On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (17 page)

Chapter 5

Lamotte returned to find her sitting on the ottoman, laboriously combing the tangles out of her hair with a comb carved in intricate swirls of bone.
 
Dressed in his over-sized clothes, she looked surprisingly fragile and vulnerable.
 
“Feeling better?” he asked.

She nodded.
 
“Smelling better, too.”

He set down the jar he was carrying on a low table by the ottoman.
 
The apothecary in the next street over had a failsafe recipe for blisters and cuts of all kinds.
 
He’d spent the time while Sophie was in the bath replenishing his stocks.
 
He sat down on the ottoman beside her.
 
She smelled of jasmine and mint – a huge improvement over sweat and dirt, stale ale and vomit.
 
He breathed deeply of her scent.
 
“Give me your hands.”

Her hands were large for a woman’s.
 
Strong, capable hands, though badly battered.
 
He took a gob of ointment from the jar and smoothed it over one raw palm.
 
She bit her lip at the sting of it, but she did not utter a sound of protest.
 
He had to admire her courage.
 
He knew first hand how much the stuff hurt.

“Climbing stone walls, huh?” he said with a grin, trying to distract her from the pain as he began to work the oily unguent into both her palms with a gentle, circular motion.
 
“Not what I would have expected from an ambitious young Musketeer.”

“We didn’t want to be caught by the guards.”
 
Sophie was biting her lip with her white teeth, trying not to cry out with pain, he’d wager.
 
“I have the honor of my family name to uphold.”

He worked the ointment gently around a vicious blister.
 
She was a woman – her hands should not have to look like this.
 
“Not for much longer.
 
Soon you will have the honor of my family name to uphold.”

He could feel her arms stiffen.
 
“We have already discussed that.
 
I told you I would not marry you.
 
I will be a Musketeer.”

He looked at her straight in the eye.
 
He would not let her win this battle.
 
It was best she were to know it from the beginning and not waste her efforts fighting the inevitable.
 
“I made a vow to your brother that I would take care of you if aught should happen to him.
 
I will not let you make me break that oath.
 
Marry you I will, if I have to tie your hands behind your back, gag you, and drag you to the altar kicking and scratching to be my wife.”

Her face was deadly serious.
 
“You forget that I am a soldier now.
 
You would not live long as my husband were you to force me like that.”

What had happened to Gerard’s sister to warp her in this fashion that she would threaten to murder him for the crime of wedding her?
 
“I doubt you would find my murder worth your while.
 
Husband-killers are tortured and burned at the stake.”

Sophie gave an evil smile.
 
“Never fear - I would not burn.
 
I am too careful for that.
 
Many a brutal husband has accidentally died of eating bad mushrooms and their wives have gone unpunished.”

He did not like the thought of watching his back for the rest of his mortal life, but he could see no other alternative.
 
He rubbed some ointment in to the back of her hand with a touch that had lost some of its gentleness.
 
Much as he misliked the idea, he had to marry her.

He had made a solemn vow to Gerard, the man he had loved as a brother.
 
Sophie was his responsibility now before God.
 
Only when she was his wedded wife would he have the right of a husband, before man and his laws, to protect her as he was bound to.

“Still, I will agree to marry you.”

He raised his head, temporarily ceasing his ministrations.
 
He was suspicious of this about face.
 
Barely a moment ago, she was threatening to poison him did he ever wed her.
 
“You will?”

“On one condition.”

“What is it?”
 
Knowing her as he did already, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

“I will continue to live and dress as a man, in my own lodgings, living my own life.
 
I will continue to be a Musketeer.
 
You will not disclose to anyone else by word or deed that I am a woman.
 
You will not interfere in my life as I will not interfere in yours.
 
We will be as strangers to one another.
 
If you agree to this, then I will marry you and allow you to fulfil your promise.”

He could not help but be amused at her audacity.
 
She could not possibly be serious, or think he would consider such outrageous demands.
 
He was marrying her to protect her.
 
He could not protect her if she was estranged from him so utterly.
 
Still, at least she was willing to open negotiations.
 
That was a good sign.
 
“That was at least three conditions.”

She did not smile back at him.
 
“Do you accept?”

He spread his hands open, palms out, with exasperation.
 
Was she so blinded by her stubbornness that she could not see his point of view?
 
“I cannot marry another Musketeer.”

“Then I refuse to wed you.”
 
She pulled her hands from his and stood up, wincing as her injured feet touched the ground.
 
“Thank you for the bath.
 
I will be on my way again.”

She was either deadly serious or she was the best negotiator he had ever come across.
 
She would really leave if he did not agree to her absurd demands.
 
“Stop for a moment,” he said, pushing her down on the ottoman again.
 
He needed to buy himself some time to convince her that he would not take no for an answer.
 
“I have not attended to your feet yet.
 
They will suppurate if you do not let them heal.”

“My feet are fine.”

“Nonsense.
 
I can see that they pain you.
 
You can barely walk on them.”
 
He knelt down on the floor in front of her and pulled one stocking off her leg.
 
By God, but she had a beautiful leg – trim and lean and long, with soft, curving calves.
 
He felt a stirring in his loins at the sight of it.
 
Maybe marriage to the little termagant would not be so bad as he thought, as long as he could chain her to his bed and keep her there.
 
Especially if the rest of her body was as tempting as her naked leg.

He let his eyes travel up her body, slowly, almost luxuriously.
 
Her thighs in the breeches he had lent her were shapeless, but her waist was tiny and her belly as flat as a girl’s.
 
Not so her chest, though.
 
His eyes nearly popped out of his head in amazement as he saw her large breasts, barely covered by the thin linen of his shirt.
 
His fingers itched to touch them, to take them in his hands and knead them gently between his fingers.
 
He ached to touch the dusky pink of her nipples, to take them into his mouth and suckle on them until she arched her back and cried out with pleasure.
 
How had she managed to hide them so successfully, and for so long?
 

She caught the direction of his gaze and brought her arms over her chest to cover herself again.
 
The tips of his ears burning at being caught staring at her breasts like some callow schoolboy, he bent his attention to her feet.

Her feet were worse than he had thought, covered in bulging blisters, running sores and half-healed scabs.
 
“You could not have done this all last night,” he said, as he smoothed the ointment into a huge blister the size of his thumbnail.
 

She shrugged.
 
“Not all of it.”

He rubbed ointment into each of her toes, one after the other.
 
He would rather be smoothing sweet, scented oil on her stomach and her beautiful white breasts than treating her badly wounded feet.
 
Her nipples would pucker under his touch and she would make soft, sweet mewing sounds like a newborn kitten as he caressed her.
 

He shook his head to dispel the sweet image that bewitched his brain.
 
Time enough to think about the pleasures of her body and the pleasures he could give her with his touch when she was his wife.
 
“What about the rest?”
 

“Gerard’s boots rub my feet.”

Once she was his wife, he would see to it that she would never have to wear borrowed boots again.
 
“You must buy some new boots of softer leather, and some thicker stockings.
 
Your feet are rubbed raw.”

“One pair of boots was enough for Gerard.
 
One pair of boots will have to do me, as well.”

Her feet had to feel like she was walking on broken glass.
 
He did not know how she could have kept upright for the last few weeks, let alone learn to wheel and leap as she had.
 
Once again he was struck by the force of her determination that had fueled her in her life as a Musketeer.
 
His job of convincing her to marry him might well be harder than he had first thought.
 
“Marry me, and I will buy you a new pair.”

Sophie wiggled her toes appreciatively and broke into a grin.
 
“That’s got to be the best offer I’ve received yet.”

“Better still, I will buy you soft velvet slippers embroidered with silk, and you’ll never get another blister in your life.”
 
No other woman he knew would wear harsh leather boots when she could have silken slippers in their place.
 
Why should his errant fiancée be any different?

“I would rather have a pair of boots.
 
Musketeers cannot fight in slippers.”

He smoothed the ointment into her callused sole, trying to be gentle with every patch of blistered and broken skin.
 
He would not bear down on her with the full force of his mind and body and force her to marry him.
 
She would only resent him.
 
He needed to convince her that no other course of action was possible for him to keep his word to her brother.
 
“I am honor bound to marry you.”

She shrugged uneasily.
 
“Your honor is not my concern.”

The first foot done, he rolled the stocking up to above her knee and tied it with a ribbon.
 
Her thighs were white and soft, though leaner than most.
 
He let his fingers linger on her thigh for a moment before turning his attention to her other foot.
 
The insistence of his desire for her disturbed him - he was still getting used to viewing her as a woman and not just a soldier.
 
“You are determined to stay a Musketeer.”

“I am.”

“You do not want to live a life of ease, a life of luxury and warmth, silk dresses and fine wines, in my castle in Burgundy?”
 
He touched a raw patch and she gave an involuntary winch.
 
He still didn’t understand a woman who would not choose ease over labor.
 
“As my wife, you need never have another blister in your life.”

“I will not lead a life of selfish idleness and sloth, without meaning or purpose.
 
I would rather die.”

He knew how she felt – he felt exactly the same way himself, but he had never known that women could feel that way as well as men.
 
“You would rather live a life of hardship and privation as a soldier, prepared work hard all day and night too if necessary, to go cold and hungry when there is no food or fire to be had, prepared even to sacrifice your life if need be?”
 

“I would rather be a humble honey bee and serve my colony as best I could, than be the most beautiful butterfly ever seen, draped in luxury, and be of no use for anything.”

“What would you do if I turned you in to D’Artagnan?”
 
He would not betray her so calmly – her courage deserved better than that.
 
He wanted to know though just what she would do.
 
“He would turn you out without a second thought.”