Thief of Hearts

by Leda Swann

  “Lucky for me, not so lucky for you. And did you also rob me of everything I owned, down to the boots off my feet, as I lay in the gutter.”

  “Not me. Andre threatened that he’d send us to the gallows himself if we was found robbing you of aught but the letters. He didn’t want us to be caught with anything that would point the finger at us.

  “But we got the wrong letters so the Cardinal sent us out again to have another go at it. Only Andre is dead and Henri has disappeared and Lavar was taken up a moon ago for killing a whore so there were only the three of us left. And your goddamned friend has crippled me and the others, pox on them, have left me here to die.” He spat on the ground again. “Got rot their souls, the yellow-bellied sons of whores. I hope the Cardinal throws them to the dogs for what they’ve done to me.”

  “The Cardinal would have killed me for my letters?”

  The man nodded.

  Metin got to his feet. He had as much information as the man could give him – and as much as he needed to protect himself.

  Miriame moved to Marin’s side and poked the man on the cobbles with the toe of her boot. She almost regretted not killing the filthy louse. Almost. “Then the Cardinal is more of a fool that I gave him credit for. And I give you leave to tell him so, with my regards.”

  “It’s a man with a death wish who’d be a-telling him that,” the wounded man muttered. “I’m too fond of my skin to be heard saying words like that.”

  “Then just tell him he’s got the wrong man.”

  The man stared. “I aren’t that daft. Jean-Paul Metin, of the King’s Musketeers was the one we were to rob. We ain’t got the wrong one, for sure.”

  She gave a mocking bow. “Please, let me introduce myself. I am Jean-Paul Metin of the King’s Musketeers, just as this gentleman here is. And I have the letters you want. Pity it is for you that I shall go home and burn them now so they can cause no further trouble to me or my friend here. The Cardinal will never get them now, even were he to murder us both.”

  “What did you do that for?” Metin asked, as they left the man groaning in the street. “They’ll be after the both of us now.”

  The boy shook his head. “Not now that we know what they’re after. The Cardinal will give it up as a lost cause. His only hope of getting the letters was to take them when you were unprepared for him. Now that you know what he wants, it’s an easy matter to get rid of them.”

  He shook his head. “Not as easy as all that. I don’t have them any more.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I have them.”

  He’d known that the boy was the thief all along, but it seemed churlish to charge him with it just after the boy had saved his life. “It figures,” was all he said.

  They walked along in silence for some yards. “You have changed your mind about going to see the Countess after all?” he said at last. “Is there something about being in danger of your life that puts your mind off making love to her?”

  The boy shook his head. “My mind was never on that in the first place.”

  The boy was cocky enough still. “If you knew what kind of a woman she was---”

  He wasn’t allowed to finish. “I do know what kind of a woman she is. I am in no danger from her, I assure you.”

  “You have lied to me so many times before. How can I believe you now?”

  The boy stopped in the middle of the street, his eyes blazing with impatience. “God damn and blast you, but I am sick to death of being accused of things I am not guilty of. Heaven knows I am plenty guilty in other matters, but in this matter I am innocent.”

  “Prove it to me.”

  The boy tossed off his jacket. “Damn you, I will prove it to you, right now. I had thought of telling you a better time, but I cannot wait. As he spoke, he began to unbutton his shirt, fixing Metin with a determined eye. “If you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone, you are dead meat. I swear, i will hunt you down and kill you myself, before the Cardinal’s men get another go.”

  He put his hand over his heart. “I will not betray your confidence.”

  The boy slid his dagger out of his boot. “That will be just as well for you,” he said, punctuating each word with a shake of his dagger. “Believe you me, I will make you rue the day you would betray my secret to the world.” Then he held the dagger up high and ripped through his undergarments with one long cut.

  Metin stood and stared. His mouth gaped open. He could not speak for shock. His head swam as he tried to grasp the reality of what he could see in front of him. There was no doubting it. His eyes could not lie.

  It was not a boy who stood in front of him, chest bare to the world, but a woman.

  Chapter 8

  Miriame had to stifle a laugh at the look on Jean-Paul Metin’s face. He looked as stunned as a mullet, his eyes wide and staring just like the dead fish lying stiffly on the fishseller’s stall.

  She had not meant to tell him in the street like this, but she could take no more of his absurd accusations, and she was tired of having to defend herself every time they met. She had no wish to hide behind her breeches any longer. It were better than he know the full truth of her at last, whatever he thought of her for her masquerade.

  She shook her newly loosened breasts at him to emphasize her point. The air was freezing cold on her exposed skin, making her nipples tighten into hard peaks, and he stared at them as if he could not tear his eyes away. “I am not interested in making love to the Countess,” she said clearly, so there could be no more misunderstandings. “I have never been interested in making love to her. She is not exactly my type. Do you believe me now?”

  He wiped his hand over his brow and went back to staring at her breasts. “Ah, yes, I suppose I do.” His voice came out as hardly more than a croak.

  “Good.” She pulled the two halves of her shirt together and began to button them together again. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, I can put my evidence away again before they get frostbite.”

  “Who are you?” He had raised his eyes to her face again and was looking at her as if seeing her properly for the first time.

  Miriame flung her jacket over her shoulders to stop herself from shivering. Her skin still felt like ice. “Can we talk more in front of a nice warm fire. Preferably over a glass of wine? I’m tired, it’s dark, and I’m getting cold.”

  “A tavern?”

  She raised her eyebrows at his stupidity. “Do you think I am going to discuss my sex in a public place where anyone might hear? Have you not got a bottle of wine in your apartments, and a landlady who can set you a fire? Then we can talk in private without fear of being overheard.”

  “My apartments?” His voice was hesitant. “If you think it fitting for a woman in your situation to visit me there.”

  “Fitting?” She barked out a short laugh. “I’ve masqueraded as a man for all these weeks. Do you think I have never visited a man in his apartments before? For God’s sake don’t turn prudish on me now.”

  He looked at her strangely. “You have been a woman all along? From the day you joined the Musketeers in my name?”

  She shrugged. “From the day I was born, actually.”

  “You do not have a brother?”

  She shook her head.

  He still looked disbelieving. “You have never had a brother?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “It has been you all along.” He sounded as though he could hardly believe it himself. “Just you all along.”

  “Just me.”

  “I will not hurt you if we go to my chambers,” he said. “I just thought that you might not feel quite comfortable---”

  “I know full well you won’t hurt me. I have just saved your life, remember?” She slid her knife out of her boot again, tossed it in a glittering arc in the dark of the night, caught it again and slid it back into her boot in one easy movement. “Besides, my friend here,” and she patted her boot, “is th
e very best assurance I can have of my safety.”

  He fell silent at that and strode off down the road, jerking his head at her as an indication for her to follow him. She fell into step beside him, stretching her legs to match his long strides. God, but now that the danger was past and her secret was out, she was bone weary. She hoped he did not live far away.

  He did not speak to her and his face was set as if in stone. She sneaked a peek at him as they strode along, but his expression did not change. He still looked stunned, but a new emotion had been added to those already carved on his face. His disbelief had been replaced with fury. He looked as angry as she had ever seen him before.

  His apartments were modest enough, though larger than hers. In silence Jean-Paul lit a taper at the embers of the fire and stuck it into the stand on the mantelpiece. Miriame looked around her in the flickering half-light that it shed, curious to see how he lived.

  A truckle bed covered with warm, homespun woolen blankets leaned up against the wall in one corner, and a straight-backed wooden chair stood in front of the fireplace. Miriame thought of the luxury of the velvets and tapestries of Courtney’s apartments with a sigh. She had been spoiled lately, no doubt about it. Jean-Paul’s rooms simply could not compare.

  The chamber was warmer than the weather outside, but it was still chilly, and she was no longer warm from the effort of fighting, or of matching Jean-Paul’s long strides. She hugged her arms around herself to stop herself from shivering. Not so long ago, she would never have even noticed the chill in the air. Easy living had made her soft.

  Jean-Paul still did not look at her. He knelt in front of the embers of the fireplace and coaxed them into life again with a few strong breaths and some well-placed sticks of wood. When the sticks were burning merrily, he added some larger logs.

  Miriame sat forward in her chair and held out her hands to the welcome warmth. The domesticity of the scene was unfamiliar, but comforting – Jean-Paul squatting in front of her at his chores, the firelight flickering from below on his face and the candlelight shining from above on his golden-blond hair. She shivered as she watched his deft fingers pile on the last logs of wood, but this time it was not from the cold.

  If only he would turn his head and look at her. If only he would speak to her, telling her that he forgave her, that whatever she had done to him, he did not care.

  Her heart was beating so loudly she was scared that he would hear it. She knew only too well that the time for telling the truth, the whole truth, had finally arrived.

  How little she knew of this man, except that he was one of the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen, that he fought like the very Devil, and that he had been, and maybe even still was, despite all the words of love he had spoken in her own ears, in love with the pink and white Francine, mistress to the King.

  She had once gambled her life on his death. With the wound he was carrying, she’d thought she could not lose, but she had lost nonetheless.

  Now she was gambling her livelihood, if not her life again, on his forgiveness – a much more chancy thing. She had given him her secret – something she had sworn never to give to any man. If he was mean in spirit, she would not last much longer as a Musketeer. A word in the ear of the Captain and she would be dismissed and disgraced, if not hanged for horse thieving.

  The fire was beginning to send out real heat now, making her face red and flushed and warming the room to the very corners. Jean-Paul got up off his heels and sat on the end of the bed. There was no other chair in the room. He still did not look at her. “Who are you?” His words were abrupt and his tone less then friendly.

  She sighed. They were hardly the words of forgiveness she longed to hear, but she supposed they were a start. “Miriame Dardagny, also known as Jean-Paul Metin, Musketeer in the King’s Guards.”

  “I am Jean-Paul Metin. How did you come to steal my name?”

  “No doubt you have guessed already. I saw the men following you as you rode through Paris. I crept after, hoping that a few crumbs would come my way. I’d found no one else to rob that night and I was cold and hungry. They pulled you off your horse, took your letters, stabbed you, and melted away into the darkness.”

  His lip curled with disgust. “So you came to rob my corpse?”

  She felt a surge of anger at his disdain. He had never known hunger as she had known it. What gave him the right to set himself up in judgement against her? “I thought you were dead. Your money and your clothes were no use to you anymore.” Her voice was hard and cold. “Better they should keep me from starving or freezing to death on the streets than be buried with you. Besides, if I hadn’t taken them, chances are that the next person who came across your body lying in the street would not be so squeamish.”

  “But I was not dead. You robbed me anyway.” He put his head in his hands as if he could no longer bear the weight of it. “I suppose I am lucky that you did not knife me to make sure I would not trouble you.”

  It troubled her that he thought she had no heart. She did have feelings just like every other woman – she just didn’t give in to them very often. She could not afford to. “You were still breathing, but only just. I couldn’t bear to leave you lying there to die so I bandaged you up with a strip off one of the rags I was wearing, dumped your body on the back of your horse, and carted you off to a tavern.”

  “And then stole everything I owned.”

  She ignored his ingratitude. He did not realize the depths of fear she had had to conquer in order to rescue him, or that in saving his life she had endangered her own. “I knew the landlady of old. She had a heart buried in her breast somewheres, unlike most of them. Many’s the time she’d given me a crust of bread and some slops that she could’ve fed to her pigs to stop me from starving. I knew she’d look after you until you died and then see you were fittingly buried. You were dying. I could do no more for you.”

  He shifted uneasily on the bed at her description, but he did not look up. “How came you to steal my name?”

  She’d stolen a small fortune off him and he was worried about his name? “I read the letters you carried with you.”

  He raised his head at that and looked her straight in the eye, surprise written all over his face. “You read them yourself? You can read?”

  She was nettled at his tone. “I was not always a beggar and a thief,” she said, holding his gaze squarely with her own. “My mother taught me my letters when I was small and I can remember much of what she taught me. I could read enough of your letters to know that you had an introduction to the Musketeers.”

  “You turned soldier after reading my letters? You had no other reason but my letters?” He looked suspicious, as if she were not telling him everything.

  “I was sick of being cold and hungry, of risking my neck every day to steal enough food to keep myself alive. I was already used to pretending to be a boy – it was safer that none on the streets knew my real sex. Finding your body was like a gift to me from Heaven. I could not turn down such a chance to make a decent life for myself. I decided to be a soldier.”

  “You, a woman, turn soldier to make a better life for yourself? But you could not fight.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe not with a sword, but I have always carried a knife. I should not have lived long on the street if I did not.”

  For a moment his face softened into what almost looked like pity. “Living on the street was that bad?”

  Unbidden memories clawed at her mind. She did not want to remember just how bad it had been. She looked away from him and into the fire, concentrating on the flickering red of the flames as they licked against the logs of wood. “Think of your very worst nightmare, magnify your fear and disgust a thousand times and you still wouldn’t know what living on the streets was like. It was worse than you could imagine.” She did not want his pity – just his understanding.

  “And the gown? Did you steal that as well?” His face was as hard as granite again. “Were you laughing all the while as you made a
fool out of me as I poured my heart out to you?”

  Did he think she stole for fun or for the sake of her vanity? “I would not bother stealing a gown to wear. It was lent to me by a friend.”

  He shook his head incredulously. “I am supposed to believe that? After all the lies you have told me and all the thefts of which you have been guilty?”

  She’d lied and stolen plenty, right enough, but she didn’t need him to add more sins to her tally - particularly when she was innocent for once. “You saw me first on the steps of a church, in a wedding party, did you not?”

  “So?”

  “My comrade was getting married and wanted the two of us to be with her. I had no gown to wear. Neither, as it happens, did the bride. We both had to borrow one from the third of our party, who had gowns enough to spare.” Miriame grinned at the memory of Courtney’s closet full of silks and satins. “She was the only one of us three foolish enough to prefer gowns to breeches. Then you saw me at the church and did not recognize me as the Musketeer you wanted to fight. You saw me as a woman, and I decided I did not mind wearing a gown quite so much after all. My friend was glad to loan it to me...”

  “Your friends?” He shook his head in wonderment this time. “Do not tell me that they are men-women as well? Soldiers? Musketeers?”

  She would not confirm his suspicions. “What if they are? Surely you did not think that I am the only woman with enough spirit to carry off such a trick?”

  He had no answer to give her. “What will I do with you?” is all he said, as he gazed at her.

  Miriame took off her hat and tossed it beside her on the floor. She undid the leather thong that kept her hair tied at the nape of her neck, shook out her curls to loosen them and combed through them with her fingers to put them in some kind of order. Now was her chance to force him to see her as a woman -–as a desirable woman – not just as a woman who had deceived him. She would use every trick she knew to stop him from betraying her, to make him want her as she wanted him. “What do you want to do with me?”