by Leda Swann
The young woman gave a wan smile. “I will not try your patience for longer than I must.”
Miriame was wandering around the outer chamber, picking up the dainty objects that littered the room, examining them closely, and putting them down again. “Damn me if I couldn’t make a fortune flogging off this lot to old Malvoisin,” she muttered under her breath. “And all of it just sitting here waiting to be nicked. It’d be enough to tempt a saint to thievery.”
Sophie glared at her. “Just remember that you are a Musketeer now, not a thief.”
“`Once a thief, always a thief,’ is my motto,” Miriame said with a grin. “Lucky for your sense of honor that I value my skin to highly to steal from the royal family.”
Sophie barely had time to get impatient when the young woman appeared again, richly attired in velvets and jewels. “You are going to the Bastille, not to a royal pageant,” she could not help exclaiming. “Have you nothing more fitting to wear? You will ruin your beautiful clothes.”
The young woman fingered the string of rubies around her neck. “I am a princess of England and a Duchesse of France. My brother is the King of England and my husband is the only brother of the King of France. What care I for ruining a paltry velvet? I shall go to my death with my head held high.”
A covered carriage was waiting for them in the street below. Sophie could not help but admire the straightness of her back and the calmness of her demeanor as they clattered over the dark streets towards the cold, forbidding dungeons of the Bastille. Her prisoner was a brave woman and not afraid to die for what she had done. Whatever treason she had committed, she was reaping her just deserts with honor and bravery.
The governor of the Bastille was none too pleased to be woken at such an hour. He stumbled into view, a sputtering wax candle clutched in his hand and his tasseled night cap hanging drunkenly over one eye. “What do you want?” he grumbled through the iron grille.
Sophie stood to attention. “I have orders from the King to deliver a prisoner to you.”
The governor grunted with displeasure. “You didn’t need to have the sentry wake me up for that, you damn fool,” he said as he turned away again. “Toss him to the guards and be done with him.”
“You misunderstood me. I have orders directly from the King himself that I was to deliver this prisoner to no one but you. Here is the letter that will explain more.” She reached into her jacket for the letter, but it was not there. Maybe she had put it elsewhere? She fumbled in the other side of her jacket, to no avail. Surely she had not dropped it in the coach? The King would be highly displeased with her carelessness, after he had enjoined her to strictest secrecy as well.
Miriame stepped forward, gave a deep bow, and handed the letter through the grille. “From the King himself.”
Sophie looked daggers at her comrade. Miriame had given her the fright of her life. Her light-fingered companion must have picked her pocket so neatly that she had not noticed her loss before.
“Just practicing,” Miriame murmured in Sophie’s ear as she straightened up out of her bow. “So as not to lose my touch.”
At least the letter was not lost, Sophie thought, as she elbowed Miriame sharply in the ribs for her mischief.
The governor opened the letter and read it by the dim light of the candle. “Where’s the prisoner,” he demanded, once he had reached the end.
Sophie stepped back and urged the prisoner forward with one hand in the small of her back.
Henrietta looked up at the strong walls of the Bastille and shuddered as if she could already feel the cold air of the dungeon on her face. Without further urging, she stepped daintily to the grille in her high-heeled shoes. “Here I am.” Her voice was strong and clear. She was too proud to show her fear.
The governor’s face grew pale at the sight of the prisoner. He drew up a big bunch of keys from his waist and unlocked the grille with fumbling fingers as he ushered her inside. He turned to face her again, his hand on the gate. “You have arrested Madame the Duchesse D’Orleans on the order of the King? Are you sure this is not a mistake?”
Sophie watched as the prisoner stepped forward into the shadow of the Bastille. The governor bowed nervously to her as she passed, the keys in his belt clanking with every move her made, but she went by him with her nose in the air.
The iron grille clanged shut behind her with an ominous bang.
Sophie watched her go with a feeling of foreboding, which she tried to squelch. She was there to serve the King, not to question his orders, and his orders had been very clear. The woman was a traitor who deserved her fate. “Quite sure. The King does not make mistakes.”
Henrietta sat on cold stone bench in her prison cell. The thick velvet of her dress shielded her from the chill of the night air, but still she shivered. King Louis would not forgive her for helping the Comte de Guiche to escape. She had read the fury in his eyes when his guards had come back empty-handed, and had trembled. She had known then that her punishment would not be long in coming.
Still she had not expected him to move so quickly, or so viciously. Few returned from the Bastille, and those who did were broken in body and spirit. Imprisonment in the Bastille was a death sentence. The King had doomed her to a long, slow, torturous demise.
She wiped a renegade tear from her eye. For the first time since she had crossed him, she realized in full how badly she had underestimated her opponent, the King. Thwarted of his intended prey now the Comte had fled to safety, he had struck at her instead. She would not feel sorry for herself. She had known that she risked her life in helping her lover, and she had done so gladly. She loved him more than she loved her own life or even the hopes of her own salvation. She would not want to keep living if de Guiche had been harmed on her account.
It was too late to ask her brother for help. He had plenty of troubles of his own in his island Kingdom. She would not ask him to sacrifice his peace of mind for her and declare war against France to save her.
Besides, she was not sure that he would answer her call for aid. His brotherly love did not run so deep as his love for his country, or even his love of frivolity and idleness. She loved her brother dearly – better, perhaps, than he deserved. She would rather die in peace and quiet than risk testing the depth of Charles’s love for her and finding it wanting.
She fingered the necklace around her neck. She might still manage to break free from her jailer if he were to prove sufficiently greedy. She had put on her jewels not to salvage her pride – a prisoner of the King could not afford such luxuries as pride – but to pay for the help she might need in escaping from her prison.
Any of the rings on her fingers, or the necklaces she kept hidden under the velvet of her dress might buy her freedom. She relied on no man to come and rescue her from the hole she had dug for herself. She was not without resources of her own to save her own skin. She would explore them all before she gave her soul up to despair.
Chapter 6
Sophie threw her sword down on the ground in disgust and glared at her opponent. She wanted to stamp her feet and shout at him, but she doubted it would do her cause any good. She counted up to ten to master her anger before she spoke. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Lamotte put up his own sword, looking relieved at the cessation of hostilities. “Teaching you to fight, as I promised.”
Teaching her to fight? Teaching her to dance was more like it! He was big enough to break her in two with his bare hands if he felt like it. Why then would he not fight with her? “Have I suddenly turned into fragile porcelain overnight and you’re scared that I will break if you touch me? Does becoming your wife somehow make me less of a soldier? You’re not even trying to batter through my defense.”
He passed his hand over his eyes, his face suddenly weary. “You know that I cannot fight you.”
What nonsense was he talking now? “How can I learn if you do not teach me?”
He leaned on his sword. “I cannot fight a woman – especially not t
he woman to whom I have pledged my troth,” he said, soft and low that none could overhear him. “To fight my own wife? - it goes against everything that I have ever believed in.”
She spat on the dust at her feet. “I suppose you think that women are soft creatures, to be cosseted away in silks and velvets in high towers far away from the world?” She kept her voice soft, but she knew he could not help but hear the exasperation that was plain in her tone. She wanted him to hear it. She wanted him to know how absurdly she thought he was acting.
He shrugged his shoulders, plainly agreeing with her assessment but not wanting to admit it. “I cannot fight a woman.”
She picked up her sword again. She must break him out of his foolishness if she was to continue her education as a soldier. Did he not see that her life might one day depend on how well he had taught her? She prodded him in his leather jerkin with the point of her sword. “What if a woman insists on fighting you? What then?”
He did not rise to her bait. “I do not think it likely. Women should not fight.”
She smiled to herself. She would make him admit his error before she had done. She would force him to fight her. “This one does.” She prodded a little harder until he gave a slight wince as the tip of her sword came uncomfortably close to his navel. “Would you strike back at me, or would you stand still and let me carve you into little pieces?”
He stood in the middle of the courtyard, his legs apart and his arms crossed in front of him. “I doubt you would go that far, wife.”
She looked around her in panic at his words. Thank the Lord there was no one close enough to hear him call her wife for all the world to know. “Maybe not,” she said, and she flicked her sword to give him a light scratch on his cheek. “Just spoil your beauty a bit, maybe.”
He stood where he was, but his fists clenched at his side and his green-brown eyes grew dark with rage as a tiny trickle of blood dribbled down his cheek. “That was not a wise thing to do, wife.”
“Why not?” she asked, her voice all mock innocence. “You won’t fight me, so what have I to fear from you?” She flicked her sword again to cut his other cheek and flashed him a mischievous grin. “That was just to even you up a little. You shall have matching scars now – one on each side. They will remind you each time you look in a mirror what a woman can do to do if you will not fight back.”
His knuckles were white, he clenched them so hard. “Sophie, my sweet, you are playing with fire.”
“Fire?” She snorted in derision. “Pah. There is nothing fiery about you. You are as full of sober melancholy and phlegm as the saddest friar in the abbey.” She moved the point of her sword rather lower and prodded him gently below the waist. If this did not rouse him to rage, then nothing would. “I wonder if you even have as much manhood as a friar, sworn to celibacy, does.”
With an inarticulate roar of fury at this last insult, Lamotte grabbed his sword out of its scabbard and forced her blade away from his groin. “I warn you, wife, I will not stand much more of this.”
Sophie grinned to herself as she felt the strength of his blade connect with hers and the force of the impact travel up her arm in waves. Success! She had angered him into fighting her. “So stop me then, if you can.”
She thrust in the general direction of his breeches and he parried quickly this time. Around the courtyard they went, back and forth, from one side to the other, now advancing and now retreating, blades flashing in the sunlight and clashing at every step.
Lamotte was still holding back, she could tell. He was not giving it his all. He would only defend himself against her attacks – he would not make a positive move against her. She would not be satisfied with that.
To test her theory, she deliberately made a lunge that left her side open to attack, but he failed to press his advantage.
Damn him. She would not let him get away with this. She needed him to forget that she was a woman, and to see instead that she was a fighter intent on doing him an injury. Could he not see that his misplaced sense of honor was putting him in danger?
She redoubled her efforts, desperate to get through his defenses and prove to him that she was in earnest. She watched him like a hawk watches the rabbit marked out for its prey. Her eyes did not leave his, reading in them the movements he would make as soon as he knew himself what they would be.
He would not attack her. She would use her knowledge of his weakness against him. With a flurry of thrusts that left her vulnerable to counter-attack, she moved against him with renewed vigor. She was never dare such a dangerous move with anyone else – but his foolish sense of honor meant that she ran no risk.
He would not attack her – not even to defend himself. With a last, frantic lunge, she broke through and scored him in the pit of the belly with the tip of her sword.
He looked up at her, surprise and disappointment written all over his face. “You cut me.” He sounded as if he could not quite believe it.
She had not meant to cut him quite so hard – just to prove to him that she could. Guilt made her defensive. “What else did you expect. We were fighting and you would not defend yourself.”
He put his hand over his stomach, and when he drew it away again, blood was dripping off his fingers. He looked at the blood with a puzzled eye. “I did not think that a woman would do this to me.”
Sophie gazed at the blood in horror. She had meant only to provoke him into forgetting that she was a woman and fighting her soldier to soldier. She had meant to wound only his pride, not to seriously hurt him. She tossed away her sword and fell to her knees in front of him to see how badly he was hurt.
Blood was seeping from under his tunic. She wanted to be sick at the sight of it. “Lie down,” she commanded him in a shaky voice. “You are hurt. You need to be attended to.”
With unaccustomed obedience, he stretched out on his back in the dirt, his face unusually white. “I don’t know that I trust you to treat the wound you caused in the first place,” he grumbled. “You are a vicious woman. You’ll be the death of me yet.”
With fumbling fingers, she pulled open his jerkin and unbuttoned the white linen shirt he wore underneath. She cut through the lacing of his breeches with her dagger and pulled the fabric back to expose the wound she had made. The shirt was ruined with blood anyway, so she tore a strip off the hem and dabbed away the blood that seeped out of the cut.
The cut was long but not deep, and the bleeding had nearly stopped already. She felt her stomach settle as she realized that she had done him no lasting damage. “It could be worse,” she said as she started to bind him up with more strips torn off his shirt.
She liked the look of him without his shirt, she decided as she bandaged him up. His chest was a deep golden brown with well-defined muscles. Her fingers itched to run her hands over his chest, over his hard, flat stomach, and into the curls of golden hair that peeked through the opening of his breeches.
She stopped herself just in time. She couldn’t do that. They had agreed that he was her husband in name only. She had no right to touch him. Besides, it would be asking for trouble to let him see her curiosity about his body. “You won’t die of it.”
He looked aggrieved at her lack of sympathy. “I might.”
Her composure had returned now that she was satisfied she had not hurt him. “No man worth his salt would die of such a pathetic little scratch. I doubt it will even leave a scar.”
“Sacre bleu. Is that all the sympathy I get? If you had caught me an inch or two lower down, I wouldn’t be a man at all anymore.”
She gave a snort of laughter which she hastily muffled in the sleeve of her jacket. No wonder his face was white. No man could face the fear of being unmanned with any equanimity. She leaned over and patted him gently on his groin. “Don’t worry, Monsieur, your manhood is still intact, as far as I can tell.”
He gave a grunt of annoyance. “Men do not cut other men below the navel in case the favor is returned one day.”
She leaned over him to
secure the bandages. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a man.”
He gave a pointed glance at her chest, just inches from the tip of his nose. “How could I possibly forget?”
She sat back on her heels again to remove her chest to a safer distance from where he could not ogle it so obviously. “Besides, I did not mean to hurt you badly, just to shake you up a little.”
“Kiss it to make it better, then, and I will be happy.”
She glared at him. What pathetic kind of plea was that? “Soldiers do not kiss other soldiers to make their booboos better.”
He screwed up his face in disappointment. “But wives kiss their husbands better when the poor men have been wounded in battle with fierce, bloodthirsty Amazons.”
She took a quick look around. No one was in the courtyard. She leaned down and, under pretence of adjusting his dressings, planted a light kiss on his scratched belly. . Then, before she succumbed to the temptation to kiss him again, she knotted the lacings of his breeches together as best she could and pulled his jerkin shut. “There now. I thank you for the compliment you made me in calling me an Amazon, and I have paid in full for wounding you. Are you satisfied?”
He put his hands under his head and looked at her with a measure of triumph in his eyes. “You were worried that you had hurt me and you kissed me to make it better again. I knew you still had some semblance of a true woman about you.”
His idea of true womanhood was so narrow and unenlightened that she wanted to shake him. Could she not be a woman and a soldier both at once? “I was concerned that I had disabled my mentor, that is all. Who but you can teach me all I need to know?” She swatted him lightly on the shoulder as she squatted next to him on the dusty ground. “Get up, you lazy lump. I’ve done bandaging you now. Besides, it was only a scratch and we have work to do.”
He didn’t move. “Kiss me again first.”
He was teasing her and she didn’t know what to do with him. “Why should I do that?” she temporized, not moving any closer to him, but not moving away either.