On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (2 page)

Gerard.
 
She clutched onto the thought of her brother like a lifeline.
 
He was returning home in a sennight.
 
He would save her.

Surely her twin would see how repugnant this marriage was to her soul.
 
Their father would listen to his son’s objections where he would ignore those of a mere daughter.
 
She must win him over to her cause before it was too late.
 
“Does Gerard know yet of my betrothal?”

“Indeed.
 
He was the first to propose the match.”

The words hit her ears with the force of a hammer striking an anvil.
 
Gerard, her beloved twin, had betrothed her to a man she had never met?
 
He knew how much she wanted adventure in her life – how she envied him his life in Paris.
 
He even knew how fond she was of Jean-Luc.
 
He could not be responsible for having her sent away to some far away county, to manage the household of an absent stranger.
 
He had never breathed a word of this marriage to her.
 
She shook her head in denial.
 
“No, I cannot believe it.”

The gooseberry preserves roiled around in her insides once more, and her stomach finally revolted.
 
“Excuse me, Sir,” was all she managed to stammer as she stumbled white-faced out of the door.

She barely made it to the privy before she sank to the floor and was violently ill.
 
Retching convulsions racked her body until at last her stomach was emptied of everything but bile.

She did not sleep that night, her mind turning over and over with a sense of utter rejection and betrayal.
 
As the first fingers of daylight began to appear over the horizon, she finally gave up on her attempt to rest.

The stableboy was snoring in the corner in a bundle of hay when she crept quietly into the stables.
 
She saddled Firedancer as quietly as she could, unwilling to disturb the young lad’s rest.

The early autumn air on her face made her shiver, and she wrapped her heavy coat around her more tightly.
 
She felt strangely lightheaded – from lack of sleep she supposed.
 
She hadn’t broken her fast that morning either, but the memory of the gooseberries was still too recent for her to feel hungry.

She could leave now, she supposed, if she had anywhere to run.
 
She could not go to Jean-Luc and ask for his help.
 
Marriages were made by fathers – never by the parties involved themselves.
 
Jean-Luc was as powerless as she in this matter.

For a brief moment she flirted with the idea of riding to Paris and throwing herself on the mercy of the King, begging him to forbid the marriage, until the practicalities of such a flight intruded into her despair.
 
She had no food either for her or for Firedancer, and no money with which to buy any.
 
She did not even know the right road to take to get to Paris.
 
And even if, by some miracle, she were able to get to Paris without losing her way or dying of starvation or being robbed and murdered by brigands on the road, the King might not be there, or more probably he would refuse to see her, or, most likely of all, he would tell her to cease her disobedience and to honor her father’s wishes in the matter.

Running away was impossible.
 

Refusing to marry the Count would dishonor her father, but marrying him was unthinkable.

She’d reached the outer marshes now.
 
This was her favorite place in the whole world – the spot that was hers and hers alone.
 
She came here whenever she needed time to herself, to think or just to daydream.
 
Never had she needed the consolation this place held for her more than this morning.

As she approached the water, the croaking of the nearby frogs stopped, and she heard the tiny plops as they jumped into the water, disturbed by her nearness.
 
A group of flamingos, their pale pink feathers showing clearly against the green brown marsh, stalked through the water in the distance, their long, thin legs picking delicately through the mud.
 

Firedancer was soon tied to a tree at the edge, to graze on the lush grass that surrounded him.
 
With blades of green poking out of the sides of his mouth, he snorted and tossed his head, enjoying his reprieve from the early morning exercise.

Sophie sat down on a hillock of dry ground by the edge of the marsh, her bow within easy reach.
 
She could not run away, but at least she could still hunt.

A flock of geese passed overhead, but they were too far away for her to shoot.
 
Jean-Luc would have shot at them anyway, and wasted his arrow like as not.

She wondered if Count Lamotte ever hunted, or if he believed women should spend their lives on dull household chores.
 
God preserve her from a husband like that.
 
She would almost rather have the Marquis de la Renta and his interminable poetry.
 
At least he considered hunting a healthful pursuit, as he was overfond of telling her.

Cicadas chirruped sadly, their rasping song reminding her that summer was nearly done, and the dark, cold days of winter were not far away.
 
The lowing of nearby cattle resonated through the stillness.

Her patience was soon rewarded with the sight of a pair of ducks just come from their nest of grasses at the edge of the water.
 
With the ease and grace of long practice, she fitted an arrow to her bow and let it fly with a soft thwang.
 
The drake was dead before he registered the presence of a predator.
 
The duck flew squawking into the misty morning, only to be brought down a few seconds later with a second arrow.

A brace of ducks already.
 
Usually she would be satisfied with her morning’s work, but today she did not want to return.
 
Her home was no refuge against the dangers that faced her.

She gutted her kill, wrinkling her nose at the stench of the innards.
 
The by now familiar pang that Gerard was not there to laugh at her squeamishness tugged at her heart.
 
She flung the bloody mess into the water and wiped her knife and hands on the grass to clean them.

She had to face up to the reality of her future, she chided herself, as she flung herself down on the ground in the early sun.

She was heartsick that she could not marry Jean-Luc.
 
She had loved him so well, and for so long.
 
Her heart wrenched in two to have to give up all thoughts of wedding him.

Still, her husband-to-be was a Musketeer – a Parisian like Gerard was now.
 
If Gerard liked the Count, he could not be all bad.
 
He would not be violent or a drunkard at any rate - Gerard had no time for such men.
 
She only hoped that she and the Count would achieve at least a small measure of liking for one another.
 
She could not bear to be married to a man she disliked and who would be sure to despise her in return.

Gerard would be bound to visit her once she was married to his closest companion.
 
If she played her cards well maybe Gerard, or even Lamotte himself, would one day take her to Paris with him.
 
She had always longed to go to Paris.

Doubtless Burgundy would have its own charm, too – even though it was far from Paris.
 
At any rate, her marriage would give her a new world, one that she was certain that she could order in some measure to please herself.

Her father had handed her adventure on a plate, she thought wearily, even if she had been too shocked at first to recognize it.
 
Once she was over the suddenness of the proposal, her fate did not seem so bad.
 
She would try not to pine overmuch for Jean-Luc, whom she could never have now.
 
She would do her duty to her parents as she had been brought up to do, acquiesce to this marriage to the Count with a good grace, and prepare herself for adventure.
 
Indeed, she had no other choice.

Her decision once made, and with the sun warming her tired limbs as she lay in the grasses at the edge of the marsh, she fell into a deep, troubled sleep.

The sun was high in the sky when she awoke again.
 
Midges swarmed around her, attacking every scrap of bare skin they could find.
 
She brushed them away with a lazy hand, but there were too many of them.

Her sleep had not refreshed her but had left her with a pounding head and a body that felt tired and aching all over.
 
She felt worse than she had before she went to sleep.
 
Moreover, she was dying of thirst, and she had no water bottle with her.

Chiding herself for her foolishness, she brushed the midges off the brace of ducks she had killed early that morning, picked them up by their webbed feet, and tossed them over the pommel of the saddle.
 
Firedancer snorted at the smell of dried blood, but he allowed her to climb on his back and wearily point his head towards home.

The gelding was in no hurry, and, despite her thirst which had grown almost unbearable by now, she had not the strength to hurry him on his way.
 
He ambled slowly through the fields and down the rutted path, Sophie concentrating all that remained of her energy on keeping herself upright on his back.
 
Mists threatened to engulf her vision while the bright sunlight of the clear autumn day overwhelmed her eyes, which were made doubly sensitive by the pain that throbbed behind her temples.
 
Her arms barely had the strength to hold the reins and her legs hung limply along the gelding’s side, too weak to hold her in her seat as she flopped about with every step he took.

Nightmarish apparitions appeared in the air around her, tormenting her with the empty promise of the water she longed for and filling the air with maniacal laughter before dissolving back into her nothing once more.
 
She didn’t know if she was awake or dreaming.

By the time she reached the courtyard, she was hanging on to the merest thread of remaining sense by the sheer force of her will.

The courtyard was thronged with people rushing hither and thither, and the noise of it assaulted her ears like a blow to the temple.

Her brother – at least she thought it was her brother, but wasn’t he still in Paris? – strode towards her from among the crowds of people, his arms held out wide.

Sophie gazed uncomprehendingly at the apparition in front of her, expecting it, too, to dissolve before her eyes as had all the others.
 
“Water,” she croaked from between her cracked lips, when the form in front of her stayed strangely solid.
 
“Give me water.”

His arms reached out to lift her down from her horse, but she could not make any move towards him.
 
“Water,” she begged once more, as her sight grew black and she felt herself slip and fall.

She could not tell whether it was her body or her mind that was tumbling down.
 
All she knew was that the pit engulfing her was cold and dark, and the bottom was a long, long way away.

The next few weeks were a blur.
 
Now and then she awoke with a raging thirst, calling out for drink until a blessed figure would come and drip some precious drops of life-giving liquid down her throat, and smooth her brow with a cool, wet rag scented with lavender.
 
Sometimes the figure was her mother, sometimes her brother, and sometimes her childhood nurse, dead of a dropsy more than three seasons ago.

At times she was so hot she knew she had died and gone to hell where devils were roasting her over hot coals for all eternity.

Then the cold would ambush her, freezing her limbs until she could feel the ice forming on her toes, on her knees, on her belly, immobilizing her with the caress of its deadly fingers.

Always the pain was there – lurking just out of reach in the recesses of her head or engaged in a full-frontal assault on her entire body.
 
Then she would shake and cry and beg to be released from torment, until the pain receded once more into the mini death of her deep, trance-like sleep.

Then one morning when she awoke the pain was gone, the curtains around her four-poster bed were drawn back to let in the fresh morning air, the sun shone through a chink in her windowpane, and she knew that she was no longer asleep in a feverish nightmare.
 
Her arms felt strangely heavy when she tried to move them and the light still hurt her eyes, but her mind was clear.