierre for her son.
 
Her boy would grow up respecting his mother and his grandfather, knowing that they were strong enough to avenge any wrong done to them.
 
No one would dare to call him bastard in his hearing or in hers.

She wiped away the tears that started to fall as she thought of Pierre, alone and friendless at the last, fighting to the death to give her a chance to escape.
 
He had died with her name on his lips and with love for her in his heart.
 
Maybe he was less guilty than she had always thought him to be.
 
Maybe he really
had
loved her.

She blew out the candle and padded softly into the chamber she shared with Suzanne whenever she stayed at the cottage.
 
It was too late for doubts and recriminations, she told herself, as she climbed into the bed beside Suzanne.
 
By now Pierre would be dead, and from death there was no return.

One of the tasks she had set herself was complete - she had avenged herself on her faithless lover by leading him to his death.
 
She shivered under the bedclothes, hugging herself to keep warm.
 
The chill of the winter air had seeped into her bones and she could not get it out again.

Beside her, Suzanne stirred and yawned.
 
“Are you awake?” she whispered softly in the darkness.

As if she could sleep on such a night!
 
Despite her exhaustion, she was as wide awake as if it were broad day.
 
“Yes, I am.”

“Who is chasing you?
 
Robbers?
 
Thieves?”

If only it were that easy.
 
Thieves, even highwaymen, she could deal with.
 
“King’s guards.”

Suzanne gave a gasp of horror.
 
“What have you done wrong?”

It was all so complicated.
 
How could she explain that she had been maneuvered into committing treason, and then betrayed by the very person who had solicited her services?
 
“I tried to start a rebellion against the King.
 
Unfortunately for all of France – and most particularly for me - it failed.”

Suzanne gave a snort of disbelief.
 
“You didn’t!”

“Yes, I did.”

There was silence for a moment as Suzanne digested the information.
 
“You cannot go back to being a Musketeer then?” she said at last, sounding as if she hardly dared to hope.

Courtney stared into the darkness.
 
How completely she had burned her bridges behind her.
 
She would never dare even to put on men’s clothes again for fear of being recognized.
 
William Ruthgard, Musketeer in the King’s Guard, was dead for ever.
 
“Never.
 
If I were ever to be caught, the King would hang me for certain.”

Suzanne sighed with contentment.
 
“You will stay at home with me and bonny little Luc?
 
He is such a good boy and he had missed you terribly.
 
Maybe we can even move back into the country where we used to live, close to Lyons, and be happy there.”

She had not realized that Suzanne hankered to return to Lyons.
 
“You liked living in the country?”

Suzanne was quiet for a moment.
 
“The blacksmith in the village where we lived...”
 
Her voice trailed off into an awkward silence.

The village blacksmith?
 
Courtney searched her memory for any knowledge of him, but the best she could come up with was a shadowy image of a youngish man with fair hair and the well-muscled arms of every blacksmith she’d ever seen.
 
She had never noticed him in particular, but obviously Suzanne had.
 
“You liked him well?”

“He was kind to me when I was lonely.
 
I have missed him since I have been here.”

She knew only too well the heart-aching loneliness of being without the one you loved.
 
“You have an understanding with him?”

Suzanne nodded in the darkness.
 
“He said he would wait for me until we returned.
 
I told him I would not hold him to his promise as I did not know if we would ever be back, but he insisted that he wanted no one else.”

She would strive not be envious of her own son’s nursemaid.
 
“You are a lucky woman, to have his heart.”

Suzanne sighed in the darkness.
 
“Cosette, the daughter of your cook, fancied him madly for a time.
 
I have no doubt she is trying to turn him away from me in my absence.”

What could she say to reassure Suzanne?
 
She was no expert in matters of the heart – this very night she had been the death of the only man she had ever loved, and the only man who had ever loved her.
 
She was worse than poison to those who loved her.
 
“Do not fret over Cosette.
 
If he truly loves you, he will not stray with her, even in his thoughts.”

Suzanne sniffed softly.
 
“I have been faithful to him since I left, in both thought and deed,” she said, in a wavering voice that showed how close she was to tears.
 
“I can only hope he has been so to me.”

They lay silent in the darkness once more, quiet as mice, though neither of them slept.
 
The noise of horse’s hooves coming closer kept them on edge.

Finally came the noise they had been expecting and fearing for so long – a hammering on the door.

Courtney rose from the bed and flung a warm shawl around her shoulders.
 
“Stay here,” she instructed Suzanne.
 
“I will go to the door.”

She left the chain on the latch as she opened the door as fraction.
 
“Who is there?
 
What do you want?”

The guards were in no mood to be polite.
 
“We are seeking a false rebel – a Musketeer turned traitor to the King,” one of them said.
 
“He was last seen heading in this direction.
 
He is deadly dangerous – and will be a desperate man, stopping at nothing to save his pitiful skin.
 
Have you see him this night?”

Courtney shook her head in its white mob cap.
 
“There is no man in the house.
 
Just me and my young son, a mere babe in arms, and his nursemaid."

The guard looked at her suspiciously.
 
“Where is your husband?”

She wiped a tear from her eye.
 
“I am a widow.”
 
That was true enough.
 
The man she had promised to wed, the only man she would ever love, was dead now for certain.
 
“My husband, God bless his soul, was taken from me over a year ago.
 
He did not even get to see the sweet face of his only son.”
 
It was not difficult for her to seem sad and weepy – she wanted to bawl in earnest at the thought of Pierre being hacked to pieces by this mob.

He seemed moved by her evident sorrow.
 
“No stranger has come knocking on your door this evening?”

She put a hand to her mouth as if to hide an expression of shock.
 
“Indeed, no.
 
I would not let a stranger in to my house after dark for all the tea in China.”

He was anxious to get away now he had ascertained she was not harboring his quarry.
 
“May we look around your property, to ensure he is not hiding here?”

She gave a little shriek of terror.
 
“You think he may be hiding here?”

“It is possible.
 
We cannot rule it out.”

“Please, please, look over everywhere you please – only take a care not to trample the kitchen garden, if you would.
 
Do not forget to take a look around my little stables, and through all the hedgerows in the fields, and under every stone.
 
I will never sleep safely in my bed with a nasty rebel lurking in the neighborhood.
 
Heaven knows, he might try to snatch my poor baby and take him off to make a heretic and a traitor out of my poor innocent boy.”

He had already half-turned his back towards her by the time she had finished speaking.
 
“Indeed, Madame, if he is here, rest assured that I will find him.
 
Keep your door bolted against the night, and do not bother your pretty head about him.”
 
He turned in his heel and he and his followers disappeared into the night.

What fools men were, Courtney thought with a bitter smile as she returned to her bedchamber and climbed back into bed beside Suzanne.
 
Let her just put on the act of a foolish woman, and they could not see beyond it.

They had discounted the entire household as unimportant because a man did not live there.
 
All her precautions had been unnecessary – her pursuers had been too blinded by her sex to bother further with her.

She wondered what they would say if they ever discovered that their fierce, wild rebel was a woman after all – a woman in her nightgown and her bed cap who had just sent them packing with the help of a few false tears.
 
It would almost be worth telling them, just to see their incredulous faces.

She doubted they would believe her even if she confessed to her dual identity.
 
They looked at her and saw only a woman.
 
They did not see a soldier.

Not even Pierre had seen through her disguise and known her for what she was.
 
His blindness had been the cause of his death.
 
He had trusted her – and she had led him to ruin in the end.

She had been as false to him as ever he had been to her.
 
She had won his trust, led him into a rebellion, and then abandoned him like a coward at the end.
 
He had given his life to save hers, and she had accepted his sacrifice without argument.
 
She had not stayed to fight at his side, but had run for the woods, to save her own sorry skin.

She would not feel guilty for what she had done, she told herself, as bitter tears streamed down her face to run unheeded into the soft down of the bolster beneath her head.
 
She would not even feel sorry for him, dying alone in the dark for her sake.
 
He had never known her for who she really was – not even at the end.
 
He had been so blind and so stupid that he deserved to die.

Chapter 9

The soldiers returned the next day when it was light, their faces black as thunderclouds and their tempers strained to the breaking-point.
 
They shouldered Suzanne aside roughly when she came to answer their knock.
 
“We need to search the house,” was all they said by way of explanation.

Courtney fluttered around them as they searched through her few chambers.
 
“You haven’t found the nasty rebel yet?
 
Oh dear.
 
I shan’t feel safe in my bed knowing that he is still on the loose.”