Marrying the Musketeer (9 page)

Another suitor?
 
She had the name of one on the tip of her tongue.
 
“Maybe you could wed me to one of your handsome Parisian friends.
 
Monsieur Charent, or Monsieur de Tournay, perhaps?”
 
She kept her voice light, as if she were making a jest.
 
Only she knew how serious her intent was underneath the laughter in her voice.

Her father misliked the idea even in jest.
 
His face darkened at her carefully-chosen words.
 
“Never you fear, Courtney, my love, I shall wed you to an honest merchant.
 
No rascally scoundrel of a soldier shall wed with my daughter while I yet live.”

His heart was set against her new suitor then.
 
The pity was that she had so little time to convince him to change his mind.
 

She would warn Monsieur de Tournay on the morrow that he would need to work hard and fast to gain her father’s favor – show her father that he was not a rascally soldier but an honest man with a good head for business.
 
Her father only wanted what was best for her.
 
Eventually he would be won over to her way of thinking and accept Monsieur de Tournay as her lover.

Her father was sitting in silence, looking around the room as if he had forgotten something.
 
Then he shook his head sadly, sorrowfully almost as if he were mourning the passing of an era.
 
“I cannot think there is anything else I need to tell you.”

The questions were burning in her stomach, but she could hardly find the words to utter them.
 
“What trouble are you in, papa?
 
Who wants to hurt you?”

His face clouded over.
 
“It were best that you did not know.
 
Your innocence is a gift from God.
 
Keep it while you may.”

He rose to his feet.
 
“Come, we have lingered in this gloomy place for long enough.
 
Let us enjoy the sunshine on our faces while we are yet able.”

They spread out the picnic in the manor gardens under a tree.
 
Courtney had little appetite, but she forced herself to swallow a morsel of food for her father’s sake.
 
Even the sweet, red, wild strawberries that the housekeeper had packed for them tasted like sawdust and ashes in her mouth.

Her father ate no more than she did.
 
Finally he too gave up the pretense that he was hungry.
 
“Let us wait in the lane.
 
Our carriage will soon return.”

She followed him mutely up the path to the lane.

Halfway back to the lane, he stopped, held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes.
 
“Do not speak to anyone of where we have been today, or what I have shown you.”

She was shaken by the fear in his voice and hastened to reassure him.
 
“I will not.”

He was not happy with her simple reassurance.
 
“You will not tell a soul?
 
Not even Justin?
 
Not even Suzanne, your serving maid?
 
You will not let a single incautious word escape your lips?
 
You give me your word?”

His earnestness frightened her more than anything else than morning had.
 
“I give you my most solemn word, papa.
 
I swear on my mother’s grave that I will not tell a soul of aught.”

He nodded, satisfied by her solemn vow that she would not speak of her secret.
 
“Good girl.
 
You ease the torment of my spirits a little.
 
Your life may well depend on your silence.”

The rumbling of the carriage wheels could be heard in the distance, though a turn of the tree-lined road meant that it was still hidden from view.
 
“Do not forget, my dear,” he said, as they continued their funereal march back up to the lane.
 
“We have had a picnic in the country, a pleasant walk in the sun - nothing more.”

Dusk was falling as they returned to town – in vastly different spirits from when they had left that morning.
 
Courtney stared out of the window at every person they passed by, seeing a bogeyman behind every tree, seeing a monster out to destroy her father in every chance passerby.

Never had she been so glad to come home again, to clamber out of the carriage and into the well-lit chambers of their country house, and to lock and bolt the doors securely behind her.
 
With the smell of good beef pudding wafting in from the kitchens and the housekeeper’s cheery greeting ringing in her ears, she could hardly remember the chill of the other house they had visited today.
 
Was it not for the strain she still saw on her father’s face and the golden key she had hidden around her neck, she would have thought the whole affair had been a dream.

Monsieur de Tournay was waiting in the park for her on the morrow as she had asked.
 
Courtney hurried up to him, the hem of her skirts trailing in the wet grass.
 
A light rain was falling and a mist hung low over the trees.

He took her hand in his and drew her in closer for a kiss.
 
“I missed you yesterday.”

He tasted of mist and rain, like an insubstantial water sprite, a conjuring of her imagination rather than a man of flesh and blood.
 
She wanted to hold him tight to make sure that he was real, and would not float out of her fingers like a dream.
 
“I missed you, too.”

Even his dark, brown eyes, usually so lively, looked as if the spirit behind them was far away.
 
“Your father spirited you off before daybreak, your maid told me.
 
Bound on some adventure, I take it?”

“He took me…”
 
She stopped mid-sentence, her father’s caution ringing in her ears.
 
He trusted in her silence and she would not let him down the first time she came to be tested.
 
She was sure her father need not fear her beloved, but she would not tell Monsieur de Tournay until her father gave her permission to do so.
 
“He took me for a picnic in the country.”

“A picnic in the country?”
 
All of a sudden he was a man of earth again, not longer a spirit of the other world.
 
“He does this often?”

She smiled as she recalled how often she had begged him to take her out on a jaunt and how often he had refused her, pleading the demands of his trade.
 
“Not as often as I would like.”

“Where did you go?”
 
His words were casual but his tone seemed more serious and focused than such an inquiry warranted.

Maybe her father’s fear had infected her but all of a sudden she did not like to be questioned so.
 
She looked at him sharply, her confidence in him shaken just for a moment.
 
“Nowhere in particular.
 
We merely had a picnic by a pleasant stream, walked in the country air, and then came home again.
 
Why do you ask?”

He caressed her arm, her shoulder, and then took her chin in his hand and tilted her head up to look at him.
 
“I wanted to know what charms had drawn you out of my arms.
 
You are sure you did not visit anyone?
 
Monsieur Legros, for instance?
 
The friend of your father’s with the handsome son that everyone wants you to marry?
 
I would not be pleased if I thought your father was sneaking you away from me to visit with him.”

She laughed, relieved that his curiosity was impelled by nothing more sinister than a lover’s jealousy.
 
She put her hand on her heart.
 
“I swear on my mother’s soul that we did not visit Monsieur Legros.”

He did not look satisfied.
 
“You did not visit any other friend of your father’s who happens to have a marriageable son?”

She smacked his hand away from her chin.
 
“Upon my mother’s soul, I swear we did not.
 
We did not visit anyone at all.
 
We spent a day in the country, papa and I, all by ourselves with only the cows for company.”

He drew his dark brows together in a mock glare.
 
“I hope there were no handsome, marriageable cows among them?”

She smacked his hand.
 
A fine farmer he would make.
 
“What does it matter.
 
They are all female anyway.”

“It matters to me what kind of cows they are,” he said with a laugh, “but as long as they were all female, I will not complain.”
 
His face grew serious once more.
 
“I would not lose you as soon as I have found you, Courtney, my love.
 
I could not bear the thought of having you hurried off to be betrothed to another the instant my back was turned.”

She was horrified at the suggestion.
 
“My father would do no such thing.
 
He has turned away many of my suitors for no other reason than that I had little liking for them.”
 
Still, she felt a niggle of fear.
 
Her father had talked of a speedy betrothal.
 
He might be desperate enough to marry her to the first man who could protect her from the harm that threatened them, like him or not as she please.

“I hoped that I may be able to bring him around and show him that I was not a man he could easily dismiss as unworthy of his daughter, but he has little liking for me, either, I fear.”

She felt an uncomfortable feeling start to grow at the base of her spine.
 
Her father had never seemed very enamoured of her French Musketeer.
 
She hoped nothing further had happened to give him even more of a dislike of her lover.
 
“Why do you say that?”

“I decided to brave your house last night, hoping that you and your father would have returned from your journey and that I could at least see you for a few moments, even if we could not be alone together.
 
I did not expect a grand welcome, but I hoped to at least be shown a modicum of politeness, and be admitted on sufferance though I were not particularly welcomed.
 
The spell of your eyes was so strong upon me that I could not bear to have you so near and yet so far from me.
 
I did not want to wait to see you until today.”

The uncomfortable feeling in her stomach grew stronger.
 
Was her papa so afeared of his enemies that even her friends were to be refused admittance to their house?
 
“How strange.
 
Papa did not tell me that we had visitors last night.”
 

“I do not wonder at it.
 
Your footman showed me the door most unceremoniously.
 
He said that the master had given him orders that no damned, lousy Frenchman was to be admitted to his house, and that if I returned, he would have me thrown out on my ear.”

“Our footman refused you the house?
 
He threatened you?”
 
She could hardly believe that Jacques had been so saucy – not even under orders from her papa.
 
“I will speak to papa at once and have him dismissed from his post.”

He shook his head.
 
“Do not, I beg of you.
 
I would not be the cause of trouble in your house.”

“But to be refused the house with such rudeness?
 
I can hardly credit it.”

“The insult to me matters little.
 
What pains me more than anything is the thought that it means I cannot see you again before I leave for Paris.”

All thoughts of the footman flew out of her head on the instant at his dire news.
 
“You cannot see me again?”

He shook his head sorrowfully, as if his heart broke to impart such news.
 
“My absences during the day have been noticed and I have been ordered to remain at my post until we leave.
 
I cannot disobey my King.”

She could not believe that this was the last she would ever see of him.
 
She did not want to believe it.
 
“So I will not see you again?”

“My duties keep me occupied from daybreak until sundown.
 
Could I but visit you in the evenings, I would be a happy man.”
 
His face was grave and his black eyes troubled.
 
“I cannot come to see you then.
 
Your father has forbidden me the house.”