Marrying the Musketeer (23 page)

He would force his way into the house in a heartbeat if he thought that would help him, but it would only make matters worse.
 
He needed Justin’s cooperation, not his antagonism.
 
If the young merchant had truly liked Courtney even just a fraction as much as she deserved, getting even a little cooperation would be a difficult task indeed.

He had eventually given up trying to see young Justin Legros in private and had staked out his warehouse instead.
 
Here, it was harder for Justin to pretend that he did not exist.
 
The young merchant was canny enough not to make a scene in front of his customers, but he was obviously not pleased to be bearded in his den.
 
He had kept him waiting most of the morning already and showed no sign of concluding his current business in a hurry.

Pierre crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his boots impatiently on the stone floor of the warehouse.
 
He would wait all day until the evening came and longer if he had to, but his patience was growing short.
 
He had but six weeks of leave in which to find Courtney.
 
He had no intention of spending them all waiting in patient silence while some jumped-up young merchant ignored him with such extravagant incivility.

Justin was still rabbiting on endlessly to his customer.
 
He gave Pierre a sideways glance out of the corner of his eye and then moved away across the floor to show his customer yet another set of damned gems.
 

Pierre had had enough.
 
He strode up to the pair of them, cracking his riding whip against the leather of his boots as he walked.
 
“Excuse me,” he said to the customer, a large, well-dressed merchant whose pale blue eyes were bulging out of his head with affronted dignity.
 
“Pardon the interruption, but I have some urgent business to conduct with young Monsieur Legros here.”

Justin opened his mouth and started to protest at his high handedness.
 
“Indeed, Monsieur, your business can wait until I am finished---”

Pierre hit his riding crop against his boots with a loud, menacing thwack that silenced the young fool and made the other man jump out of his skin.
 
“My business with you can wait no longer.”
 
He turned again to the affronted customer who was watching the exchange with great apprehension written all over his pudgy and mottled face.
 
“If you will be so good as to excuse us...”

“Certainly, certainly.
 
Only too h...happy to oblige,” the man stammered.
 
He nearly tripped over his feet in his hurry to escape the conflagration that he could sense was about to explode.

Justin Legros looked faintly annoyed, but he made no further effort to stop his cowardly customer.
 
He looked back at Pierre with a truculent gaze for a moment before bending his head to tidy away the trays of gems he had been showing.
 
“Well?
 
Now that you have succeeded in chasing off one of my best customers, what can I do for you?”

Pierre wanted to shake him out of his arrogance and antagonism.
 
It was going to be as hard as he had thought to get any information out of the young man, but he had to try.
 
The Legros were his best hope of finding out any information about Courtney.
 
Monsieur Legros senior had been her father’s best friend and his closest colleague.
 
No doubt the family was terrified still of being caught up in the avalanche that had swallowed Monsieur Ruthgard, but that should not make them all into cowards.
 
They would help him find Courtney whether they wanted to or no.

He stroked his chin as he thought of how to begin.
 
He was suddenly shy of mentioning Courtney’s name in front of her old suitor.
 
What if her cousin William had been wrong about her single state?
 
What if she was not lost and alone, but happily married to one of Justin’s acquaintances?
 
For all he knew to the contrary, she could even be married to Justin himself.
 
“I want to buy an emerald,” he said at last.

The merchant stopped his tidying and raised his eyebrows.
 
“You what?”
 
He looked suspicious still but Pierre at least had his attention.

“Yes, I want to buy an emerald,” Pierre repeated.
 
“You sell them, I believe?”

The merchant folded his arms across his chest.
 
“I can’t help you there.
 
You might want to try across the street.”
 
He turned his head away and Pierre thought he heard the man say,
 
“they have fewer qualms about dealing with rogues and vagabonds.”

He was in no position to take offense at the man’s words, insulting though they were.
 
Keeping a firm lid on his temper he merely asked, “You have no emeralds fit for a lady?”

“None that I will sell you.”

“That is indeed a pity.
 
I was hoping you would be able to help me choose one that my promised wife would like well.
 
You have known her for so much longer than I have...”

The merchant whirled around to face him.
 
“I beg your pardon?”

“You have known Mademoiselle Ruthgard for so much longer than I have known her,” Pierre said, pleased with the reaction he had prodded out of the phlegmatic young man.
 
“You would surely know what kind of emerald she prefers above any other.
 
I have been away from her for so long that I am counting on this emerald to help me make amends for my past behavior.”

The man’s face grew purple and he clenched his fists by his sides.
 
“Get out.”

Definitely a stronger reaction than he had expected.
 
He stood his ground, raising an eyebrow as if he wanted an explanation for this piece of rudeness.
 
To give him his due, the merchant was brave in his anger to try to show the door to a Musketeer of the King’s Guard.
 
He let his hand rest on the hilt of his sword to emphasize their differences – principally that he was well armed and well versed in the art of war, and the merchant was not.

The merchant was well-nigh shaking with impotent anger.
 
“You mock a woman I love as dearly as if she were my sister.
 
She is no more your promised wife than she is mine.
 
Less, in fact.
 
I would have wed her when she was left alone and friendless.
 
You abandoned her to her fate without a second thought.
 
Get out.
 
You are not welcome here.”

Pierre did not move, though he was burning with anger inside.
 
He did not take kindly to being scolded by his inferiors.
 
“We pledged our troth to one another and she swore she would wait for me until I returned for her.
 
She is not the sort of woman who would break her word.”

“That was twelve months ago and more.
 
What woman would be such a fool as to wait that long?
 
Not Courtney Ruthgard, for sure.
 
Especially not when she knew what shameful part you played in arresting her father.”

He found it hard to defend himself from that charge.
 
He had been charged with finding evidence against Courtney’s father to bring him to justice, and he had found the evidence that he sought.
 
“Monsieur Ruthgard received only what he deserved.
 
He was a fool to think he could defraud the King of France and get away with it.”

The merchant shrugged.
 
“I know not what Monsieur Ruthgard deserved or no, but you had no need to ruin the daughter along with her father.
 
That was a shameful act of spite.”

He could not wait any longer to hear what he needed to know.
 
“She did not wait for me, then, when her father was arrested?”

“She came looking for you – at this very warehouse – hoping that you would help her find some way to save her papa.
 
I told her what you had done and she left again without a word.
 
She looked as though her heart was breaking in two.”

So his instincts had been right.
 
Justin knew where she was.
 
“Where is she now?”

“I do not know where she is.
 
But even if I did know, I would not tell you.
 
She has suffered enough at your hands already.
 
I would not be the cause of sending her yet more grief.”

“Is she still unwed?
 
Or has she married someone else while I have been away?”
 
He had to ask the question, little as he wanted to hear the answer.
 
He feared that it would be little to his liking.
 
She had much cause to despise and hate him for what he had done to her, and no reason to wait for him.

“I told you already – I do not know where she is.
 
She has refused to marry me more than once, but who is to say whether or not she has found someone who can offer her more than I can?
 
At any rate, she never told me where she was living, though I asked her many a time.
 
‘In the country’ was all she would ever say.”

He did not believe that Justin was as ignorant as he made out.
 
“But you see her from time to time?
 
You could carry a message to her from me?”

“I used to see her once in a while,” the merchant admitted.
 
“For some months she brought in things for me to sell if I could – she had nothing else to live on.
 
It is a while since she has come to see me here – three months or more.
 
I have not seen her since some weeks before her lying-in was to fall due.
 
I have been worried about her myself, hoping that both she and her babe are safe and well, but I do not know where to find her.”

He felt as though he had been picked up and dropped from a great height.
 
All the air left his lungs and he felt faint.
 
“Her babe?
 
She has a babe?”

The merchant nodded, satisfied to find that one of his barbs at least had hit home.
 
“She was with child when you left her.”

His words were bitter enough, but Pierre’s thoughts were more bitter still.
 
He had not once thought that she could have conceived his babe in her womb.
 
He had been too busy trying to escape the pangs of his conscience to consider the matter.

How she would hate him now.
 
How much more did he deserve to be hated than even he knew.

The merchant looked as though he were telling the truth.
 
His face was too pained for him to be lying.
 
He must be concerned about her in his own small way.
 

Pierre knew he ought to feel grateful to him for his concern, but he could not.
 
Courtney Ruthgard belonged to him and to him alone.
 
No other man had the same right to look after her and take care of her as he did.
 
He was her promised husband and the father of her babe.

He turned on his heel and strode out of the warehouse without another word, feeling as though the world had caved in around him.
 
Let him but find her, he prayed as he strode aimlessly through the streets in a daze, and she would never want for help again.

Three days after her fall, her broken arm splinted to make it heal straight and her teeth gritted against the pain that still lingered in her bones, Courtney arrived at her cottage in the country where her son waited for her.

Thank the Lord that Sophie had doubled back to help her and had killed the man who would have stabbed her as she lay hurt on the ground.
 
She owed her life to Sophie, and to Sophie’s husband, who had carried her to the nearest village to have her broken bone set.
 
Were it not for the two of them, she would be in a bad way indeed.
 
Sophie’s husband had even given up his mission to stop his wife from going to England and had instead joined her to protect her along the way.
 

There were still a few good men around in the world, she supposed grudgingly enough – and Sophie’s husband seemed to be one of them.
 
It was just her luck that she had hit on one of the worst of them in Pierre de Tournay.
 
Still, he had given her a son, the pride and joy of her life.
 
How ironic that the method he had tried to use to shame her and her father had given her instead the greatest joy she had ever known.