On My Lady's Honor (Secrets of the Musketeers Book 1)

by Leda Swann

  His wife was surely not thinking of going into the Bastille to rescue a prisoner with only a single companion to help her. “I will not let you go alone.”

  “Sophie will be safe enough inside the Bastille.”

  He glared at the Englishman. “She is not your wife. I will go with her or she will not go.”

  “She has no need of an escort to help her get inside, but both of them will need help to escape the guards once they are out again. I will take Henrietta away. Let you look to the safety of your wife and her companion.

  “It seems like we do not have a second to lose. Ladies, your costumes, please.”

  Sophie and the snake grabbed a collection of tattered garments and began to disrobe as Hugh pored over his chicken scratchings once more.

  He watched scandalized as Sophie and her friend transformed themselves in seconds to women of the street, tattered, ragged and world-weary. “What are you intending?”

  Hugh walked around them, inspecting with the eye of a true connoisseur. “Take your neckline a little lower,” he said, as he tugged on Sophie’s bodice until her breasts were nearly ready to spill out. “Try not to appear nervous. You’re a tart now – a cheap streetwalker. You’ve seen it all, done it all before. You’re after the money – remember that. A gold coin that will pay the rent and put food in your belly for another day.”

  He looked appraisingly at the snake. “Perfect – you’ve got the look exactly right. Greed and distrust in equal parts. Just try not to look as though you will bite the man’s head off if he got too close. It will put off your potential customers like nothing else could.”

  They had not answered his question. He stood in front of Sophie, blocking out her light. “What are you intending to do dressed in that garb?”

  She looked up at him with those blue, blue eyes and his heart turned over in his chest. When had she become so dear to him? How had she pierced through to the innermost core of his heart, this unlikely woman with her fierce ways and her determined will? “To rescue Henrietta – the best way I know how.”

  “That is the task of a soldier. You are dressed as a woman.”

  She smiled into his face. “The better to put them off their guard. They will not expect any tricks from a woman. Women do not fight, do they?”

  She was throwing his own words back in his face, the minx. He would kiss her if they were not in such a confounded hurry.

  Hugh buckled on a knife under his jacket. “Don’t waste your breath arguing. Time is too short to think of another plan.”

  Sophie smiled at him and his heart turned over in his breast at her brave beauty. “My job is only half done. There will be little danger in it for Miriame and me. You cannot come with us or you will spoil our charade.”

  He did not like to leave Sophie to break into the prison without his aid, but she was a soldier and a Musketeer. He had trained her as best he could. Whether or not he liked the idea, he had no right to stop her from doing her duty as she saw fit.

  Miriame gave a mocking smile. “If you are afraid, Monsieur Musketeer, leave it to others who are not.”

  No one would ever call him a coward. He would not leave Sophie to endanger herself alone but he would protect her, even in the shadow of the Bastille. “What would you have me do to help?”

  Hugh grinned at him, showing a row of even white teeth. “You can hold the horses outside and be ready for when we need you for the escape. Come with me and I will explain the plan to you on the way.”

  Sophie’s insides were achurn with nervous excitement as the cheap hired coach trundled along in the deepening twilight, the poor tired horse clopping over the cobbles with weary legs. She was about to face a battle of a different kind, where her wits and not her strength with a sword would be her best ally.

  Miriame looked as calm and detached as ever. “No need to be nervous,” she advised. “Men are ruled by what lies between their legs. Pull your bodice a little lower, show them some more bosom and a bit of leg and they won’t have a drop of blood left in their head to think with.”

  They passed Lamotte, pulling along a street barrow. She hardly recognized him in the failing light with his hair matted and filthy, his face smudged with dirt and wearing Hugh’s tattered clothes and thick peasant’s boots. It gave her some measure of comfort to know that he would be waiting for them outside, ready to whisk them off and out of danger as soon as they had rescued Henrietta. She had put her life in his hands before, and he had saved her. She felt secure and protected whenever he was around. She only hoped that he would not run into any trouble as he watched and waited for them.

  She clutched Miriame’s hand tightly as they alighted in front of the Bastille. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said to Miriame as she looked up at the forbidding gray walls in front of her. They were enough to send a chill though the bones of even the most stout-hearted person. “I will think none the worse of you if you pulled out now.”

  “And give up the reward that Hugh has promised me if we are successful? Enough money to keep my belly full for a year or more?” Miriame shook her head. “I think not. If you knew me better you would not waste your breath suggesting such a thing.”

  The guards leered at them through the darkness with greedy eyes as they banged on the door.

  “We wos sent for,” whined Miriame in a voice that Sophie had never heard her use before. “The Guv wants us.”

  One of the guards sniggered as he held his lantern so that the light shone right into their eyes. “What could he want with a pair of dirty slatterns like you?”

  Sophie tugged her bodice down a little lower. Miriame was right about the power of naked flesh. The eyes of both guards were fixated on her now. “We have special talents, if you know what I mean.”

  Miriame cackled. “Naughty boys like to be punished, and the Guv’s been a very naughty boy lately.”

  The guards sniggered again, but they unbolted the gate and let them in.

  Sophie felt her breathing quicken as the gate slammed shut behind them. They were trapped inside the most evil prison in France – and of their own free will, too. There was no turning back now. She would rescue Henrietta or die trying.

  After a short but vicious argument, one of the guards left the gate to escort them to the Governor’s apartments. The other stayed at the gate with a bad grace, spitting on the ground and muttering curses at their departing backs.

  Their escort dawdled his way through the passages. “Is the Guv in a hurry to see you?”

  Sophie wiped the sweat off her palms surreptitiously on her tattered dress. If the worst came to the worst, they both had daggers within easy reach and there were two of them against one of him. Stringing along a lecherous guard had seemed easy enough while they were simply sitting around a table talking about it. It was a lot harder to do for real, when the stone walls of the prison were all around her and the scent of prison misery corrupted the very air she was breathing. “You wanna quickie afore we go in to him, eh soldier?”

  Miriame sidled up to him, took his arm in hers and ran her free hand over the bulge in his groin with an appreciative coo. “I ain’t never been in here before. Show us where you keep all the prisoners and Polly ‘n me – we’ll give you one for free, right Poll?”

  He licked his lips with greedy anticipation. “What about the governor? Won’t he be expecting you?”

  Sophie sidled up to him on the other side and took hold of his other arm. “He can wait on us for a bit. Won’t do him no harm.”

  With a woman on each side, the guard led them through the passages, opening peepholes in every dungeon they passed to show them the human misery that lay behind each door. Sophie felt her heart sink with every chamber she looked into. Human misery she saw aplenty, but there was no sign of the woman she had come to rescue.

  “Aint you got no one famous in here?” Miriame whined after they’d gone through a half-dozen corridors with no sight nor sign of the imprisoned Duchesse. “We wanna see the famous prisoners,
don’t we, Poll.”

  The guard hesitated.

  “Show us the famous ones you got, and Poll and me will do you both together, just like the Guv likes, eh, Poll? A special favor for a special favor.”

  He scratched his belly with a thoughtful air. “I got one real famous prisoner I could show you. But you’d better not tell a word of it to no one else, or tell who showed you, or I’ll be strung up by me neck.”

  Sophie held her breath with excitement. Maybe their plan was going to work. “We won’t breath a word of it. Not a word, we promise.”

  Still he hesitated. “I’m risking my neck for you,” he grumbled. “You sure you’ll make it worth my while?”

  Miriame gave her evil grin that made Sophie shudder as she rubbed up against him like a cat. “You’ll die a happy man.”

  Another guard was stationed outside the door – a young guard with a pale face and a guilty cast to his countenance. He did not look happy to see them as they rounded the corner. “What brings you here?”

  Their guard gave an awkward grin. “Visitors for the Princesse.”

  The Princesse. Sophie wanted to shout with joy. They had the right cell. Now they just had to get her out of it, and she would be free. Well, almost free, They still had to get her out of the Bastille, and out of Paris, and out of France. At any rate, they were making good progress.

  Henrietta’s guard did not look convinced. “Harlots come to mock at their betters, more like it. Be off with ye. I have orders to let no one near her.”

  Miriame sidled up to him and put one grubby hand on his chest. “We just wants to take a peep.”

  Had she not been listening for it with all her night, Sophie would have missed the telltale clink that signified success. Miriame had lifted the keys to the dungeon right off the guard’s belt, and without him suspecting a thing.

  He pushed her hand off him with a look of distaste. “Be off with ye, ye slatternly drabtails, or I’ll beat ye off with the flat of my sword.”

  Voices. Sophie heard voices from the other side of the door. There was a cry as if a woman was in pain, and then silence. They had to act now – if they were not already too late. There was no time to lose. With a quick flick, she drew her knife from beneath her skirts and slashed at the guard’s right knee. She had had enough of killing. She wanted only to immobilize him, not kill him.

  He gave a bellow of rage as he fell to the floor, unable to stand.

  “Hush your mouth,” Sophie barked at him, no longer needing to play the seductress, “or I’ll slit your throat instead.”

  His noise stopped abruptly in mid-bellow as if by magic.

  Miriame had her guard on the floor, bleeding from a wound in his side. “Who is in there with Madame Henrietta?” she demanded, her knife at his neck.

  “Priests,” Henrietta’s guard babbled, his face white with fear and guilt. “I felt sorry for her. They said she had called for them and they were there to comfort her in her distress.”

  “Fool,” Sophie said, as she caught the keys that Miriame tossed at her. She was deadly afraid that they had come too late to be of any use. “You have let in her assassins.”

  The guard groaned with fear and pain. “Do not kill me, I beg of you. I was only trying to help a soul in need.”

  She unlocked the door with shaking fingers, fearing what she would find on the other side.

  Two black-robed figures rushed at them as soon as the door swung open. Sophie had no qualms about killing hired assassins. She plunged her dagger deep into the belly of one and he fell with a gurgle of blood in his throat. Miriame, on her feet again with an agile leap, slit the throat of the other before he knew what had hit him.

  The body of a woman dressed in tattered red velvet lay on the cold stone floor. Sophie ran to her side. “Madame,” she said urgently, shaking the woman’s shoulder gently. “We have come to deliver you from this place.”

  Henrietta opened her eyes just a slit. Her face was pale and contorted with pain. “Those false priests have already freed me. I am on my way to Heaven.”

  Miriame wiped the blood off her dagger and stuck in back into her bodice. “What ails you? You are not wounded that I can see.”

  Henrietta closed her eyes again as if the effort of keeping them open was too much for her. “Not wounded. Poisoned.”

  “Your brother sent us to free you and bring you back to England. You must not disappoint him.”

  A smile spread across her white, anguished face. “Charles did not forget me, then? He sent someone for me?”

  “He did.”

  “Tell him that I love him and am sorry to leave him so. And tell the Comte…” Her voice faded away.

  “Tell the Comte what?” Sophie bent her head down to the dying woman.

  The words were a mere flicker of sound in the dying air. “Tell the Comte de Guiche that I loved him to my very last breath, and beyond.”

  “I will tell him.”

  “You promise?”

  “I swear it, on my word on honor.”

  “I am not sorry that I loved him.” Her hand fluttered for a moment in the air and then lay still. “I am sorry only that our love had to end.”

  Her throat rattled, a twist of pain crossed her features, and then she lay still.

  Too still.

  Chapter 11

  Sophie bowed her head for a moment. There was nothing more they could do for her.

  “Dead?”

  Sophie nodded.

  Miriame swore. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They had no need of their disguise now and voluminous skirts would only slow them down. With hasty fingers they ripped off their skirts and tossed them to one side. Clad once again in the breeches of their more familiar disguise, they leaped over the bodies of the false priests and the fallen guards and took to their heels as fast as they could go.

  To the courtyard they raced as if they wings on their heels. Behind them they could hear a hue and cry start up. They had mere moments up their sleeve.

  The courtyard was deserted, with only a few smoky torches casting a flickering light onto the blackness that surrounded them. So far their luck was holding up. They ran to the wall where the rope should be waiting for them. They searched the wall on either side with desperate eyes.

  No rope.

  Behind them, a dozen guards with drawn swords rushed into the courtyard.

  Miriame swore again, worse than before. “I should have slit Lamotte’s throat too, while I had the chance. He has failed us.”

  Sophie took her dagger in her hand. They stood no chance against a bevy of well-armed guards, but she would not simply give in. “We’ll have to fight our way out and hope to slip by them in the dark.”

  A whistling noise made her look up. An arrow attached to a length of line hurtled down mere inches from where she was standing. She stuck her dagger in her teeth and grabbed the line. Lamotte had not failed them after all. “Hold off the guards,” she cried as she pulled on the thin rope.

  Attached to the thin rope in her hands would be a length of thick rope. That rope was their ticket to freedom.

  The thin rope seemed endless as she pulled and pulled on it, looping lengths and lengths of it at her feet. Miriame danced around her, her sword flashing, keeping her from harm.

  Ah, there it was. Finally she could see it. With another burst of energy she pulled in the last lengths of thin line, until she felt the thickness of their savior in her hand.

  A grapnel was attached to the end. She gave three swift sharp tugs on the rope, followed by another three. “Jump on,” she yelled to Miriame, as she felt the rope start to move.

  The sharp ends of the grapnel bored into the soles of her boots as she balanced on it, holding on to the rope for dear life. With a leap, Miriame joined her.

  The guards stared in openmouthed wonder as the rope was pulled higher and higher into the air, away from them on the ground out of their sight into the darkness above, until they were standing on the topmost battlements of the
Bastille’s outer wall.

  Below them, the guards were running for the gate to catch them on the other side.

  Sophie hooked the grapnel over the edge of the battlement and tugged on it firmly. It held tight.

  She unbuckled the belt from her waist and swallowed nervously. “Ready?”

  Miriame grinned. “This looks like fun.”

  The rope was stretched taut all the way from the topmost battlements to the street barrow on the road below, where Lamotte waited with the horses who had so bravely hauled them to the topmost tower of the Bastille.

  Sophie flung her belt over the rope, wrapped the ends of the belt around her wrists, said a brief but heartfelt prayer, and flung herself over the battlements into the air below.

  It was almost like flying, she thought, as she plummeted towards the ground at an alarming speed.

  A hay wagon loomed out of the darkness in front of her. Her landing would be softer than she had hoped. She let go of the belt and slammed into the hay with such force that it knocked the breath from her body.

  A moment later, Miriame fell beside her. “Whee, that was fun,” she spluttered. “Let’s go up and do it again.”

  Sophie shuddered as she reached overhead and cut their lifeline. The cut end whipped back like a snake, and hung twitching against the prison wall. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Lamotte, waiting with their horses, had seen their wild ride down from the battlements.

  He vaulted down from his horse and gathered Sophie into his arms. She ran there willingly, feeling as if she had come home. “You are not hurt?”

  She shook her head. A little breathless maybe, and her arms would surely ache in the morn from her wild ride, but that was little enough. “No.”

  He brushed hay out of her hair with a hand so tender that it brought tears to her eyes. “Henrietta?”

  “Dead. Murdered a mere instant before we could get to her.”

  He hugged her closer. “I care not, so long as you are safe.”