On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (31 page)

“I’m almost afraid to ask what way you would choose.”

She shook her head and did not answer.

He hoped her silence boded well for his longevity.
 
“The King may well have set more men on your tail,” he said, after a short pause in which he tried unsuccessfully not to think about tumbling his virgin wife on the bed of pine needles on which they lay.
 
“I cannot take you back to Paris.”

“No, you cannot take me back to Paris.
 
I will go to England when day breaks.”

He considered his options aloud.
 
“You would be safe enough in Burgundy.
 
I doubt the King would feel secure enough to pursue you into the territory of the Duke of Burgundy.”
 
That assumed that he would be able to get her and keep her there, of course, which was another matter altogether.
 
Tying her to his bed appealed to him at the moment – with nice strong leather thongs that she could not break away from, however much he teased and tormented her.
 
And tease and torment her he would until she cried out with pleasure again and again…

She squirmed in his grasp, trying to pull away from him as if she could read his licentious thoughts about her, but he held her tight.
 
“I will go to England and ask King Charles to save his sister Henrietta, as Philippe of Orleans begged me to do.
 
I will not go to Burgundy.”

He was trying to concentrate on his thoughts rather than on the feeling of her backside wriggling against his aching groin.
 
“I could tie your hands and feet and toss you across the back of my horse and take you to Burgundy that way.”

“You cannot keep me tied up forever.
 
One day I will escape, and then you will be sorry.”

God, but he could keep her tied up for his pleasure for days and not be satisfied.
 
He was unbelievably aroused by the little spitfire he held in his arms.
 
She was soft and sweet on the outside, but with a core of steel that kept her together through the toughest of times.
 
He had to admire her courage – it was beyond that of any other woman he had ever met – and thank the Lord as well for her steady hand with a bow.
 

If he did not want to spend the rest of his life chasing her from one end of Europe to the other, he would have to bend to her will once again.
 
“I cannot let you go to England by yourself.”

“There is no help for it now.
 
Miriame was left behind at the first inn and Courtney will not be fit to ride for days.
 
My message cannot wait that long.”

Aha, so the third Musketeer was called Miriame.
 
A strange name, but one that suited her puckish nature.
 
“I suppose I have no choice.
 
I will have to go with you.”

“But the King sent you to stop me.”

The King did not know Sophie.
 
He might as well have sent him to stop the wind.
 
“No, the King sent me to kill you, and he may well have sent others besides the two who fell in with me.
 
I will not take that risk with your life by leaving you unprotected for such a long journey.”

“Why are you so concerned?
 
You married me only for the sake of your word to my brother.
 
Why should you care what happens to me?”

He could not dispute the truth of her words.
 
He had only married her to keep his word, but since their wedding day he had come to respect her and like her for all that she was – loyal and strong and honorable to a fault.
 
Besides, she was an eminently desirable woman, for all her contrariness.

He inched one hand under the edge of her jerkin, surreptitiously caressing her bound breasts through the fabric of her shirt.
 
God, how he desired to strip all her layers of clothing away and clasp her naked breasts in his hands.
 
One day he would make her melt for him, he promised himself.
 
One day soon.
 
“You are my wife.
 
I owe you my protection.”

She sighed as she settled down to sleep in his arms.
 
“You may be my husband but you owe me nothing.
 
When will you ever learn that?”

He brushed her hair away from her face and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
 
“Good night, Sophie,” he whispered.

The pine needles rustled under her as she buried her head in her arms.
 
“Good night, Monsieur le Comte.”

The morning came too soon for Sophie’s liking, bringing with it a nasty measure of wind and driving rain.
 
She wrapped herself as well as she could in her greatcoat as she sat astride her horse, the rain dripping down inside the neck of her collar making her back cold and clammy.

What with Courtney’s horse she could no longer ride, and the horse of the dead assassin, they had four horses now between them, and two saddles.
 
With double the number of mounts, they could make better time and not have to stop to haggle over a new pair of broken down, skinny-looking post horses at each stage.
 
Their own four beasts were sleek and well-fed and made good time.

Despite her exhaustion, she had not had the most restful night.
 
Sleeping in her husband’s arms was torture.
 
The warmth of his body close to hers and the touch of his hand holding her to him made her body burn with heat.
 
His innocent touch of her breasts as they were settling down to sleep had almost undone her.
 
How she had longed to turn over and kiss him wildly, passionately on the mouth as they lay together in their nest of pine needles under the tree.
 

No doubt he would have been horrified if she had done so.
 
He had only married her for duty’s sake, not because he desired her the way a man desired a woman.
 
How she wished she possessed Courtney’s slender, blonde beauty, or Miriame’s exotic dark hair and sloe eyes.
 
If she was beautiful in his eyes surely he would not be so cold to her.

He had threatened to seduce her into his bed once they were married.
 
How she had longed last night for him to make good on his threat.
 
Then she would not have been left this morning feeling hollow and empty with a void that only he could fill in her.

Her night had been passed in restless dreams and wild fantasies of her husband discovering just how beautiful he thought her.
 
She had dreamed of him lying over her, parting her legs with a gentle hand and touching her softly between her thighs, driving her on to heights of passion she had not thought possible, making her restless and striving to reach a goal that remained forever out of reach.
 
She regretted her inability to command her emotions now, as lack of sleep had dulled her wits and made her head ache.

Lamotte seemed as distracted as she was, too.
 
He rode in silence, interrupting it only to bark out a terse command once in a while.
 
She looked sideways at his stern face.
 
How she hoped he was not regretting his decision to accompany her to England, or worse still, plotting to abscond with her to his manor house in Burgundy as soon as might be.

She shook her head at her silly fears.
 
She trusted her husband and his promise to help her.
 
She should have been more pleased at their rate of progress, too, but all she could think of as she rode along was of how she could get close to Lamotte and force him to think of her as a woman, and not just as an unfortunate duty he was saddled with.

How foolish she was.
 
She was the one who had insisted on a platonic marriage, and he had accepted it only begrudgingly.
 
He had been true to his word and had not attempted to force her.
 
How she wished now that she had never made such a Devil’s bargain.

She had not thought that the touch of his hands on her body would rouse passions she never thought could exist.
 
She had not thought that her longing for him would surpass every other want or need of hers until she could think of nothing else.
 
She had not thought that she would give up even her quest for honor just for the sake of a kiss from his lips.

They stopped briefly under a tree at noon to eat a hunk of bread and cheese from their saddlebags.
 
The drizzle in the air made Sophie shiver.
 
She cut their pause as short as she could, wanting only to find a warm, dry place to stay and sleep.

It was getting on towards late afternoon by the time the road took them through several villages.
 
Sophie looked longingly at the warm, dry taverns they rode by.
 
She set her mouth in a line and passed them by without a murmur, though she was beginning to droop with wet and weariness.
 
Henrietta, she reminded herself, as she was on the verge of begging Lamotte to stop for the night, was in a far worse place than she.
 
How could she let a little bit of drizzle delay her, when Henrietta was immured in the cold, dank dungeons of the Bastille, slowly being driven mad by fear and deprivation.

Just as the last rays of the sun disappeared below the horizon, they came to another roadside inn.
 
Miserable through and through, this time Sophie spoke up.
 
“Can we not stop here?”

Lamotte wheeled his horse in without a word and headed for the welcoming light.

Sophie felt the need to explain.
 
“It will soon be too dark to see where we are going, and it is raining too hard to sleep on the ground.”

He slid off his horse and handed the reins of his mount and the horse he was leading to the post boy, who scurried out into the rain to take care of them.
 
“I don’t need any convincing to stop.
 
I was disappointed you did not call a halt at either of the last two places we passed.”

Maybe his face was drawn with weariness rather than with annoyance, Sophie thought with a flicker of hope.
 
Maybe he had slept as badly as she had.
 
“Why did you not stop, if you were weary.”

He gave a faint grin.
 
“And have you accuse me of trying to sabotage your mission?”
 
He shook his head.
 
“I am not that brave a man.”

Sophie slid off her horse in her turn.
 
Her husband stood by to help her down, a small courtesy that pleased her.
 
She leaned back slightly into his arms, so it felt as though he was embracing her.
 
“You think me such a dragon that I would begrudge you a rest?”

He set her firmly on her feet and stepped backwards again, so their bodies were no longer touching.
 
“I think that you are a very single-minded young woman.”

She wasn’t sure that that was much of a compliment, she thought as she knocked on the door with her fist.
 
He could have called her something more suited to her sex - beautiful maybe or desirable, or even strong, but single-minded?

The landlady welcomed them in with open arms.
 
“What can I get the pair of you, your poor men,” she clucked, as she bustled around them, taking their sodden greatcoats and hanging them up to dry in front of the fire and pressing mugs of hot mulled wine into their hands.
 
“Food?
 
Warm water?
 
A nice soft feather bed warmed with a bedpan full of red hot coals?”

She was cold and wet through and through, not to mention stiff from climbing out a window, falling from the roof on to the ground, riding for an entire day, sleeping on the ground and then riding all day again.
 
Her body felt as though it had been rolled down a hill in a barrel of nails – she’d read once that the barbarous Germans used this nasty trick to punish wrongdoers.
 
Whatever the wrongdoers had done, she was sure they didn’t deserve such a punishment.
 
She doubted she would ever feel quite the same again.

She stretched her arms out in front of her and rolled her shoulders around.
 
“A whole tub full of steaming hot water,” she said, as she pressed a gold coin into the woman’s hands, “and a warm, dry bed, and I shall be quite content.”

The tub of steaming water, brought up to her in pails by a sturdy serving man, looked better than anything she had seen in her life before.
 
She glanced sideways at Lamotte as he lay sprawled out on the bed.
 
They had been put together in the same chamber, and Sophie had not had the energy to ask that they be given separate rooms.
 
Such a luxury for two single gentlemen traveling together would have taken more explanation that she felt up to giving.