The Musketeer's Seamstress - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,39

Porthos felt his heart shrink within his chest. Perhaps there was something here that the entire palace knew, something that Aramis had kept from even his closest friends. As Porthos had told Athos, the servants always knew about everyone’s lives.

“But was there such a one? One that she loved more, or that she intended to replace Aramis with?” He asked, and watched while the woman bit her lower lip, as though in deep thought.

Was that possible? While Porthos could not imagine Aramis killing the woman he loved even then, well . . . In Porthos’s knowledge, Aramis just moved from girl to girl, from flower to flower hardly giving them time to realize they’d been loved, much less to experience the disappointment of losing him. But Aramis hadn’t been quite normal about Violette. He’d stayed with her for years now, and he talked of her as other men talked about their wives. He trusted her with everything, even—Porthos suspected—his true identity.

But the cook shook her head, slowly. “No . . .” she conceded at last. “No . . . I can’t imagine . . .” She shrugged. “Well, to tell you the truth, monsieur, before the musketeer came to her bed, she dallied with many. Sometimes we took bets as to whether a valet sent to her room with hot water or a tisane would return quickly enough and unmolested. But then all of a sudden there was the blond musketeer. Aramis, as he’s called. And all the kitchen wenches,” she made a dismissive gesture towards the various girls and women laboring at the various fireplaces, chopping foodstuffs, kneading bread, throughout the expansive area. “All the kitchen wenches made jokes about how he must be endowed that he could make Madame de Dreux want no one else. And also . . .” She grinned. “About how long before she gave the Duke de Dreux a blond heir.” She nodded as if to herself. “The woman was that smitten that she might have lost all sense of propriety.”

Porthos took a deep breath in relief. If Violette didn’t have a lover, then Aramis hadn’t killed her. The whole case was that simple to Porthos who was not willing to entertain a moment of doubt on the subject of his friend’s morals.

Aramis dallied with women—as, who didn’t? Well, perhaps Athos whose taste in women was so wretched that it was safer for everyone, and himself too, if he didn’t dally with anyone—and sometimes the women were married. It was just the way musketeers lived. What single woman would want to attach herself to a man with few prospects except those of living in the army forever, going here and there at the command of his king and risking his life on battlefields?

But Porthos couldn’t imagine Aramis maltreating a woman for the fun of it. As far as that went, he was a good man. He fought in duels, with those who insulted or challenged him, and he dallied with the occasional married woman, but in neither case did he overrun his bounds. He didn’t kill for fun.

He sighed, a sigh of deep frustration.

“I’d swear my friend didn’t do it.”

“And yet,” the cook said. “He was alone with her, in a locked room. He jumped from the balcony so fast that he left his clothes behind.”

It all came back to that again. That damned locked room. How could a murderer have got in it without Aramis’s noticing? “Perhaps . . .” Porthos said. “Well, palaces are notorious for having . . . I mean, kings get jealous. And kings like to have a secret way to get at their mistresses. I mean . . . Passages and corridors and things with eyes in pictures.”

He thought he’d made rather a bad jumble of it, but the cook’s eyes widened. “Secret passages.” She smacked her thick lips together. “Oh . . . I hadn’t thought of that. Mind you, I don’t think there are any passages, but then I’m not the one who cleans or supplies the nobles up there . . .” She grinned, displaying crooked teeth. “Oh, I shall ask around, Monsieur. Thank you so much for giving me such an idea. Perhaps I can discover something . . .”

And while Porthos was thinking that there must be some way he could ask about what she found, without being too conspicuous, he looked up and found her staring at him with an expression akin to hunger.

“I don’t suppose, Monsieur,” she said. “Musketeers have to