On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (28 page)

Whatever the reasons for which they had wed, she was his wife now and she owed him more duty than to go gallivanting around the countryside with two of her comrades.
 
When he had hauled her back to Paris, he would re-negotiate the terms of their deal and insist that she was a proper wife to him.
 
He could not live with such a runaway wife as she had proven to be.

The gruff-voiced killer turned his back on his companion and strode up to the door and bashed on it with his fist.
 
“Open up in the name of the King.”

The other man sneered as the landlord opened the door, his face looking like a frightened rabbit.
 
“So much for taking our quarry unawares, you fool.”

Lamotte stepped up, shoving the others aside with little ceremony.
 
“We are looking for a Musketeer by the name of Gerard Delamanse.
 
Have you seen him?”

The landlord nodded, his face clearing with relief that they were not looking for him.
 
“Yes, sir.
 
Three of them stopped by early this morning for a meal and a bed.
 
I’m sure I heard one of them call the other Gerard, if I’m not mistaken, sir.
 
I gave them a good meal, too, sir.
 
Roasted rabbit and a good haunch of beef.
 
Would you care to try some yourselves, sirs?”

The sneering killer fixed the landlord with a cold eye.
 
“Where is the boy now?”

The landlord shuddered and made the sign of the cross.
 
“Upstairs in his chamber.”

“Show me.”

The landlord led the way up the stairs and pointed to a door at the top.
 
“That is their chamber, if it please you, sir.”

The gruff-voiced killer shouldered the landlord aside and banged on the door.
 
“Open up in there.”

There was the sound of a scuffle inside and then a voice came through the door.
 
“Who might you be that I should open my door for you?”

It was not Sophie who spoke, but the voice of a man.
 
Lamotte saw red to think of his wife closeted in a bedchamber with another soldier.
 
“It doesn’t matter who I am.
 
Open the door or I’ll break you into pieces,” he growled.

The man on the other side of the door laughed.
 
“Temper, temper.
 
Surely you gentlemen will not mind waiting until I put on my boots.”

Lamotte waited, his soul bursting with impatience for what seemed long enough for someone to put on their boots five times over.

“Ah, that’s better,” the voice on the other side of the door finally said, stomping around the room in noisy satisfaction.
 
“Now just let me put on my jacket.”

The gruff-faced man banged furiously on the door.
 
“Open up in the name of the King, you fool.”

“You
do
like saying that, don’t you.
 
Does it make you feel big and important?
 
I suppose a gutter rat like you must needs have something to make him feel that his life has meaning.
 
Still, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until I have attended to my hair before I let you in.
 
A gentleman must never been seen, even by gutter rats, without his hair dressed.”

The gruff-voiced man growled with fury as being insulted and drew out his dagger.
 
“I shall kill you for that, you little weasel.”

“You’ll have to wait just a moment longer, I’m afraid, for the killing to start.
 
Just let me button up my breeches, and I shall be right with you.”

This last was too much for Lamotte.
 
He rushed at the door, intending to batter it down and plant his fist straight into the face of the man who mocked him so.

The key turned in the lock and a pretty-faced youth with dark curls tied up at his neck and a wicked-looking knife in his hand opened the door just as he reached it.
 
Driven on by the force of his rage, he fell through it all in a heap.
 
The gruff-faced man, swearing and cursing behind him, tripped over him and they fell on the floor together.

A dull thud marked the arrival of the third of their party.

Lamotte scrambled to his feet to see the door closing behind him and the sound of the key being turned in the lock from the outside.
 
He knew the man that had caught them so neatly like rats in a trap – he would swear he had seen that face somewhere before.
 

Still, he had no time to worry about the identity of the stranger – the instant the door was locked behind him, his attention was grabbed by the bloody, violent death that lay before him.

On the floor in a rapidly widening pool of blood lay the body of sneering hired killer with the cultured voice, his sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, his bare, white throat slit from ear to ear.

They were caught in the most obvious of traps.
 
Had he kept a cool head, it would have seen right through it.
 
He had allowed the youth to rile him into forgetting all caution, and now one of his companions was dead.
 
He was not sorry for the death, only for the manner of it.
 
No man deserved to die like that.
 
He hammered at the door in a fury.
 
“Let me out.”

“Can you not make up your mind?” came a taunting voice from the corridor.
 
“When you were outside you begged to be let in.
 
Now that you are in, you beg to be let out.
 
I have no more time to play silly games with you.”

The gruff-voiced man was shaking as he looked down at the body of his comrade.
 
“Let me out, by God, or I will slit your throat as you have slit André’s.”

“I rather think
I
will do all the slitting of throats that is called for around here.
 
I hope you were not over fond of your companion – he has received only what he has deserved for years.

“Au revoir, Monsieur le Comte,” the youth continued.
 
“And may I say, that your wife is an exceptionally pleasant woman to share a chamber with.
 
What a pity you came by too late to find all three of us a-bed together.”

By all that was holy, what had he done to Sophie?
 
Lamotte gave another roar of rage and shook the door until the hinges rattled.
 
“I will kill you for that.”

“You will have to find me first.”
 
The youth gave a merry giggle and clattered off down the stairs.
 
“I doubt you will find it easy.”

The large oaken door was stronger than it looked, and the heavy iron bolts held it together strongly.
 
It took the best part of an hour before the two of them managed to break open the door.

“Ah,” the landlord said with a jovial grin as Lamotte stomped down the stairs.
 
“You have won the wager, I see.”

He looked blankly at the landlord’s smile.
 
“The wager?”

“The wager you made with the merry young gentleman that you would be able to get out of the locked chamber within the hour.
 
The hourglass I set has not yet run out.
 
You’ll find him in the stables seeing to his horse, if you want to collect your winnings.”

Lamotte clenched his fists in frustration.
 
There would be no point in chewing off the landlord’s ears for not unlocking the door.
 
He had been outfoxed well and truly.
 
He turned his head towards the stables.
 
First he would find Sophie and drag her home with him, and then he would deal to the youth who had so abused him.

The landlord stayed him with an outstretched hand.
 
“My money for the door?”

“Your money?”

“Your young friend promised that whoever won the wager would pay double the cost of a new door from his winnings.”

Rigid with fury, he grabbed a handful of gold pistoles from his pocket and tossed them in the man’s general direction.
 
He had been utterly outwitted, and his defeat did not sit lightly on his shoulders.

The landlord protested his generosity.
 
“This is far more than double what the door is worth.”

“Keep them,” Lamotte said, his face taut with rage.
 
“Thanks to that young rascal and his quick knife, there’s a corpse in the chamber overhead that needs burying.
 
Use it to bribe the surgeon to swear that he died in his sleep.”

He threw a saddle on the best post horse in the stable.
 
Sophie had at least an hour’s start of him again.
 
He would ride without stopping, changing horses as often as he could, until he caught up with her.
 
He would not be tricked again.

Sophie turned her head to watch Courtney struggling up behind her, slipping and sliding on the bare back of her mare.
 
She tried to stifle her impatience and not let it show in her manner that she was ready to scream with frustration at the slowness of their progress.
 
Courtney could not help that she never ridden bareback before and was finding it hard to keep upright.

Courtney was gripping her horse’s mane with a death grip.
 
“Go on ahead,” she called as soon as Sophie was within earshot.
 
“I am holding you back.
 
You will be able to travel much faster alone.”

“All for one and one for all,” Sophie reminded her.
 
“Two of us are stronger than one alone.”

Courtney nodded with relief.
 
Then the look on her face turned to dismay as, for the second time already that afternoon, she slid slowly off the back of her horse and onto the grassy bank by the side of the road.

She sat up with a groan, rubbing her backside.
 
“Ouch.
 
I cannot get the hang of riding those damn slippery beasts without a saddle.”

Sophie wanted to laugh at the look on Courtney’s face, but she resisted the temptation.
 
“Hold on with your thighs and calves, not with your hands.”

Courtney grunted as she heaved herself on to her mare’s back for a third time.
 
“I was trying to.”

They rode on in silence for some time, until the light began to fail.
 
Sophie cast a worried eye at the sky.
 
They had not ridden as swiftly or gone as far as she would have liked.
 
“We cannot afford to stop just yet.
 
We’ll ride on until we can swap our horses for fresh.”
 
How she hoped, and yet did not hope, that Lamotte was not far behind her.

Miriame would surely not have hurt him
, she thought for the thousandth time that afternoon
.
 
Not when she knew I did not want him harmed.
 
How she wished she had stayed behind to make sure that no evil had befallen him.
 
Her mission was important to her, but not as important as the lives of her husband and of her friend.
 
She would disobey his orders and run from him to do her duty, but not even her conscience could make her harm him in earnest once more.

The air was starting to cool down noticeably.
 
Courtney let go of her horse’s mane for long enough to take her hat off and shake her hair down over her shoulders.
 
“Anything you say, as long as they come with saddles.”

Sophie liked the feeling of riding bareback with nothing to come in the way of her and the raw power of the horse between her legs, but even she was feeling the chafing on her thighs by now.
 
“With saddles,” she agreed.

Dusk was falling in earnest when they heard the hoof beats behind them.
 
In a few moments, they caught sight of their pursuers, riding hard towards them.
 
Sophie felt her heart leap up into her chest with fear.
 
Where there had been three before, now there were only two.

Courtney’s face was set in a mask of determination.
 
She nudged her horse into a trot.
 
“Shall we try to outrun them?”

Sophie narrowed her eyes to see into the distance behind her.
 
The gap between them and those who rode after them was closing slowly, but it was closing nonetheless.
 
“We cannot outrun them all the way to England.”
 
She could not run before making sure that Lamotte was one of the two.
 
Besides, Courtney may well fall off again, and they would lose any advantage they had gained.
 
“There’s no point in making a race of it when we have little chance of winning.”