“I’m not sure he doesn’t mind, Athenais. Just that he can’t do anything about it. If he could, if an idea presented itself…”

Athenais had gone pale. She nodded. “I can’t say… Oh, I wish my loyalty permitted me to say that he would never do that. I wish… I wish I had the very proper feelings of a wife, and that I could rely on those feelings to say that nothing, ever would persuade Monsieur Coquenard to try to kill anyone.” She put both hands in front of her mouth, then lowered them slowly. “Oh, I am an unspeakable wretch. The only thing I can’t believe-the only thing, Porthos-is that my husband would have the resources to find out about your son, or to know that your son was spending time at Monsieur de Comeau’s. But he might have found it by accident. We get a lot of information in various ways. Whispers in the dark, you know, conversations that happen in here, behind closed doors. It is possible. It is possible he has somehow found it out.” She shook her head. “The only thing I can think, Porthos, the only thing I can say is that my husband being who he is, and my having lived with him for these many years, he’s not a… convoluted man. For someone in his work, he’s not a devious man. He wouldn’t think of killing the child, Porthos. He’d be more likely to kill you.” She smiled, a nervous smile. “He would be very likely to kill you, probably stealth or with poison, of course-or even more likely to pay someone to challenge and kill you in the street.” She held up a hand to forestall any possible protest of his. “Porthos, I know that no normal fighter could have killed you on the street, but Monsieur Coquenard wouldn’t know this.”

“Except, perhaps,” Porthos said. “If he were very angry at our… involvement, he truly wanted to punish me. Perhaps he wanted to kill one of the two people I would have died to save, and in such a way that everyone would think I had killed him. Perhaps he was looking for me to be killed in the gallows. Perhaps that would be his great revenge.”

Athenais paled, then blushed, then paled again. She sighed and shook her head. “I wish I could say…” she said.

“I know,” Porthos said. “I don’t want to believe it of him, simply because I know it would sully your name, and leave you alone in the face of the world… only not really, because you know I would be ever ready to protect you with my name and my honor… but…”

Athenais, who had been staring at Porthos with a horrified expression, as if she were looking onto her own doom, now giggled. “Porthos,” she said. “Did you just tell me that should my husband be a murderer, should he go to the gallows and leave me penniless and lost, you’d marry me?”

Porthos opened his hands as he did when he didn’t know what else to say. Didn’t Athenais know this? How could Athenais not know this. “We’d go hungry, sometimes, ” he said. “And you might have to follow us on campaign. The life of a musketeer’s wife is not an easy one, but, Athenais, of course I would marry you. Do you think I’d abandon you in your hour of need? Do you think…?”

“Oh, Porthos,” she said. “Don’t say any more. Don’t say anything else…”

“You’re angry at me,” Porthos said, trying to read her expression which was odd in the extreme. She was smiling, but her eyes were full of tears and half-closed, as though something hurt her.

“No,” she said, and shook her head. “No. I’m not angry at you.”

“Irritated, then,” Porthos said.

But Athenais giggled. She giggled and covered her mouth, and then she giggled again. And Porthos hoped she wasn’t hysterical because what he’d heard about curing a woman’s hysteria involved slapping her hard, and he couldn’t even imagine slapping Athenais, not the least of which because he had a serious suspicion that Athenais would slap him back.

However, Athenais’s giggling didn’t escalate. Instead, it stopped all together, and when she removed her hand from in front of her mouth, her smile was something of wonder, the smile of a child faced with a new toy, the smile of a woman on her first ball.

“Don’t speak, Porthos, don’t speak.” And before Porthos could think or move or protest, Athenais surged forward and put her arms around him. Her warm lips met his, and she kissed him with passion that had happened rarely in their accustomed, comfortable relationship.

Caught between confusion and Athenais in his arms, her warm body against his, her tongue in his mouth, Porthos did what any gentleman would do and kissed her back with all the passion he could muster.

It was a while before he could collect his thoughts again, enough to speak rationally. “But Athenais, why are you so… Why are you so… What did I say that was so good?”

Athenais smiled. She sat down by his side, looking composed, with her hands on her lap. “When you get to be my age,” she said. “And never having been a beauty.” She smiled at Porthos. “I know what you’d say, Porthos, but you have no need to be gallant. I was not beautiful enough to be sold to a higher bidder than an aged accountant. I know my price.”

“Your father was a fool,” Porthos said.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps you see more beauty in me than I actually have,” Athenais said. “It signifies not. Until this moment I never fully believed you could want me for me and not for the substantial inheritance I’ll receive when Monsieur Coquenard dies.”

“Athenais!” Porthos said.

“I’m sorry, Porthos, did I-”

“I have a good mind to be angry with you,” Porthos said, but looked at her, staring at him with her eyes still flooded with tears and her mouth still smiling. He reached out and grabbed her, and kissed her again, wildly.

Afterwards, as both were recovering their breath, Athenais said, “I’ll look at the accounts, of course. Set a couple of my husband’s clerks to trace things for me. If we’ve ever loaned anything to Monsieur de Comeau, I’ll find it.”

“Good,” Porthos said. “I’ll be gone for some days, perhaps you’ll have an answer for me when I return.”

“Where will you be going for some days?” Athenais said, then shook her head. “Oh, wait, you told me. Your father’s home.”

Porthos nodded.

“Good. I think it’s time you went home. You don’t have to stay but you should know…”

“Athenais, the only thing I want to know is whether Guillaume went there and to whom he might have talked.”

The Domains of a Provincial Lord; A Paternal Welcome; When Winning a Duel Would Be the Worst Thing

THE travel to Porthos’s domains was unexceptionable; the horses Monsieur de Treville had loaned them were swift and even their servants, riding somewhat behind, had been provided with fast horses. Still, by the end of the second day-having overnighted and changed horses- for horses of like quality-in a hostelry of dubious cleanliness-Athos was wondering if Porthos’s domains were mythical, or perhaps placed so far from the capital that they might as well be mythical.

Most of the ride, Porthos had taken the lead in silence, and the others had held still, till Athos wished highwaymen would attack them for the sake of creating a diversion. But as night fell, on the second day, Porthos announced, “St. Guillaume du Vallon.”

Athos looked around in confusion. They had been riding for some time along an increasingly dark country road. Light was just enough to let him perceive the time-polished stones of an old Roman road underfoot, and the glimmer of a farm house, here and there, amid the thickets of trees that lined the path. “Here?” he said, thinking Porthos joked. “In this wilderness?”

Porthos laughed, the first time he had done so, in their entire voyage. He’d slowed down, so they could catch up with him, and he took his horse at a measured walk, so they could talk. “Indeed,” he said. “I told you it was a little place.”

But as they got farther down the road, they could see the smoke of a half dozen houses, dark against the evening sky. And farther on still, past what looked like no more than miserable hovels and a bit down a winding road, there appeared what seemed to be a pile of ruins in huge, golden stones.