A Lady Betrayed (Secrets of the Musketeers Book 2)

by Leda Swann

  “He took me…” She stopped mid-sentence, her father’s caution ringing in her ears. He trusted in her silence and she would not let him down the first time she came to be tested. She was sure her father need not fear her beloved, but she would not tell Monsieur de Tournay until her father gave her permission to do so. “He took me for a picnic in the country.”

  “A picnic in the country?” All of a sudden he was a man of earth again, not longer a spirit of the other world. “He does this often?”

  She smiled as she recalled how often she had begged him to take her out on a jaunt and how often he had refused her, pleading the demands of his trade. “Not as often as I would like.”

  “Where did you go?” His words were casual but his tone seemed more serious and focused than such an inquiry warranted.

  Maybe her father’s fear had infected her but all of a sudden she did not like to be questioned so. She looked at him sharply, her confidence in him shaken just for a moment. “Nowhere in particular. We merely had a picnic by a pleasant stream, walked in the country air, and then came home again. Why do you ask?”

  He caressed her arm, her shoulder, and then took her chin in his hand and tilted her head up to look at him. “I wanted to know what charms had drawn you out of my arms. You are sure you did not visit anyone? Monsieur Legros, for instance? The friend of your father’s with the handsome son that everyone wants you to marry? I would not be pleased if I thought your father was sneaking you away from me to visit with him.”

  She laughed, relieved that his curiosity was impelled by nothing more sinister than a lover’s jealousy. She put her hand on her heart. “I swear on my mother’s soul that we did not visit Monsieur Legros.”

  He did not look satisfied. “You did not visit any other friend of your father’s who happens to have a marriageable son?”

  She smacked his hand away from her chin. “Upon my mother’s soul, I swear we did not. We did not visit anyone at all. We spent a day in the country, papa and I, all by ourselves with only the cows for company.”

  He drew his dark brows together in a mock glare. “I hope there were no handsome, marriageable cows among them?”

  She smacked his hand. A fine farmer he would make. “What does it matter. They are all female anyway.”

  “It matters to me what kind of cows they are,” he said with a laugh, “but as long as they were all female, I will not complain.” His face grew serious once more. “I would not lose you as soon as I have found you, Courtney, my love. I could not bear the thought of having you hurried off to be betrothed to another the instant my back was turned.”

  She was horrified at the suggestion. “My father would do no such thing. He has turned away many of my suitors for no other reason than that I had little liking for them.” Still, she felt a niggle of fear. Her father had talked of a speedy betrothal. He might be desperate enough to marry her to the first man who could protect her from the harm that threatened them, like him or not as she please.

  “I hoped that I may be able to bring him around and show him that I was not a man he could easily dismiss as unworthy of his daughter, but he has little liking for me, either, I fear.”

  She felt an uncomfortable feeling start to grow at the base of her spine. Her father had never seemed very enamoured of her French Musketeer. She hoped nothing further had happened to give him even more of a dislike of her lover. “Why do you say that?”

  “I decided to brave your house last night, hoping that you and your father would have returned from your journey and that I could at least see you for a few moments, even if we could not be alone together. I did not expect a grand welcome, but I hoped to at least be shown a modicum of politeness, and be admitted on sufferance though I were not particularly welcomed. The spell of your eyes was so strong upon me that I could not bear to have you so near and yet so far from me. I did not want to wait to see you until today.”

  The uncomfortable feeling in her stomach grew stronger. Was her papa so afeared of his enemies that even her friends were to be refused admittance to their house? “How strange. Papa did not tell me that we had visitors last night.”

  “I do not wonder at it. Your footman showed me the door most unceremoniously. He said that the master had given him orders that no damned, lousy Frenchman was to be admitted to his house, and that if I returned, he would have me thrown out on my ear.”

  “Our footman refused you the house? He threatened you?” She could hardly believe that Jacques had been so saucy – not even under orders from her papa. “I will speak to papa at once and have him dismissed from his post.”

  He shook his head. “Do not, I beg of you. I would not be the cause of trouble in your house.”

  “But to be refused the house with such rudeness? I can hardly credit it.”

  “The insult to me matters little. What pains me more than anything is the thought that it means I cannot see you again before I leave for Paris.”

  All thoughts of the footman flew out of her head on the instant at his dire news. “You cannot see me again?”

  He shook his head sorrowfully, as if his heart broke to impart such news. “My absences during the day have been noticed and I have been ordered to remain at my post until we leave. I cannot disobey my King.”

  She could not believe that this was the last she would ever see of him. She did not want to believe it. “So I will not see you again?”

  “My duties keep me occupied from daybreak until sundown. Could I but visit you in the evenings, I would be a happy man.” His face was grave and his black eyes troubled. “I cannot come to see you then. Your father has forbidden me the house.”

  Her father’s fear was making him behave like a tyrant towards her. She would not accept it. “He cannot stop me from seeing you. I will sneak out of the house and meet you in the alley, if I must.”

  “Alleys at night are no place for a young woman. I will not allow you to take such a risk just to see me. I hold you more precious than that.”

  She could not live without seeing him again. “Is there no other way? Can you not sneak into the house when it is dark and sit quietly in my chamber with me? Papa would never know.”

  He looked almost startled at her suggestion. “Sneak into your chamber?”

  “Yes – it is the perfect answer,” she cried, warming to her topic. “Papa sits late in the library most nights, taking his nightcap and sorting through his papers. If we were to sit and talk quietly in the dark, he would never know.”

  “If he were to find out…”

  She had hit upon an answer to their dilemma and she would not let it go that easily. “Why would he ever suspect?”

  “How am I to get in?”

  She considered the possibilities. “My chamber window looks out on to the courtyard. I could throw you over a rope and you could climb up it.”

  He shook his head. “Too noisy by half. I would be caught for sure before I had gotten half way.”

  “You could pretend you were a tradesman delivering fish from the market and sneak past the cook and hide in a cupboard until the servants had gone to bed.”

  “I do not think that would be wise. I would be sure to be discovered. Your father would be extra vigilant after that and I would never be able to see you.”

  “You could hide in the garden and come in at night when the servants have gone to bed.”

  He tapped his finger on his chin as he thought over her latest suggestion. “How would I get in? Don’t they lock the house?”

  She thought for a moment, her brow creased with the effort. “I suppose I could leave a window open and hope they didn’t see it.” It was hardly a great plan – there were too many things that could go wrong. Moths were bound to come fluttering in, attracted by the light. A servant would notice the moths and close the window. It would look too suspicious if she were to open it again.

  She racked her brains, searching for another way. Suddenly she saw it. “Of course – how stupid I am. Why did I not think of it before? Al
l you need is a key and then you can come and go as you please.”

  “A key?” His face lit up with excitement. “But how could I get one?”

  “My father keeps the keys in his study. If I bring them to you tomorrow, can you have one copied? One that would fit the door to the house?”

  “A key to the house? My love, you are a genius - that would solve all our problems. I could come and visit you every evening and not fear discovery.”

  How to get the key to him? She could not bring it to him at her father’s warehouse – she never visited there at all. Her father said it was no place for women. “Can you meet me one last time? Feign an illness maybe to give you an hour’s grace?”

  “To spend my evenings with you, I would brave more than my commander’s displeasure. I would brave the King of France and fires of hell itself.”

  She leaned up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “You are a brave man, my darling soldier. I must go now or Suzanne will be worried, but do not fear - I shall bring you the key on the morrow.”

  Chapter 3

  Stealing the key from her father’s study was easier than she had thought it would be. She merely waited until her father had left the house to go to his warehouse, wandered into his study under the pretext of searching for a book she had mislaid, and rifled through the drawers until she had located his ring of keys. She knew which one was the front door key – the large iron one with the scuffed top – but she did not want to spare the time to detach it from the rest. Besides, it would look less suspicious if the whole ring were to go missing for a few hours, not just a single key. Were her father to come home unexpectedly and notice they were gone, he would assume the housekeeper had taken them for oiling.

  She wrapped the keys in a scrap of cloth to dull their jangle and placed them carefully in the pocket she had hung at her waist, inside her skirt. She was sure that anyone she passed would be able to tell that she was concealing something, but the one housemaid she passed on the way out the door did not even glance at her. With a guilty feeling in her heart, she hurried on to the churchyard.

  Monsieur de Tournay was waiting for her as he had promised. He barely stopped to kiss her briefly on the lips before he asked with a slight tremor in his voice. “You have the keys?”

  She drew the ring of keys out of her pocket and picked out the house key. “This is the one you must copy.”

  He took the bunch in his hand and looked around him with what seemed like anxiety. “I must take them to my friend who is waiting to have an impression made. Will you be alright here alone for a moment.”

  She turned her head to look, but could see no one in sight. She pressed his hand with intense feeling. “Yes, go and hurry.”

  Her guilt and nervousness made her agitated. Ten short minutes seemed like forever. She paced up and down keeping out of sight as well as she could, her fear making her see villains lurking in every bush, until he at last returned at a run, the smile on his face proclaiming his success.

  Breathing heavily, he handed her back the keys again, wrapped in the cloth. “I thank you, my darling. Come, I will escort you to your gate and then go again as quickly as I can before I am missed.”

  His words did not hold their usual warmth. She needed reassurance that he still loved her and that he would not fail her. She held tight to his arm and looked up into his face. “You will come to me tonight?”

  His eyes as they looked into hers were sincere, their warmth melting away any last doubt she had ever had about him. “I will come to you tonight to sit in your chamber with you as soon as night has fallen and the house is quiet. I swear it on my honor as a Frenchman and as a soldier.” He kissed her hand as they parted. “Fare thee well, my love. Until tonight.”

  She was too excited to eat supper that night. Her lover had promised that he would come to her and sit with her in her chamber. She was in a fever of impatience to see him, to kiss him, to hold him in her arms once more where prying eyes would not be able to see them.

  Their meeting in the churchyard had been hurried and unsatisfactory. He had seemed as burdened by guilt as she was about the keys. Tonight they would put the guilt and fear behind them to enjoy each other’s company – alone again at last.

  She excused herself after dinner and went straight to her chamber, dismissing Suzanne as soon as the maid had undone the row of buttons that ran down her back.

  In her planning she had forgotten that she could not get dressed again without the aid of her servant. Monsieur de Tournay would have to excuse her night attire. She could not afford to have Suzanne suspect her. Her reputation could be ruined for less.

  Dressed in naught but her long, white nightgown, she sat on the window seat, her arms clasped around her knees, staring out the window at the vanishing light.

  Dusk fell slowly. Like a slow-moving snail, the sun began its descent, leaving a trail of glistening light in its wake like the slime of a snail’s path.

  Dusk became evening. Evening became night. As she sat and listened, the sounds of the house slowly died away. Fires were banked and candles snuffed. Servants scurried up the stairs to their beds in the attic. Her father’s heavy tread climbed the stairs to his chamber. All was still.

  If she had not been listening for it so intently, she would have missed it – that light rasp of metal against metal, the sound of a key being turned in a lock, the sound of a door being opened, the tiny whisper of muffled footsteps climbing the stairs.

  As it was, she was not sure she had really heard anything or whether she was just imagining the noises of her lover coming to her until her door to her very chamber creaked open in the night. “Courtney?” came a whisper through the darkness.

  She dared not keep her candle burning for fear her father would sense that something was amiss and come to investigate. “Monsieur de Tournay?” she whispered into the deep black of the room.

  In an instant he had crossed the chamber in his stockinged feet and was by her side. “Call me Pierre, my love,” he whispered into her hair.

  Pierre. She tasted the word in her mouth, rolling it around her tongue as if she had never heard it before. She liked his name. “Pierre,” she said out loud to test the sound of it.

  He sat next to her on the window seat and took her into his arms. “Courtney, my love. How I have looked forward to this moment.”

  She had no will to resist when he kissed her. Somehow it all seemed so natural that she be with him, that he hold her in his arms, that he kiss her until she was breathless.

  Just as she felt she was about to melt into his arms, he broke off the kiss and breathed into her hair, drinking in the scent of her. “Though I met you scarcely a week ago, I feel as though I have known you all my life.”

  He had put her own feelings about him into words. She knew he was her soul mate the moment she met him. He had made her leap from her comfortable existence into a world of passion and delight that she had never known existed before. “I feel the same way about you.” She felt her face grow hot in the darkness. She was not used to confessing her feelings out loud.

  “I had never thought to say this to a woman I have barely met, but I love you, Courtney. You are more precious to me than anything else under the sun.”

  She buried her head in his shoulder, muffling her voice so that he could not hear her tears, suddenly overcome by the hopelessness of her feelings for him. “I love you, too, Pierre, but there is no use in it. You must leave for Paris in six days.”

  His hand was hot on her shoulder through the thin fabric of her nightgown. “The news is worse than that, my love. I must leave for Paris on the morrow.”

  “On the morrow?” Her tears broke out afresh and she muffled them on his shoulder so no one would hear her sobs. “I thought we had six nights left to be together.”

  “I thought so too, my love, but new orders came from the King this very eve.” His voice was troubled, as if he did not want to give her such evil tidings. “We must set out at dawn.”

  She co
uld not comprehend that her love would be ripped from her so cruelly. “I shall not see you again?” Her anguished cry came from the depths of her heart.

  “I must go to Paris when the King orders me there, but I cannot bear to leave you behind for long.” He clasped her hand in his and held it to his breast. “Courtney, my love, I have only known you for a short while, but I have lost my heart to you. Will you wait for me until I can return to you? Will you plight your troth to me? Promise to wed me and none but me?”

  In an instant she had gone from black despair to gloriously shining happiness. Her heart felt so full that it would burst with joy. Pierre had asked for her hand in wedlock. She could think of nothing she wanted to be more than Pierre’s wife. She took him in her arms and hugged him close to her. “Yes, my love – I will wait for you. I will wait until the sky falls into the sea for you to come back to me.”

  He stroked her hair in reassurance. “I will not be that long, I promise you.”

  She smiled in the darkness. “I am glad of it. I would find it hard to be that patient."

  “You will wait?” His voice was anxious all of a sudden. “Your father will not try to marry you off to that friend of his while I am gone?”

  How could her father object to their marriage when he saw how happy her darling Pierre would make her? She would bring him around to the match. Little by little she would make him see that Pierre and none other would be her husband. He had never been able to refuse her aught that she begged for with all her heart. He was sure to consent in the end – maybe sooner than she might normally hope for, given that he was eager to see her wed before long. “I will wait for you until you return to me – I swear on my mother’s grave that I will have none but you.”

  He held her close. “I will go to Paris in the morn with a lighter heart now that I know the greatest treasure in all of France will keep herself safe for me.” He sounded happy to have her vow.