The Musketeer's Seamstress - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,22

if the man had heard or if he would obey. These days it didn’t seem as though any landlords were honest, any merchants respectful, or any noblemen honorable. Indeed, in Athos’s dimmed view, the whole world was sinking into a morass of disorder.

Which was why it didn’t surprise him to see D’Artagnan, a seventeen-year-old youth, staring at him with the disapproval that Athos would have expected of his elders and betters. He straightened his spine, insensibly, under the scrutiny, and found his upper lip curling in disdain, ready to refuse the young man’s pity or scorn at his wounding.

But D’Artagnan’s dark eyes shifted, and his expression became one of frowning concern. “The salve . . .” he said, and paused, as if searching for words. “You remember the salve, the recipe of which my mother gave me before I left my father’s house? Be the wound ever so grave, the injury so severe, as long as no vital organ is touched, it will cause it to heal three days. I have had the chance to make it useful to you in the past.”

Athos remembered this same speech. “Yes. Last month, when we first met and I was nursing a shoulder wound.”

“My lodging at the Rue des Fossoyers is nearby and I have a jar of salve ready.”

“It is nothing,” Athos said. He didn’t even know why, except that he didn’t like for anyone to see him weak or wounded. And in their brief acquaintance D’Artagnan had seen this all too often already. “It is a scratch.”

Porthos, who had held silent through all this, cleared his throat as he looked meaningfully at Athos’s sleeve, which was now so drenched in blood that a trickle of it was dripping below his wrist and down his hand.

Athos looked at Porthos, then rounded on D’Artagnan, expecting to read pity or annoyance in the young man’s eyes. But D’Artagnan had turned away and, as they walked, was scanning the street ahead of him as though something vital held his interest in the midmorning sidewalks and their sparse foot traffic of shopping housewives and surly apprentices.

“We have to talk at any rate,” the young man said, as he looked ahead. “Of topics best not described on the street. Unlike Fasset I have no fear for our friend’s culpability, but still we told him we would do our best to clear his name and his honor while he was gone . . .”

And on that he’d got Athos, because Athos could not deny that they should be investigating the murder, that they should be talking in private. And D’Artagnan’s house was the one nearest. And—if he owned the truth to himself— Athos could profit from the salve upon his arm. The pain was near unbearable, and all the nursing that Athos’s servant, Grimaud, would give him would be the wrapping of a ligature to stop the bleeding. But that would do nothing for the pain or the possibility of fever.

D’Artagnan’s salve, if it worked, might keep Athos’s head clear enough to find the murderer in this crime. Not that there was a murderer to find. Or none other than Aramis. Because, how could there be another one? Aramis had been alone with the woman, locked in. And yet Athos refused to believe that Aramis would lie to them.

Could Aramis kill the woman he loved? Why not? Others before him had. Athos himself . . . Athos stopped the image of his dead wife from surfacing in his mind. And yet . . . and yet, though he could believe Aramis capable of murder, he couldn’t believe him capable of deceiving his friends.

Oh, truth be told, Athos himself had never told his friends of his crime, his dark, secret remorse. But the crime had happened long before he met even Aramis or Porthos, much less D’Artagnan. And he’d asked for their help with neither cover-up nor expiation, both of which he was managing on his own, though perhaps not as well as he would like to.

But once they were friends and bonded as closely as brothers, Athos could not imagine any of them keeping a secret from the others. It was impossible. Aramis would have confessed to his transgression as he asked for help. He would have given his reason for the murder. And he would be sure as one could be sure of eventual death that his friends would stand by him no matter what his crime, stand as ready to save his neck in guilt as