On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (30 page)

Courtney’s accusing voice suddenly broke the comfortable silence.
 
“Why were you riding with such a scoundrel?
 
Did you not care what manner of man he was?”

Lamotte gave a snort of disgust.
 
“I was not so much riding with him as he was riding with me.
 
We were both after my delightful wife – on the King’s orders.
 
I was to stop her from completing her mission to England, and he and his erstwhile companion were to kill her once I had caught her.”

Sophie gasped, the smile well and truly wiped from her face with shock.
 
“The King wants me dead?”
 
Suddenly her mission to England took on a new and desperate gravity.
 
This was no mere adventure now to win her brother honor.
 
It had well and truly ceased to be a game of outwitting her husband in the race for England and become a matter of life and death.
 
Lamotte was in deadly earnest.
 
Her life, along with Henrietta’s, was at stake.

“So it would seem.
 
He certainly sent a pair of thugs out to do the deed.
 
He feared I lacked the stomach for it, so I believe.”

The King of France, the fount of all honor, had sent a pair of desperadoes, killers of the night, to murder her?
 
She never would have believed it.
 
Philippe of Orleans was right – his brother was a monster who had to be stopped.

The King would murder her, who sought only to save a woman who had refused him?
 
What worse deed would he do to Henrietta herself?
 
She shuddered to think.

“A pair of thugs?
 
What happened to the other one?
 
Where is he now?”

Lamotte grunted.
 
“Dead.
 
Your companion took care of that with a slash of his knife from ear to ear.”

Miriame.
 
Sophie gave a sudden gasp.
 
In the furor and sickness of killing a man, she had forgot about Miriame.
 
“And he is unharmed?”

Lamotte’s face was black and thunderous.
 
“Why should you care?
 
He is a scoundrel who deserves to be hanged from the yardarm.”

Sophie would not bow before his anger.
 
He was her husband, not her keeper.
 
She knew not how Miriame had managed to make an enemy of her husband.
 
His quarrels did not concern her.
 
“I care greatly, as it happens.”

“As do I,” Courtney chimed in.

Lamotte glared down at her.
 
“He is unhurt – as yet.
 
Until I find him again, that is.”

“So what are you going to do with us now?” Courtney asked wearily from her perch on the pommel of the saddle.
 
“I doubt that we can count on your manly honor to protect us.
 
If you are going to dispose of us as your King intended, why not do it right here and save me the bother of riding any further?
 
There’s no point in getting my arm set if you intend to kill me a moment later.”

Lamotte’s face was set as if in stone.
 
“The King may order me as he wishes, but I have honor enough not to harm either of you.
 
I am a Musketeer.
 
I do not make war on women.”
 

Sophie felt the heat of his gaze as he glared at her.

“Much as they might deserve it,” he added under his breath, looking straight at her still.

She looked him straight in the eye.
 
“I have done nothing but what my conscience demanded of me.
 
I shall live in honor, or I shall not live.”

He harrumphed at her, and they continued again through the fading light in silence.

Lamotte was relieved when they came to signs of habitation, a village big enough to boast at least a wise woman skilled in herbs, if not an apothecary.
 
He directed his step to the wise woman’s cottage, which lay on the outskirts of the hamlet, separated from the other shabby dwellings by several large fields.
 

He would prefer a barber surgeon at least, but beggars could not be choosers.
 
The night was becoming dark and cloudy, his mare was tired to the bone and the woman in his arms felt like a deadweight.
 
His one concern was to get her off his horse before she fell off in a faint.

He and Sophie stood to one side while the wise woman poked and prodded at Courtney’s arm, pronounced it a clean break, and proceeded to strap it to a board so that it would heal straight and she would not pain herself by moving it.

Courtney acquiesced in the treatment with a good grace for a woman, he supposed.
 
At least she did not scream or cry out, but bit her lip until it bled.
 
“You’ll have to rest here for a bit, dearie,” the woman said when she had done.
 
“That arm of yours needs a good rest to let it heal.
 
It will feel as weak as a newborn kitten when I unstrap it again in a few weeks, but with the grace of God, it will heal up and be as good as new.”

Courtney made a face through her pain.
 
“A month in this village with naught to wear but breeches?
 
Ugh – I wish I had broken my neck, not just my wrist.
 
Or at least I wish I had not left my gowns in Paris.”

The wise woman clucked her tongue. “Just a few days rest here, dearie, and you’ll be up and about again as good as new.
 
But there’ll be no riding for you for a month or more.”

Lamotte barely heard the words of the wise woman.
 
His mind was ticking over at a furious rate.
 
Gowns.
 
In Paris.
 
That was where he had seen her before – in a yellow gown, at Sophie’s side, when they had joined hands in wedlock at the door of the church.

And the dark-haired youth at the tavern – now he remembered where he had seen her before, too.
 
She was the second of Sophie’s attendants and had worn a red dress, with a bodice cut low enough so that her womanhood could never be in doubt.
 

A woman.
 
Of course.
 
That explained her trickery and devious nature, and the way she had so outfoxed him.
 
The Devil take him if ever a man could match a woman for cunning tricks.

He shook his head in disbelief.
 
“By God, there are three of you.”

The youth at the tavern who had shared a chamber with Sophie was a woman.
 
He should have guessed as much.
 
She was simply taunting him for the love of it, and to make him so blind with anger that he lost his cool head in a white-hot rage.
 
He should have trusted Sophie’s honor without question – he knew how much it meant to her.
 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sophie and her friend exchange a worried glance in the smoky yellow light of the rush tapers dotted sparsely around the tiny cottage.
 

“Three of us?” Sophie asked, her brow furrowed.
 

“Whatever are you talking about?” Courtney added with an air of nonchalance.

He grinned.
 
Their false puzzlement could not fool him any longer.
 
“Your comrade is a troublesome minx, but I am glad I shall not have to kill her after all.”

Night had fallen in earnest while Courtney’s arm was being set.
 
Sophie looked as though she were about to collapse with exhaustion, and he felt little better.
 
Whatever they were going to do, it would have to wait until the morn.

The wise woman made up a straw pallet for her patient on the floor of her cottage for the night, but there was no room for Sophie or him.
 
Neither was there any barn or shelter from the elements close by.
 
They would have to sleep out under the stars for the night.

He shouldered his bedroll and followed Sophie outside to the shelter of a pine tree, whose widespread branches and thick covering of needles would give them some protection from the night dew.

Without a murmur of complaint, Sophie lay down on the carpet of needles at the base of the tree to sleep, with naught but her clothes to cover her.

He shook his head at her staunchness, unrolled his blanket and spread it next to her.
 
“Come and share my blanket.
 
You’ll freeze else.”

She shook her head in the darkness, contrary to the last.
 
“I have suffered worse.”

He lay down on his blanket and drew her into his arms, their bodies sharing their warmth, the one blanket providing a covering for them both against the damp night air.
 
Her body was stiff against his, but she did not protest.

He held her close as she gradually relaxed into the warmth of his chest.
 
He liked her when she was like this, soft and pliant in his arms as a woman should be.
 
“So, now what, escaping wife of mine?
 
Now that I have caught you, whatever shall I do with you?”

He felt her body turn rigid in his arms once more.
 
“I go to England in the morning.”

He tweaked one of her ears between his thumb and forefinger, wanting her to melt against him once more.
 
He was almost sorry he had brought the topic up, but the air between them had to be cleared.
 
He did not want to wake in the morning and find his arms empty and know that she had fled form him again.
 
“You deserve to be punished, wench.
 
Have you forgotten that I promised to drag you back to Paris by your ears did I ever catch you.”

“I will not come with you willingly.”

He teased the soft back of her neck, winding her hair around his finger into curls and letting it go again.
 
Her hair was as soft and sleek as the fur of a wildcat.
 
“I did not think you would.
 
Besides, I doubt that you should return to Paris right now.
 
The King is incensed against you.
 
You would not live for long were you to return.”

He felt her shudder in his arms.
 
“Those men, they meant to kill me?”

He stroked her hair until she calmed down again and her tremors stopped.
 
“They did, but I had no intention of letting them do so.
 
You are my wife.
 
I will always protect you.”

“You would have saved Courtney, too, if I had not shot him first.”

He thought of his blind rage when the villain had threatened the woman as she lay helpless on the ground.
 
If Sophie’s arrow hadn’t separated the villain’s soul from his body, his dagger would have done so in the next instant.
 
“How could you doubt it?
 
I would not see any woman brutalized by such a thug if I could prevent it.”

“Even if she turned out to be a mere tavern wench?” she inquired, a little sharply.

He smacked the side of her rump with the flat of his hand.
 
“None of your cheek, wife, or you will regret it.”

She was silent for so long that he thought she had fallen asleep.
 
“I was so afeared that I would miss him and shoot you instead.”
 
Her voice was small and soft and it trembled a little.

He hugged her close to him for comfort, warming her with his presence, his arms crossed over her chest.
 
“You did not miss.”
 
He was feeling very much alive – more alive in certain parts of him than was quite comfortable.
 
He shifted a little so his arousal did not press so obviously into her backside.

“I might have killed you by mistake.”

He did not want her to dwell on the ifs and maybes of life.
 
He was still here and that was the important thing.
 
He nudged her in the ribs with his elbow.
 
“You would have been sorry to be made a widow then, my troublesome wife, who married me only so she could continue fighting with impunity?”

He felt her shake with suppressed laughter.
 
“I suppose it would be one way of being rid of my troublesome husband who married me only for the sake of his duty, but it is not the way I would choose.”