On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (12 page)

Chapter 4

The thief drained the bottle dry and put it down by her side with a look of regret on her face.
 
“Guilty as charged.
 
Do you have another bottle of wine or shall I have to make do with ale for the rest of the night?”

The blond Musketeer looked utterly bemused.
 
She was staring straight at Sophie, not seeming able to accept what was in front of her.
 
“That’s why you attacked that lout in the tavern, isn’t it?
 
Because you’re a woman, too?”

Sophie was still reeling from the shock of finding two Musketeers with the same secret that had weighed her down for so many weeks.
 
She had companions now – two of them.
 
She had someone to talk to, to share her life with, someone who would understand, and who would never give her secrets away.
 
She was not alone any more.
 
She wanted to shout out loud with the joy of it.
 
“I don’t like bullies that pick on people who can’t fight back,” she said.
 
“He needed to be taught a lesson.”

“I wondered at the time what had possessed you to fight him.
 
No man would have gone to the serving girl’s aid.”
 
The blonde Musketeer’s voice was laced with bitterness.
 
“Whatever pretty words they may whisper in your ear, men are all alike in their selfish, stupid, pig-headed ways.
 
They all believe that women are there only to be used, not protected.”

“I owe you my thanks for coming to fight by my side.
 
I thought I was done for.”

“I couldn’t let you fight that battle on your own.
 
It was a battle that all women should fight against the men that abuse and oppress their sex.”

A snort of muffled laughter came from the other side of the room where the thief had given up waiting for an answer to her request for more wine and was rifling through the sideboard in a search for something else to drink.
 
“Pah.
 
All women indeed.
 
Don’t feed me any of that codswallop or I’ll puke.”

The blonde Musketeer growled.
 
“Trust a dirty little gutter rat not to know the meaning of morality or respectability or human decency.
 
You may as well stay a man and be done with it.
 
You act just like men do.”

The thief turned around to glare back at her.
 
“Street rats can’t afford morals.
 
You can take your morality and shove it up your arse for all I care.”

Sophie spoke up quickly, trying to distract their attention away from their quarrel.
 
She wanted them to be sisters and work together, not to snarl and spit at each other like fighting cocks.
 
“How did you guess our sex?”

The thief was still not mollified.
 
She looked pointedly at the blonde Musketeer as she spoke.
 
“A life on the street teaches to look beyond how people seem on the outside.
 
If you don’t learn that lesson quickly, you’re dead.”

Surely she could have seen through them on the instant.
 
No one else had so much as suspected her disguise for weeks.
 
“When did you realize that we were women?”

“As soon as you burst into the storeroom and rudely disturbed my booty-gathering,” the thief said, her back turned to them again.
 
“You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw the pair of you evidently with the same idea as I had – to become a Musketeer.
 
I thought I was the only woman daft enough to try it, not to mention smart enough to carry it off.”

Sophie knew just what that felt like.
 
She could hardly conceive that there were three of them in the same boat.
 
She had to wonder if there were any more of them hidden away in different regiments – women passing themselves off as men, just like the three of them.

“It’s the only reason I stuck with you both,” the thief continued, her head deep in a cupboard.
 
“If you’d been men, I would’ve ditched you three times over and left you to be taken up in irons by the guard without a qualm.
 
As it was, I figured you two could do with a helping hand.
 

“Ah ha, success.”
 
She turned around again, a fresh bottle of wine in her hand.
 
“Come gentleman, shall we make our introductions again?” she said, as she poured them all another generous measure.
 
“Let me start.
 
May I introduce myself not as JeanPaul Metin but as Miriame Dardagny, born and raised in the back alleys of Paris, lately a pickpocket, recently turned Musketeer in the hopes of making my fortune with rather less risk to my neck.”

The blonde Musketeer stretched out her legs in front of her.
 
“Courtney Ruthgard at your service.
 
I have a cousin named William of around my age.”
 
She wrinkled her nose.
 
“He is a sweet-natured simpleton who grows tulips in Holland and hasn’t a martial bone in his body – he is one of the few men in the world who is worth the food he eats.
 
I borrowed his name to become a Musketeer and avenge the wrong that one of them did to me and my family.
 
God willing, he will sleep with the worms before too much longer and I shall sleep easy in my bed again.”

“Sophie Delamanse.
 
My twin brother, Gerard, was a Musketeer before he died of the plague – the plague that I brought into the house.
 
I loved him dearly and would have given my life for his, but I was the cause of his death.
 
I decided to take his place, and win in his name the honor that should have been his.”

The three of them sat in silence for a while, drinking their wine and looking at each other in bemusement.
 
Sophie did not know what to say to the other two.
 
She had trained herself for so long to act and think like a man that she did not know how to be a woman again.

Finally she dared to do what she had been longing to do for hours.
 
She reached under her shirt and pulled free the wrappings that bound her chest, sighing with pleasure as her breasts swung free.
 
“Ah, that feels so good.
 
I never dreamed how uncomfortable men’s clothes could be until I had to wear them myself.”

At her cue, Courtney pulled off the tattered remains of her moustache, tossed her hat aside and ran her hands through the strawberry blonde hair that fell straight to her shoulders.
 
“I detest wearing hats, but I look impossibly feminine without mine.”
 
Her usually somber face relaxed into a grin.
 
“I think I’ll forgo the moustache in future though.
 
I would hate to have it fall off in my dinner.
 
How shockingly disreputable that would be.”

Miriame perched comfortably on the arm of a chair.
 
“Breeches are far more practical than dresses when you live on the street.
 
I don’t know that I’ve ever worn a dress in my life – certainly not that I can remember.”

All three of them were silent with their own thoughts.
 
The silence was broken only by the sound of them breathing, the faint ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and the night noises that filtered their way up through the street.

Sophie lay back in her chair and stared at the ceiling.
 
This discovery had changed everything.
 
“So what now?”

Miriame rested her boots on the low table in front of her.
 
“We have a drink, we rest our feet and then Sophie and I make our way home again once the guards have given up the chase.”

“That is not what I meant.”

Miriame looked genuinely confused.
 
“What do you mean?”

“Well, we can hardly go on pretending that we don’t know each other’s deep, dark secret, can we?
 
So, what do we do about it?”

Courtney nodded.
 
“I see what you mean.”

Miriame raised her glass.
 
“You keep my secret close and I’ll keep yours to my dying day.
 
Either of you betray me by so much as an incautious word, and I throw the pair of you to the wolves.
 
Deal?”

“And that’s all?”

“What more do you want?”

Sophie shook her head at Miriame’s obtuseness.
 
“We could make each other’s lives far easier.
 
Alone as we are now, we risk attracting unwanted attention from those who may want to befriend us.
 
If we succeed in keeping our fellows at a safe distance, we may garner suspicion because of our solitary ways.
 
Alone, we are vulnerable.
 
Together, we can form a barrier against the rest of the world that our enemies will not be able to break.”

Miriame raised her glass in a cynical salute.
 
“All for one and one for all and all that stuff?
 
How quaint.”

Sophie glared at her.
 
“I’m serious.”

Miriame looked suspiciously at the wine in the bottom of her glass.
 
“Why?
 
What do you get out of this?”

Sophie thought of the lonely nights she had spent in her attic room, longing for companionship.
 
She would not let this chance slip out of her hands without a fight.
 
“How long can you be a Musketeer and yet not be one?” she asked.
 
“How long can you survive surrounded by people you cannot afford to trust or confide in?”

Miriame crossed her arms across her chest in a defensive gesture.
 
“All my life so far.”

Sophie could not imagine such solitude.
 
She had always had Gerard to love her and listen to her.
 
She hated to feel so alone.
 
“That is no way to live.
 
It is existence, not life.
 
Are you not sick of it?
 
Don’t you ever long to have a friend to talk to?”

“How long will it take before your fellows notice that you never go swimming with them?” Courtney chimed in.
 
“Or that you never strip down to wash off after a hard day’s fighting?
 
Won’t they start to think you strange?
 
Of course, most men wash infrequently enough that they may not notice.”