On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (18 page)

“I would kill you, or die trying.”
 
Her voice was matter-of-fact, as if death was a minor detail.

He heaved a huge sigh a she rolled the second stocking up her leg and tied it with a ribbon around her white thigh.
 
He could read determination in her eyes, but he was just as determined.
 
He would compromise for now – but it was only a strategic retreat so he could prove the ultimate victor in the battle between them for dominance.
 

He had few other options unless he were to force her, which he was loth to do.
 
He would not set her against him so badly right from the start.
 
There would be time enough for bringing her round to his way of thinking once they were safely wedded.
 
Heaven knows that he would need to if he were ever to have a quiet house.
 
No household could safely contain two soldiers without them eventually coming to blows.
 
“Then I do not see that I have a choice.
 
I will marry my Musketeer.
 
But I have a few conditions of my own.”

She looked at him suspiciously.
 
“Like w hat.”

He tried to frame a compromise that he could live with and that would allow her to bend graciously into wedlock without too much of a blow to her pride.
 
She was like a skittish wildcat that he had to tame into eating out of his hand.
 
Moving too fast or demanding too much of her would scare her away and she would be doubly hard to come close to again.
 

He cleared his throat.
 
“In public you will be a Musketeer, and I will not give rise to any suspicion by word or deed that you are a woman and my wife.
 
In private, you will be my wife, in both word and deed.
 
You will live with me in my lodgings, and you will be faithful and true to me in every way.”

She shook her head and the ghost of a smile flitted across her face.
 
“I cannot be your wife in deed.
 
What would D’Artagnan do with me if he discovered I was not only a woman, but I was breeding to boot?”

She saw his intent exactly.
 
Did she once have a babe in her belly, she would surely lose interest in fighting and become a proper wife and mother.
 
Motherhood would tame her to his hand faster and more surely than anything else ever could.
 
“I would have you faithful to me, Sophie, and not seek to break your contract later on for lack of consummation.
 
This must needs be a real marriage.”

Her brows drew together in a frown.
 
“I am a Musketeer and a woman of my word.
 
I will not betray your trust in me, but I cannot be your wife in every way.
 
I will not wed you if you insist on that condition.”

He needed her close to him if he were to succeed in winning her over.
 
“You will live with me in my lodgings?”

She nodded.
 
“Yes, I will do that, if I must, but as your comrade, not as your wife.”

He would have to seduce her into his arms.
 
If he put his mind to it, he would wager she would not resist him for ever.
 
She was only a woman after all, without the self-control or iron determination of a man.
 
Sooner or later she would weaken, and he would be there to catch her when she fell.
 
“Then I will not insist that you share my bed, though I must insist I have the right to try to change your mind.”

“I will not change my mind.”

He grinned.
 
He would enjoy trying to seduce his lovely wife and tame her to his hand.
 
She would present a worthy challenge to him, but he was sure to win in the end.
 
“I am willing to take a gamble on that.”

“Then I agree.”

He made a quick calculation in his head.
 
“We will have the banns read at church on Sunday for the first time, and then we shall be as good as wed.”

She made a move to get up again.
 
“I will see you on Sunday, then.”

He could not let her go as easily as that.
 
She might yet run from him.
 
He would make sure of her while he could and not take the risk that she would back away from the bargain he had forced upon her.
 
“I will send a boy around for your belongings.
 
As from today, you are living with me.”

Sophie’s mouth fell open in horror.
 
“Live with you?
 
We are not yet man and wife.”

“I am not sure that I trust you yet, my beloved wife-to-be,” he confessed.
 
It would not hurt her to know that he distrusted her as much as she distrusted him.
 
“I have no guarantee that you will not slip my traces and be off to Lyons or to Reims, to pop up as a soldier there.
 
I have you here now, and I intend to keep an eye on you as best I can.
 
Besides, if I have you sleeping here with me, I can be sure that you are not sleeping on the floor of one of your other comrades.”

“I cannot share apartments with you while we are as yet unwed.
 
I am a woman, you are a man.
 
It is…it is unthinkable.”

“You have slept in a drunken stupor on the floor of another Musketeer’s bedchamber,” he reminded her.
 
He did not like thinking on that himself.
 
Sure, it must have been innocent enough, or her fellows would surely have let out the secret of her sex by now, but he still did not like it.
 
If they ever discovered her sex, they would think her a loose woman, and treat her accordingly.
 
She was no light skirt to be so abused – she was a gentlewoman and his wife-to-be.
 
He would have to impress upon her the risks she ran and make sure she did not ever run them again.
 
He would not like to have to run through a dozen of his fellow Musketeers for mistreating his wife.
 
“Is that not equally unthinkable?”

She made a noise of protest.
 
“That was different.
 
It was only one night – and it was quite harmless.”

Harmless?
 
He hardly thought so.
 
Whether or not she was willing to admit it, she had run a huge risk.
 
She was only lucky she had not been caught.
 
“We have been promised to each other for some months.
 
The contract between my uncle and your father is signed.
 
In the eyes of God, we are as good as wed already.”

“The contracts may have been signed a thousand times, but I have plighted no troth to you.
 
I have promised nothing.”

That was easy to remedy.
 
He stood up straight, his arms by his side.
 
“Sophie Delamanse, I do hereby plight my troth to you.
 
From this day forth you shall be as my wife to me.
 
Unto you will I cleave and all others forsake.
 
I shall marry you and none but you, so help me God.”

Sophie groaned.
 
This was not how she had envisaged her betrothal day to be – dressed in ill-fitting breeches and suffering from a head that threatened to split in two with every movement she made.
 
What choice did she have?
 
The Comte was determined to fulfil his promise and come what may she would stay a Musketeer for her brother’s sake.
 
This way, at least they would both get what they each demanded.

She stood up on her stockinged feet.
 
It did not seem right to perform such a solemn vow while lolling at her ease on a sofa.
 
“Comte Ricard de Lamotte,” she said, trying not to wince at the pain in her feet, “I do hereby plight my troth to you.
 
From this day forth you shall be as my husband to me.
 
Unto you will I cleave and all others forsake.
 
I shall marry you and none but you, so help me God.”

The Comte had a look of triumph on his face.
 
Sophie was too worn out to care.
 
He had won this battle only because she was too tired and sick to fight anymore.
 
“My head hurts and my feet hurt.
 
I want a drink of water and I need to sleep.”
 
She did not even care if she sounded like a querulous child.
 
All she wanted now was oblivion.

He pushed open the door to another chamber with a huge canopied bed in the middle.
 
Picking her up as he would lift a child, he carted her over and placed her gently on the coverlet.
 
“I’ll bring the water for you in a moment.
 
Then you can sleep for as long as you like.”

The sheets were crisp and white and smelled of lavender, just like the soap she had used in her bath.
 
She tossed her over-sized breeches on the floor and crept between the sheets, thankful to close her eyes at last and block out the light that made her head pound harder.
 
Baths, clean sheets, the smell of lavender.
 
Maybe her marriage would be tolerable after all.

Glass of water in his hand, Lamotte looked at her as she lay tucked up in the bed, her damp hair fanned out over the pillow.
 
Asleep, she looked soft and sweet-tempered – far more like a woman than she did when she was awake and spitting at him with her teeth bared and her claws unsheathed.

It would be so easy to throw off his clothes and climb into bed beside her to hold her naked body against his own.
 
She would be too sleepy to protest.
 
He would be able to hold her in his arms all night, his hands could rove freely on her luscious breasts, her hips, her thighs, and that soft sweet cleft between her thighs.
 
He could make her his wife in more than name only and she would not be able to say him nay.

He felt his manhood rise at the thought of entering her tantalizing body until he was embedded inside her to the very hilt.
 
He would prepare her well with kisses and touches until she was as eager for it as he was.
 
Her channel would be wet and warm and welcoming and he would thrust into her body, losing himself in her as he had dreamed of doing when he had first seen her portrait.

He knew he was only dreaming – he would never do that.
 
She was sick and tired and he would never force himself on her.
 
She would never forgive him.
 
He would never forgive himself.

He squatted down and put the water on the floor beside her.
 
No doubt she would wake in a while with a desperate thirst.
 
He hoped her headache was a salutary lesson not to drink to excess in the future.
 
Drinking had ruined more good soldiers than he cared to think on.
 
He would not have the same vice ruin his wife.

There was little point going back to the barracks now.
 
Training would be over for the day and he was not on duty until the morrow.
 
Besides, he wanted to be there when Sophie woke again.
 
He intended to see her properly bedded down in his apartments before he took his eyes off her.
 
She belonged to him now, and he was determined to take good care of her.

A boy was soon dispatched to the Rue de Fosset to bring back her belongings.
 
She had little enough.
 
A small cloth bag filled with clean linen, and an ornate dagger.
 
He recognized it as having belonged to Gerard.

She was still sleeping peacefully when he opened the door quietly and put her bag at the foot of her bed.
 
With a grunt of satisfaction, he sat down at his desk and began to polish his weaponry.
 
The simple tasks of a soldier should help him keep his mind off the soft white body of the woman sleeping in the next chamber, in his bed.

He was giving Gerard’s old dagger, now Sophie’s, a final polish when he heard a strangled cry come from the chamber where she lay asleep.
 
He dashed next door to find her sitting bolt upright in the bed, her eyes wide open and staring blankly at some horror that only she could see.
 
“Water, give me water,” she moaned, not seeming to see him.

He grabbed the water glass from the floor and held it to her lips.
 
She drank it down greedily, not caring when it dribbled over her chin and on to her shirt.
 
The glass drained, she lay back on her pillows and was immediately deep in slumber again.