“Here. As a musketeer. As you see.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Have you a wife?”
“That is… complicated.”
“I see.” She nodded. “Tell me at least that you were not free to offer for me ten years ago. Do tell me.”
Ten years ago, he thought. She looked like ten years ago she would not have left her nursery. But he knew that she probably had. “I was not free,” he said. “I was very far from free.”
“Oh, good. That at least is one less complaint against fate,” she said. And smiled archly. “And now you were telling me that someone had told you I wanted to get rid of the King. I don’t know who it might be. If I would venture a guess, I’d say Richelieu, but I know you like him as much as I do, or possibly less. You must understand, though, I would never try to get rid of the King. Oh, I think as a man he is a bore and a burden. And also that he leads the Queen a very miserable life. However, he is my King.” She shrugged. “There is a respect for the crown, if not for the man, and besides, you must believe I am, most sincerely, the Queen’s friend. If the King were to die, then the Queen would be in effect deposed. Surely you can’t suspect me of wishing that?”
Athos wasn’t sure about the rest of the torrential flow of words, but he was sure those last were true. She would not wish to leave her friend dispossessed, without a country. And, if the worst happened, the Queen would very likely be sent back to her parents’ house, a dowager daughter, with no position and no power. She had never had a child. Her importance would be very small, and she might not marry ever again.
No. He didn’t think De Chevreuse wished that for her friend the Queen. He’d heard that she had caused one of the Queen’s many miscarriages by inducing the Queen into racing her along the hallways of the palace. That he could believe. It was the sort of reckless amusement that would come to her at a moment’s notice. But the idea that she would deliberately set out to depose a friend… no. That he could not believe. Madcap and in love with adventure the duchess might be. Ill-intentioned, never.
He inclined his head, conceding the point. “It was the Cardinal,” he said. “But he said, first, that you intended to kill him, and then that you intended, perhaps, to kill the King. I will say I believed the first and not the last.”
Her eyes danced with amusement. “Oh, if one were to be punished for wishing to kill someone, then I would have lost my head on the gallows twenty times over.” She paused. “Possibly twenty times each day. I do wish to kill the Cardinal, though I must say I don’t think any of my plans has ever been good enough to achieve such a noble purpose.” She looked at him and raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Monsieur le Comte doesn’t think the purpose worthy?”
Athos raised an eyebrow, matching her gesture. “Monsieur le Comte,” he said, “would have agreed with you in the heat of his early twenties. But he is now, as you’ve said”-he bowed his head at her-“past thirty. And being past thirty, he’s started to wonder if all his best-intentioned actions have the effect he desires. Madam, we might get rid of Richelieu and saddle ourselves with something far worse.”
“How so?” she asked, staring intently at him. “How might someone be worse than Richelieu?”
“He could be less intelligent, your grace. Anyone less intelligent would not only be worse for France, but he would not be nearly as good an adversary.”
She laughed again, that delightful laughter, as though he had surprised her in the most wonderful way. “Perhaps, yes. That would be a pity. However, perhaps maybe a slightly less intelligent adversary would be good too? He wouldn’t come so close to hitting the mark, quite so often. And Monsieur le Comte, you must know I am not at all sure of the Cardinal’s being good for France.”
Athos shrugged. “I’m never sure. Some people…” He shrugged again. “I am sure he thinks he’s doing what’s best for France. Not sure if it’s truly the best. He’s either a more far-seeing statesman than I could hope to be, even had my bend of mind run that way, or he is more ambitious than anyone I’ve ever read about, and more reckless. Think, though-who could have guessed the result of Brutus’s assassination of Caesar. Brutus was-at least according to some-trying to preserve the republic, and yet he ushered in one of the most famous empires in the world. History is a tricky thing, when one is trying to write it.”
She shifted her dainty feet, displaying yet more of her ankle in the process. “Milord, I have never wanted to write history. Just to make it go the way I wish it to for a very short time. If history is a river, I’m the boy floating sticks on it, milord. I don’t think it will make any difference, in the long run.”
He looked her over. “I would hope not, Madam,” he said. “I would hope not. Most influence one can have on history seems to be bad.”
She smiled at him. “What a dreary philosophy.” And smiled wider when he bowed. “Let me tell you, though, that I have no intentions of having the King killed, so if what you wished was to ask me that… I have answered.” She looked at him, impish and challenging.
“Well, someone else,” Athos said, knowing he was skating on thin ice, but unable to stop, because he must ascertain how involved in this she was, “has told me that you had a letter addressed to the Duke de Vendôme, the King’s brother… and I wondered… since yet someone else has told me, that you have an interest in preventing monsieur’s marriage to Mademoiselle de Montpensier.”
“Certainly,” she said, a little hot flush rising to the rounded cheeks. “Certainly I have an interest in preventing monsieur’s marriage. The King’s younger brother and heir to the throne is seventeen. How will it look if he has children? Everyone will then know that the royal line will continue that way. The King… Ah, the King is the King and he will retain his court. But the Queen will become utterly irrelevant-a woman without children, without a stake in the future. Both King and Cardinal mistreat her and ignore her now, when not actively planning to divorce her and set her aside. How do you think they will view her then.” She finished the speech, her little fists tight in her lap, and she looked at him, as though thinking she must have scared or shocked him. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I told you I am loyal to my friends.”
“It does you credit,” Athos said, finding his voice unaccountably hoarse. “To be loyal to your friends.”
“So are you,” she said. “From what I heard, and if I recall from your list, one of the accusations against me was that I had, somehow, managed to entrap your friends.”
“Madam… The friend of another of my friends says that she heard you say that we would have a duel or a fight on our hands, and that you said it with such malice, she understood we were to fight a duel that night.”
For just a moment, the duchess looked baffled. It was not a put-on, but the surprised, utterly blank face of a woman who is struggling to recollect something and cannot find even a hint of it in her memory. Then, unexpectedly, her laughter pealed forth like a ringing of bells. She looked at Athos with a lopsided smile. “My dear sir, if what I referred to were a duel, the swords involved would be quite fleshy.” And to his shocked expression, “Monsieur le Comte, if you must know, your friend, Aramis, had thrice put off a meeting with me. Once because-he said-the young Gascon needed him to be a second in a duel. The next time, because your friend, Porthos, was in need of comfort and company, his friend having put off her own meeting with him, because her husband was suspicious of their relationship. And the third time,”-with a little bow towards Athos-“because, you, monsieur, seemed troubled and were drinking and he was afraid you would again gamble money you do not have.”
“Oh, last week,” Athos said. “He was an infernal nuisance, I recall, and clung to me like a wet shirt.”