Free The musketeer's apprentice by Sarah d' Almeida Page A

of anything. You know that! But you’re looking at me as if I’d killed your favorite hound and had designs on your horse.”

    Porthos harrumphed, another behavior that didn’t come naturally to him. “You and Athos both surely sounded like you thought everyone at large would believe I might kill an innocent child to prevent my pedigree from being divulged. As though I could care less who my ancestors were, other than the most recent ones.” He made a sound in his throat as if spitting. “I didn’t know nobility, even of birth, much less nobility of mind and behavior, could be measured by how many noble ancestors a person could count. I always thought it was just what it was at the moment of birth.”

    Oh. So that was what was working at Porthos. At least this, Aramis was prepared to understand. “I’ve always considered you noble enough,” Aramis said. “At least . . .”

    Another harumph and Aramis hastened to add, “I mean, I’m not sure I look at nobility the same way others do. Look at me, I let my servant run on and on at me about my misbehavior and how I should long since have entered the church.”

    This elicited a chuckle from Porthos, which, at least, had the advantage of sounding like natural Porthos. “We all think Bazin would be made far more acceptable by a regular thrashing, or at least the liberal use of a muzzle.”

    This was such a common complaint, that Aramis smiled, for a moment, and forgot he was aggrieved with Porthos, before coming back to his main argument. “The point is,” Aramis said, “that though Bazin is no more than the son of tenants on my parents’ land, I know he was brought up for the church as I was, and his mind is, if not the equal of mine—” Did Porthos truly need to snort? “If not the equal of mine, at least close enough to it that what he says might illuminate my path as I try to make myself worthy enough to enter the church.”

    Porthos made a sound again. “So you’re not sure what’s noble and what isn’t, but you believe this could be a plot to implicate me? That people, strangers and people who’ve talked to me, would think I killed just to prevent it being known that not all my ancestors were noble? And killed a child, yet?”

    Aramis shrugged. “We all know you to be proud, Porthos, all of us.”

    “Indeed? In what way am I more proud than any of you?”

    Aramis felt blood rush to his cheeks. There was nothing for it but he would have to list his friend’s defects of character, or at least the visible outward marks of those defects. The truth was that beneath his quick gossiping tongue and the eye that was ever ready to apprehend and mock a fashion faux pas, Aramis was more tolerant than he would wish anyone to know.

    His maxim, or at least one of the maxims that cluttered his religiously brought-up conscience was “Judge not lest you be judged.” He knew how often—particularly in sins of the flesh—he fell short of the Christian ideal. Particularly the ideal of the Christian bound to a religious life of chastity and obedience. He didn’t like to throw Porthos’s vanity, or Athos’s drinking, or D’Artagnan’s more than eager wish to view everything as a challenge to a duel into his friends’ teeth. And he hoped and fervently prayed they wouldn’t throw in his teeth his inability to resist any beautiful female who set her mind on dallying with him.

    But now he would have to and there was nothing for it. He waved at Porthos. “There is the way you dress,” he said, stiffly. “I don’t find anything wrong with it, mind,” he lied. Truth was there were a hundred things wrong with it, but mostly the fact that a well brought up gentleman wouldn’t dream of mixing stripes with dots or adorning his person with three different shades of gold trim and a bit of silver thrown in just in case. It wasn’t the sort of wrong he meant, anyway, he told himself. “But there are few musketeers who, on a musketeer’s pay, wear that much