by R A Dodson
D’Artagnan’s heart sped up to a staccato beat of excitement and nervousness. “All right,” he said after a moment’s thought. “I think I can understand that. But, surely you don’t want to, well, have relations with me? Now, I mean. Here... just like that?”
Constance’s face was bright red and she couldn’t look at him directly. “I don’t know. Probably not. But I though that maybe, with what Milady taught me...”
She trailed off, and d’Artagnan let the silence hang until it became apparent that she didn’t know how to continue. Finally, he said, “You said that you’d been taking her advice about something?”
Constance nodded. “I know it sounds wicked, but she said I should try to learn about my own body before trying to be with a man again. So... I’ve been doing that.”
D’Artagnan frowned, unsure if he was understanding her correctly. “Do you mean...”
“By touching myself,” she blurted in a rush, and his arousal, which had faded after accidentally choking on water earlier, surged back with a vengeance.
“That sounds amazing,” d’Artagnan said without a single moment’s thought.
She looked up at him in surprise, brows furrowed. “You don’t think it makes me... dirty? Sinful?”
“I think it makes you the bravest person I know,” d’Artagnan said with utter sincerity, and Constance’s eyes grew wet.
“I don’t feel brave,” she said, and bit her lower lip, worrying it with her teeth.
“I don’t think anyone feels brave when they’re in the middle of doing brave things.”
He took her hand in his own as had become his custom, and kissed it before relinquishing it once more. “Tell me about it. Did you enjoy it?”
“At first it was just... odd,” Constance said. “Awkward, I suppose. But Milady said to keep trying, and try different things. When I started to relax, it felt different. Good. I could start to see how, if someone else could make you feel like that, and you could make them feel like that, you’d want to do it.”
“I want to make you feel like that, Constance, and more,” d’Artagnan said, tenderness warring with desire in his breast. “But maybe not today.”
Constance’s frown deepened. “You don’t want to—?”
“I do want to,” he said immediately. “But I want to make sure it’s good for you. Today, will you simply... kiss me? However you like, and for as long as you like. We’ll both agree that nothing more will happen, and see how it goes.”
The look on her face was complicated, but relief was definitely part of it. Seeing it helped d’Artagnan cool his ardor to a manageable degree. When he climbed onto the riverbank and rested his back against the base of a large tree trunk, Constance joined him in her wet camisole, her earlier modesty apparently forgotten.
She leaned over him, her lips brushing his tentatively at first. As the kiss went on, she seemed to gain confidence, and d’Artagnan settled into the gentle slide of skin on skin, allowing her to lead. A strange sense of peace settled over him—a sensation of being exactly where he was supposed to be.
“May I hold you?” he asked, when she pulled away some considerable time later.
She smiled down at him. “Please,” she said.
He reached a hand up to guide her down next to him. They settled hip to hip, his arm around her shoulders and her head resting on his chest. She craned up to look at him. “I’ve thought of a name for your horse, by the way.”
“I’m half afraid to ask,” he said wryly.
“Rivière,” said Constance. “It’s a good name for a horse.”
D’Artagnan mulled it over for a bit. “Well, it’s definitely better than Buttercup,” he said after a few moments’ thought. “And it will remind me of this day, which can only be a good thing.”
Constance nuzzled into his neck and he yawned, soothed by the warm breeze and her weight resting against him.
“You should rest for a while,” she suggested. “I’ll wake you if I hear anything unusual.”
“Are you certain?” he asked, as though his eyelids weren’t heavy with exhaustion.
“Mm-hmm,” she replied. “I’m not tired. In fact, I’m rather the opposite of tired right now. It feels like my blood is buzzing underneath my skin.”
“Hmm, if you’re sure,” he said, his eyes already closing. Within moments, he was asleep, Constance a soft, reassuring presence against his side.
HE AWOKE AN HOUR OR so later with Constance still pressed against the length of his body, feeling as though he could achieve anything. The two of them did, in fact, reach Éparnon that evening just as the sun was disappearing behind the horizon. Unfortunately, the inn at the center of the run-down little town was in a bad enough state to make them wonder if they’d have been better off camping after all. However, there was wine and ale, along with food—of a sort.
D’Artagnan stared at the unidentified lumps of... something... floating in a sickly, gray broth, and then looked askance at Constance when she tucked into her own bowl without hesitation.
“What?” she asked, pausing with the spoon halfway to her mouth when she noticed him frowning at her. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”
He was, so he took a deep breath and started eating. It didn’t taste quite as bad as it looked, which was something, he supposed.
Their room was small and smelled of sweat and mildew. Constance looked at the narrow bed and dubiously offered, “We could try to share...”
D’Artagnan shook his head immediately. “I’ll take the floor,” he said. “Not only is this a dark bedroom at night, but I’m afraid one of us would fall off the edge in the first five minutes—or the thing would collapse under our combined weight.”
Constance’s smile was tremulous in the flickering light of the single, smoky candle they’d been given.
“Besides, this way you get the bedbugs,” he added, relieved when her smile grew a bit wider and stronger.
“Is it still considered chivalry when it’s secretly self-serving?” she wondered aloud.
“I’ve no idea,” he replied with an answering smile.
They navigated the tiny room with only a slight degree of awkwardness as they readied themselves for sleep—Constance under the threadbare blanket on the bed, and d’Artagnan in his bedroll on the rough wooden floor.
“Goodnight, Constance,” he said when she snuffed out the stub of a candle, plunging the room into darkness.
“Goodnight, d’Artagnan,” she replied.
Despite his earlier nap, d’Artagnan was tired and a little bit sore from his unexpected foray into the new sport of mounted river-diving that afternoon. Nonetheless, he lay awake for some time listening as Constance’s breathing evened out into sleep, smiling to himself when she began to emit soft snoring noises. Eventually, the sound lulled him into his own slumber.
In the recent weeks since his humiliating surrender to grief in his friends’ arms, d’Artagnan’s nightmares of death and loss had subsided for the most part, giving way instead to strange, half-remembered dreams. He awoke from one such odd vision that involved his old pony and his new gelding drinking wine together from a trough and laughing at him with wheezing snorts. He blinked his eyes open in the darkness, wondering what had awakened him, disoriented for a moment until he remembered Éparnon, the inn, and Constance. The question was answered a moment later when a low noise of distress came from the darkness above him.
The noise came again, louder this time. “Constance, are you awake?” d’Artagnan said into the blackness, and carefully felt his way toward the table with the candle and flint striker.
It took several tries to get the benighted candlewick to catch, during which time the moans from the bed gave way to soft sobbing and mumbled words.
“Mm... no, please...” The faint light from the candle stub flared up and illuminated the tear tracks on Constance’s cheeks. “Please, God.... not her, too...”
A low, drawn-out, primal sound of pain drew d’Artagnan to the bed, and he reached a hand out
to wrap around her shoulder.
“Wake up, it’s only a dream,” he said, and gave her a gentle shake.
The result was dramatic, and entirely unexpected as far as d’Artagnan was concerned. Constance shrieked and flailed at him, her small fist rolling off his shoulder to impact stingingly across his jaw.
“Don’t touch me!” she yelped, and half-scrambled, half-fell off the bed, landing hard on her bottom and crab-crawling backwards until her back met the wall. D’Artagnan nearly lost his footing as well, tripping over the bedroll as he staggered back to give her space, one hand cradling the side of his face where she’d hit him.
“Constance! It’s d’Artagnan... it’s all right, you’re safe,” he said in a rush.
Constance stared at him from the floor. Her wide, glazed eyes looked out from a tear-stained face.
“... d’Artagnan?” she asked, awareness gradually returning to her expression.
“Yes, it’s me,” he said, trying to make his voice sound calm despite his pounding heart. “We’re in Éparnon, on our way to Paris. Do you remember?”
Constance stared at him, her mouth working, but no sound coming out. Suddenly, her attention was drawn downward, to her own chest. Her chemise was soaked in two rivulets leading down from her nipples, where her breasts had leaked milk. Her face crumpled and she broke down into tears, grasping the wet material in her hands, curling forward over her knees to rock back and forth as she cried.
D’Artagnan’s chest ached with the need to go to her, but instead, he backed up the final few steps to the wall opposite hers and slid down it into a crouch, letting his forearms rest on his knees and his hands hang, loose and unthreatening.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I want to help you, but I don’t know how. I’m here, though. I won’t come any nearer if you don’t want me to, but I won’t leave you alone, either.”
Constance only cried harder, burying her face against her knees. They sat like that for some time. D’Artagnan felt his own throat close up and his eyes start to sting in sympathy, but he quashed the threat of tears with deep, even breaths. Gradually, Constance’s hitching sobs slowed and quieted.
“I don’t know how you can put up with me,” she said finally, her voice thick with tears and snot. “I’m such a mess.”
“I spent months whipping my own back until I bled rather than acknowledge my grief over the death of my family,” d’Artagnan said. “I don’t think I’m in any position to judge. May I come closer to you now?”
She nodded miserably, her eyes still cast down. D’Artagnan crossed the small space and sat next to her, leaving a small gap between them. He let out a quiet sigh of relief when she closed the distance so that their shoulders touched.
“I dreamt about Sophie,” she said, her expression far away. “My baby. She was crying, and I wanted to nurse her, but she wouldn’t take the breast. Her cries kept getting weaker and weaker, and I thought, I have to do something—she’ll die if she doesn’t feed. And then I woke up, and I thought you were Jacques. It’s been almost two weeks since I dreamed that dream. I’d hoped I was finally done with the nightmares.”
“Perhaps it’s merely the unfamiliar surroundings, and the excitement of the day,” d’Artagnan offered.
“But I was happy today, d’Artagnan!” She looked at him earnestly, as if afraid he would not believe her. “I was... truly.”
D’Artagnan shrugged the shoulder that rested against hers lightly. “In the weeks and months after I left Gascony, whenever something would give me a flash of happiness or pleasure, afterwards, I would find myself wondering what I had done to deserve something good in my life, and how I could find pleasure from anything when my family was dead.”
He glanced quickly at Constance, who was looking up at him intently. “The truth is, though,” he continued, “we do deserve happiness if we can find it or make it without hurting someone else. Both of us do. Everyone does. But finding happiness one day doesn’t mean we won’t feel sadness over our losses on the next. Nor does our sadness mean that happiness won’t return the day after that. It’s simply the way the world is.”
Constance’s eyes grew wet again, but this time, rather than push him away, she let her head fall to rest against his shoulder. “I want to live in that world with you, d’Artagnan. It sounds like a beautiful place.”
“You’re living in that world with me now,” d’Artagnan said. “You just have to let yourself believe in it, I think.”
Constance pressed closer to him. “I’m trying,” she said. “I really am.”
Chapter 56
The following day saw them somewhat quieter and more subdued as they rode, each tangled in their own thoughts. The inn in the little town of Le Parray-en-Yvelines had burned down that spring, but an enterprising widow on the outskirts of town had since opened her farmhouse to visiting travelers as a way to support herself and her three daughters. The beds were clean and fresh, and the food a vast improvement over the mystery stew in Éparnon the evening before.
D’Artagnan slept on the floor again that night. Again, Constance’s sleep was restless and punctuated by disturbing dreams, but this time d’Artagnan did not make the mistake of trying to wake her. The next morning they were a bit more rested and returned to their usual talk and banter as they rode. As they approached Montigny-le-Bretonneux, their goal for the night, Constance began to insert sly innuendoes into the conversation, smiling whenever she succeeded in making d’Artagnan squirm in the saddle and throw her disgruntled looks.
That evening when they’d settled in their rented room, they once more fell to kissing as they had on the riverbank, hands wandering in tentative exploration until fatigue from their hard travel finally caught up with them.
LIGHT WAS FILTERING through the small, shuttered window across the room when d’Artagnan awoke. Constance was puttering around, packing up their belongings for the final day’s journey.
“You should have woken me,” he greeted her. “I would’ve slept on the floor.”
She smiled at him. “I slept on the bed as well, on top of the blanket. It was fine.”
“Oh,” he said, a smile spreading across face.
Grinning at him, she tossed his clothing on his chest. “Come on, d’Artagnan! Don’t just lie there—we’re going to reach Paris today!”
It was true. Paris had been his original destination when he’d left his home in Gascony, and today he was going to see it for the first time. As grateful as he was for the extended detour he had taken since meeting three strange men on the road near Blois, he was excited to finally reach the capitol... even if it meant a new kind of danger and intrigue. His smile grew to match hers, and he quickly began to dress.
The road north of Montigny-le-Bretonneux was far busier than anything d’Artagnan had encountered recently, and the nature of their fellow travelers seemed different. He found himself on edge as rough characters passed them, raking over them with assessing eyes and making his hand itch to reach for a weapon.
“That’s just the way things are around Paris since the Curse,” Constance said when she noticed his concerns. “Mostly they leave you alone if you don’t antagonize them, and if you aren’t too easy a target for robbing.”
“How long did you live in Paris?” d’Artagnan asked, curious.
“A little over ten years. It changed a lot during that time,” Constance said. “Part of me was glad to leave after my husband died, but part of me still missed it, even as bad as things had become. It’s hard to explain; you’ll have to see for yourself. There’s just something about that city. It gets under your skin and nothing else is ever quite the same afterward.”
They crested a hill soon after, and the outskirts of Paris lay spread out before them. It was true—he had never seen anything to compare. The road soon became a steady queue of carts, riders, and people traveling on foot. The pace slowed to a crawl as they approached the gate to the city, and d’Artagnan was glad that they had not arrived any later—at this rate they
would not be inside until it was nearly dark.
When they finally reached the gate almost two hours later, a surly guard dressed in leather armor with bare, muscular arms halted them, thrusting a sharp-pointed staff to block their way as he took in their provincial appearance.
“What’s your business in the city?” he asked.
“We’re here to apply for positions in the palace,” d’Artagnan said. “My wife has connections at court and her godfather invited us to come.”
“You’re carrying weapons,” said the guard, indicating d’Artagnan’s sword and pistols.
“The roads are dangerous, monsieur,” d’Artagnan said, not sure what he was getting at.
“Can’t let you bring those in,” the guard said.
D’Artagnan looked at the man with increasing consternation, unwilling to hand over his weapons and leave them defenseless in a strange place. He looked over in surprise as Constance spoke up in a soft, cajoling voice.
“Monsieur,” she said, eyes wide, “my husband is from Gascony, and did not know this would be a problem. He is only trying to keep us safe—we have been accosted twice on our journey by bandits and would have been robbed blind had he not fought them off. Perhaps we could make a small donation to the city’s coffers in lieu of giving up our weapons? That sword has been in my husband’s family for generations. He will not say so, but I know it would break Charles’ heart to give it up.”
D’Artagnan swallowed against the sudden catch in his throat—in reality, his father’s sword had been broken in a battle long ago, and lay abandoned somewhere in Athos’ castle at Blois. He looked at the guard, who appeared to be wavering. Beside him, Constance counted out coins from a purse in her saddlebag and held them out for the guard’s perusal.