On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (24 page)

The stranger ignored him, turning his attention back to Sophie.
 
“Were you on guard duty last night?”
 
His voice was soft, as if he wanted no one to overhear him.

Sophie could see nothing of his face.
 
She misliked talking to a stranger wrapped up like a ghoul in the light of day, as if he had something to hide.
 
“I was.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the street.
 
“Then come with me, if you would.”

She stood her ground.
 
“Where to?
 
And why?”

He pulled urgently at her sleeve.
 
“Come, I am in haste. I care not where we go so long as it is somewhere we can talk privately.”

She swiveled her head around, but there were few others in sight, and they were all going about their own business and showing no interest in their talk.
 
“Why not here?”

He looked around the yard with desperation.
 
“There are too many people here who might see us together.
 
Please, let’s go.
 
Anywhere in private where no one can see us.
 
I swear I will not hurt you.
 
You may search me if you please.
 
I am unarmed.
 
Besides,” he said, gesturing towards Lamotte, “you have your own private guard dog to look out for you.”

He didn’t look as though he could hurt a fly, but Sophie nevertheless followed him out of the yard with some reluctance.
 
She was glad to have Lamotte at her back.
 
She was no dealer in secrets and shadows, but the stranger seemed so desperate for her help she did not like to refuse him.

Once in the street outside, he looked around him as if unsure where to go next.
 
“Have you somewhere nearby we can talk?
 
My apartments are some way away, and I do not want to be seen walking the streets with you.”

Sophie tossed the possibilities over in her mind.
 
The apartments she shared with Lamotte were her only choice, though she misliked taking him there.
 
Inside those four walls, she lived life as a woman, not as a soldier.
 
She wanted no dark stranger to guess her secret.

There was nowhere else.
 
She set off towards their apartments at a cracking pace, Lamotte close at her heels and the mysterious stranger half running beside them to keep up.

As soon as they hustled in the door, the stranger collapsed on a well-cushioned chair and rubbed his ankles with a pained expression on his face.
 
“You walk faster than a horse can gallop,” he said ruefully.
 
“My feet are all a-blister.”

She wanted to point out that his feet would be in better shape if his shoes were not so absurdly high-heeled.
 
Instead, she bit her tongue and flung herself down on a sofa.
 
“Well?”

Lamotte plonked himself down beside her, his legs stretched out in front of him and his arms crossed defensively over his chest.
 

The stranger held his hand to his heaving sides.
 
“You arrested a woman last night?”

The King had counseled her to keep it silent, but Sophie would not lie, either.
 
“I cannot tell you that.”

“So, you did arrest her.”
 
What she could see of his face grew gray.
 
“Poor, poor Henrietta.”

Lamotte stirred uneasily beside her.
 
“Who is this Henrietta you speak of?”

The man pushed his hat back on his head and let his cape fall.
 
“She is my wife.”

Sophie gave a gasp of shock as she saw his face, so like that of his brother, King Louis XIV of France.
 
“Monsieur le Duc, Philippe of Orleans?”
 
How could she have been in the presence of royalty and not know of it till now?

The stranger nodded gravely.
 
“Yes, I am the Duc.”

She fell to one knee and bowed her head.
 
Offending royalty by failing to give them due honor was the quickest way of finding your head suddenly separated from your shoulders.
 
“Forgive me for my earlier rudeness.
 
I did not know who you were.”

Beside her, Lamotte doffed his hat with little sign of his earlier antagonism.
 
“At your service, Monsieur le Duc.”

Philippe of Orleans waved her up again.
 
“You were not meant to know me.
 
I will be luckier than I deserve if no one else recognized me, either.
 
Now will you tell me what has happened to my wife?”

Sophie shuddered.
 
Monsieur did not look happy to hear of his wife’s arrest, despite the gossip of the streets that claimed they could barely tolerate the sight of one another.
 
“I arrested her and delivered her over to the Governor of the Bastille last night.”

Philippe of Orleans gave her a haughty stare.
 
“On whose authority?” he asked in a cold voice.

He looked every inch as formidable as his brother when he chose.
 
She shuddered.
 
When royalty squabbled among themselves, the common people suffered for it.
 
“The King himself gave me the orders.
 
He wrote the paper I delivered to the Governor in his own hand.”

“On what accusation.”

She hardly dared say the word.
 
“She was under accusation of treason.”

Philippe of Orleans crushed his hat in his hands and swore like a fishmonger.
 
“My royal brother the King, God rot his soul, is a hypocritical, whoremongering bastard.”

Sophie’s shock must have shown on her face.
 
For any man to say that about his brother was unthinkable.
 
For the Duc, it was treason.

The Duc shrugged his shoulders.
 
“I forget that you are a simple soldier.
 
You need to have been a courtier to understand the intrigues that take place in every corridor and corner of the royal palace.
 
Suffice to say, my royal brother, for all his sanctimonious piety in public, has a letch for my wife.
 
He’s been obsessed about her for years, but unfortunately for him, he revolts her.

“I don’t like women much in general,” he continued, and he gave an elegant shudder, “but I like Henrietta very well.
 
She is my best friend and she has the most elegant taste in gowns that you can imagine.
 
I borrow hers whenever I am sick of my own.
 
I only wish I could borrow her slippers, too, but she has such delicate feet that I cannot squash my toes into her footwear.”

Sophie looked at the man in front of her with a new eye.
 
Did he really dress in women’s clothes as she hid herself in those of a man?
 
She had not imagined such a thing before.
 
Why would any man desire to be a woman when the least of men had so much more freedom than the greatest of women ever could possess?

Lamotte was shifting nervously on his seat beside her.
 
She wondered what was bothering him now.

“You don’t look as shocked as most people when I tell them that,” Philippe of Orleans said and he patted her knee in a friendly gesture.
 
“That’s a good start.”

She shrugged.
 
He confused her, but did not shock her.
 
Little did he know that she kept her own secret from the world.
 
“Each to his own, and the devil take the hindmost.”

Philippe raised his eyebrows.
 
“I sympathize with your motto, but Henrietta is my wife and I must protect her.
 
The King denies all knowledge of her disappearance.
 
He swears she must have run off with her lover, the Comte de Guiche, but I cannot believe it.
 
It would be most unlike her.”
 
He wrinkled his nose with annoyance.
 
“I was most put out with Henrietta for seducing the Comte, you know.
 
I had an eye on him myself, but he preferred my wife to me, the silly boy.”

Sophie grinned in spite of herself.
 
Philippe of Orleans had all the infectious charm of a boy who had never grown up, and never would.
 
“How unfortunate for you.”

He patted her knee again, and let his hand rest there as if by accident.
 
“I thought you would understand, my dear boy.
 
I saw right away that you had a generous soul.”

Lamotte scowled at him and looked pointedly at the hand resting on Sophie’s knee.

Philippe of Orleans looked up into Lamotte’s scowl.
 
“Ah, your watchdog is displeased with me,” he murmured, as he moved his hand away again.
 
“I had better behave myself.

“As I was saying, I love Henrietta dearly and I most heartily detest my royal brother.
 
I must rescue my dear wife, but I cannot do it alone.
 
I need your help.”

Sophie hesitated.
 
Did he know what he was asking of her?
 
“I have sworn fealty to your brother, the King.”

Philippe of Orleans did not look impressed with her doubts.
 
“You would rather let an innocent woman suffer, and not go to her rescue?
 
What human vow is worth the sacrifice of your honor?”

What could a single Musketeer do anyway?
 
“She has been taken to prison.
 
What would have me do?
 
Storm the Bastille single handedly and get her out again?”

Philippe of Orleans fluttered his hands in the air with distress.
 
“Nothing as dramatic as that, my dear boy.”

Lamotte scowled harder than ever.
 
“The Bastille is a fortress.
 
No one has ever escaped from there.
 
Would the King not release her on your asking?”

Philippe of Orleans raised a scented handkerchief to his nose and rubbed the tip of it daintily.
 
“My dear brother cares little for my displeasure – indeed, he would rather have me displeased than not, I fear.
 
Duc though I am, I am powerless.
 
Luckily Henrietta has friends more powerful than I am.
 
I need you to go to England and tell them of her plight.”

Lamotte snorted with derision.
 
“Wouldn’t you rather we stormed the Bastille?”

Sophie raised her eyebrows and waited for the Duc to explain.

“Go to her brother, King Charles, and beg his help to rescue her.
 
He does not know of her current situation.
 
Indeed, only a handful of people could even guess the truth – the rest will only too readily believe the lies of the King that she has fled with her lover.
 
If King Charles has any notion of honor and decency left in him, he will save his sister.”

Sophie felt torn between sympathy for the Duc and pity for his wife on the one hand, and her loyalty to the King on the other.
 
She did not know what to do.

If she were to believe the Duc, then the King must have lied to her – the Duchesse was guilty of nothing more than refusing the King a boon that he should not even ask of her and she herself had been complicit in punishing an innocent woman.
 

She could not comprehend a King who told untruths.
 
The King of France was the fount from which all honor flowed.
 
If he proved corrupt, her life, which she had dedicated to the pursuit of honor, had little meaning.
 

And yet why would the Duc lie to her?
 
What motive could he have but to protect the life of his wife?
 
She did not know.

She rose to her feet and paced backwards and forwards across the room, her indecision tearing at her.
 
“I cannot give you an answer now.
 
I will have to think over what you have said.”

Philippe of Orleans rose to his feet in his turn.
 
“Do not take over long to decide,” he said, as he paused in the doorway.
 
“The Bastille is not a gentle or forgiving place for those poor unfortunates incarcerated within its walls.
 
Those stones eat away at a man until there is nothing left but an empty, soulless shell.”