Outside, they walked for a while in silence, before D’Artagnan said, “You don’t believe then, Aramis, that the boy was Porthos’s son?”

Aramis shrugged. “I wouldn’t know one way or another. There are so many children… I don’t think we have any reason to think he was. But then, we also have no proof that he wasn’t. Porthos is old enough to have fathered him, mind…” He seemed preoccupied with something for a long while. “Sometimes I wonder…” He shrugged and rubbed his face with his spread fingers, as though seeking to remove an obstruction to his sight.

“If you have any children out there, forgotten?” D’Artagnan asked.

Aramis smiled unexpectedly. “None that would thank me for claiming them,” he said. “If I have sired any child, it was when I was very young and surely his mother’s husband can better look after him than I can. Also, if that ever happened, the lady never saw need to inform me. No, D’Artagnan. I was thinking of Violette. If she had lived and had my child, I wonder what the child would have been like.” He was silent a while longer. “You know, it’s funny because until now I never thought I’d want to be a father. It’s obvious that Porthos wishes to be one, but I never thought of it. And then Violette… Well… I’d have liked to see what kind of child we’d have had together. I would have liked…” He shrugged again. “But what is life without some regrets? And, after all, in consigning myself to holy orders and the church, I shall have not one, but a hundred spiritual descendants.”

D’Artagnan was so surprised, he let the words burst forth before he could stop them, “You are sincere about wanting to take orders.”

“Oh yes,” Aramis said, looking a little surprised. “I thought you knew? What would be the point of shamming?”

D’Artagnan shook his head. Having blurted out his feelings without thought he now had to concentrate to attempt to make sense. “It’s just that I knew you wanted to enter the church, but I wasn’t sure it was a real spiritual pursuit. So many people take orders…”

“I know, I know,” Aramis said. “His eminence the Cardinal, for instance. But… This is not for me. I do intend to devote myself to the church. I have given it much thought these last few months, since Violette…” He shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel for anyone what I felt for her. At the same time… I am a fallible man. I don’t feel I’m ready to dedicate myself fully to the church yet. And so I shall wait. Besides, our friends need me.”

D’Artagnan interpreted Aramis’s speech to mean that Aramis was not ready to give up on the fair sex. But perhaps here, too, he was doing Aramis an injustice. At least Aramis meant to take his orders seriously when he took them.

Meanwhile they’d arrived at the Rue des Fossoyers, and D’Artagnan’s mind wandered away from Aramis and Aramis’s concerns. He found himself scanning the front of the house anxiously, looking for the shape of someone watching from the windows. Oh, he knew it was ridiculous at this time of night. What would she be doing up? Waiting for him? She was a married woman and worked for the Queen as one of her favored maids. And he was a seventeen-year-old guard, not even a musketeer. What could she ever see in him?

He realized he’d been silent for a while and that Aramis was watching him curiously. D’Artagnan blushed dark and said, “I must go. I really should get some sleep before I stand guard tomorrow at Monsieur des Essarts.”

“Yes, you probably should,” Aramis said, but he still looked curious. When D’Artagnan didn’t say anything, Aramis said, “Good night my friend.” And turned to leave.

No sooner had he taken three steps away, than D’Artagnan heard an urgent “Pssst” out of the shadows.

He barely had the time to turn before one of the windows in the bottom floor opened and something came sailing out of it. By instinct more than by design, D’Artagnan caught it, in the dark.

It was a rose. Not the one he had given her, but another, for it still had its thorns upon it. To protect his hands upon catching it, she’d wrapped a silken handkerchief around the stem. It was lace bordered and the initials worked upon it were CB.

He lifted it to his lips and kissed the initials. From somewhere up the road, he’d swear he heard Aramis chuckle.

But when he turned, Aramis was walking away, in the dark night, and didn’t look like he’d ever turned back or witnessed the scene.

D’Artagnan looked back, towards the window, from which rose and handkerchief had dropped, and saw her looking out. Her. Or at least enough of her to recognize: a hint of blond hair, the curve of a cheek, two intent blue eyes. His heart sped up and blood thundered in his ears like an oncoming summer storm.

He bowed deeply and removed his hat, while bowing almost to the ground.

As he straightened, he saw her smiling at him, a smile full of intent and meaning and at the same time, she lifted her hand, as though telling him to wait.

D’Artagnan wasn’t sure what she meant, but at that moment, he couldn’t have moved no matter how much he wished it. He stood planted, on the street in front of her house, and presently-it seemed to him as though she were decanted from moonlight and roses-she opened the door and stood before him, dressed in her dress and a cloak with a hood. She was a little breathless, causing her chest to heave and putting pink on her cheeks. Which made her even more beautiful than she’d been before. And she plucked at his sleeve. “Monsieur. Would you render me a service?”

D’Artagnan was sure he was sleeping, then. The night had run too long and he must have fallen asleep, with his head on Porthos’s table, and the others, feeling sorry for his youth and tiredness, had scrupled to wake him. That must be it, because it was only in D’Artagnan’s dreams that beautiful women asked him this sort of question. In fact, it was only in D’Artagnan’s dreams that beautiful women spoke directly at him.

However, this being a dream he enjoyed, he decided he would take it at the full and enjoy it to the end. Bowing deeply, he said, “Madam, you have only to tell me where I may lose my life in your service.”

She smiled, and blushed darker, and said, “Oh, I hope that might not be needed, but you see… I have a friend…” When he didn’t dispute this, she went on. “A friend who is married to a most suspicious husband, and there is a man she loves, but with whom she is too honorable to have any commerce. She wishes to send this man a message, to prevent his being foolish enough to appear at her door as he’s been threatening to do. Only, she is constantly watched.”

“By her husband?”

“And his minister.”

“And his-” D’Artagnan took a deep breath. Until that word he had been, complacently, imagining that Madame Bonacieux referred to him in a round about way. “You mean she is the-” Her hand clapped on his mouth before he could finish the sentence.

“Yes,” she said.

“And?”

“And this message to her gentleman friend she entrusted to me,” Madame Bonacieux said. “Only I am a woman, too, and frail. I’m afraid of being attacked between here and the house where I’m supposed to deliver it. She believed my husband might protect me, but I don’t think my husband will be much good against armed attackers, do you?”

Her hand still covering his mouth, all he could do was shake his hand.

“Would you escort me, then?” Madame Bonacieux said. “On my errand?”

“With the best will in the world, madam,” D’Artagnan said, offering her his arm. She accepted it, and slipped her hand upon it.

“You are so brave, monsieur,” she said. “I perceive with you, there will not be the slightest cause for alarm.”

In fact, D’Artagnan found no cause for alarm, at any rate. As they walked along the deserted, darkened streets, everything was quiet. It seemed to him, for a long while, that he heard steps behind him, but after a while he was sure it was just the disordered beat of his own heart.