Marrying the Musketeer (30 page)

She would have been better to keep her mouth shut.
 
Pierre tossed his quill down on the table and looked at her in exasperation.
 
“Have you not heard a word that I have been saying in the last hour?”

She had heard every single word, but she had understood nothing.
 
He might as well have been speaking in Spanish.
 
“I was trained as a merchant, not a soldier,” she reminded him.
 
“I look at a wavy line drawn on a piece of paper and I do not see masses of troops fighting a battle.
 
I see naught but a wavy line.”

He sighed as he ran his fingers through his hair.
 
“I will go over it again one more time.”
 
He picked up his quill pen and pointed to the area around the wavy lines.
 
“These represent the lie of the land around the outskirts of Paris.
 
Mostly flat, as you can see, but there are some hills over here,” and he pointed to a set of wavy lines, “and here,” and he pointed to the first set of wavy lines, “that would make a suitable vantage point.
 

“If we were to land our troops over here,” and he pointed to a piece that Courtney finally understood - it was shaded and labeled sea.
 
“If we land them here, march them this way towards Paris, and take up a stand on these hills, we would be the best placed for the battle that would follow.
 
The King would be hard pressed to come at us without exposing his troops to our archers.
 
We could pick them off at our leisure as they approached.”

Courtney still didn’t understand.
 
“Why do you want to be up on a hill when you are fighting?
 
Wouldn’t the enemy troops be able to see us from miles away?”

Pierre looked at her as if she were half-witted.
 
“Which is easier – to run uphill or to run downhill?”

“To run downhill, I suppose, as long as the slope is not too great.”

“So which way do you think it is easier to fight, uphill or downhill?”

Of course.
 
She had not thought of that.
 
“Oh, I think I am starting to understand.”

He shook his head.
 
“The Duc was a fool to think you would be any use to him in a battle beyond the strength of your sword arm.
 
Heaven help me if you are ever made a general.
 
I shall resign my commission rather than fight under you.”

Her professional pride was hurt.
 
“I can fight as well as any other man when the mood takes me.
 
What else is there to a battle but a man’s skill with sword or musket?”

“Battles are not won just through fighting, they are won through strategy.
 
If we think faster and smarter than our enemy can, we can outmaneuver him and place our men where they will be of most use to us.
 
We could win the battle with far fewer numbers on our side if we are smart about it.”

Such a way of looking at a battle was new to Courtney.
 
She had thought it was nothing more than chopping people to bits before they got a chance to chop you to bits instead.
 
“I shall do the fighting that falls my way then and leave the thinking to you.”

“I am glad of it.
 
That way we both stand half a chance of coming out of this affair alive.”

His reminder of how dangerous their mission was sobered her thinking on the instant.
 
She needed to keep herself safe for her father and for her son.
 
“What of our more immediate plans?
 
How will we get the Duc to England?”

He grinned at her.
 
“You have a point.
 
Here I am building castles in the air and planning the strategy for a battle to end all battles, where we take on Paris itself to win the kingdom for the Duc when there are a thousand smaller battles we must plan for first.
 
If we fail in any of those, we shall have no need of these battle plans.”
 
He drew a clean sheet of paper out from underneath the plan he had just drawn and started again, scratching away with his quill pen.
 
“First things first,” he muttered as he wrote.
 
“The Duc must get to England in safety.”

Courtney groaned at the thought of yet another mad dash across the country on horseback.
 
Last time she had tried such a thing she had fallen off more times than she could count and eventually broken her arm.
 
The memory of the pain still lingered in her mind.
 
“We need to get him there as fast as possible.
 
The King will discover that his brother has gone soon enough, and we shall have to outrun our pursuers all the way to Calais.”

He shook his head.
 
“No, Calais is the last place we should go.
 
That is the first place the King would think to look for us.
 
We must take a different route out of the country.”

“Such as?”

“We are not a million miles away from Spain.
 
We could go south and cross the border into Spain and go from there.
 
The King would not dare to send an armed force into Spain after us.
 
It would be tantamount to declaring war on his powerful neighbor.”

Courtney shook her head.
 
“We need to get there first, and it is a long way to our southern borders.
 
Once we are in Spain, we might be safe from a large force, but not from a small one.
 
He need only send a couple of assassins after us.
 
Then he would have us all dead, and the King of Spain would never know.
 
Besides, even were we to reach Spain in safety, the journey by sea to England would be far longer and more dangerous from Spanish shores.”

“Burgundy, maybe.
 
The Duke has no love for the King and might afford us some protection were we to ask.”

Sophie was now in Burgundy serving its Duke in his private army.
 
She would like to see Sophie again.
 
“The Duke might not want to anger his French neighbor, either, by offering us his protection.
 
We should not put too much faith in him.
 
He might just as well turn us over to the King of France as help us on our way to England.”

Pierre twirled the ends of his moustache around his finger.
 
“True, but going north is no answer, either.
 
Holland will not welcome Catholics and none of the petty German princes are much use for anything.
 
That way would afford us no protection.”

“We could travel north towards Holland as if we were to take refuge there and cut eastwards to a French port before we reach the border,” she suggested.
 

“Ah, you’ve got it,” he said, as he bent his head to his paper and began to scribble away like mad again.
 
“Only we will go south, not north.
 
Spain poses a much greater threat to France than Holland ever could.
 
We will leave enough clues behind us to suggest to anyone who might follow us that we are headed south to Spain to ask for their support, but instead of following the south road all the way to the border, we will cut eastwards towards Brest and take ship from there.
 
That way we shall not delay overmuch on the road, but the King will hesitate to muster a large troop against us to send into enemy territory.”

Heads together, they continued to plan their flight to England.
 
Courtney was surprised how easy it was at a time like this to put aside her hatred of Pierre and work with him towards a common goal.
 
As she wrestled with discovering the safest path for them both, she forgot how she ought to be hating him and working towards his downfall.

She savored each minute they spent in each other’s company, knowing that their time together was limited.
 
If their bold enterprise failed, they would both be hanging in chains from a gibbet at the crossroads to frighten crows or scattered to the four winds in exile from their homeland.
 
If it succeeded, she would free her father, stab Pierre in the back as soon as his usefulness was ended, and flee the country at once.
 
Win or lose, these few days would be the last time she would spend with him.
 
Win or lose, the father of her child would very likely soon be dead – and by her hand.

She looked at the back of his head as he bent over his scratchings.
 
His hair was as black as ever, and his shoulders just as broad.
 
She wanted nothing more than to lay her hand on his head, run her fingers through his hair, and stroke the back of his neck and the planes of his back.

How long it had been since he had made love to her that first time.
 
She had never guessed that such ecstasy could exist this side of Heaven.
 
How long it had been since she had felt the touch of another human being even in simple affection, like the love of a father for his daughter or the love of a son for his mother.
 
How much longer since she had been touched with desire.

She wanted Pierre to touch her again the way he had touched her so many months ago.
 
She wanted him to see her as a woman, a desirable woman.
 
She wanted him to take her to his bed and make her his own one more time.

She shuffled uneasily in her seat, cursing the breeches and jacket that kept her sex hidden from him.
 
No longer did she want their protection.
 
Hiding from the world in the garb of a man was not the answer.
 
She wanted the world to see her for what she was.
 
She wanted to be desired and courted again, as she had been as a girl in her father’s house.
 
More than anything else, she wanted to be loved.
 
She wanted Pierre to love her again.

“I have the papers.”

At the sound of the voice, Courtney looked up with a start from her accounts.
 
She had not even heard Miriame come in.
 
“You what?”

Miriame was disheveled and dirty and breathing hard as if she had been running quickly through the streets.
 
There was a gleam of wildness in her eyes and an air of barely suppressed excitement in her whole demeanor as she paced up and down through Courtney’s chamber, her feet making no more noise than those of a cat.
 
“I have the papers.
 
I have robbed the King of France in his own halls, and no one has yet discovered the theft.
 
I am a master thief, truly a master thief.
 
This escapade is my master work.
 
I shall never want to steal again, for what else could possibly compare with this?
 
All else would be tame beside this.”

Courtney felt a thousand butterflies erupt into flight in her stomach.
 
This was the beginning of the rebellion.
 
They had gone too far to go back now.
 
“Where are they?”

Miriame drew them out of her jacket and tossed them on to the table in front of Courtney.
 
“One set of incriminating papers, as ordered.”

“You were not seen?
 
Or followed?”

Miriame shook her head.
 
“Not me.
 
I grew up on the streets, remember?
 
I was shaking off pursuers as soon as I could walk.
 
Nobody, but nobody, can follow me if I want to lose them.”

“Nobody saw your face or could identify you before the King?”

“Not a soul.
 
I would stake my life on it.”

“You
have
staked your life on it,” Courtney reminded her.
 
She could not comprehend Miriame’s coolness and flippancy about her own mortality.

Miriame shrugged as if she were used to the thought of risking her life and gave it no heed any more.
 
She probably
was
quite used to it by now, Courtney thought with a shudder.
 
She risked being hanged thrice a day and thought no more of it than Courtney would think of buying a pair of ribbons.
 
She seemed to positively
like
flirting with danger.

She herself did not have Miriame’s insouciance in the face of death.
 
Her stomach was churning over and over with fear and dread.
 
Only her determination to see justice done carried her through.