The duchess laughed, once more. “Aramis can be very earnest. It is easy to ignore that because he is also… well, wild and naughty in many ways. But it is the naughtiness of a good man, you know. His instincts are for good. And his broken heart troubles him more than he wishes anyone to know.” She sighed. “Monsieur Athos, when I said you would have a fight on your hands, it was because I felt as if your friendship was wresting him, to be blunt, from my bed. It was that fight I referred to, and if your kind informer had listened more closely, she would have heard what weapon I intended to employ in bringing him to beg for quarter.” She smiled, her lips slightly parted and moist. “But you spoke of conspiracy. Surely that could be no more than an idle threat. How did you think I had conspired?”

He longed to kiss her lips, to take her in his arms, to feel the round firmness of her breasts against his chest. But he did not and could not even speak of it. Instead, he bowed a little. “I’m sorry. If you did not mean anything about a duel by that, it is highly unlikely you were implicated in a conspiracy.” In truth, he wasn’t at all sure of it, but he felt as if he couldn’t think clearly until he got out of her presence. And yet, a part of him did not want to leave her at all.

“I am sure I am implicated in several conspiracies, most of them private, but I promise you I have no intention of hurting you or your friends. I am loyal to my friends, remember. And Aramis is my friend.”

Athos looked at her and asked the question he had not meant to ask-in fact the question he had meant to never ask, no matter how long he stayed. “How close a friend is Aramis? Are you… are you very fond of him?”

She laughed. “Aramis is a good friend, but not… that close. He has a disturbing habit of preaching theology in the most awkward of situations, did you know that?”

“Heavens, yes, often in the middle of a duel.”

“It wasn’t a duel I was thinking of, Monsieur le Comte. But yes. He is, as I said, a good man. And I am not a good woman. But I am… very fond of him. And he is very good at providing that excitement that has little or nothing to do with danger.” Her eyes were veiled and challenging. “Besides there is something in me that makes me long, very much, to corrupt the innocent. Aramis was only a seminarian, not a priest, but it is close enough for corruption purposes.”

Athos wished to despise her for her desires, or at least for speaking of them so freely, but instead, all he could find himself thinking was that he was very much-passionately, in fact-jealous of Aramis.

He bowed to her, abruptly, feeling suddenly very old. Old enough to be past the temptations of the flesh. At least that was what his mind insisted on telling him, even if his body refused to listen.

“Your grace,” he said, softly. “I believe it is time I should leave. You’ve answered all my impertinent questions. I should thank you and leave.”

She rose from her chair and came up to him, till she was so close that his nose was full of a cloying perfume of violets and something else that he could only think was her own, unique smell. “Must you go?” she asked. “Without dueling?”

“Lady,” he said, feeling his heart heavy as lead within him, even as it pumped madly in his chest, even as his arms longed to envelop her. “You don’t wish to engage in that sort of duel with me. I blight all I touch.”

And then, without warning, she was on her tiptoes and stretching. She just managed to touch her soft, moist lips to his, but the touch of her lips was like the feel of a branding iron, and her hands, on his shoulder, were like the touch of rain after a long and parched summer.

The last of Athos’s self-control fled him. His hands, like mad things, too long confined, escaped him, and settled themselves on either side of her waist. He lifted her. She was scarcely heavier than a small child. He pulled her against himself, raising her, so that her breasts rested, heated and firm, against his hard chest, so that their mouths were at the same level, and his lips could meet hers, and his tongue penetrate the moist haven of her mouth. Her tongue met his, and entwined with it, in a long kiss in which-for Athos-time stopped and breath became something not at all necessary.

He breathed through her, and lived from her touch, and their hearts beat together, one beat echoing each other. Only the moan that escaped him-long and painfully drawn, like the lament of a lost soul, woke him from the idyll. He knew better than to allow his body sway, for every time he did, it meant his heart was yet more bruised. Presently he should grow as much scar tissue on his heart and soul as would make his ability to feel love or friendship even vanish utterly.

He put her down, almost abruptly. She looked bewildered and also a little stunned, as though she’d expected anything but that passionate kiss. Athos bowed, not daring speak, not daring look at her again. And bolted for the door like a man escaping a great danger. Not danger to himself, he thought, but danger to her. He should not be trusted when he got past all his self-controls.

Out in the hallway, he was aware of her gaze burning a hole into his back and looked back, for just a moment, to see her framed in the doorway of her lodgings, her hair askew, her hand covering her mouth, either to not allow the sensation to escape, or to hide her dismay.

He realized he could still taste her in his mouth-a hint of honey, a scent like rosemary. Shaking his head, he thought that he was indeed very jealous of Aramis.

Some moments later, climbing down a staircase, he noticed that passing valets and maids looked very oddly at him, and realized that his hair was all askew.

He’d just managed to comb it with his fingers and re-bind it, when he reached the kitchens.

And there, in the midst of the steam, the confusion, the screams and instructions that accompanied the tasks of making dinner for all the inhabitants, permanent and temporary, of the royal palace, he saw no Porthos.

He looked again, but it wasn’t as though Porthos could hide himself easily. On the best of days, in the middle of a company of identically dressed musketeers, Porthos stood out like an oak in a field of daisies. Though he wasn’t that much bigger than everyone else, he was large enough to call attention, his height allowing him at least a head advantage over the next tallest man, and his shoulders easily twice the width of anyone else’s shoulders. And his flaming red hair and beard weren’t exactly discreet in a world that had a lot more drab brunettes and dull blonds.

After the third sweep of his gaze through the kitchens, he motioned a young man, who looked like he might be a cook’s aid, to come close, and asked, in a shout, to be heard against the din of the kitchen, “Have you seen a redheaded musketeer, about this tall?”

The man looked a little confused, then smiled. “Oh, yes, he came in and wanted to talk to the head cook, but it turned out it was the old head cook. The new one doesn’t know him. So he said, he said, thank you and never mind and somehow-none of us knows how-he disappeared with a dish of pigeons stewed with apples. He said…” He frowned a little. “That he was going to the Bastille. And, you know, the cook, though he is very stern, said that the musketeer must be crazy. He wasn’t about to denounce him for the theft of a dish of pigeons.”

But Athos wasn’t about to devote any time to the pigeons. Instead, his mind was telling him the madman had gone to the Bastille. Exactly what he had promised Athos he wouldn’t do. And why should Athos have believed him? No one else seemed to be listening to Athos’s warnings.

Standing there, aware he had gone pale, staring at the young cook’s aid, he wondered if Porthos would need him. Should he go to the Bastille, anyway, and try to extricate his friend?