“Monsieur Porthos, I am proud,” Mousqueton said, bowing, a little humor in his eyes. “And all for my sake?”

“No. Or rather, yes, but…” In a tumble, he related everything that had been happening, omitting only Hermengarde’s death. He tried, but when it came to it, he couldn’t bring himself to tell Mousqueton that story. The thing was, in recent times, he’d seen Aramis survive the death of his lover-if indeed he had survived it. There were still days that Porthos wondered. And he suspected that Aramis wondered too. And he’d seen the look on Athos’s face when speaking of his long-lost wife. He simply couldn’t face seeing Mousqueton’s expression crumple like that. Not while the poor man was here, away from Porthos and from all his friends who might support him and comfort him.

So, absent that one distressing fact, Mousqueton listened to everything intently. “She was going to accept my proposal, then?” he said.

“You didn’t know that?” Porthos asked.

“She’d never yet told me,” he said. He looked somewhat worried. “Is she…”

“I think she is well,” Porthos said, crossing his fingers as much as might be, and telling himself that he was after all speaking of Hermengarde’s soul, which would, doubtlessly, be in heaven.

Mousqueton frowned, which seemed like a very odd response to such a question. “The thing is, monsieur, you see, that Pierre Langelier is a very good-looking man. He looks a lot like Monsieur Aramis, in fact. And though I was willing to marry her, to… you know, raise her child as mine, I wanted to make quite sure that that was all over before I did. One thing is to marry someone knowing they made a mistake once, and another and completely different to marry her and know you are going to be cuckolded lifelong. One I was ready to accept, the other one never.”

“Hermengarde said-says that you were suspicious of her relationship with the armorer’s son, but that, in her heart, there was never any other but you.”

“In her heart…” Mousqueton said, and shrugged. “Perhaps not. But in her arms there was.”

“Are you sure of this?” Porthos asked. “Or is it just your unfortunately suspicious nature?”

“Oh, my nature, surely, but my nature is greatly bolstered by my having walked in on her, in her sleeping room at the palace, in Langelier’s arms. He has this uniform… at least it is not really a uniform, but a blue suit, of such cut and style that it makes him look like a musketeer. I suspect this makes it easier for him to get into the palace, and he’d got into the palace, and when I came in…” He shrugged. “I don’t wish to describe it. Let us just establish the child could be either of ours.”

Porthos thought that Athos would say that women were, after all, the devil. But Porthos could not echo it. The thing was, with the lives they lived-the lives they all lived-they might be alive in a month and they might not. Porthos knew how much women craved security. Even his Athenais, whom his death would not leave either destitute or abandoned in the world, was known to scold him most fiercely for his perceived failings-particularly those that regularly put him in the way of men animated by a murderous intent and armed with sharp, pointed objects. She was, for some reason, convinced that Porthos did it only to vex her.

How much more would a woman feel that way, if she were dependent on the man for her chances at a future and at her child’s future at that?

Mousqueton seemed to read Porthos’s mind in his eyes. “It wasn’t, you know, that I didn’t understand her. Of course, I did. He might be a gambler and a bit wild, but he was the heir to a thriving business, a man with something to himself, some substance to spend.”

“And were you talking to his father when…” Porthos started. “I mean, what do you remember happening? Exactly?”

Mousqueton rubbed the top of his head. “The devil of it,” he said, “is that I only remember very confused things. I remember waking up, of course, and the corpse right here, and Faustine screaming her damn fool head nearby. And then, before I could fully open my eyes, for the infernal pain in my head, the Cardinal’s Guards were there, holding me. It was a devilish thing.”

Porthos nodded in understanding. “But nothing before that?” he said.

Mousqueton sighed. “I remember going in with sword and… working out some terms.”

“Terms?”

“Oh, he wanted…” Mousqueton shrugged. “He wanted one of us to find out exactly where and how much his son owed. It seems his gambling habit is worse than I’d thought, and his father wanted to know everything he owed. Of course…” He hesitated. “He was couching it all under the terms that if Pierre had truly blotted his copy book that badly, he would disinherit him. Something about sending him to the country, to be a smith, which I know for a fact he wouldn’t do, since Pierre is one of the best armorers in the country and his father was very proud of it. But he was saying that he would, you know, like people talk when they’re very upset. And he said that all his money and his business would then go to Faustine.” He rubbed his hand backwards through his hair, as though trying to comb it. It did nothing but increase the wildness with which it fanned around his face. “As though, you know, I could marry her for a few more coins…” He shrugged. “And as though I had any idea what to do with an armory. He was telling me, I remember, something about how the man he had trained-not Pierre, but the apprentice-could run it for me very profitably, and all I’d have to do was keep Faustine happy.” He frowned. “Which wouldn’t be such a bad deal, if only I thought anyone could.”

Where Monsieur D’Artagnan Wakes Up; The Strangeness of a Strange Bed; Fleur-de-Lis

D’ARTAGNAN woke up. The bed felt wrong. Too soft beneath him, and too hot too, as he appeared to be sinking halfway into a feather bed. The covers above him were far too suffocating, also. They increased his feeling of being hot, and also made him feel as if he could barely breathe.

He threw them back from his body and tried to think. He’d gone to dinner with milady, last night. That much he remembered. And also that milady had given him far too much wine. But how had he come to be naked on her bed? He could not remember. Probably the wine.

A look to the side showed him that she was under the covers, awake, looking at him. “Are you ready now, Monsieur le Guard?” she asked, her voice seductive, rising from the welter of sheets, her high breasts all the more prominent-seeming by being encompassed in a froth of silk.

But D’Artagnan was fully awake now, and fully alive to the possibilities and to everything that might have happened and might happen.

He remembered Planchet’s story. It seemed impossible that this blond beauty was Athos’s lost and infamous wife. And it seemed impossible that she might have drugged his wine, but unless D’Artagnan’s head for alcohol had inexplicably failed, drugging it was what she had, undeniably, done.

And while he could appreciate her beauty-which seemed even more pronounced under the light of day, the question remained of why she would want to sleep with him. Oh, he could understand Constance, at least at first, before she had-as he hoped she now had-found better reasons to care for him. Constance, in her confined life, shuttling between palace, where she was under the eye of her godfather, and her home, under the aegis of her much older husband, could not possibly have met anyone more dazzling than D’Artagnan-such as he was.

She had met a young, wild man, and had been attracted to him for that youth, which she did not share with her husband, and for the wildness which she’d spent most of her life trying to suppress. The love-and D’Artagnan truly hoped she loved him, because he surely loved her-had come later. But that had been the initial attraction.