On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (14 page)

“Musketeers do not waste their skill brawling in taverns.”
 
His eyes were cold and gray.
 
She shivered as he looked straight through her.
 
“No Musketeer should be brainless enough to start a brawl that he is not prepared to see through to the end.
 
By himself.
 
I will not always be around to see you out of every foolish scrape you get yourself into.
 
Even when I am around, I may not choose to aid you.
 
You may as well learn that lesson sooner rather than later, in a place where your foolishness will mean only a beating, and not your death.”

She rested her head in her hands, keeping it as still as she could to stop the pounding in her brain.
 
“You would see a woman abused, then, and not go to her aid?”

He made a dismissive noise.
 
“She was no innocent maid, but a sluttish serving girl in a tavern.
 
Why should you rush to her side?”

Sophie felt her gorge rise up in her throat.
 
How easily he had labeled the woman as unworthy of his protection.
 
Were not Musketeers supposed to protect the weak and prevent injustice wherever they found it, regardless of whether the victim was a Queen or a lowly serving maid in a tavern?
 
“She was a woman and so worthy of our protection.”

“She worked in a tavern.
 
What else could she expect but to be treated that way?”

She was growing angry now.
 
“Women have to eat, just the same as men.
 
Or would you rather she starved on the streets?
 
Would you help her then, or would you consider her equally unworthy of your protection?
 
Is your honor so meager and uncharitable that you only protect wealthy virgins?”

He shrugged his shoulders.
 
“There are other ways to earn a crust than spreading your legs for every soldier in the barracks.
 
Still, she would have come to no lasting harm in his hands.
 
Henri is a brutal bastard, but he would’ve paid her well enough.
 
She would have had nothing to complain about.”

She was almost too angry to speak, and far too angry to hold her tongue.
 
“You think a handful of pennies would make amends for being abused in such a way?
 
You are a fool with no feeling.
 
Have you no imagination to put yourself in that poor woman’s place for a moment and to feel what she might feel?”

He picked his sword up off the ground and weighed it in his hand with a threatening air.
 
“I do not care for being called a fool.”

Sophie’s temper was still too riled for caution.
 
“If you are not a fool, then you must be a vile, whoremongering bastard.
 
Take your pick.”

She saw a blur of motion and the tip of his sword was suddenly at her breast.
 
“That was not a wise thing to say.”

She felt too ill to defend herself.
 
She did not even attempt to rise or even reach for her sword.
 
“Not wise, maybe,” she readily admitted.
 
“Honest, but not wise.”

The tip of his sword pressed sharply against her breastbone.
 
“Those are fighting words.”

For the first time, Sophie was glad of the wrappings around her chest.
 
The thick cloth cushioned her from the point of his sword, preventing his blade from breaking her skin.
 
“Go away,” she said wearily, lifting her aching head from her hands.
 
Why did men always take offense at the slightest insult and want to cross swords over it?
 
She could not have so much as a simple disagreement with a man without him wanting to slit her throat for it.
 
Men needed to learn to save their energies for battles that were worth fighting.
 
She was running out of patience with the lot of them.
 
“I’ll fight you tomorrow if you insist.
 
I am too sick to fight this morning.”

He did not move his sword.
 
“Musketeers do not always have the luxury of choosing when to fight.”

She looked at him with disdain.
 
“Attack me now if you insist, though it would be the work of a braver and more honorable man to wait until I could defend myself.”

He looked at her with growing disbelief.
 
“Are you calling me a coward?
 
Again?”

“If the hat fits…” she muttered under her breath.

His face grew tight with rage.
 
“Damn you, I am no coward,” he said in a voice of scarcely controlled fury.
 
“I will whip you tomorrow until you beg for mercy.
 
But to last you until then, I think you deserve a taste of your own medicine.”
 
With a quick flick of his sword, he ripped the front of Sophie’s shirt in two.

His blade had caught some of her bindings.
 
With a feeling of horror, Sophie watched the linen rags she kept wrapped around her chest start to unravel.
 
If they came undone any further, her breasts – and her secret - would be exposed for all the world to see.
 
All she had achieved would be wasted in the work of a moment.
 
She would be utterly ruined.

With a strength born of desperation, she sprang to her feet, clutching the two pieces of her shirt together in one hand and her sword in the other.
 
“Damn you, damn you, damn you,” she shouted, driving him off with a sudden fury that caught him completely by surprise.

The effort of standing up so suddenly and moving so quickly was too much for her badly hung over body to cope with.
 
Her stomach protested violently at the movement, her eyes grew misty, and her head began to swim.
 
After fewer than half a dozen steps, she collapsed to the ground, retching violently into the dust.

He ran to her side, his anger dissolving into concern as she made no move to get up again.
 
“Gerard?”
 

She lay motionless on the ground, exhausted.
 
She could not move.
 
Her only thought was to get away from the barracks somehow and hide in her tiny room until she was better.
 
She would never touch a drop of wine again.
 
She closed her eyes to block out the pain.
 
“Go away,” she whispered.

He grunted with annoyance as he crouched in the dirt beside her.
 
“Gerard, you are more trouble than you are worth.
 
You insult me, and then refuse to fight.
 
Then when I goad you just a little, you attack me as if all the furies in Hell had taken possession of you.
 
You deserve for me to leave you here for crows to peck out your eyes.”

She could not wish for anything more.
 
“Leave me alone.
 
I do not need your help.
 
I will wait until JeanPaul comes looking for me.
 
He will help me.”

He ignored her complaints.
 
With a fluid motion, he picked her up in his arms as if she were a baby.
 
“Where do you lodge?”

She struggled briefly, but the effort only caused her head to swim with pain until she was too dizzy to think.
 
“Put me down,” she croaked, when her head had stopped pounding enough for her to speak.

He wrinkled his nose at the mess she was in, but he did not drop her.
 
“Where do you lodge?” he repeated.

It seems he would rescue her whether she would or no.
 
“With the Widow Poussin in the Rue de Fosset.”

His hands were gentle as he cradled her head to stop it from jolting around with every step he took, and his arms holding her were strong and held her safe.
 

She shifted a little in his grasp to make herself more comfortable, resigned to being carried home like a child.
 
Once she was safe inside her lodgings, she would barricade her in her bed and sleep the pain and nausea away.
 
Her secret would be safe there.

Lamotte picked his friend up with a less than gentle touch, only just resisting the temptation to fling him over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.
 
The only thing stopping him was the fear that the boy would puke all the way down the back of his jerkin and over his favorite leather breeches and well-shined boots.

Did the boy have a death wish that he insulted him so at every turn without rhyme nor reason to it?
 
Twice now the boy had called him a coward and lived unscathed to tell the tale.
 
No other man could boast of that.

The lad in his arms was more fragile than he looked – he must have been starved by the plague for he weighed scarcely more than a feather.
 
His legs were slim and his arms positively puny, but his hips were wider than most men’s would be.
 
For all his lightness, the boy had a surprisingly broad, well-muscled chest.
 

He looked a little more closely at his burden, and he felt his whole world turn over.
 
It was no young man he was carrying – he would wager his life on that.
 
He would swear on the Bible that he held a woman in his arms, and no man at all.
 

He shifted his burden a little, feeling the round softness of her hips under his hands.
 
No man could have such curves there.

A woman, dressed as a Musketeer, masquerading as his friend.

Gerard had a twin sister, Sophie.
 
She had supposedly died in the plague that had swept over the south of France, destroying half the human souls in the path of its relentless fury.
 
Out of his whole family, Gerard had been the sole survivor.

He looked down at the girl he was carrying in his arms, so like his friend in every feature.
 
He had no doubt about it.
 
Gerard’s twin sister, Sophie, had not died.
 
The woman in his arms had to be Sophie - and the woman to whom he was betrothed.

How unlike she was to her portrait!
 
In her picture she had seemed all sweetness and light, all softness and welcoming love.
 
How far removed her appearance was from reality.
 
She was as beautiful as he had imagined, if not more so, even despite the purple rings of exhaustion under her eyes and the green tinge of sickness to her face.
 
Her look of sweetness had been replaced by a hardness that he had never seen before in woman’s face.
 
Either the portrait had lied from the beginning, or in becoming a soldier, she had become less of a woman.

However much of her sweet softness she had lost, he was still betrothed to her and he would not break his word.
 
This brawling, fighting woman, who had the temerity to call him a coward, must needs be his wife.

Her eyes were shut, puckered against the light.
 
No sign of a whisker marred the softness of her skin.
 
He marveled that he had never noticed it before.
 
Few of his fellows were such dandies that they shaved every day, but even they could never rival this young woman’s complexion.
 
He touched her chin gently with the tip of his finger.
 
Only a woman or a child could possibly have such smooth, soft cheeks.

He stumbled over an uneven patch on the cobblestones and she gave a groan.
 
He held her tighter to his body to protect her against the roughness of her ride.
 
He was carrying a woman disguised as a man, and wearing the uniform of a soldier.
 
He had never even imagined such a thing before.

A woman.
 
No wonder she had rushed to the aid of the serving wench in the tavern.
 
She had seen her own self in the figure of that poor bedraggled maid servant and had rushed to her defense.
 

Fool that he was, he had not gone to her aid but had let her battle it out on her own against the drunken mob intent on her blood.
 
He shivered with the realization of the danger she had been in – that he had allowed her to face without him by her side.
 
She was only a woman, and fighting against half a dozen men twice her size.
 
She could have been killed as he stood by.

She relaxed in his arms, nuzzling her cheek against his rough linen shirt.