by Leda Swann
“I cannot share apartments with you while we are as yet unwed. I am a woman, you are a man. It is…it is unthinkable.”
“You have slept in a drunken stupor on the floor of another Musketeer’s bedchamber,” he reminded her. He did not like thinking on that himself. Sure, it must have been innocent enough, or her fellows would surely have let out the secret of her sex by now, but he still did not like it. If they ever discovered her sex, they would think her a loose woman, and treat her accordingly. She was no light skirt to be so abused – she was a gentlewoman and his wife-to-be. He would have to impress upon her the risks she ran and make sure she did not ever run them again. He would not like to have to run through a dozen of his fellow Musketeers for mistreating his wife. “Is that not equally unthinkable?”
She made a noise of protest. “That was different. It was only one night – and it was quite harmless.”
Harmless? He hardly thought so. Whether or not she was willing to admit it, she had run a huge risk. She was only lucky she had not been caught. “We have been promised to each other for some months. The contract between my uncle and your father is signed. In the eyes of God, we are as good as wed already.”
“The contracts may have been signed a thousand times, but I have plighted no troth to you. I have promised nothing.”
That was easy to remedy. He stood up straight, his arms by his side. “Sophie Delamanse, I do hereby plight my troth to you. From this day forth you shall be as my wife to me. Unto you will I cleave and all others forsake. I shall marry you and none but you, so help me God.”
Sophie groaned. This was not how she had envisaged her betrothal day to be – dressed in ill-fitting breeches and suffering from a head that threatened to split in two with every movement she made. What choice did she have? The Comte was determined to fulfil his promise and come what may she would stay a Musketeer for her brother’s sake. This way, at least they would both get what they each demanded.
She stood up on her stockinged feet. It did not seem right to perform such a solemn vow while lolling at her ease on a sofa. “Comte Ricard de Lamotte,” she said, trying not to wince at the pain in her feet, “I do hereby plight my troth to you. From this day forth you shall be as my husband to me. Unto you will I cleave and all others forsake. I shall marry you and none but you, so help me God.”
The Comte had a look of triumph on his face. Sophie was too worn out to care. He had won this battle only because she was too tired and sick to fight anymore. “My head hurts and my feet hurt. I want a drink of water and I need to sleep.” She did not even care if she sounded like a querulous child. All she wanted now was oblivion.
He pushed open the door to another chamber with a huge canopied bed in the middle. Picking her up as he would lift a child, he carted her over and placed her gently on the coverlet. “I’ll bring the water for you in a moment. Then you can sleep for as long as you like.”
The sheets were crisp and white and smelled of lavender, just like the soap she had used in her bath. She tossed her over-sized breeches on the floor and crept between the sheets, thankful to close her eyes at last and block out the light that made her head pound harder. Baths, clean sheets, the smell of lavender. Maybe her marriage would be tolerable after all.
Glass of water in his hand, Lamotte looked at her as she lay tucked up in the bed, her damp hair fanned out over the pillow. Asleep, she looked soft and sweet-tempered – far more like a woman than she did when she was awake and spitting at him with her teeth bared and her claws unsheathed.
It would be so easy to throw off his clothes and climb into bed beside her to hold her naked body against his own. She would be too sleepy to protest. He would be able to hold her in his arms all night, his hands could rove freely on her luscious breasts, her hips, her thighs, and that soft sweet cleft between her thighs. He could make her his wife in more than name only and she would not be able to say him nay.
He felt his manhood rise at the thought of entering her tantalizing body until he was embedded inside her to the very hilt. He would prepare her well with kisses and touches until she was as eager for it as he was. Her channel would be wet and warm and welcoming and he would thrust into her body, losing himself in her as he had dreamed of doing when he had first seen her portrait.
He knew he was only dreaming – he would never do that. She was sick and tired and he would never force himself on her. She would never forgive him. He would never forgive himself.
He squatted down and put the water on the floor beside her. No doubt she would wake in a while with a desperate thirst. He hoped her headache was a salutary lesson not to drink to excess in the future. Drinking had ruined more good soldiers than he cared to think on. He would not have the same vice ruin his wife.
There was little point going back to the barracks now. Training would be over for the day and he was not on duty until the morrow. Besides, he wanted to be there when Sophie woke again. He intended to see her properly bedded down in his apartments before he took his eyes off her. She belonged to him now, and he was determined to take good care of her.
A boy was soon dispatched to the Rue de Fosset to bring back her belongings. She had little enough. A small cloth bag filled with clean linen, and an ornate dagger. He recognized it as having belonged to Gerard.
She was still sleeping peacefully when he opened the door quietly and put her bag at the foot of her bed. With a grunt of satisfaction, he sat down at his desk and began to polish his weaponry. The simple tasks of a soldier should help him keep his mind off the soft white body of the woman sleeping in the next chamber, in his bed.
He was giving Gerard’s old dagger, now Sophie’s, a final polish when he heard a strangled cry come from the chamber where she lay asleep. He dashed next door to find her sitting bolt upright in the bed, her eyes wide open and staring blankly at some horror that only she could see. “Water, give me water,” she moaned, not seeming to see him.
He grabbed the water glass from the floor and held it to her lips. She drank it down greedily, not caring when it dribbled over her chin and on to her shirt. The glass drained, she lay back on her pillows and was immediately deep in slumber again.
He stayed for a while, stroking her forehead gently with the palm of his hand, making sure her nightmare did not return to disturb her sleep once more. She was so brave and strong that it was easy to forget how much she had suffered and how much grief she must still carry around in her heart. The horrors she had faced as her family died around her would have been enough to break the spirit of most men he knew. And she was only a woman. A remarkable woman, but a woman none the less.
The shadows were lengthening into night when Sophie woke again, the remembrance of a nightmare weighing heavily on her mind. In her dream she had had the plague and none would help her. She cried out for water, and an angel of mercy had poured water into her desperate mouth and chased her demons away. She could not fathom why, but the angel of mercy had worn the face of Lamotte.
Her headache was only a dull throbbing now, she was ravenously hungry, and a tantalizing smell of roast meat was wafting through the room. She had not eaten all day and her stomach growled at the thought of being fed at last. Stopping only to pull on her breeches, she padded out of the silent bedchamber in search of food to satisfy her suddenly desperate hunger.
Lamotte was sitting in the last of the evening sun, reading a leather-bound book. He raised his head when she came padding through the door. “I thought you would sleep all night.”
She hoped he was not reading poetry. She despised poetry. “I’m famished. What have you for me to eat?”
He gestured towards the table. “I was about to start by myself. Now that you are awake, would you care to join me?”
She had no time to waste on words. Roast beef, roast chicken, dishes of vegetables, and glory of glories, even a couple of fresh peaches. She had not seen such a feast in months – not since before the plague had struck her family. Her mouth watered until she thought she would drown in
saliva.
She could not resist the sight of the peaches. Grabbing the nearest one, she bit into it with relish, licking her lips as the juice tried to escape and run down her chin. She could not bear to let a single precious drop escape her. “I have died and gone to Heaven,” she said, through her mouthful.
“If you came to Burgundy, you could eat your fill of peaches every day,” he said, as he helped himself to a plateful of roast beef and delicious-looking dressings. “We have an orchard of them there. When I was a boy, I used to gorge myself on them until I was sick.”
The last succulent mouthful of peach turned to ashes in her mouth at his words. Silently she laid the knobbled pit on her plate.
He looked guilt-stricken at her actions. “I did not mean to spoil your simple pleasure.”
She shrugged. “It is of no matter.” She loaded her plate and ate mechanically – barely tasting her meal. She would not let herself be seduced by the richness of the beef gravy, she vowed, or by the delicate flavor of the chicken wings he served to her. She would not let the devil tempt her with luxury so he could imprison her in his castle in Burgundy. She would be strong and steadfast against him.
He offered her a glass of wine, but she shook her head with a feeling shudder. “Water, if you please.” She had had her fill of wine for now. She would not care if she never saw another glass in her life again.
The meal was scarcely over when Sophie began to yawn once more. Her craving for food satisfied, she wanted only to sleep again. “Seeing as you have demanded that I live here with you, where shall I sleep?”
“There’s only one bed.”
She rolled her shoulders with a grimace, feeling the ache in them from sleeping on the floor of Courtney’s lodgings the night before. “It’s mine.” She would not sleep on the floor tonight for all the gold in Christendom. She would rather walk in her stockinged feet over the rough cobbled streets to her own apartments and sleep in her own narrow cot than bear the hardness of the floor of her aching muscles for another night.
He shrugged. “As you wish. I shall not ask you to share it with me until we are wed.”
She tossed her napkin down on the table and rose to her feet. She would not fall for his seductions. She would not even notice the muscles in his arms, or the way his hair fell in waves down to his collar. She would not long for the touch of his hand on hers, or for the caress of his lips against her neck. She wanted nothing of him but to be left alone.
She would be strong and steadfast against him and live the life she wanted to live. She would make him regret it if he were to presume on his role as her husband and try to talk her into what she was determined against. “Not even then, Monsieur le Comte, if you know what is good for you.”
Ricard Lamotte watched her stride towards his bedchamber with a feeling of regret tugging at his loins. She was a desirable woman, for all her fighting ways. He very much wanted to plunge into her body and lose himself in the soft sweetness of her milky thighs and breasts – to use her as a woman should be used by a man. He had sworn to wed her – there would be no shame in trying to seduce her into his arms even before the marriage ceremony.
He thought of her remark about poisoned mushrooms and shuddered. The wench had an evil, masculine mind. Were he to disturb her rest with such demands, he would not put it past her to knife him as he slept. He would not be crawling into bed with her until he was duly invited.
He would work on getting that invitation. He took his marriage vows seriously and would be true to her once they were wed. He had no desire to live a life of married celibacy for the rest of his days, or at least until his beautiful, desirable, hotheaded, sharp-tongued wife managed to get herself killed.
Sophie strode into the barracks the next morning, feeling halfways human again. Her stomach was blessedly quiet, her head no longer ached and the dressings that Lamotte had rubbed into her feet were working miracles. She could walk almost without pain.
Pierre greeted her with a slap on the back so hard and unexpected that it nearly made her go sprawling. “You brawling bastard,” he said, with a note of admiration in his voice. “You have more courage than sense to take on such a big bastard.” He chuckled with delighted glee. “I will never forget the look of surprise on his face when he lost his breeches.”
Sophie looked at him in surprise. Lamotte had been so aggravated by her behavior she had not considered her other comrades may look at it in a different light. Evidently some of her comrades enjoyed a brawl for no other reason than the love of it.
She could not understand it herself. Fighting was a good cause was just and glorious, but she did not comprehend how men could enjoy fighting for the sake of it.
“Damn good swordsmanship this morning,” another Musketeer grunted at her as she shoveled food into her mouth after a hard morning’s training.
She choked on her mouthful. His face was vaguely familiar, but she’d never so much as spoken a word to him in her weeks in the barracks. She’d been at pains to keep herself to herself and none of them had bothered her in her self-imposed solitude before.
“Almost as good as the other night when you showed that big bastard what we Musketeers are made of,” said another.
“May you live to fight many more battles,” called a third.
Yet another lifted his mug of ale into the air for a toast. “Long live the King’s Musketeers, the cream of the crop.”
“Death to the King’s enemies,” shouted another, to loud cheers.
Courtney, seated by her side, nudged her with a sharp elbow, lifted her mug of ale in a salute and grinned at her. “Welcome to the club of brainless brawling bastards, Gerard, my man,” she said softly into Sophie’s ear.
So elated was Sophie by her new-found sense of acceptance into the group, she almost didn’t mind when the Captain of the Musketeers set her to scrubbing the barracks on her knees with a bucket and mop all afternoon. “That ought to cool your hot head down for a bit,” he muttered at her, as she scrubbed away. “Doing the work of a woman for a day will teach you a lesson not to go picking fights just for the fun of it.”
She grinned at him, her mood quite undeflated. “Yes, Sir.”
“Why, oh why, do I have to look after a regiment of foolish young boys?” she heard D’Artagnan grumble as he stomped away over the wooden boards she had just scrubbed. “Young fools who think they’re invincible. Why, in my day, I had a healthy respect for my enemies, those damned Frondeurs. Musketeers these days wouldn’t stand a chance against them. Ah, they don’t make rebellions like they used to anymore…”
Sophie stared out the window in Courtney’s apartments at the gray sky and the drizzling rain. She had been made to scrub floors all afternoon and had had no chance to get the three of them alone together all day. Her news was burning up inside her.
Now that the chance had come, she felt her courage fail her. There was no easy way to tell her comrades what she had to tell them. She would have to be blunt and hope they would forgive her. “I am to be married tomorrow to the Comte de Lamotte.”
Courtney dropped her glass in astonishment, and stared stupidly at the thousand shards scattered on the ground, winking up at her in the light from the wax candles. Her face was white and strained as if she had just seen a ghost. “You are to be what?”
Miriame drained her glass dry and put it down on the table with a hand that trembled slightly. “If you have given away my sex to the Comte, you are a dead woman.”
Sophie shook her head. Paris in the rain was the most drear and dismal place in the world. Gone was its gaiety and song. All that was left was the cold and the wet and the mud. Everywhere you looked there was mud and filth and more mud. “Your secret is safe with me. I was affianced to him before I became a Musketeer and he will not release me from the bargain. I have agreed to wed him on condition that he keeps my secret. He has agreed to my terms, and is content to be my husband in name only.”
Courtney’s eyes went from astonishment to excitement in a flash. �
�Oh, I love weddings,” she said dreamily. “What kind of a dress will you wear to the church on the morrow? What color have you chosen? What flowers will you carry? Something blue to match your eyes?” Then she suddenly seemed to come to herself again. “The only thing wrong with a wedding is that there has to be a groom involved,” she added with her usual bitterness.
Sophie was puzzled by Courtney’s reaction. Did she not see how her news would affect them all? Dresses were the last thing on her mind. “I had not thought of what I would wear. I have no dresses in Paris – I left them all in my father’s house in the Camargue. I shall have to get married in my breeches or not at all.”
Miriame shrieked with laughter at the thought. “You would scandalize the priests to within an inch of their lives.”
Sophie shrugged. “I wore breeches at home and Father Capin did not mind. He only lectured me occasionally about the proper place of a woman, but he eat the ducks I shot for him nevertheless.”
Miriame laughed even harder. “You do not know the priests in Paris,” she said, as soon as she could get the words out between her gales of mirth. “They are a different breed from those in the country. I doubt they could be bought with a brace of freshly-killed ducks – they would demand a fat haunch of venison at the least.”
“So I will pay them whatever it takes for them for their eyes to convince their consciences that I am wearing a perfectly proper and suitable dress.”
Miriame poured herself another glass of wine. “I will have to come and watch this wedding. It will be better than a play. The priests will excommunicate you as an unnatural man-woman, not marry you.”
Sophie dropped her hands into her lap in despair. She had not thought of what she would wear. Miriame was right – she could hardly get married in her breeches, and yet how was she to obtain a dress without giving away her secret a thousand times? She would have to call the wedding off again. Lamotte would simply have to understand that she could not go through with it.