On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) by Kate Silver Read Free Book Online

ached with weariness and riding Seafoam until it seemed as though she and the horse shared one body and one will.   She could ride now as well as her brother ever had.   Her skill with the sword was as yet still rudimentary, but she would work on that.
    Even if her future companions noticed the changes in her face or her bearing, she doubted they would ever guess at the truth - it was too preposterous to be believed.   As far as the world knew, Sophie Delamanse was dead of the plague, and Gerard, after a lucky escape from the disease that had killed his entire family, was on his way back belatedly to rejoin his regiment.
    Her brother had boarded with a widow in a respectable lodging house near the barracks.   Sophie paid a street lad a couple of sous to guide her there.   The boy led her through dark alleys and dirty streets, stopping in front of a shabby tenement with a ragged sign proclaiming rooms to let within.
    The widow looked sideways at Sophie when she rapped at the door, travel sore and weary from her days on the road.   “So, you’ve come back then.”   She bared her gums in a attempt at a smile.   “I heard you was dead but I guess I heard wrong.   You’re in luck.   I’ve got a room free if you want to take it.   The gentleman who was in there hanged hisself the other week.   Still, I don’t ‘spose you’ll worry about that, having just come from the parts where there’s the plague and all.”
    The room was in the garret, up four flights of stairs.   The heat up at the top of the house was stifling, the open wooden shutters did nothing to move the air, and there was barely enough room for the small bed and a dresser that were the room’s sole furnishings.
    Tired and longing for a rest as she was, Sophie looked at the pokey accommodation with distaste.   “How much?”
    The withered old crone named an exorbitant fee – nearly the whole of the recompense Sophie would receive from her duties as a Musketeer.  
    Sophie shook her head in disbelief.   “For such a small room?   With barely a window?”
    “I’ll be charging you a mite extra coz you’ve come from the Camargue,” the old woman said, her beady eyes fixed relentlessly on Sophie’s face.   “It’s not everyone who’ll take in those as have had the sickness.   The other boarders don’t like it.   It’s bad for business.”
    The old woman had a point, Sophie was forced to concede.   She might find it difficult to find another place to stay.   But still she hesitated.   Paying so much for her board would mean draining badly needed funds away from the family estate.   She was reluctant to do that, but both she and Seafoam were close to collapse and needed to rest.  
    At her silence, the old woman relented slightly in her greed, fearful of losing a paying customer.   “Ach, seeing as you’re an old friend, I’ll let you have it for a bit less.”   She named a sum that Sophie could live with.   “Payment in advance though,” she said, as she stuck out her skinny claw.
    Sophie tipped a couple of livres into the outstretched hand.   “Bring me some hot water and food.”   She added a couple of sous.   “And have your boy take my horse to the stables.”   The old woman tucked the coins away in the pocket of her apron with a feral look in her eye.   Sophie doubted her poor boy would see any of the coins for himself.
    When the landlady had shuffled away again, Sophie sat down on her bed, the thin straw rustling beneath her.   She was in Paris.   She had found herself lodgings – meager though they were.   She was going to be a Musketeer.   No one had questioned her sex – as far as the world was concerned, she was a man.   Maybe, just maybe, she would succeed in her mad scheme.
    Her confidence had evaporated into heat and worry by the time the landlady returned carrying a small basin of barely lukewarm water for her to wash away the grime of travel, and a bowl of thin, watery-looking gruel.
    She