Marrying the Musketeer (39 page)

Never again, Courtney thought, as she hurried along the corridors.
 
Only a fool would tempt fate by breaking into a well-guarded prison twice in his life.
 
The unfortunate prisoners in the Bastille must needs remain there until the King had mercy on them, for she could not help them.

Her father could only limp along slowly.
 
They were lucky they did not run into any guards patrolling the corridors, or they would have been lost.
 
As it was, they arrived at the front gate without incident.

The red-faced guard was alone at the gate when they arrived.
 
Courtney and her father shuffled up to him while Miriame lurked behind them in the shadows, knife at the ready.

The red-faced guard looked at them suspiciously.
 
“Where’s Stephan?
 
Didn’t he come to let you out?”

Courtney put on a blank face.
 
“Who?”

The red-faced guard made a gesture of impatience.
 
“The other guard.
 
Where is he?”

Courtney looked around her in fake confusion.
 
“Is he not right behind us?
 
He let us out of the chamber where we were ministering unto the prisoners and told us to go ahead and he would follow right away.”

“Damn fool of a guard to stop to take a leak and let you wander around on your own,” the red-faced guard said, taking a step into the shadows as if to go after him and tell him what a fool he was.
 
“I’m not letting you go until he gets here.”

One more step into the shadows, and that was the last step he ever took.
 
Miriame was on him in an instant, the silver blade of her knife flashing in the darkness.
 
With a deft hand she slit his throat from ear to ear, stepping neatly out of the way of the blood as it spurted out of his neck.

Feeling as if she wanted to be sick, Courtney leaned over and extracted the keys from his belt.
 

Her fingers were wet with his blood.
 
She wiped them on her dark robe with a shudder before turning the key in the gate and opening it wide.

Her father stepped through it as if in a daze.
 
“I had never thought to see the outside world again,” he muttered as he limped along.

Courtney held tight to his arm to help steady him on his feet.
 
He had been chained to the manacles in his cell for so long that he had nigh lost the use of his legs.
 
Was this the fate in store for Pierre, she wondered?
 
Would he, too, be beaten and tortured until he could not longer walk?

With a shudder of horror she remembered Brother Jacques and Brother Francis, sent for especially to deal with recalcitrant prisoners.
 
Were they meant for Pierre?
 
He had been taken up for treason and plotting against the King.
 
For sure the King would torture him until he divulged the names of his fellow conspirators.

She shivered again, huddling herself into her filthy robe.
 
What had she doomed Pierre to?
 
What fate would he have to suffer because of her?

Miriame’s friend was waiting for them with the covered cart as he had both days previously.
 
His eyes widened when he saw three monks stumbling up to him instead of the usual two.

They clambered into the cart and the driver set off at a good pace.

“Off with your robes,” Courtney told her father as they clattered along.
 
“As soon as your escape is discovered, they will be looking for you everywhere.”

The discarded robes were hastily bundled together and hidden under a pile of straw in the cart.
 
It would not fool anyone but the most casual searcher, but with any luck, it would not have to.
 
They should be well out of the area before anyone noticed that the guards were missing.

They arrived in a fever of haste at Miriame’s lodging where they had been sleeping ever since their arrival in Paris.
 
Miriame’s landlady was a friend of hers from way back and well used to hiding people from the law.
 
She would be sure to hold her tongue if she noticed anything unusual.
 
Miriame paid her well to turn a blind eye to whatever was going on.

Once inside, Courtney helped her father to peel off his prison rags and fed them one by one into the fire.
 
Together, she and Miriame lifted him into a tub of water and she scrubbed the months of prison dirt away from every pore of his body.

His hair was crawling with lice.
 
Courtney shuddered with distaste as she shaved him close to his scalp with a sharp blade, and scraped the beard from his chin.
 
The hair she gathered up carefully from the floor and threw in the fire, insects and all.
 

The suit of clothes she had bought for him were too loose on his newly gaunt frame.
 
She pinned the sides of his breeches together as best she could and buttoned up his jacket to hide how loosely his shirt hung on him.
 
Even his stockings hung in folds from his thin calves, but at least he was clean and properly dressed once more.

Miriame fetched the curled gray wig they had obtained for him and helped him adjust it on his head.
 
He looked at himself in the mirror and shook his head in amazement at his reflection.
 
“I almost look like myself again.
 
You would never know to look at me that I had been a guest of the King for so many months.”

Courtney and Miriame left him to gloat on his changed appearance and went to wash themselves, scrubbing off all the stink of their false monk’s robes.

Courtney reappeared in a few moments sparkling clean from head to toe and dressed in a sober green traveling gown and ladies’ laced boots.
 
Miriame strutted out in breeches and riding boots, her dark hair tied at the nape of her neck, a fashionable cavalier from her head to her toes.
 
The pair of them looked, and smelled, nothing at all like the two monks who had broken in to the Bastille a scant half hour ago.

Still, haste was best.
 
Paris was a dangerous place for all of them but Miriame, and she would be damned just by being found in their company.
 
She shoveled Courtney out the door again as soon as she was dressed to where a carriage was waiting in the street.

Courtney hugged Miriame tightly to her as they said their farewells.
 
“I owe you my father’s life,” she said.
 
“I shall not forget it.
 
If you should ever need me---”

“Then be sure that I will come a-knocking on your door as loud as can be,” Miriame interrupted her with a grin.
 
“Now be off with you.
 
The sooner you’re gone, the safer I’ll be.”

Courtney could hardly argue with that.
 
She scrambled into the carriage, the driver gave a shake of the reins, and they set off down the street at a fast clip.

“You have just arrived from the country, come to fetch me away to Burgundy,” she explained to her father.
 
“We are traveling to your country home for a visit as my mother is ill and like to die.
 
That explains our haste.”

Monsieur Ruthgard nodded, accepting instantly the need to get their stories straight if they were stopped.
 
“Why to Burgundy?”

“I have friends there, Sophie and Ricard Lamotte.
 
They will hide us until we can escape out of the country.”

“Friends you can trust?”

“With my life.
 
They were Musketeers with me.”

“Surely not both of them?”
 
He sounded as if he could not comprehend what she was implying.
 
“The wife along with the husband.”

“Yes, Sophie as well as her husband.
 
They were both soldiers, as was I.”

“You were a Musketeer, too?”

“I was.
 
In the King’s Guard, no less.”

“And the one who helped you free me?”

She nodded.
 
“He is Jean-Paul Metin, a street rat turned Musketeer and the best friend to have around you when you are in trouble.
 
He has saved me from more scrapes than this one.”

Monsieur Ruthgard shook his head at Courtney.
 
“The man who is really a woman in disguise?
 
You have been running with a strange crowd since I have been imprisoned, my love.
 
Where is the young girl I left behind me?”

Courtney pressed his hand with love.
 
“I have grown up now, papa, and learned how to look after myself.
 
You need never fear leaving me again.”

Paris was soon left behind them and they rumbled along the country lanes that led to Courtney’s cottage in the country.
 
Suzanne, who had been warned on their way to Paris that their flight was imminent, saw them rumbling up the lane and was outside in a flash with Luc and their bundles.
 
The carriage stopped for just long enough for them both to squeeze on board.

Courtney gathered Luc to her arms and covered him in kisses.
 
“My darling.
 
How I have missed you.”
 
She turned to her papa, fearing his anger.
 
“Papa, this is my son, your grandson.”

“You have married while I have been away?”

“No, papa.
 
I am not wed.”

Her papa looked sorrowful at her words.
 
“His father?”

She had known that she would one day have to make a confession of her shame, but knowing it did not make it any easier to perform.
 
“Pierre de Tournay.
 
He betrayed the both of us, papa, me as much as you.”

Her father reached out and patted the boy on his head.
 
“I am sorry for what you must have suffered in my absence,” he said to Courtney.
 
“I would not have chosen such a path for you, but neither can I condemn you for taking it.
 
I will love the lad dearly for your sake.”

Courtney felt the constriction around her heart begin to grow less.
 
“I avenged myself on the man who wronged us, papa.”

Her father looked at her with new understanding.
 
“That is why you would not bring him with us – because of the boy.”
 
He nodded to himself.
 
“That explains much.
 
I had not thought you would have proved so cruel to any man else.”

She turned her eyes to her father.
 
“You think I did wrong to leave Pierre in the Bastille?”

He shook his head in sorrow.
 
“Do not ask me, daughter, for I have no answer for you.
 
I can only speak to my conscience, not to yours or to any other man’s.
 
You rescued me from a living hell, and I am more than grateful to you for that.
 
You did what you thought was right and just to the man who had wronged us both.
 
No one can ask more of you than that.”

Chapter 10

Pierre did not close his eyes until the door to his dungeon was shut and locked.
 
Even then he kept them open for some minutes, hoping against hope that Courtney would relent, that she would return to him and free him from this living hell.

The minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness.
 
She did not return.
 
The guard stirred from his position on the floor, moaning through his gag, but still she did not return.

She was not coming back.
 
She hated him with all the passionate intensity that he loved her.
 
She had abandoned him to his death.

How foolish and blind he had been not to have seen the truth before.
 
She had ripped the scales from his eyes and left him torn and bleeding, but seeing clearly at long last.
 

He had wronged her too greatly ever to hope for the forgiveness she had once sought from her.
 
He had wounded her so deeply that her girlish love for him had been transformed into a woman’s deep and abiding loathing.