On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (13 page)

Miriame was not impressed.
 
“Each to his own.
 
If I don’t bother them, they won’t bother me.”

Sophie shook her head.
 
“You may spit and curse along with the rest of them, but you’ll never be able to piss in the corner of the courtyard like they do.
 
Sooner or later, one way or another, they’ll find you out.”

Courtney screwed up her face in disgust.
 
“Men are such pigs.”

Miriame was silent for a while, her forehead furrowed in thought.
 
“So, what do you suggest we do about it?”

“We band together.
 
Not just for one night, but for all time.”

“We eat and drink together.”

“We keep each other’s secrets.”

“We go on duty together.”

“We look after each other’s interests.”

“Brothers-in-arms.”

Miriame lifted her nearly empty glass. “Fellow Musketeers, sisters in arms, we have a deal.”

Courtney filled their glasses to the brim one more time.

Miriame drained her newly filled glass and lifted it to the ceiling with a whoop.
 
“Pour me another one then, sisters, I feel a celebration coming on.”

Sophie tilted the warm rich wine down her throat.
 
She had two new companions, and life was good.
 
All the three of them needed now was an adventure that tested their mettle and their fighting spirit and proved their worth to the world.

The Comte de Guiche raised himself up on his elbow at the sound of the rustling at the door.
 
“Henrietta,” he whispered urgently into the ear of the woman sleeping soundly beside him.
 
“Wake up.”

She half woke up and pulled him towards her for a kiss, her hand moving to touch him in between his legs.
 
“Darling,” she murmured, her voice husky with sleep.
 
“You’re insatiable, and I love you for it.”

He could see the glow of a lighted candle through the curtains around their bed.
 
They had dismissed all their servants the previous eve so they could be alone together.
 
Whoever held the candle was here to spy on them and discover their loves.
 
Whoever it was bore them no good will.
 

He hugged her tightly to him.
 
“Henrietta,” he whispered again, the knowledge of mortal danger clutching at his heart.
 
“We have been betrayed.”

In that same instant she was wide awake.
 
She sat bolt upright in the bed and clutched his arm with a bruising grip.
 
“How?”

He stroked her hair with his free hand – her beautiful dark brown curls that he loved to bury his face in, breathing deeply of the perfume of her soul.
 
The how was not important at a time like this.
 
“Just remember that I love you forever.
 
You are my one true soul mate and I will love you until the waves stop crashing on the sand and the sun ceases to rise in the morning sky.”

The voice of the King cut through his avowal.
 
“How quaint, Monsieur le Comte.
 
I see you have the soul of a poet.”

Henrietta groaned softly and buried her face in her hands.
 
“I’m sorry, my love,” she whispered in the Comte de Guiche’s ear.
 
“I have ruined you.”

The King pulled back the curtains around the bed.
 
“My dear sister-in-law,” he said, and he gave a grimace that tried to pass as a smile.
 
“I see that you were not altogether honest with me, or else you have been cruelly toying with the Comte’s heart.
 
The Comte swears he loves you until the end of the world, but I vividly recollect you telling me a few short weeks ago that you cleaved to your husband and that the Comte de Guiche meant nothing to you.”

Henrietta looked at him with abject misery and guilt writ large over her face, but said nothing.

“Monsieur le Comte, I am most displeased with you,” the King continued.
 
“I had heard an idle rumor that you were cuckolding my brother by foutering his wife, but I had discounted it as a vile slander.
 
What courtier, I thought to myself, would sink that low?”

The Comte looked the King straight in the eye.
 
“I love Madame Henrietta better than her husband ever could.”

“The charges laid against you, treasonous intercourse with the King’s brother’s wife, were so serious that I thought it politic to investigate the rumor myself.
 
Unfortunately,” and King Louis gave a loud sigh of satisfaction, quite at odds with his words, “I have proven them true instead.

“What will I do with you now, Monsiuer le Comte?”
 
Henrietta felt the King’s beady eyes on her as he spoke.
 
“A ruinous fine for corrupting my sister-in-law?
 
An oubliette in the Bastille for the rest of your natural days?
 
Or a torturous death for treason?”

Henrietta squeezed the Comte’s hand under the bedclothes.
 
How much she regretted now falling in love with him.
 
Had she not loved him, he would have been safe from the malice of the King.

The King gave an unpleasant smile, looking from one to the other with a gaze of malignant satisfaction.
 
“Enjoy the rest of your night,” he said, as he let the curtain fall.
 
“It will be the last night you ever spend together.”

As soon as the door closed behind him, Henrietta sprang out of bed.
 
“You must leave at once,” she said to the Comte, thrusting his clothes into his hands.
 
“He will take some minutes to rouse the guards and send them to arrest you.
 
You must be on your horse by then and on your way out of Paris.
 
Once you are out of his sight, hidden away in the provinces, he will forget about you.”

“You must come with me,” the Comte said, pulling on his breeches.
 
“I will not leave you behind.”

Henrietta shook her head.
 
“I cannot run from here.
 
King Louis will take it as an insult to the royal family of France from the royal family of England.
 
In his anger, he might even declare war on my brother, King Charles II of England.
 
I cannot be the cause of war between England and France.”

He stopped in the middle of putting on his boots.
 
“The King will punish you if you do not come with me.”

“He cannot harm me.
 
My husband will protect me from the King’s anger.”

He shook his head.
 
“Monsieur is weak.
 
I do not like to leave you here in the mercy of the King.”

She helped him on with his riding jacket.
 
“You are wasting precious minutes.
 
Even now the guards may be on their way to arrest you.
 
If ever you loved me, be off with you right away.
 
I would die if you were caught.”

He grabbed his hat in one hand and his riding crop in the other.
 
“I leave my heart behind with you.”

She wiped away a tear.
 
“You take my heart with you wherever you go.
 
Now be on your way.
 
I would never forgive myself if you came to harm through loving me.”

Still he hesitated.
 
“Call me if you have need of me, and I will come to your side, though a thousand Kings stood in my way.”

She crushed him to her in one last desperate embrace before pushing him out the door.
 
“Fare thee well, my love.
 
Forgive me.”

Sophie’s head felt as though it was about to split in two the next morning as she staggered off to the barracks with her two new companions.
 
Courtney looked as seedy as she felt: her face was pale and tinged with green and big purple hollows ringed her eyes.
 
Sophie was glad she could not see her own face – she was quite sure it would be bad enough to scare crows and make pregnant women miscarry from fright.
 
She was not sure how she managed even to stay upright.

Miriame was disgustingly chirpy, despite having swallowed three times what either Sophie or Courtney had managed.
 
She had no sympathy for either of them.
 
“You can’t even hold your liquor like a woman, let alone like a man or a soldier,” was her disparaging comment as Sophie turned aside for the second time to be violently ill by the side of the road.

Sophie could only groan in response as she rinsed her mouth with water from her flask, and spat it out again.
 
If anything, her stomach felt worse than her head.
 
Her head only hurt – and as a soldier she was used to dealing with pain.
 
With every step she took, her stomach felt as though she were on board a tiny boat in the middle of a raging storm.
 
All she wanted to do was lie down and die to stop the sick feeling in her stomach from completely overwhelming her.

She got no sympathy from Lamotte either, when she staggered on to the grounds for her lesson, late for the first time ever.

He was singularly unimpressed with her condition.
 
“A good soldier never drinks so much in the eve that he cannot fight in the morn,” he said, his voice dry, as she stumbled into the courtyard, pain shooting through her head with every beat of her heart and her stomach still heaving.
 
His brows were knitted together in a look of disgust.

She did not even try to justify herself in his eyes.
 
She had no will left to do so.
 
Thank the Lord he thought she was a man, and didn’t know her true sex.
 
Drunkenness in a man was tolerable – barely – as long he did not make a habit of it, or cause trouble when he was in his cups.
 
Drunkenness in a woman though, she thought to herself with a giggle that made her stomach heave again, was another matter entirely.
 
Lamotte would no doubt be disgusted unto death were he to know.
 
It was the best reason yet for him never to find out that she was not Gerard.

She was having a hard time keeping up the charade this morning.
 
She could not even concentrate on her lesson with more than the outermost edges of her mind.
 
She was in no state to leap or thrust to meet Lamotte’s blade.
 
The most she could manage was to stand in the dust, parrying the blows he aimed at her as best she could.
 
Even then, her arm felt like it was made of lead and she winced with shooting pains in her head at the harsh metallic ringing made by their clashing blades.

After a few minutes of coaxing her to greater effort, he threw his sword down on the ground with disgust.
 
“Be off with you,” he growled.
 
“You are wasting my time and your own.”

Sophie sheathed her sword gladly and sank down on her heels, willing herself not to vomit up the bile in her throat in front of him.
 
She had already given him more than enough of a disgust for her.
 
She felt so sick that she wished she could die – if only death would take away her pain and nausea.
 
She looked up at Lamotte’s clear countenance with envy in her heart.
 
“You were not drinking last night, then?”

He gave a wry smile that twisted up the corners of his mouth but did not reach his eyes.
 
“You spoiled my evening.
 
After your brawling in the tavern last night, no one was able to drink anymore.”

“Drinking is bad for you anyway,” she said moralistically, forgetting for the moment what had put her into the sorry state she was in now.

“Yes – drinking to excess,” he said pointedly, “tends to make one a little slow the next day.”

She felt herself blush.
 
He was right - she ought to take her own words to heart.

He had not been drinking last night and had not the excuse that he was too tipsy to fight alongside her – so why had he not come to her aid?
 
She had a vivid recollection of Lamotte standing by, watching her struggle and refusing to lift a finger to rescue her.
 
“I know you saw me beg for your aid yester night.
 
Why did you not help me?”