Marrying the Musketeer (25 page)

Miriame looked over her shoulders, but there was no movements in the shadows.
 
Still, she wandered away into the middle of the open practice yard and motioned for Courtney to follow her.
 
“There is talk,” she said, when she was far enough out in the open that her conversation could not be overheard, “that not all the troops are happy serving under the King.”
 
Her voice was low and quiet that it barely carried to Courtney’s waiting ears.
 

Courtney felt a shiver run down her spine.
 
Miriame was a daredevil who ran risks for the sheer love of it.
 
It was unlike her to be so cautious in her speech or to care overmuch who might hear her.
 
Things must be more serious than she had imagined.

“There is talk,” Miriame went on, “that some of our troops would gladly raise a rebellion and use the might of the English King to set another up in King Louis’s place.”

Courtney nodded.
 
That explained why she had felt so uncomfortable under the scrutiny of her comrades.
 
She was being sized up to see which way her loyalties lay.
 
She smiled to herself at the thought of both camps vying for her attention.
 
Little did they suspect that her loyalties lay only with herself: not with the French King for certain, but not with the English King, either.

Courtney Ruthgard fought for Courtney Ruthgard, and for no one else.
 
She would test the waters on both sides, and jump whichever way promised to serve her the fairest.
 
She did not know for sure, but she suspected Miriame would feel the same.
 
“Which way does your loyalty go?”

She saw the white flash of Miriame’s smile in the dark.
 
“I think our French King is well enough – but I am most fond of his likeness I see stamped on each gold louis that I run through my fingers.”

Courtney had her answer.
 
As she had thought, Miriame would serve whoever paid her, and only until a better paymaster could be found.

She would serve for the same reason – only she would demand payment in justice, not in coin.

They wandered back into the barracks together, each lost in her own thoughts.
 
Miriame said her au revoirs as soon as they were in the door and immediately inserted herself into another card game, spying out the chance she needed to empty everyone’s pockets with her false dice.
 
She waved to Courtney to join her, but Courtney had other ideas.
 
She did not begrudge losing a few sous to Miriame’s light fingers, but she had not the patience to sit at cards this evening.
 
She felt restless and out of sorts with herself.
 
The atmosphere in the barracks, with suspicious eyes everywhere, did not help her mood.

She wandered aimlessly though the rooms, not knowing where to turn to next.
 
Drinking and gambling held no charms for her – particularly not when her mind was so preoccupied.
 
She felt more in the mood for a brawl than anything else, but the light was growing too dim to fight by.
 
There was little point picking a quarrel when the settling of it would have to wait until the morrow anyway.

She would go back to her apartments and sit in solitude, she decided at last.
 
She needed some time to reflect over what she should do about this new turn of events - and how best she could fashion them to fit her purpose.
 

With a new sense of determination, she strode out of the barracks and headed down the quiet streets to the rooms she called home.

She was not looking for trouble, but trouble found her anyway.
 
Pierre de Tournay, his shoulders squared and his booted feet striking the cobblestones with a dull thud, was headed towards the barracks.
 
He strode along as though he had not a care in the world, as if he were master of all France.
 

She felt her hatred begin to bubble up inside her at the sight of him.
 
It was hatred that made her breath short and her heart beat crazily in her breast.
 
It could not be anything else.

She pulled her hat down low over her eyes and tried to avoid his eye.
 
Time enough to deal with him when she had worked out her new plan of attack.
 
But it was not to be.
 
As soon as he spied her, he threw back his head with a roar of delight.
 
“Ruthgard,” he called, loud enough to wake the dead as he strode over to her and clapped her heartily on the back.
 
“Ruthgard, good to see you back again.
 
I trust you have healed well?”

She bared her teeth in a parody of a smile.
 
She hated him most of all when he treated her like his favored companion, like his friend.
 
Could he not sense the festering hatred that she bore in her soul towards him?
 
“Well enough.”

He seemed in rare good spirits.
 
“Injured in the line of duty, I heard.”

She shrugged off his question.
 
She was hardly going to explain the Pierre the arch-traitor how she had been injured.
 
He would turn her into his master the King and her neck would be stretched on the nearest gallows tree before she could turn around.
 
“You could say that.”

He gave her an odd look, as if he, too, was calculating just exactly where her loyalties lay.
 
“I have only just returned from my business in the south myself, but I hear you were missed in the barracks.
 
The practice dueling has been much less entertaining without you around.”

Come to think of it, Pierre had been bitter against the King many a time in her presence.
 
Maybe he was wondering if she could be trusted not to turn him into the King for his disloyal speeches.
 
Or maybe he was thinking already of joining the rebellion she heard bruited everywhere about…

She weighed up the possibilities quickly in her head.
 
Pierre’s loyalties were unpredictable at best, but if he could be swayed around to the view she wanted him to take…

She made a quick decision and hoped she would not live to regret it.
 
“My belly is as empty as the pockets of a beggar,” she said, linking her arm with his in the manner of a soldier.
 
She would win his trust if she could and hope to turn it to her advantage when she needed to.
 
“Come dine with me in my apartments and you can bring me up to date with everything that I have missed while I have been away.”

Her apartments had never seemed so small as when Pierre was in them, crowding her out with his presence.
 
She had to concentrate on every gesture that she made and every word that came out of her mouth to make sure that she never strayed from her character of William Ruthgard, former Flemish merchant and now Musketeer.
 

She had to banish every feminine thought from her head.
 
She could not notice how Pierre’s forehead was wrinkled in a frown or how smooth was the skin on the back of his hands.
 
She could not notice that he was still the darkest and most dangerous looking man she had ever known.
 
She could not notice how the last fifteen months had put new lines in his face and a new look of cynicism in his eye that perversely made him only more attractive.

She closed her eyes for a moment to draw on every morsel of inner strength she could find.
 
She was a man now.
 
She had to forget that she ever had been a woman.

Pierre sat down on a sofa and Courtney threw herself down on the furthest away chair.
 
She could not trust herself too close to him.
 
Being in her own private chamber was torment enough.
 
She recalled only too vividly what had happened last time she had invited him into her bedchamber.
 
She recalled as if it had only been yesterday the rasp of his moustache against her cheek, the way her body had moved to meet his in the darkness, their muted cries of passion as they came together in the night...

Then he had risen from her bed, stolen her father’s papers and betrayed them both.
 
She had to concentrate on remembering that if she were to get through the evening without committing an act of serious folly.

Her landlady brought them food – roast beef, boiled chickens, and plenty of vegetable dressings.
 
They heaped their plates with food, Courtney poured them both a glass of good Rhenish wine, and they began to eat.
 
For some moments there was no noise in the room but the clatter of knives on the plates and the sound of chewing.

“So,” Courtney began, when her hunger for food was well on the way to being appeased for the moment, if not yet sated.
 
“What have I missed while I have been laid up with a broken arm?”
 
She tried to block her mind to thoughts of another, more insistent hunger.

“A death in the royal family for starters,” Pierre replied, waving his knife in the air for emphasis.
 
“The wife of the Duc of Orleans is dead and buried.
 
Some say the death of the English princess was an accident.
 
In other places it is whispered that she was murdered – and on the orders of the King of France himself.”

How quickly the news had flown through Paris, like an ill wind of doom.
 
She hoped that Sophie’s name would not be bandied about as the one who had caused the King so much grief by alerting the English to the evil he had plotted against one of their own.
 
She may have fled to safety, but a King’s arm was long and his memory longer.
 
“I have heard as much.
 
I did not know what to think of it.”

Pierre carefully soaked up the gravy from his plate with a hunk of bread before he answered.
 
“The people of France wish to believe that the death was a tragedy – that God had decided to call her home to him while she was yet young and beautiful.
 
They do not wish to believe evil of their King – fools that they are.
 
They would rather shut their eyes and pretend that all is well with the world than face the truth.”

She shrugged.
 
“The truth?
 
Is there any such thing?
 
Whom among us know what the truth is?”

He laid his plate aside, all thoughts of eating fled for the moment.
 
“The truth is that the King is but a man, and as a man he is plagued by the same greeds and jealousies that torment lesser men.
 
Indeed, being the greater man, he has that many more of them to plague him, and less resistance against giving into them.
 
When a man’s word may be taken as law, what is to stop him from justifying his greed and his lust in his own eyes and calling them policies?
 
Our King has too few checks and balances on his power, and too many corrupt men who will carry out his orders for good or evil, to the peril of their own souls.”

“You do not think that King Louis is a descendant of the sun, then, as he would have us think?
 
Closer to a God than to a man?”

He spat on the floor by his feet in derision.
 
“A descendant of the sun?
 
A veritable God?
 
Do not make me laugh.”

She did not need to work hard to bring him around to her way of thinking – indeed, she suspected that he had already surpassed her in his hatred of their monarch.
 
“You are not happy in your King?”

He pushed his plate to one side, held up his glass to the light of the candles and took a large swallow.
 
“The King of France, damn his eyes, caused me to lose the one and only woman I have ever loved.
 
Were I to murder him while he is committing an act of sin and so send his soul straight to Hell, he would still get less than he deserves.”

She was surprised at the depth of the hatred she found in him.
 
She had not thought he was so desperate.
 
“You would dare to join a rebellion against your King?”

His face was determined.
 
“Were God but to give me the opportunity, I would dare more than join it.
 
I would dare to lead it.”