On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (9 page)

The maid looked at her, her frightened face silently beseeching her mistress not to make her tell her King a lie.
 
He could have her whipped to death for less.

Henrietta sighed.
 
She liked her little maid too well to give the King any reason to punish her.
 
“Show him in.”

The maid’s face lost its terrified pucker and sank into its usual look of agreeable docility as she scuttled off to do her mistress’s bidding.

Henrietta patted her hair straight and tucked the bedclothes securely around her.
 
Not for the first time she wished that her husband’s brother was not the King of France.
 
It would not be politic to offend the King, howsoever much she might be tempted to.

At that moment, the door to her chamber opened with a flourish and King Louis XIV strode in, an ermine nightcap on his wigless head and a purple dressing gown loosely belted around his corpulent waist.

He gestured to his young page, who pulled back the curtains from around her bed.

She bent her head in a gesture of respect, shivering in the cold draft that tickled her shoulders.
 
“Your Majesty.”

“You may call me Louis,” he said with a benevolent smile, as if he were conferring the highest honor of the land upon her.
 
Indeed, he probably thought he was, Henrietta thought to herself with a grimace.
 
He had always loved pomp and ceremony above all else that to voluntarily ask her to address him without his title was most likely a sign of greatest love.

A great love from the King, however, she could very well do without.
 
“You do me too much honor, Sire.”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it with his wet mouth.
 
“If the whole world came to pay homage to you, sweetest Henrietta, it could not give you more honor than you deserve.”

She drew her hand away again and tucked it out of sight under the bedclothes.
 
“I trust Monsieur, my husband, is well?”
 
Perhaps he needed a timely reminder that she was his sister-in-law – married to his younger brother.

He sat down on the side of her bed with an air of dignified complacence.
 
“Monsieur was perfectly well when I left him last.
 
He was quite surrounded by a peck of adoring boys.
 
You know how much he enjoys that.”
 
He gazed at her greedily, his beady eyes shining with desire.
 
“I know my brother is no fit husband for you, Henrietta.”

She forbore to remind him that he had arranged the match himself, in full knowledge of his brother’s proclivities towards those of his own sex.
 
“I like my husband very well.”

“Then you are not being unfaithful to him with one of his friends, I suppose?
 
Not with the Marquis de Torbay, for instance, or the Comte de Guiche?”

Henrietta felt the blood rush from her head.
 
She and the Comte had been so careful in their liaison.
 
They had thought they had kept it a secret from all around them.
 
Someone must have spied them together and gone running to the king with the tale.
 
“Did Monsieur request that you put such a question to me?”
 
Though trembling with fear for her lover inside, her guilt made her seem haughty.
 
“Would it not be more fitting for Monsieur to ask me himself, if he were worried about the fidelity of his wife?”

The King gave an uncomfortable harrumph.
 
“I would not like to think that you give freely to the Comte what you refuse your King.”
 
His words held a wealth of warning.

How many times would she have to tell him the same thing?
 
Would he never accept her refusal?
 
“I refuse you nothing that is lawfully mine to give you.”

“You refuse me your love, which I, your King, have many a time begged you for, though it doth humiliate me to my very soul to beg for aught.”

She could not ever give him her love, even were it hers to give.
 
The Comte de Guiche was embedded deep in her heart, and no blusterous words from the King could drive him out again.
 
“I owe my love to my husband.”

“Pah.
 
You owe such a husband nothing.
 
You refuse me your kisses, you refuse me the sight of your naked body, you refuse me the pleasure of being abed with you.
 
Such things would cost you nothing but a little complaisance to bestow, and they would make me the happiest of men.”

She shuddered at the thought of his body atop hers, his thick, slobbering lips kissing her face, neck and breasts.
 
She would rather die than submit to his embrace.
 
“I cannot give you such things.
 
I am your sister-in-law, and to be abed with you would be a mortal sin.
 
You have no right to ask it of me.”

He drew himself up in anger at her words.
 
“I have the divine right of a King to ask of you anything I require.
 
When you refuse me, you refuse God’s messenger on earth.
 
To refuse me is to commit not only treason against your ruler, but blasphemy against God himself.”

Were he not the King of France and the ruler of much of Christendom, she would call him a deluded old fool.
 
“I love God, and I cleave to my husband as the Church teaches me to do.”

He gave an ugly laugh.
 
“You do not ever cleave to your husband.
 
He is far too busy cleaving to young boys to bother with you.”

How true his words were, she thought to herself with an inward smile.
 
Had it been left up to her husband to deflower her, she would be a virgin yet.
 
Still, Monsieur had been good to her and had protected her from those at Court who bore her and her brother, King Charles II of England, little goodwill.
 
She loved her husband dearly as her friend, though he would never be her husband in more than name only.
 
“My husband is what he is.
 
I do not judge him for it.”

He edged closer to her on the bed.
 
“I would give you wealth and honor that my brother Philippe could never match.
 
I would dress you in silks of royal purple and shower you with sapphires and rubies.”

She did not wear half the silk dresses or jewels she possessed already.
 
Monsieur could be generous when he pleased – particularly when he had no young boy to lavish his affections and gifts on.
 
“The greatest honor a woman may possess is a good reputation.”

“I would make you my chief mistress.
 
None would dare to say a word against you.”

His breath was foul and his teeth stained a dull brown from too much wine.
 
She drew back as far as she was able.
 
“My conscience would not be satisfied.
 
It would not leave me to rest peacefully, knowing that I had done wrong.”

He drew back again, his back straight with anger.
 
“You are refusing me again?”

She was silent.

“Will you be my mistress?”

“No, Sire.
 
I cannot.”

He glowered at her.
 
“I will have the Comte de Guiche thrown into the Bastille at sunrise.”

She decided to brazen it out.
 
If he had proof of her liaison, no doubt the Comte would already be in the Bastille upon the rack or worse.
 
“The Comte de Guiche is nothing to me.”

He rose from his seat on the bed, his face red with bottled rage.
 
“I am a patient man.
 
You have a month to reconsider your foolishness.
 
If your only answer is still to refuse your King, I swear you will live long enough to regret your obstinacy.
 
Not even Monsieur will be able to save you from my anger then.”

Three weeks of lessons.
 
Three weeks of rising before dawn to practice each movement until she could run three paces at top speed, leap in the air, and spit a tiny caterpillar off the wall with unerring accuracy and without so much as blunting the very tip of her blade on the stone.

Lamotte had worked her harder than a mule, and she risen to the challenge as well as she could.
 
She had done her best and more for him.
 
For hours each day, she watched each movement of his lithe body, mirroring him as best she could.
 
She knew his body almost better than her own – she could see every scratch or scar on his arms and neck, even with her eyes closed.

Every day she trained with him to the point of exhaustion, and each night she dreamed about fighting him again.
 
Day or night, sleeping or waking, he was with her.
 
She lived only for his approbation and for the casual nod of his head that told her more eloquently than the floweriest of words that she had done well.

Her obsessive attention to his lessons had paid off.
 
Her skill had improved to the point where she could hold her own against some of her companions.
 
She would always be better with a bow or a knife, where skill was all and strength nothing, but she was no longer a disgrace with a sword.
 
Even D’Artagnan had noticed the difference and had growled his appreciation of the fact that she no longer fought like a lily-livered girl.

How proud Gerard would be if he could see her now, Sophie thought to herself as she flicked her opponent’s sword out of his hand, grinning to herself at the look of shock and surprise on his face.
 
Gerard had always believed that she could do anything if she set her mind to it.
 
She had proven him right.

Her opponent, a likeable red-haired Tuscan called Pierre, threw up his hands in defeat.
 
“God damn it, Gerard, but you must have been practicing like the very devil was driving you.
 
You’ve beaten me fair and square.”

She shot a glance out of the corner of her eye towards Lamotte, as he stood in the slowly lengthening evening shadows, watching her.
 
No doubt he would have a dozen criticisms of her style for tomorrow’s lesson, but she wouldn’t worry about that now.
 
She had beaten Pierre in a fair fight and it felt good.

She inspected her blade carefully for nicks.
 
Finding none, she wiped it carefully with a soft cloth impregnated with oil jut as Lamotte had taught her to do and put it away by her side.
 
“Lamotte has been teaching me.”
 

Teaching was too easy a word for it.
 
He had been drilling her unmercifully, but with such success that she had disarmed one of her fellows for the very first time.
 
In her delight at winning, she momentarily forgave him every harsh word he had ever aimed her way.

Pierre wiped the grime off his blade on his shirt, and shoved his sword back into its scabbard with an easy motion.
 
“Ah, so that’s your secret.
 
He’s the very devil when it comes to fighting.
 
Maybe I should get a few tips myself before I cross swords with you again.”

His good humor was infectious.
 
Sophie let down her habitual guard enough to smile.
 
“Lady Luck favored me today, that was all.”

Pierre flung his jacket over his shoulder.
 
“Lady Luck and a lot of practice.
 
I’m for a drink of something a mite stronger than the feeble ale you get around here.
 
You interested?”

Sophie hesitated, wavering between desire for company and the ever-present need for distance and caution.
 
She glanced at Lamotte again, hoping he would call her to him now that her bout was over, but his back was turned away from her.
 
She sighed with disappointment.

“Come on, Delamanse.
 
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
 
You’ve been working like the very devil.
 
You must need a drink for sure.”

She could go back to her tiny room and eat watery gruel for supper in her stifling attic room in safety, or she could accept Pierre’s offer of uncomplicated company.
 
Pierre was as new to the Musketeers as she was and posed little danger to her masquerade.
 
He had never known Gerard.