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

by Leda Swann

  Just then, a huge commotion broke out behind them. Sophie turned her head to see the cause.

  A barrow cart had broken an axle and overturned just before the gates of the Bastille. The owner of the barrow was wringing his hands and wailing at the top of his voice. Apples were rolling everywhere to the delight of the street kids who scavenged a meager living under the shadow of the Bastille. With cries of glee they dashed in among the guards and horses to gather such an unforeseen treat into their grubby hands and pockets.

  The rolling apples under their hooves and the squealing children darting around their legs were too much for the horses. One by one they whinnied in panic and fear and reared up, depositing their riders on the ground. Those who managed to retain their seats were too busy trying to get their scared mounts under control to give chase.

  Lamotte hugged her to his side. “Hugh. It seems he has his uses after all.”

  They put the spurs to their horses, dodging the crowds who had come to witness the fun. Several guards who had escaped the melee caused by Hugh’s cart load of apples gave chase.

  Miriame lifted her hat off her head and whirled it around her head as they rose at top speed through the narrow streets. “Wheeee,” she shouted at them above the noise of the galloping hooves. “This is almost as much as flying down the rope.”

  Sophie looked back at their pursuers. There were half a dozen of them now, riding after them as fast as they could go, caring little for the innocents who may get caught up in their furious path. “Shall we split up and divide the pursuit?” she shouted at her companions.

  Lamotte shook his head vehemently as he galloped along. “I will not let you out of my sight, wife. You seem to get into trouble the instant I turn my back on you.”

  Miriame waved her hand in a gesture of farewell. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone then,” she called with a grin on her face. “Until later. Don’t worry if you get yourselves caught. I’d come to your rescue just for the sake of another wild ride down that rope.”

  With a quick twist of her reins, she disappeared down a side street. Two of the guards wheeled around to follow her. The other four kept up their dogged pursuit.

  Through the streets they went, their sole aim to lose the guards so they could make their way unmolested to their nominated meeting place. Sophie started to get worried as the chase went on through the darkness until the sky was pinkening with the approaching dawn, with no sign that the guards were flagging.

  One of their pursuers gave a cry and went down, felled by a missile thrown at his head. It looked suspiciously like an apple. Hugh must still be on the case, Sophie thought with glee.

  Through the streets they went, making their way slowly towards the marketplace. The market was thronged with early morning shoppers. They picked their way among them as fast as they were able.

  There was a crash behind them as another pursuer went down, felled by a barrow stand accidentally kicked over by his comrade’s horse. Only two were left now.

  The day was breaking and the sky becoming dangerously light. They could not allow their pursuers to see their faces in the clear light of day or they would be doomed. Sophie looked at Lamotte. “Now?”

  He reached into the saddle bags behind him and drew out two large gourds. Sophie reached behind her and drew out two of her own. They were heavy in her hands. Gripping her horse tightly with her knees, she unplugged the stoppers and threw the leaking gourds over her shoulder. Within moments, a thick, slippery, treacherous oil slick covered the ground behind her.

  A barrow cart trundled by its owner slid out of control into the path of the guards. Seeing their quarry escaping them, they took a desperate chance and tried to leap over the impediment. The horses’s hooves could get no purchase of the slippery ground. The lead horse slid on the oil and its legs went from under him with a sickening crunch of broken bone.

  The last guard left on their tail saw the disaster that have befallen his comrade and tried to pull his horse up short from the jump, but he was too late. Pulled down at the last minute from the jump, the second horse, too, lost its footing on the treacherous cobblestones and crashed in a heap.

  As Sophie and Lamotte turned the corner out of the marketplace, all they could hear behind them was the screaming of the horses and the cursing of their pursuers at their double loss.

  The sky was bright and blue when they reached the house of the Widow Poussin where they had arranged to meet. Sophie had no love for her avaricious old landlady, but her old attic chamber had proven a perfect bolt hole for Hugh of Coventry to hide in. As a lodger in a respectable boarding house, he would attract no undue attention to himself.

  Wiping her hands on her greasy apron, the Widow Poussin herself shuffled outside to meet them as they dismounted, greeting them with an unpleasant grin that showed her teeth rotted down to the yellow stumps. “The others are waiting for you upstairs, if you please.”

  Sophie did not like the way the woman’s eyes gleamed with a fearful gold fever as she watched them with her beady eyes or the way she wrung her hands together under the pretext of wiping them. She felt a cold shiver run down her back as the widow bobbed a curtsey at them and held the door open for them to enter. Old Widow Poussin was not usually so welcoming.

  She stopped Lamotte with one hand on his arm as he strode towards the stairs. All was not right here. She could smell fear and lust together on the old woman’s breath.

  “Go upstairs and fetch them for me, would you,” she said to the Widow, tossing a small silver coin at her. “My legs are too stiff from riding to manage the stairs.”

  Lamotte looked at her with a curious eye and opened his mouth to speak. She silenced him with a finger laid to her lips. “All is not right,” she whispered soft in his ear. “I suspect a trap.”

  As she had suspected, the Widow’s face grew black at her request. “Step inside and fetch them yourself,” she grumbled, as she tucked the coin into her skinny bodice and scuttled back into the doorway. “I am no maidservant to a couple of traitors.”

  So, that was the way the wind blew, Sophie thought as she reached wearily for her dagger. Their quest was over, they had failed in their mission, and they had been betrayed at the last. She was tired to the bottom of her soul, but there was no help for it. They would have to fight their way out once more and hope that they could win through one last time.

  Lamotte was on the Widow before she had taken more then a couple of steps. “Where are my friends?” he said, his dagger at her neck.

  The Widow stood stock still, her face white and shaking. “Don’t kill me, Monsieur,” she gabbled, spittle forming at the corners of her mouth in her agitation to get the words out fast enough and avoid the blade of his knife. “Don’t kill me and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  He took the edge of the knife away from her throat so she would calm down enough to answer him. “I’m listening.”

  “They’re upstairs, just like I told you. Both of them.” Removed from immediate danger, her voice had regained its truculence.

  He gave Sophie an exasperated look and pressed the knife back against the hag’s neck. “Who is up there with them?”

  She shivered. “I don’t know who they are, honest to God I don’t. I’ve never seen them afore in all me life.”

  “Try a little harder.” His voice held a silky menace. “You can do better than that.”

  Sophie turned away. She did not like to see the poor old woman bullied, even though she had blithely tried to send them to their deaths. Only the thought of Miriame and Hugh in danger prevented her from putting a stop to the interrogation. A few moments of fear might enable them to save two lives.

  The old woman’s shoulders slumped – her resistance finally broken. “Guards. Sent by the King.”

  “How many?”

  “Five.”

  “Who are they after?”

  “They wanted the English spy – and anyone who helped him.”

  “How did they know where to come?”<
br />
  She gave a convulsive swallow and was silent.

  He pressed a little harder with his knife so the blade just nicked her skin.

  “Me,” the hag shrieked at the feel of the knife. “I told them to come here.”

  “Ah, I thought as much.”

  “Word on the street was that the King would pay royally for news of an English spy. I’m a poor old woman, Monsieur,” she whined, “with nobody to take care of me in my old age. I have to look after myself because no one else will. I needed the money, and he was only an Englishman. They paid me two whole pistoles in gold to know where he was hiding.”

  “Two pistoles for betraying a man’s life?” Having gotten what he needed from her, Lamotte took his knife away with a shrug. She was no danger to him any more. “You were robbed. The King would have paid two thousand for such news.”

  “Two thousand?” The old woman’s voice was laced with abject misery. She didn’t even seem to notice that the knife had gone from her neck. “He would have paid me two thousand gold pistoles?” She held her hands out beseechingly. “Tell me that you are mocking me. Tell me that you are making fun of a poor old woman with one foot in her grave. He would have paid me two thousand pistoles?”

  “Or more.”

  They left the hag in the doorway wringing her hands with a look of despair on her face. “Two thousand pistoles or more?” she was repeating over to herself in accents of deepest grief. “How could I throw away such riches?”

  Up the stairs they ran as quietly as they could, the soles of their boots making a muffled thwack on the wooden stairs.

  The door to Sophie’s old chamber was shut, with only the soft shuffle of anxious feet and the noise of breathing to give away the presence of the soldiers inside.

  Sophie drew her sword, hefting it lightly in her hand. Lamotte looked at her and she nodded.

  With a rush, they burst in at the door.

  Hugh was tied to a chair in a corner, his hands behind his back. Five guards surrounded him, weapons in their hands.

  The sudden attack took them by surprise. Two of them were disarmed and wounded in the first charge before they knew what was happening, and lay groaning on the floor, but the other three had time enough to collect their wits before Sophie and Lamotte were on them.

  “Where is Miriame?” Sophie called to Hugh, as she fought off one of her attackers with desperate sword strokes.

  Hugh shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t seen her.”

  There was a crash from up above them, and through the skylight in the roof jumped Miriame, her face aglow with the light of battle. “Was somebody looking for me?”

  All five combatants stopped for a second to stare at the apparition. A second was all she needed to leap to Hugh and cut his bonds with a slash of her dagger. He jumped to his feet, a knife magically appearing in his hand.

  The odds were now tipped the other way, in favor of the conspirators. There were four of them against three guards, and they were fighting for their lives.

  With a frightened squeal, the guard nearest the door jumped through and ran off down the stairs, his boots clattering noisily as he ran. The remaining two guards looked at the fierce faces in front of them, and threw down their weapons. “We surrender.”

  Miriame looked disappointed at the cessation of hostilities. “Can I kill them?”

  The guards looked pale. The younger of them started to tremble and opened his mouth to beg for mercy. The older guard jabbed him sharply in the stomach with his elbow, and the younger one shut his mouth again, a look of abject misery on his face.

  Sophie shook her head. “No more killing.”

  Miriame grumbled in her sleeve and glared at the prisoners, but she put her sword back in its scabbard.

  Tie ‘em up,” Lamotte ordered Hugh. “I’ve no wish to see them dead, but they can stay here until we are well out of their reach.”

  Hugh gathered up the loose pieces of rope that had recently been on his wrists and tied their hands behind their backs and their ankles together. He rubbed his wrists together with a grimace as he did so. “I’ll tie them as tightly as they tied me, the whoremongering French bastards,” he said, as he pulled the knots tight. “I hope to God they won’t be able to lift a sword for three days together once they win free again.”

  The two wounded guards lay on the floor still, groaning, one of them with a nasty cut to his thigh which was bleeding all over the floor. Sophie did not like to leave them there untended. She bent down over the badly-wounded guard and hastily tied up his wound so that it no longer bled. He mumbled his thanks. “I will send a leech to you anon,” she said. “You will live.”

  Half an hour later, they reined in their horses and came to a stop outside the gates of Paris. The countryside stretched before them – an open land.

  “Where to now?” Sophie asked. Where indeed could she go? Paris was no longer safe for her. She had nowhere to go but to the Camargue, to live among the ghosts of her family. Reluctantly she turned to face the south – to admit her defeat and desolation. She had failed in her quest. Her brother’s name would die an undeserved death, and she would live a woman again.

  Hugh sniffed the breeze from the west. “If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine that I can smell the sea. I am to England by the shortest way to tell the King the sad news of his sister. You may all come with me, if you have a mind to. France may be too hot to hold you now, but King Charles will welcome you in England for your efforts to save the princess.”

  Settle in England and serve the English King instead of King of France? Sophie shot a sideways glance at Lamotte, who was frowning slightly. She did not think she could bear to leave beautiful France for a cold, remote island kingdom. Besides, she could not leave Lamotte behind without the hope ever of seeing him again. She loved him too well for that.

  Miriame turned her horse around to face back the way she had come. “I am French through and through - England is not the place for me. I am back to Paris.”

  Her friend was brave as well as foolish. “You are not scared of the King? That he will put you under sentence of death?”

  “I’ve been under sentence of death for as long as I can remember – for picking pockets mostly. I’m not going to let a little thing like that stop me from being a Musketeer. Besides, the King does not know my name, and his guards barely caught the merest glimpse of my face. I shall be perfectly safe. And you, Sophie? What shall you do?”

  She looked at her husband in misery. How could she bear to leave him now that the time had come for them to part? “I do not know.”

  Lamotte shook his reins and his mare flicked her ears in acknowledgement. “I have nothing left to hold me in Paris. I have resigned my commission and angered the King so that he will never forgive or forget.”

  “To England then?” suggested Hugh.

  He shook his head. “I have long wanted to show my new wife my estates in Burgundy. It would be a good time to visit, I feel. The peaches in the orchard will be nicely ripe. Besides, the Duke of Burgundy is an honorable man, and I wager he will not say nay to a couple of King’s guards joining his household. Will you come with me, Sophie, and serve the Duke? Come with me as my companion? And as the wife of my heart.”

  He was offering her the third way when she had least expected it. He was offering her life – the life that she wanted to live. “You would stay married to a soldier then?”

  “I would stay married to you, Sophie, whether you be a soldier or no. I love you.”

  Sophie looked into his eyes and saw what she had never hoped or expected to see - the love he carried for her in his heart. A love that mirrored her own. “I love you too, Ricard Lamotte, husband of my heart. Yes, I will come with you to Burgundy, be your wife and serve the Duke, with all my heart.”

  ◆◆◆

  Read on for a bonus excerpt from A Lady Betrayed the second book in the Musketeers series.

  Spoiled Courtney Ruthgard gave her heart - and much more - to a dashing Musketeer in
the service of the King, only to have him turn on her and arrest her father. Her solution? Infiltrate the King's Guard and take revenge on him.

  Pierre's greatest regret is the woman he betrayed - on the direct order of the King himself. The arrival of Courtney's young cousin in the Guard allows him to unleash his painful secrets. But when a dangerous rebellion throws them into the fray together, he learns that his comrade is none other than the lady he betrayed, and he would do anything to prove to her that his heart has always been true.

  Courtney held her arms up in the air as her maidservant dropped the yellow gown over her head, taking care not to crease the delicate silk as it was lowered gingerly over her body.

  She stooped slightly and looked at herself critically in the looking glass that hung from the back of her dresser.

  Her corset was tight, but not uncomfortably so. Her dress would barely do up at the back with her corset as loose as this. She could make her waist seem a good half inch thinner were she to try a little harder. “Lace me tighter, Suzanne,” she instructed her maid.

  “Yes, miss.”

  The maid tugged and tugged at the laces until Courtney was satisfied. That was better - much better. She could scarcely breathe now. Her waist looked as thin as that of a child of seven and her breasts, forced up by the tight corset, made a respectable cleavage.

  She tugged at the neck of her dress, pulling it ever so slightly lower to make the most of her small curves. She would never have a cleavage to be particularly proud of, but tightly-laced corsets gave her sufficient bosom not to be ashamed to be seen out in company.

  With nimble fingers, the maidservant did up the multitude of buttons that ran the length of Courtney’s back. She turned this way and that in front of the speckled glass. With her corsets tightly laced, the gown fitted her like a glove, the smooth silk sliding over her body like a shimmering waterfall of sunshine.

  She shook the lace cuffs down past her elbows with a frisson of triumphant satisfaction. The lace was real Brussels lace which her father had obtained for her at great expense – it had cost as much as an entire new gown just for a few luscious yards. She had loved it the moment she saw it on the counter of her favorite draper’s shop, the delicate white webbing looped and coiled in waves of fine temptation. Her father had proved an easy mark when she went to him a-begging. He loved to see her finely dressed.