On My Lady's Honor (Secrets of the Musketeers Book 1) Read online

  “Because you hurt me.”

  He didn’t exactly look very hurt, lying on his back at his ease in the sunshine with a satisfied grin on his face. “I’ve already kissed you once to make your stomach better. That excuse won’t wash with me.”

  He gave a mock frown. “Because you’re my wife, then.”

  She frowned in earnest at his words. “In name only. Don’t forget that.”

  “Then how about because you have the most beautiful blue eyes in the world and I love to look at them until I feel that I could drown in their cool depths.”

  “How poetic. Unfortunately, I have no feeling for poetry. You should save your fine words for the tavern girls – they have more use for them than I do.” Despite her mocking dismissal, she couldn’t help feeling disturbed by his words. Jean-Luc had never mentioned her eyes. He had complimented her on the sharpness of her vision and on her accuracy with a bow, but she doubted he even knew that her eyes were blue. She had no remembrance of what color Jean Luc’s eyes had been – if indeed she had ever known. She had been too intent on admiring the daring way he rode his horse to worry over much about his eyes. It felt strange to be appreciated for something so ephemeral and impractical as the color of her eyes.

  He took her hand in his, holding her fingers lightly in his own. “You have beautiful eyes. Just like your brother’s, only even more blue.”

  She looked at him suspiciously, but his voice was all sincerity. His eyes were beautiful, too. They were a deep green with flecks of tawny gold and surrounded by a band of darker tawny gold around the edge. Truly beautiful eyes, like the green of the marshes, glinting in the sunlight in her home in the Camargue. “You have green eyes just like a cat.”

  He laughed delightedly, showing his white teeth. “Then we are well-matched, you and I. I have the eyes of a cat, and you have a wildcat’s sharp claws.”

  “Female cats are the most vicious killers,” she reminded him, as she rose to her feet and stretched out his hand to help him up. “You should remember that in future before you ask them for a kiss.”

  He held on to her hand as he leapt lightly to his feet, showing not a sign of discomfort from the scratch on his stomach. “You have given me graphic proof of that – twice. I shall not dare forget again, or I will be a dead man.”

  She raised her sword in front of her. “So you will forget that I am a woman and fight me properly this afternoon?”

  “I could never forget that you are a woman. but I will endeavor to fight you as if you were a man.” He rubbed his arm when she had wounded him the first time and patted his belly a little gingerly. With a slight grimace he bent over and picked his sword up from the ground. “Indeed, I dare not do otherwise.”

  She attacked him before he finished speaking. He defended himself vigorously this time, testing her defenses whenever she left him an opening to do so.

  Within a minute he had disarmed her with a flick of his wrist that jarred every bone in her arm. Dispite her discomfort, she smiled to herself in triumph as she bent down to pick up her sword from the dust. She had won that battle. He would see her as a danger and treat her as a soldier now. She had seen to that.

  After half an hour’s swordplay, she put up her sword and held her side for a moment to catch her breath again. “That’s better,” she said, as soon as she could speak again. “I did not like being treated as a child.”

  A movement from the shadows caught her eye and she turned her head to look. A figures dressed in a dark cloak and hat was signaling with furtive desperation in her direction. She sighed. She was enjoying her lesson immensely, but she was a Musketeer and sworn to help those in need. “Excuse me a moment. It seems I have some business to attend to.”

  Lamotte followed the direction of her glance to where the dark figure waited in the shadows. “With him?”

  She nodded. “It seems so.”

  He glowered at her. “What business do you have with other men, wife?”

  She ignored his last whispered word. “I’ll be back soon enough.” She strode over to the shadowy figure in the corner of the yard. Lamotte followed her, a couple of paces behind. “You want me?”

  The man blanched at her direct approach. He pulled his hat further down on his head and wrapped his cloak over all his face but his eyes. “I would speak with you only, not with your fellow.”

  She looked at Lamotte, a question in her eyes, but he shook his head. “Where you go, so do I,” he said softly. “Even vicious wildcats need someone at their back.”

  She turned back to the stranger. “I will vouch for his trustworthiness. Whatever you say to me, you may say to him as well. Go on.”

  The stranger looked sideways at Lamotte, as if trying to make up his mind. After a moment’s reflection, he shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose I have no choice, if you will insist.”

  Lamotte looked even more unhappy than the stranger at the situation. “I do insist.”

  The stranger ignored him, turning his attention back to Sophie. “Were you on guard duty last night?” His voice was soft, as if he wanted no one to overhear him.

  Sophie could see nothing of his face. She misliked talking to a stranger wrapped up like a ghoul in the light of day, as if he had something to hide. “I was.”

  He jerked his head in the direction of the street. “Then come with me, if you would.”

  She stood her ground. “Where to? And why?”

  He pulled urgently at her sleeve. “Come, I am in haste. I care not where we go so long as it is somewhere we can talk privately.”

  She swiveled her head around, but there were few others in sight, and they were all going about their own business and showing no interest in their talk. “Why not here?”

  He looked around the yard with desperation. “There are too many people here who might see us together. Please, let’s go. Anywhere in private where no one can see us. I swear I will not hurt you. You may search me if you please. I am unarmed. Besides,” he said, gesturing towards Lamotte, “you have your own private guard dog to look out for you.”

  He didn’t look as though he could hurt a fly, but Sophie nevertheless followed him out of the yard with some reluctance. She was glad to have Lamotte at her back. She was no dealer in secrets and shadows, but the stranger seemed so desperate for her help she did not like to refuse him.

  Once in the street outside, he looked around him as if unsure where to go next. “Have you somewhere nearby we can talk? My apartments are some way away, and I do not want to be seen walking the streets with you.”

  Sophie tossed the possibilities over in her mind. The apartments she shared with Lamotte were her only choice, though she misliked taking him there. Inside those four walls, she lived life as a woman, not as a soldier. She wanted no dark stranger to guess her secret.

  There was nowhere else. She set off towards their apartments at a cracking pace, Lamotte close at her heels and the mysterious stranger half running beside them to keep up.

  As soon as they hustled in the door, the stranger collapsed on a well-cushioned chair and rubbed his ankles with a pained expression on his face. “You walk faster than a horse can gallop,” he said ruefully. “My feet are all a-blister.”

  She wanted to point out that his feet would be in better shape if his shoes were not so absurdly high-heeled. Instead, she bit her tongue and flung herself down on a sofa. “Well?”

  Lamotte plonked himself down beside her, his legs stretched out in front of him and his arms crossed defensively over his chest.

  The stranger held his hand to his heaving sides. “You arrested a woman last night?”

  The King had counseled her to keep it silent, but Sophie would not lie, either. “I cannot tell you that.”

  “So, you did arrest her.” What she could see of his face grew gray. “Poor, poor Henrietta.”

  Lamotte stirred uneasily beside her. “Who is this Henrietta you speak of?”

  The man pushed his hat back on his head and let his cape fall. “She is my wife.”<
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  Sophie gave a gasp of shock as she saw his face, so like that of his brother, King Louis XIV of France. “Monsieur le Duc, Philippe of Orleans?” How could she have been in the presence of royalty and not know of it till now?

  The stranger nodded gravely. “Yes, I am the Duc.”

  She fell to one knee and bowed her head. Offending royalty by failing to give them due honor was the quickest way of finding your head suddenly separated from your shoulders. “Forgive me for my earlier rudeness. I did not know who you were.”

  Beside her, Lamotte doffed his hat with little sign of his earlier antagonism. “At your service, Monsieur le Duc.”

  Philippe of Orleans waved her up again. “You were not meant to know me. I will be luckier than I deserve if no one else recognized me, either. Now will you tell me what has happened to my wife?”

  Sophie shuddered. Monsieur did not look happy to hear of his wife’s arrest, despite the gossip of the streets that claimed they could barely tolerate the sight of one another. “I arrested her and delivered her over to the Governor of the Bastille last night.”

  Philippe of Orleans gave her a haughty stare. “On whose authority?” he asked in a cold voice.

  He looked every inch as formidable as his brother when he chose. She shuddered. When royalty squabbled among themselves, the common people suffered for it. “The King himself gave me the orders. He wrote the paper I delivered to the Governor in his own hand.”

  “On what accusation.”

  She hardly dared say the word. “She was under accusation of treason.”

  Philippe of Orleans crushed his hat in his hands and swore like a fishmonger. “My royal brother the King, God rot his soul, is a hypocritical, whoremongering bastard.”

  Sophie’s shock must have shown on her face. For any man to say that about his brother was unthinkable. For the Duc, it was treason.

  The Duc shrugged his shoulders. “I forget that you are a simple soldier. You need to have been a courtier to understand the intrigues that take place in every corridor and corner of the royal palace. Suffice to say, my royal brother, for all his sanctimonious piety in public, has a letch for my wife. He’s been obsessed about her for years, but unfortunately for him, he revolts her.

  “I don’t like women much in general,” he continued, and he gave an elegant shudder, “but I like Henrietta very well. She is my best friend and she has the most elegant taste in gowns that you can imagine. I borrow hers whenever I am sick of my own. I only wish I could borrow her slippers, too, but she has such delicate feet that I cannot squash my toes into her footwear.”

  Sophie looked at the man in front of her with a new eye. Did he really dress in women’s clothes as she hid herself in those of a man? She had not imagined such a thing before. Why would any man desire to be a woman when the least of men had so much more freedom than the greatest of women ever could possess?

  Lamotte was shifting nervously on his seat beside her. She wondered what was bothering him now.

  “You don’t look as shocked as most people when I tell them that,” Philippe of Orleans said and he patted her knee in a friendly gesture. “That’s a good start.”

  She shrugged. He confused her, but did not shock her. Little did he know that she kept her own secret from the world. “Each to his own, and the devil take the hindmost.”

  Philippe raised his eyebrows. “I sympathize with your motto, but Henrietta is my wife and I must protect her. The King denies all knowledge of her disappearance. He swears she must have run off with her lover, the Comte de Guiche, but I cannot believe it. It would be most unlike her.” He wrinkled his nose with annoyance. “I was most put out with Henrietta for seducing the Comte, you know. I had an eye on him myself, but he preferred my wife to me, the silly boy.”

  Sophie grinned in spite of herself. Philippe of Orleans had all the infectious charm of a boy who had never grown up, and never would. “How unfortunate for you.”

  He patted her knee again, and let his hand rest there as if by accident. “I thought you would understand, my dear boy. I saw right away that you had a generous soul.”

  Lamotte scowled at him and looked pointedly at the hand resting on Sophie’s knee.

  Philippe of Orleans looked up into Lamotte’s scowl. “Ah, your watchdog is displeased with me,” he murmured, as he moved his hand away again. “I had better behave myself.

  “As I was saying, I love Henrietta dearly and I most heartily detest my royal brother. I must rescue my dear wife, but I cannot do it alone. I need your help.”

  Sophie hesitated. Did he know what he was asking of her? “I have sworn fealty to your brother, the King.”

  Philippe of Orleans did not look impressed with her doubts. “You would rather let an innocent woman suffer, and not go to her rescue? What human vow is worth the sacrifice of your honor?”

  What could a single Musketeer do anyway? “She has been taken to prison. What would have me do? Storm the Bastille single handedly and get her out again?”

  Philippe of Orleans fluttered his hands in the air with distress. “Nothing as dramatic as that, my dear boy.”

  Lamotte scowled harder than ever. “The Bastille is a fortress. No one has ever escaped from there. Would the King not release her on your asking?”

  Philippe of Orleans raised a scented handkerchief to his nose and rubbed the tip of it daintily. “My dear brother cares little for my displeasure – indeed, he would rather have me displeased than not, I fear. Duc though I am, I am powerless. Luckily Henrietta has friends more powerful than I am. I need you to go to England and tell them of her plight.”

  Lamotte snorted with derision. “Wouldn’t you rather we stormed the Bastille?”

  Sophie raised her eyebrows and waited for the Duc to explain.

  “Go to her brother, King Charles, and beg his help to rescue her. He does not know of her current situation. Indeed, only a handful of people could even guess the truth – the rest will only too readily believe the lies of the King that she has fled with her lover. If King Charles has any notion of honor and decency left in him, he will save his sister.”

  Sophie felt torn between sympathy for the Duc and pity for his wife on the one hand, and her loyalty to the King on the other. She did not know what to do.

  If she were to believe the Duc, then the King must have lied to her – the Duchesse was guilty of nothing more than refusing the King a boon that he should not even ask of her and she herself had been complicit in punishing an innocent woman.

  She could not comprehend a King who told untruths. The King of France was the fount from which all honor flowed. If he proved corrupt, her life, which she had dedicated to the pursuit of honor, had little meaning.

  And yet why would the Duc lie to her? What motive could he have but to protect the life of his wife? She did not know.

  She rose to her feet and paced backwards and forwards across the room, her indecision tearing at her. “I cannot give you an answer now. I will have to think over what you have said.”

  Philippe of Orleans rose to his feet in his turn. “Do not take over long to decide,” he said, as he paused in the doorway. “The Bastille is not a gentle or forgiving place for those poor unfortunates incarcerated within its walls. Those stones eat away at a man until there is nothing left but an empty, soulless shell.”

  Once they were alone together, Sophie turned to Lamotte in distress. He was more experienced that she. She needed to hear what he had to say, to hear his advice on her dilemma. “Can what Monsieur says be true? Can the King have lied to me?”

  Lamotte shrugged. “It is no secret in the court that the King harbors an unnatural affection for his sister-in-law and that she does not welcome or return this affection.”

  Of all things that Philippe of Orleans had claimed, Sophie had found this one the hardest to accept. That a King could try to pervert the bonds of a family in such a fashion beggared belief. “You know of this for certain?”

  He shrugged one shoulder as he lay back on the
sofa. “It would be hard to ignore. I have carried many a letter from the King to Madame la Duchesse and gotten naught but a door slammed shut in my face for the trouble.”.

  She ceased her pacing and fixed his eyes with a steady gaze. “So Monsieur speaks true.”

  He nibbled on his bottom lip. “I do not altogether trust Monsieur.”

  Surely both of them could not be lying, or could the truth lie in a third direction? “Why not?”

  He screwed up his face in distaste. “He openly confessed to us both that he dresses in women’s clothes. What manner of man would so shamelessly flaunt his perversions?”

  If the Duc was perverted for dressing in women’s clothes, the so was she for dressing in breeches like a man. How could the one be condemned and not the other? She did not consider either a perversion. “A man who was not ashamed of the way God made him?” she suggested, her voice tart.

  “The Devil more like it,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Be it God or Devil who gave the Duc a liking for women’s gowns is no matter. Have you no other reason to distrust Monsiuer le Duc?”

  He shrugged. “I do not like the man. Did you not see the way he pawed at you, thinking you were a smooth-faced young boy? He has an unnatural liking for young men.”

  Sophie scratched her head. Were men always this illogical and unreasonable? “So you have no reason to distrust him other than that he dresses in women’s clothes and prefers boys to women?”

  “Is that not enough to distrust a man?”

  “No, it is not. A man should be judged on his words and deeds, not on the clothes he wears. You tell me that the Duc speaks truly of the King’s love for his wife, and truth is that the King has had her arrested and sent to the Bastille. Why then should I not trust the Duc? Why should I not go to England?”

  “It is a long, hard journey to an unfriendly land where the winters are harsh, the women ugly, the food unappetizing and the wine positively evil.”

  She raised her eyebrows at his flimsy excuses. “I am a soldier. I cannot expect to live a life of ease while I fulfil my duty. Besides,” she added with a smile, “I care not if the women are ugly so long as the men are brave and fair to look upon.”