On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (38 page)

She did not mince her words now they were apart from the crowd.
 
As soon as the door to the chamber was shut behind them, she spoke up loud and clear.
 
“Your sister Henrietta, the Duchesse of Orleans has been imprisoned in the Bastille.
 
Her husband, Philippe of Orleans, cannot free her.
 
He sent me to ask you for your help.”

Chapter 10

One of the English lords took a step forward.
 
“Is this some kind of a sick jest?”

Lamotte stepped forward in his turn, his face taut with rage.
 
“My wife speaks true.”

The King tapped his fingernails against the arm of his chair.
 
“You know this for a fact?”

“I arrested her myself on the orders of the French King and took her to the Bastille.”

“You?
 
A woman?”
 
The King looked incredulous and one of the English lords laughed out loud.

“I may be a woman, but I am also a Musketeer in the King’s Guard.”

“You are jesting.”

Sophie had been prepared for such an eventuality.
 
She reached in her pocket for the small dagger she had placed there, withdrew it in a fluid movement and flung it with a sudden flick of her wrist.
 
The dagger flew through the air, knocking off the curled wig of the doubting lord and pinning it to the wall behind him.
 
There was a collective intake of breath from all present.
 
The doubting lord’s face grew gray and he looked as if he were about to be sick.
 
“I do not jest.”

She had been prepared for anger, but the King gave a snort of laughter instead.
 
“I see not.
 
Saville, retrieve your wig.
 
The sight of your bald pate will give me palpitations.”

Saville pulled the blade out of his wig and placed his hairpiece firmly back on his head.
 
He tested the sharpness of the dagger and tossed it back at Sophie with rather more force than he needed to.
 
She grabbed it by the handle as it somersaulted through the air and tucked it back into her pocket again.

“She is even better with a bow and arrow.”

The King raised his eyebrows at Lamotte’s comment.

“Only passable with a sword as yet, though she is proving an apt student.
 
She has more agility than most, she just needs to work on her strength more.
 
And her concentration – she may lose sight of the end goal in the immediate press of the battle.”

The King looked long and hard at him before turning his attention back to Sophie.
 
“So, what of my sister?”

“Monsieur, Philippe of Orleans, found her missing and suspected her arrest.
 
His brother, King Louis, claimed she had run off with her lover, the Comte de Guiche.”

The King nodded.
 
“I had heard rumors that little Hetty had found a man to console her.
 
I can hardly blame her for indulging in what I so enjoy myself, especially with the husband she has.
 
Pah – he is only half a man.”

“Monsieur did not believe that she would run off without telling him.
 
They are fond of each other, though not in the usual manner of married couples, I do believe.”

Rochester chortled.
 
“You’re in England now.
 
You’ve no need to be so damned tactful.
 
Philippe of Orleans is well-known as a buggerer of young boys.”

“Monsieur asked me to come to you.
 
He knew you would help her if you could.”

“Why did he come to you?
 
Because you were a woman and would take pity on his wife?”

Sophie thought of Monsieur’s hand on her knee and felt the tips of her ears burning.
 
“Somehow or another he found out that I had arrested her and so he sought me out.
 
He does not know that I am a woman.”

Rochester burst out laughing at her confusion and even Saville broke into a grin.
 
“I can see how Monsieur would find it difficult to resist you in your guise as a Musketeer.
 
You would make a very pretty boy.
 
How mortified he would be, though, were he ever to find out he was trying to seduce a woman.”

The King ignored his councilor.
 
“So why did you agree to come?”

Her sense of honor and her sense of pity, she supposed, and because she could not bear to see another woman hurt for protecting the man she loved.
 
“He asked me to save her on my honor as a soldier.
 
I accepted the mission because I am a woman.”

Rochester turned to Lamotte.
 
“You are the husband of this delightful Amazon?”

Lamotte bowed.
 
“I have that honor.”

“You came along to guard her on the way?”

“Not at all.
 
King Louis was not happy when his spies discovered her mission.
 
He sent me to stop her by any means possible.”
 
He took Sophie’s hand in his and squeezed it to give her reassurance.
 
“He would have me murder her.
 
Little did he guess that he had asked me to kill my own wife.”

“I take it that my French brother does not know you are a woman, either?”

Sophie shook her head.
 
“Few know the truth of my sex.
 
My husband here, and two of my sisters-in-arms.”

“You are not the only woman Musketeer in my French brother’s army?”

“There are three that I know of and maybe more.”

King Charles of England gave a great guffaw of laughter. “My French brother is guarded by women and he does not even know of it?
 
The jest is too good to be believed.”

Sophie bowed her head.
 
“What answer shall I carry back to Monsieur?”

The King lost his mirth all of a sudden.
 
“Tell him that you have faithfully delivered your message.
 
Poor, poor Hetty.
 
I wish I had not agreed to the match.
 
I will have to get her out of there by some means or another.”

Saville scratched his chin.
 
“We can hardly declare war on our neighbor.
 
France is too powerful, and the Scots would be sure to harass our northern border were we to go to war over the channel.”

“The Dutch might well join us,” Rochester suggested.
 
“They have no love for our Catholic neighbors.”

Saville shook his head.
 
“After the latest hostilities I would think not.
 
Their trading interests are diametrically opposed to ours.
 
They would watch us batter ourselves to death against France and raise no finger to help us.
 
Their intent would be only to take command of the trade routes when we are soundly beaten.
 
Spain, maybe, would be interested in a war against France, for reasons of their own.
 
That might not be the wisest course for us to take - an even stronger Spain would skew the balance of power too much in the continent.
 
A later war against Spain would take the combined effort of all her neighbors…”

King Charles silenced them both with a wave of his bejeweled fingers.
 
“There will be no war.”

Rochester made a noise of protest.
 
“You cannot ignore the insult to a daughter of England.”

Even the phlegmatic Saville seemed disturbed.
 
“The King of France has offered an insult to your own sister, to the sister of the King of England.
 
He cannot be allowed to do so with impunity.”

The King rubbed the end of his nose.
 
“I do not know yet of Henrietta’s imprisonment.
 
My French brother has not informed me of the fact, so no insult can be taken over the matter.
 
Even were I to go to war, Henrietta would long be dead ere the English army could reach Paris.
 
No, that is not the answer - I do not need to go to war.”

Sophie gasped.
 
Had her journey been all for nothing then?
 
“So you will leave Madame Henrietta to languish in the Bastille?”

King Charles drew his brows together at her incautious words.
 
“I will do no such thing.
 
She is my sister and I will protect her.
 
As King Louis has seen fit to imprison her by stealth, I shall see fit to rescue her by stealth.”

“You will bring her back to England?”

“I should never have agreed to the match with Philippe of Orleans.
 
He is no husband at all for any woman – let alone a woman such as my sister.
 
Let her but set foot back on good English soil, and I will get the Pope to annul her marriage to that buggering French fool.
 
Then I shall find a good English husband for her, let my brother in France storm as he will.”

“She is in the Bastille.
 
It is impregnable.”

“No fortress is impregnable for those who wish to escape and have skilled enough friends on the outside to help them.
 
She has the will to escape, no doubt.
 
All I need to do is send her the skill.”

Rochester grinned.
 
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

The King raised his eyebrows.
 
“What may that be?”

“Hugh of Coventry.”

“Who else.
 
Arrange to have him brought her as soon as possible.”
 

Rochester bowed.
 
“I am at your service, Sire, as always.”

The King turned to Sophie and Lamotte.
 
“Rochester will have Hugh fetched right away and told to prepare for a journey to Paris.
 
I would take it well if you would accompany him.”

What could one say to a King but yes?
 
Sophie bowed her head in acceptance of this last task.

“Please, do not hurt him or misplace him.
 
He is worth more than his weight in gold to me, and I would be seriously angry if he did not come home again.
 
If I did not love my little sister so dearly and fear for her treatment at the hands of my brother of France, I would not send him away.”

The King of England made this Hugh of Coventry sound like the right hand of God.
 
“Who is he, this Hugh?”

The King smiled into his sleeve.
 
“He is my secret weapon – silent, stealthy and deadly.
 
I have never known him to fail in any task I have seen fit to give him.
 
As long as he is by my side, I know that I shall be safe.
 
He is Henrietta’s best – and only – hope.”

Hugh of Coventry turned out to be a slight pale man with a shock of dark brown hair.

Sophie wiggled her toes in her new English boots and eyed him warily.
 
What was so special about him that the King of England could not do without him?

She nudged her horse with her toe to spur on her gait a little.
 
The King had arranged horses for them to take them as far as the coast where a boat was waiting for them.
 
Lamotte had groaned at the thought of another crossing, but she could not wait to get her feet on to good French soil once more.

Lamotte had been right.
 
English food was barely edible.
 
How she longed for a good ragout, seasoned with plenty of fresh herbs instead of endless slabs of beef boiled until it was gray as a corpse and as tough as leather to chew.

She came up alongside Hugh and slowed down a fraction so they could ride side by side.
 
She wanted to know more about this mysterious stranger.
 
“Why did the King send you?”

He did not take offense at her directness.
 
“I am the King’s thief.
 
He sends me on errands that call for a light touch and a complete absence of morals.”