Dying By The Sword Part 6

The d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse had to be close to Athos's age. Aramis wasn't sure exactly how old she might be, but he knew she was on her second marriage and that her son, Louis Charles D'Albert, a G.o.dson of the King's, was now six and that she'd given birth to a daughter just the year before. But no one would have believed it, looking at her.

Blond, with soft, well-shaped features, Marie Aimee de Rohan, d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse-or Marie Michon4, as she called herself in the midst of her impetuous adventures and intrigues, which had made her the scandal of France and the amus.e.m.e.nt of the rest of the world-looked no more than seventeen.

Her hair retained the intense gold shading which was usually the mark of the very first youth, and her intent blue eyes projected an expression of complete innocence.

Yet she stepped into Aramis's arms with the ease that betrayed a woman who had had more than one husband and who, at this time in her life, entertained several lovers from various orders of n.o.bility.

Aramis received her body in his arms, with a sigh-half of relief and half of desire. He was no fool. He knew that she was no Violette. Oh, he might have thought when he'd first started seeing Violette that he was only one of the musketeers and servants that she took to her lonely bed that her husband had spurned.

He might have continued to think so with his brain, but in his heart he knew that Violette was his and his only. As he was hers. He would have been offended-and fought a duel-had anyone told him that his Violette was seeing anyone else.

It wasn't like that with Marie. In fact, he had no illusions at all. He thought of Marie as he supposed Athos thought of the bottle. Something in which to lose himself when the pain grew too intense to bear and the futile longing for what could never again return so strong that he could hardly think against the force of it.

For the last several months, when that longing got too strong, its buffets impossible to resist, he'd come here and satiated them on the warm lips, the pliant flesh of the d.u.c.h.ess.

Now he kissed her, ardently, his tongue invading her mouth, his hands roaming the heated expanse of her velvet-dressed body. She responded in kind, her hands bold and searching, loosening his doublet and slipping beneath it and his linen s.h.i.+rt to raise a hundred points of desire from his flesh.

"Ah, D'Herblay," she said, as he pulled away to draw breath, and she looked up at him smiling, her eyes dazed with desire. "Nothing like the sword to make the muscles of a man stand out." Her hands went lower and struggled for a very brief time with the fastenings of his breeches, then found their mark. Clutching it, she looked up and favored him with a dazzling smile. "I do so love a man with a good sword."

Aramis groaned, and picked the lady up by her waist, surprising a delighted squeal from her. "Ah, Marie Michon," he said, because he knew it pleased her to be addressed that way. "I've heard you're quite good with the sword yourself, now and then."

She giggled. "Only when some gentleman lets me borrow it."

"Well, my friend Porthos was the one who gave fencing lessons, but I learned from him, and well enough to win duels, so let me see if I can teach your grace something useful." Joining word to action, he dropped her on the bed, and pulled up the ma.s.s of her skirts and petticoats, beneath which she was, of course, bare. He ran his hands up her stockinged legs and caressed her, until her eyes looked wholly unfocused, the eyelids half-closed over them, "D'Herblay!" she said.

He grinned at her. "Are you begging me to unsheathe, milady? Is this where you wish to test my steel?"

"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes," she said, impatiently. And then, as though remembering herself and her sense of humor, "What good is a duel if all you do is brag to the other man about how fierce you are, but you will not show your mettle?"

Aramis unfastened what remained fastened of his clothes and plunged into the safe haven of her body, so suddenly and so completely he raised a small shriek from her, though not one that could in any way be considered a protest. He took a deep breath. "Have I wounded you?"

For her only response, she raised her body and pressed against him, and he lowered himself upon her, kissing her beautiful face, her soft neck, burying his own face into the soft, scented mound of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Anything, anything at all, to avoid thinking of another body, another pair of b.r.e.a.s.t.s, now taken from him by the only rival he could not hope to best.

Violette's b.r.e.a.s.t.s had been smaller, but firmer, her neck longer and her features, though not as universally celebrated as those of this d.u.c.h.ess, had a sort of arch sweetness that made him fall at her feet at the sight of them. And while he had not been her first lover, nor the second, nor, indeed, he very much doubted, in the first dozen, she was somewhat less bold than De Chevreuse. Or at least she liked letting him set the rhythm and rarely pushed against him in that impatient manner, telling him to stab forcefully or not at all.

And yet, this woman too was sweet, and her scent of spice and some indefinable exotic mixture tantalized his senses. And his body responded with deep-seated pleasure to her advances and, in the way of things, he pursued release eagerly, till his body gave it to him, blotting out thought and-for a moment-breath and awareness of self with it.

He came to while being rather rudely shoved aside, and because the lady was inconstant, but never rude, he opened his eyes in shock, to find her glaring at him. "D'Herblay," she said, crossing her arms on her not inconsequential chest, from which he seemed, somehow, to have torn enough lace and ruffles that her left nipple stood up among such a nest, looking like a slatternly version of its more demure right-side sister, still sheltered by fabric.

"Yes?" he asked, dazed, as he pulled away and fastened his own disarranged clothes.

To his surprise, she answered him with a bubbling laugh and, looking up, he found her sitting up and smiling at him. "It won't do, my friend. It won't do. This is much like sending a challenge to duel to the wrong man." She shook her head. "At the very least, you'll offend the offended yet more, and you'll offend a whole other group of people." Looking up at what must be his very bewildered expression indeed, she laughed again. "How abominable you are, D'Herblay. You have no idea at all what you have done, do you?"

He shook his head, checking that he was indeed now decent, and adjusting his doublet.

"Who is Violette?" she asked.

The name, p.r.o.nounced in the light of day, made him tremble all over and look up. "Vio-" he said, but could not p.r.o.nounce the rest of it. Not here. Not in front of this woman.

"You don't even know, do you? I'm sure," she said, drawing herself up in turn and rearranging her clothing. "She would be heartbroken if she knew you forgot her name as soon as she left your bed. And yet"-she gave him a calculating look-"you remember her in the throes of pleasure, which seems to indicate that she has bitten deeper than I would have expected. Who is she, D'Herblay? Are we going to hear the announcement that you have decided to forsake your vocation and to marry, after all?"

"No," he said, horrified, wis.h.i.+ng she would drop the subject. Sometimes he found himself quite willing to agree with Athos that women were the devil.

"Oh, good. You're not so lost. Because, of course, it would not do. I suspect you could no more be faithful to a wife than I could be faithful to a husband. So I'm very glad you're not willing-quite yet-to marry your Violette," she said, and, on the instinctive, immediate reaction to the name, she looked surprised.

"I'd marry her in a second, madam," Aramis said, primly, hoping this would stop the flow of words. And hoping above all it would stop De Chevreuse p.r.o.nouncing a name he tried to avoid even thinking too loudly, in the privacy of his own mind. "Were it possible."

The d.u.c.h.ess was sitting in the midst of her disarrayed clothes that rose like a frothy foam of fabric at her waist. She looked like a picture some Italian painter might do, slightly altered. Venus rising from the sea, perhaps, though the sea probably shouldn't be on a bed. At his response, she widened her eyes. "Oh, married is she? My condolences, D'Herblay, but I must own that leaves the field open to the rest of us who are perhaps not quite so skilled as to imprint ourselves upon your mind and heart so indelibly."

The idea that his love for Violette was based on skill-that type of skill yet-made Aramis start. "She's not married," he snapped. "She is dead."

"Oh," De Chevreuse said, and, as her face fell, "Oh, but her name was not Viol-"

"Please don't p.r.o.nounce it," Aramis said. "Please don't. She was that to me. It was the name she first gave me, and to that name we clung." He shook his head. "Have mercy on a bereaved man and don't drag your fingernails upon a still raw wound."

She tilted her head sideways and regarded him curiously. It was very much the expression of a cat studying a small animal squeaking past. "How odd," she said. "I believed you quite recovered from that incident, if indeed you had ever felt it."

"What you believed matters not," he said, and turned his back on her, walking to the wall and pretending to be allencompa.s.singly absorbed in the portrait of a small child on that wall. Probably one of Marie's daughters, he thought, as there was some resemblance to the mouth and the eyes.

He heard her get up and come towards him from behind. He felt her hand resting so half her fingers touched his neck and half his shoulder. "I could give you a child, you know?"

His head turned around so fast that it felt as if he'd dislocated something, and his normal suave manner deserted him. "What?"

She smiled at him, a contented smile. "To be sure I can. I can conceive very easily and I've had . . . bearing is easy. I've had more children than the obvious, you know? It's not so bad-a trip to the country, and later, you send the baby to the father who can then do with him or her as he pleases." She gave him an understanding look. "Someone bound to be a cleric could always claim it was a nephew of his and have him-"

"I am an only child."

"Oh, that hardly matters. It's only a polite fiction. The popes themselves have done. Everyone knew the nephews and nieces were truly-"

"No."

"But yes, I tell you it would be the easiest thing. All society really would care for, of course, was knowing the child was of the first blood. And my children are always lovely." She looked at him speculatively. "And if I have one with you, then he can't help but be lovely. I feel sure the Lady your Mother would approve. Just because she means you for the church, it doesn't mean-"

"Maman!" Aramis said, his mouth gone dry with feelings he couldn't even describe. "Oh, yes, everything I do in life must be with the object of pleasing Aramis said, his mouth gone dry with feelings he couldn't even describe. "Oh, yes, everything I do in life must be with the object of pleasing Maman Maman."

This got him an odd look and then a small nod as though De Chevreuse had decided he could not possibly but be telling the truth. "I thought," she said smugly, "that was the origin of your great grief, for everyone knows the d.u.c.h.ess de Dreux was carrying her lover's child. I never thought that lover would be you, though I knew you were one of her-" She stopped, abruptly, and Aramis was shocked to realize the reason she had stopped was probably because he'd strode towards her, and was now holding her small face in the vise grip of his large hands.

He didn't know what his eyes showed, but he was sure they were intent. And, since he'd not meant to come here and hold her face; since, in fact, he had never thought of doing it; indeed since he couldn't make himself let go of her, he must a.s.sume there was something very scary about his expression.

The impression was confirmed by a little squeal escaping De Chevreuse and then her hand coming up to cover her mouth. He looked intently at her a while longer, before his mouth found its own way to the words he must p.r.o.nounce. "Do not ever p.r.o.nounce the name of Violette again," he said. "Not in my presence. Not if you live a thousand years and see me every day. I am a sinful man, despite my best intentions. I've had many lovers and will probably have many more, whether I take orders or not." He paused. There was something in her eyes that told him only the fact that his gaze was still intent, his hands still immobilizing her face, kept her from giggling. "Violette was not one of those lovers, taken to satisfy a human l.u.s.t. Something happened between us. Though we were never married, it was the first time I understood the biblical order to leave your mother and father and cleave to your wife.

"Violette and I were like that, one body, one blood, one flesh. As long as I live, though what you might call grief might die down-will die down, I daresay, since human memory does-I will be half a creature, a half of me having been ripped away and sent to an early grave. I will never know wholeness again till, G.o.d granting it, I meet her again in the ever after and we can be one once more. A child . . ." His mouth went dry again, and he had to stop, while his eyes filled with unaccountable moisture. "Should there have been a child from her, I would have moved heaven and Earth to have him by my side and to make him my heir. Other than that, a child is of no consequence to me. I've lived since I can remember in the expectation of being a priest one day, and of leaving no descendants. My lands and t.i.tle will devolve on a distant cousin with a numerous family, and I wish him joy of them."

Now his body allowed him to pry his fingers away from De Chevreuse's face-as though he were prying them away against their will. She looked at him, her mouth half-open, like a startled child. And Aramis thought that he'd ruined it, now. He would be leaving here never to return, the one palliative he'd found for his pain over Violette's death gone forever.

He stepped away and bowed correctly. "My apologies, your grace. I regret having upset you or scared you. It was scarcely my wish to do so. I beg you will forgive me and that when we meet again, you will show no signs of your anger at me."

"Oh, but I'm not angry at you," she said, suddenly. "And you'll come see me the day after tomorrow, of course."

He raised his eyebrows. "After my . . . insufferable behavior?"

She grinned at him, raising an ingratiating dimple on her cheek. "Your behavior," she said, "insufferable though it might be, shows you to be a man of deep pa.s.sions and sudden anger." She shrugged. "It is in my nature, you know, to embrace danger. Much of my life has been lived in seeking it out and following it wherever it may lead."

"Oh," Aramis said, and stopped, remembering the rumor, more or less confirmed by Monsieur de Treville. "Your grace wouldn't be happening, right now, to be involved in a conspiracy?"

She flicked her fingers, casually. "I am always involved in a conspiracy," she said.

"To murder the Cardinal?" he said.

She looked surprised, her eyes wide. "Oh, I'd devoutly love a conspiracy that does that, or even attempts it," she said, eagerly. "Is there one? And can I join it?"

"Unlike you," Aramis said. "I don't court danger for the love of it." And then, with punctilious exact.i.tude, "Unless it's in duel where I must, of course, defend my honor."

"We women do not have that choice," she said. "All the swords we have must be borrowed."

"Those," he said, thinking of his fingers grasping her face while fury ran like a grief-dark river through his mind, "must be danger enough."

She shrugged. "But I do not know of this conspiracy you speak. If someone wants to murder the monster, I must, of course, support them. I've found no one brave enough to try it yet, though." As she spoke, she darted the smallest of looks at the folded missive on her writing table, and then quickly away.

Aramis was almost absolutely sure that she was lying about knowing nothing of a conspiracy. And yet, he was also almost sure he had seen something like surprise quickly followed by relief in her eyes when he'd mentioned the conspiracy. Surprise because he knew it? Relief because he didn't know her part in it?

"I'd take care, milady," he said. "Your correspondence with the Queen has been intercepted, and the Cardinal is sure it betrays a conspiracy against him."

"His eminence thinks that the fact I still breathe, never mind my being in the same city as her Majesty, is a conspiracy against himself. It is all very silly."

"Perhaps so, but remember he has the power to separate your head from your neck, and that's a danger too large to court. Take care, my lady."

"I always take care. I will see you the day after tomorrow, D'Herblay, since you antic.i.p.ated our meeting today."

It was so clearly a dismissal, he could not help but take it. On his way out, pa.s.sing the table, he managed to cast a glance on the name on that missive, and was startled to find the name and styling of her Majesty's illegitimate half-brother, Cesar.

The Spider's Web; Where Old Enemies Are Much Like Old Friends; The Loyalty of a Worthy Man

"SIT down, Monsieur le Comte," Rochefort said. He had led him into an office that was the exact, if poorer, replica, of his master's. Where Richelieu's study was surrounded by a profusion of bookcases, each filled with leather bound volumes with gilded edges and covers, this one had only two bookcases. And where Richelieu's chairs were majestically carved and ornamented, Rochefort's-while looking quite comfortable-were undeniably utilitarian affairs. His office also lacked a writing desk. What it had in its place was a sword, mounted on the wall, a sword that looked much like Athos's ancestral sword, mounted on his own wall.

"I wish you wouldn't call me that," Athos said. "You might know it, and the Cardinal might know it, but other than courting my vengeance if you reveal it, there is nothing you can earn by letting me know you have my secret. I don't use the name. What I have done has darkened it forever. Perhaps some yet unborn La Fere can resume it with pride, but I can never. So long as I live, that name must remain unknown."

"Or at least until the crown has forgotten the small matter of your wife," Rochefort said, casually, shrugging. "That's normally why people take the uniform, isn't it? To serve a while until one's crimes are forgotten and the King owes one enough he'd never dream of punis.h.i.+ng them. And then one can return to one's former life, untouched."

Athos felt a muscle work on the side of his jaw. "Do not mention . . . the lady. I committed no crime," he said. "But as for returning . . ." He shrugged. "There are events and . . . and decisions that alter one forever. I don't think I would be the best custodian for my lands or my people."

Rochefort said nothing to this, simply sat down and joined his hands on his lap. "You're not going to require," he said, "that I call you Athos, are you? It is a demmed silly name. A demon, wasn't he?"

"A mountain," Athos said. "A mountain in Armenia on which a famous monastery is set."

"A monastery!" Rochefort said, with every sign of alarm. "Are you then, like your friend who calls himself Aramis, merely wearing the uniform of the King's musketeers until you can exchange it for the habit of a priest or a monk?"

"I?" Athos said, almost in shock. "Heaven forbid. I hope I have as much faith as the next man, but if I find myself inadequate to care for my lands or my people, how much more inadequate am I to look after G.o.d's affairs? No. I'll remain myself. The name is just . . . what it is."

Rochefort shrugged. "Those of us who serve the Cardinal," he said, "are not ashamed to do it under our own names."

"Perhaps," Athos said, "because you had nothing left to lose." And let the idea sink in, seeing the sting of it at the back of Rochefort's eye, even as the man looked away. Rochefort was, as Athos knew, as n.o.ble as himself-a man from an ancient family.

They'd been on the opposite sides of the secret war between King and Cardinal for so many years that the two of them knew each other as well as old friends might. Two things divided them beyond their opposing loyalties-which either considered inexplicable-that Rochefort was willing to stoop to the most dishonorable actions in pursuit of his master's aim; and that Athos had no expectations, ever, of regaining the honors he had lost, while Rochefort was hoping to rebuild his domain and the fortune his ancestors had squandered.

"His eminence says you have agreed to work for him on this matter of the . . . conspiracy," Rochefort said, politely.

"On this matter only and only because he's holding Mousqueton, Monsieur Porthos's servant, as a hostage to this."

"I understood you offered," Rochefort said, drily.

"One offers, when one is compelled," Athos answered with equal dryness. "I do not want the boy harmed. You know Porthos. He took to the boy as though he were his own son." He held back from saying that Porthos had already lost one son. Not that he wasn't sure Richelieu knew this. There were very few things in France that escaped the attention of the eminence grise. But either Rochefort knew it and it didn't bear mentioning-or he didn't know it, and Athos would spare Porthos's pride. "It would be devastating to lose him."

Rochefort raised an eyebrow, "Is he perhaps, in fact-?"

"Not that I know, or Porthos knows," Athos said.

"Or find it necessary to tell me?"

Athos shrugged. No use making Rochefort and Richelieu think that their hostage was, in fact, more important than he was. "That I know," he said, "Porthos met him when he came to Paris. I understand Mousqueton tried to relieve Porthos of some of his possessions and . . . Well, you know Porthos."

"Mostly I know his prowess in duel, but yes. I have heard rumors about Monsieur Porthos's soft heart."

Athos inclined his head. He supposed that there were rumors about all of them and that somewhere, if not actually written down, in the Cardinal's hand, there was a list of their weaknesses-Porthos's soft heart and his vanity; Aramis's faith and his inability to stay away from the fair s.e.x; D'Artagnan's tendency to leap before he looked and his romanticism and Athos's-he paused. He knew himself well enough to realize he had faults aplenty. But he was at a loss to choose which of them would be the fatal one. His drinking? His reluctance to deal with any women at all? Or his shattered and embittered heart, forever burdened with the sense of guilt for having killed his wife. She might have been a criminal and her death an execution, but in the dark of night, Athos stared dry-eyed into the darkness and suspected very much that he'd made a mistake and slain the only woman he'd ever love, the woman whose memory still haunted his every moment.

"So you offered to help us with this conspiracy to murder the Cardinal," Rochefort said, suddenly businesslike, as though something in Athos's expression had scared him. "And I think perhaps you should know what we know for a fact and . . . and what his eminence fears."

Athos did not say that his eminence's fears might have very little to do with reality. He knew that this was probably a slander. The Cardinal was many things, but none of them was either coward or insane. In fact, he was-always, in Athos's experience-realistic and exact and fully aware of the truth of a situation, no matter how much he chose to distort it in his favor. Instead, he settled himself, with his hands folded on his lap, and waited.

Rochefort seemed surprised he had pa.s.sed up a chance to engage in a battle of wits. "His eminence," he said with something like a tw.a.n.g of disappointment in his voice, "has intercepted some correspondence between the Queen and some of her friends."

Athos inclined his head. "Not the first time," he said. "Nor the last."

Rochefort shrugged, as though to signify this did not matter. "The Queen is very loyal to her brother the Emperor," he said. "Sometimes it seems inexplicably so. She has also conceived the most vehement dislike of his eminence, for no reason anyone can understand, since you must know his eminence has always had her best interest-" He stopped, and shrugged and Athos was very much afraid he'd allowed a chuckle to escape him. "At any rate, you see, the Queen's loyalties are divided, and having the King's best interests-and, aye, those of the kingdom-at heart, the Cardinal can't help but monitor her conversations. We are not going to beg pardon for doing what must be done."

"I a.s.sure you, Rochefort, we never expected you to beg pardon."

He got a look of dubious enquiry for that, followed by an exasperated exhalation. "The thing, my dear Count, is that . . ." He hesitated. "This correspondence hinted that there would be a great change in France soon, and it was clear they meant that the Cardinal would be dead and . . ." He paused. "And the throne might be better managed. We believed the implication was that they meant to murder the King."

He paused. Athos caught himself halfway out of the chair, rising by the force of his arms upon the armrests, and he forced himself to sit down again. He noted Rochefort's gratified expression at what Athos was sure was his alarmed face, and Athos forced his face to relax; forced himself to discipline his emotions. This was Rochefort and Rochefort was an echo of the Cardinal. They-both of them-told the truth only when they couldn't tell lies, or when the truth served their purpose better than a lie. The chances of this being truthful were less than none.

Yet, Athos's voice still sounded altered and distorted by emotion, as he said, "You cannot know what you're saying. You cannot mean it."