by Leda Swann
He turned on his heel and strode out of the warehouse without another word, feeling as though the world had caved in around him. Let him but find her, he prayed as he strode aimlessly through the streets in a daze, and she would never want for help again.
Three days after her fall, her broken arm splinted to make it heal straight and her teeth gritted against the pain that still lingered in her bones, Courtney arrived at her cottage in the country where her son waited for her.
Thank the Lord that Sophie had doubled back to help her and had killed the man who would have stabbed her as she lay hurt on the ground. She owed her life to Sophie, and to Sophie’s husband, who had carried her to the nearest village to have her broken bone set. Were it not for the two of them, she would be in a bad way indeed. Sophie’s husband had even given up his mission to stop his wife from going to England and had instead joined her to protect her along the way.
There were still a few good men around in the world, she supposed grudgingly enough – and Sophie’s husband seemed to be one of them. It was just her luck that she had hit on one of the worst of them in Pierre de Tournay. Still, he had given her a son, the pride and joy of her life. How ironic that the method he had tried to use to shame her and her father had given her instead the greatest joy she had ever known.
Suzanne greeted her with open arms and took her into see him at once. He was lying on his back in his crib, kicking his chubby legs in the air, playing happily with his fingers and making contented gurgling noises. She felt her heart melt to look at him. It had been too long, far too long, since she had last seen him.
He smiled at her when she leaned over his crib and held out his arms to be picked up and cuddled. She took him up and held him close to her heart. He smelled fresh and clean, like soap and babyness. He was so young, so innocent, so unpolluted by the cares of the world. He had never looked on the face of evil. He had not yet been corrupted by the snares of the devil. He was so pure, so precious to her. She would give her life to save his without a second thought.
How could she have forgotten what was due to her son? How could she have spent so many weeks apart from him and not yet taken her revenge on the man who had wronged him so badly, the man who had branded her poor innocent baby a bastard?
She would see justice done to the man who had wronged her and then return to the country to be with her son for ever more. Together they would live their lives far away from the society that would condemn her sweet babe for no fault of his own.
The six weeks she spent in the country with her son were both heaven and hell. It was pure heaven to be with her boy and watch him every day. Though it almost broke her heart to see how much he had developed while she was away being a Musketeer – he could roll over all by himself and hold up most of his weight on his chubby little legs as she held him up under his armpits – she delighted in each new skill he showed her each day.
She held him patiently as he struggled to sit by himself, waiting by him for hours on end to catch him as he began to topple over sideways, always on hand to prop him up again and try one more time. She built towers of brightly painted wooden blocks just out of his reach, and coaxed and encouraged him into crawling towards them to knock them over to the ground with squeals of delight.
She gloried in each moment she could spend with him, treasuring them up in her memory to keep her going in those long cold days of winter when she would be stuck in Paris and far from his side.
Yet her time with her son was a torment, too. She knew that as soon as her arm healed, she would have to return to Paris, to her life as a Musketeer. With every hug she gave her son, she saw in front of her the empty days ahead when she would no longer be with him. With every new trick he learned, every new tower of blocks that he razed to the ground, she thought of all the things he would learn when she would not be there to see his pleasure.
How she wanted to stay by his side and forget about her life as a soldier in Paris, but she could not do that. Her father was friendless and alone, imprisoned in the dark dungeons of the Bastille. She would never forsake him there, or abandon him to madness and despair. She would find a way to rescue him, or she would die in the attempt.
Nonetheless, her arm was healed faster than she liked. In three weeks, she could move it again without much pain. In six weeks, the break had healed completely.
She put off her return to Paris for another two weeks, with the excuse that her arm needed to be brought back to full strength before she would be any use on the battlefield. After two full months, she no longer had any excuse to stay away. Her arm was as strong as it had ever been. She must needs return.
With a heavy heart she donned her uniform once more. How strange it felt to be in breeches, jerkin and hard leather riding boots again after eight blissfully long weeks of long, rustling silk dresses and soft velvet slippers that molded to the shape of her feet after a single wearing.
Most of all she had enjoyed being free of her dratted false moustache, she thought with a groan as she pasted her moustache to her top lip for the first time in many weeks. Maybe one day when she felt more secure in her role, she would take Miriame’s advice and pretend to shave it off.
She hugged her baby to her chest one last time. He squirmed in her grasp, wanting to get down on the floor and play rather than be hugged or kissed. With a sigh she handed him to Suzanne and turned her face resolutely towards Paris.
Pierre de Tournay turned his horse away from Lyons. Courtney was not there any longer – he was sure of it. He had spoken to all the jewel merchants in the city and none of them had seen her since her father’s arrest, or if they had seen her, they would not tell him about it. He had even tracked down many of her former servants, and they had told him the same story. On the whole he thought they were telling the truth. They had little reason for them to lie to him when he was offering them as much gold as he could scrape together for any word of her.
She seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. She had kept in contact only with Justin, the one among them she knew she could trust. How he envied Justin the trust she had placed in him. He should have been the one she turned to. He should have been the one she came to for help.
Of course, she had turned to him for help, but he had refused her. The note she had sent by her messenger boy had ripped out his heart. He had not been able to face sending a reply. She had turned to him for help, and he had refused her.
He shook away those useless thoughts. There would be time enough for recriminations once he had found her – and he was not even close to discovering her whereabouts. Although he had kept a close watch on the warehouse, he had seen no signs of her visiting there. It was as Justin said – she was gone.
He had searched out as far as the surrounding countryside, hoping maybe that she had taken up a residence in one of the small outlying villages, but there had been no sign of her there, either. No one would confess to even seeing a young woman with hair the color of straw in the neighborhood.
His time was nearly up - he had to return to Paris for his duties as a soldier. He could not delay any longer. How he hated to go back empty-handed.
He was not without hope that he would eventually find her. He had posted a large reward for news of her and had personally informed every one he could think of about it. He had found an ex-footman of her father’s who knew her well by sight and was currently unhappily employed and had hired him to scour the city for her. He had even painted a portrait of her from the picture engraved in his memory for the man to carry with him in his search. He was not satisfied with his crude rendering of her face – it lacked her beauty and grace – but at least it captured the wheaten gold of her hair and the piercing blue of her eyes.
He would look for her all the way to Paris. He would look for her in Paris itself, in case she had found refuge in the crowds of the city. He would shame her cousin William into helping him look for her. He would use every means in his power to discover her. He would not give up the search until he fou
nd her.
Paris did not feel like the same city when Courtney returned to it again after her long absence. Everything had changed while she had been away. Even the mood in the barracks once she reached them was edgier and more intense. She wandered through the rooms, wondering what had changed the atmosphere so intensely. Many of the faces she saw were new, and some old ones were missing. She looked for Pierre, for Sophie, for anyone she knew well enough to ask what was the matter.
At last she spied Miriame, engaged in a game of dice in the corner. Her face was flushed with wine and, judging by the pile of gold coins on the table in front of her, she was winning heavily.
At any rate, she was not pleased to be dragged away from her game. “What do you want?” she asked, stuffing her winnings into her jerkin and casting a regretful eye back at the table. “Lady Luck was with me tonight. I could have cleaned their pockets out, down to the last sou hidden in their lining.”
Courtney raised her eyebrow. She knew Miriame too well to believe that she would leave such an important matter as gambling to mere chance. “Lady Luck and a pair of false dice perchance?”
Miriame stared her in the eye without so much as the faintest hint of a blush and tapped her chest pocket with every evidence of satisfaction. “The very best. They cost me a small fortune, but I won back the price of them in the first two games.”
She motioned Miriame to follow her outside into the twilight of the darkening day where they would have less chance of being overheard. “Where is Sophie?”
Miriame shrugged. “Gone to Burgundy, I heard. She and her husband have thrown in their Musketeer’s uniforms and taken service with the Duke.”
“Why on earth?” Sophie had seemed so concerned with her honor as a Musketeer that Courtney could not imagine her ever willingly giving up her position.
Miriame leaned against a wall of the barracks in the shadows. “She failed in her mission at the last. Henrietta Anne, the English princess and the Duchesse of Orleans, is dead – poisoned by a pair of false monks in the pay of the French King, the brother of her own husband. The King was not pleased that Sophie had tried to save the life of his dear sister-in-law. Her identity was discovered. She had to leave in rather a hurry.”
Poor Sophie, being forced out of the Musketeers in such a manner for the crime of following her conscience. She was disappointed she had not had the chance to say farewell to her former comrade.
Thoughts of her father quickly chased away any sorrow she felt at her friend’s departure. Maybe he had already met the same fate as his fellow prisoner. Maybe her hopes of rescuing him would prove as illusive and illusory as Sophie’s ill-fated quest had been. “The Bastille? Did you not manage to break into the Bastille to rescue her?”
“We broke in easily enough,” Miriame said with a shrug, and Courtney’s heart was lightened to hear the words. “But she was poisoned before we arrived. She died in Sophie’s arms.”
How sad for Sophie, to know that she had come just seconds too late to save the Duchesse’s life. “That does not explain the barracks, though. The mood in here is…” Her voice trailed off. She could not put her feeling into words.
“Expectant?” Miriame suggested.
She had hit on the perfect word. “Exactly. Everyone looks as if they are waiting for something to happen.”
Miriame shrugged. “What do you think? They are waiting for a war.”
“With England?”
“Who else? An English princess is dead, and our own King Louis is widely rumored to be to blame. Is there any wonder we are preparing for war?”
“Not at all.” Courtney thought about the uneasiness she had felt walking back into the barracks, as if a hundred unfriendly eyes were upon her. “But that does not explain why I felt as though I were in the middle of an enemy camp when I returned. A barracks before a battle will be united facing a common enemy. Instead, I felt nothing but disharmony and suspicion among the soldiers, as if the war they were about to fight was between themselves, not against a common enemy.”
Miriame looked over her shoulders, but there was no movements in the shadows. Still, she wandered away into the middle of the open practice yard and motioned for Courtney to follow her. “There is talk,” she said, when she was far enough out in the open that her conversation could not be overheard, “that not all the troops are happy serving under the King.” Her voice was low and quiet that it barely carried to Courtney’s waiting ears.
Courtney felt a shiver run down her spine. Miriame was a daredevil who ran risks for the sheer love of it. It was unlike her to be so cautious in her speech or to care overmuch who might hear her. Things must be more serious than she had imagined.
“There is talk,” Miriame went on, “that some of our troops would gladly raise a rebellion and use the might of the English King to set another up in King Louis’s place.”
Courtney nodded. That explained why she had felt so uncomfortable under the scrutiny of her comrades. She was being sized up to see which way her loyalties lay. She smiled to herself at the thought of both camps vying for her attention. Little did they suspect that her loyalties lay only with herself: not with the French King for certain, but not with the English King, either.
Courtney Ruthgard fought for Courtney Ruthgard, and for no one else. She would test the waters on both sides, and jump whichever way promised to serve her the fairest. She did not know for sure, but she suspected Miriame would feel the same. “Which way does your loyalty go?”
She saw the white flash of Miriame’s smile in the dark. “I think our French King is well enough – but I am most fond of his likeness I see stamped on each gold louis that I run through my fingers.”
Courtney had her answer. As she had thought, Miriame would serve whoever paid her, and only until a better paymaster could be found.
She would serve for the same reason – only she would demand payment in justice, not in coin.
They wandered back into the barracks together, each lost in her own thoughts. Miriame said her au revoirs as soon as they were in the door and immediately inserted herself into another card game, spying out the chance she needed to empty everyone’s pockets with her false dice. She waved to Courtney to join her, but Courtney had other ideas. She did not begrudge losing a few sous to Miriame’s light fingers, but she had not the patience to sit at cards this evening. She felt restless and out of sorts with herself. The atmosphere in the barracks, with suspicious eyes everywhere, did not help her mood.
She wandered aimlessly though the rooms, not knowing where to turn to next. Drinking and gambling held no charms for her – particularly not when her mind was so preoccupied. She felt more in the mood for a brawl than anything else, but the light was growing too dim to fight by. There was little point picking a quarrel when the settling of it would have to wait until the morrow anyway.
She would go back to her apartments and sit in solitude, she decided at last. She needed some time to reflect over what she should do about this new turn of events - and how best she could fashion them to fit her purpose.
With a new sense of determination, she strode out of the barracks and headed down the quiet streets to the rooms she called home.
She was not looking for trouble, but trouble found her anyway. Pierre de Tournay, his shoulders squared and his booted feet striking the cobblestones with a dull thud, was headed towards the barracks. He strode along as though he had not a care in the world, as if he were master of all France.
She felt her hatred begin to bubble up inside her at the sight of him. It was hatred that made her breath short and her heart beat crazily in her breast. It could not be anything else.
She pulled her hat down low over her eyes and tried to avoid his eye. Time enough to deal with him when she had worked out her new plan of attack. But it was not to be. As soon as he spied her, he threw back his head with a roar of delight. “Ruthgard,” he called, loud enough to wake the dead as he strode over to her and clapped her heartily on the back. “Ruthgard, good to s
ee you back again. I trust you have healed well?”
She bared her teeth in a parody of a smile. She hated him most of all when he treated her like his favored companion, like his friend. Could he not sense the festering hatred that she bore in her soul towards him? “Well enough.”
He seemed in rare good spirits. “Injured in the line of duty, I heard.”
She shrugged off his question. She was hardly going to explain the Pierre the arch-traitor how she had been injured. He would turn her into his master the King and her neck would be stretched on the nearest gallows tree before she could turn around. “You could say that.”
He gave her an odd look, as if he, too, was calculating just exactly where her loyalties lay. “I have only just returned from my business in the south myself, but I hear you were missed in the barracks. The practice dueling has been much less entertaining without you around.”
Come to think of it, Pierre had been bitter against the King many a time in her presence. Maybe he was wondering if she could be trusted not to turn him into the King for his disloyal speeches. Or maybe he was thinking already of joining the rebellion she heard bruited everywhere about…
She weighed up the possibilities quickly in her head. Pierre’s loyalties were unpredictable at best, but if he could be swayed around to the view she wanted him to take…
She made a quick decision and hoped she would not live to regret it. “My belly is as empty as the pockets of a beggar,” she said, linking her arm with his in the manner of a soldier. She would win his trust if she could and hope to turn it to her advantage when she needed to. “Come dine with me in my apartments and you can bring me up to date with everything that I have missed while I have been away.”
Her apartments had never seemed so small as when Pierre was in them, crowding her out with his presence. She had to concentrate on every gesture that she made and every word that came out of her mouth to make sure that she never strayed from her character of William Ruthgard, former Flemish merchant and now Musketeer.
