On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) by Kate Silver Page A

her finger on exactly what it was.
    The blond Musketeer grew uncomfortable under her scrutiny.   “What are you staring at?”   His voice was brusque and less than friendly.
    Sophie had finally worked out what had been bothering her.   “Your moustache is coming loose,” she said, without thinking of what she was saying.   “You need to glue it on again.”
    The blond Musketeer’s face turned bright red.   He rose half upright in his chair and laid his hand on the hilt of his sword.   “Just what are you implying?”
    The thief laughed.   “She’s right, you know.   You need better glue that doesn’t lose its grip when you sweat.   Personally I find that false moustaches are seldom worth the effort.   They’re damnably itchy, and it’s so hard to get them looking natural.   It’s easier to pretend that you shave religiously every night and morning.”
    The blond Musketeer froze, half in and half out of his chair, looking completely nonplussed.
    Sophie barely heard past his first few words before she leapt up in horror in her turn.   “She?   You called me “she”?”
    The thief put his hands in the air, palms out, in a gesture of conciliation.   “Just a guess.   Based on the simple observation that your breast wrappings have come a little loose, and you don’t see many men on the streets with a chest like yours.”
    Sophie glanced down at her chest.   Sure, her wrappings had come a little loose in their wild scramble across the rooftops and over walls, but not unduly so.   The faint jiggle of her breasts can hardly have been noticeable, especially not in the dark.   How had this mere stranger guessed her secret so easily?  
    And why was the blond Musketeer wearing a false moustache?
    Sophie and the blond Musketeer looked at each other, and then at the thief, in burgeoning understanding.  
    Sophie was the first to speak.   “You’re a woman,” she said looking at the blonde Musketeer.   “That’s why you’re wearing a false mustache.”   She turned next to the thief.   “And so are you.”

Chapter 4
     
    The thief drained the bottle dry and put it down by her side with a look of regret on her face.   “Guilty as charged.   Do you have another bottle of wine or shall I have to make do with ale for the rest of the night?”
    The blond Musketeer looked utterly bemused.   She was staring straight at Sophie, not seeming able to accept what was in front of her.   “That’s why you attacked that lout in the tavern, isn’t it?   Because you’re a woman, too?”
    Sophie was still reeling from the shock of finding two Musketeers with the same secret that had weighed her down for so many weeks.   She had companions now – two of them.   She had someone to talk to, to share her life with, someone who would understand, and who would never give her secrets away.   She was not alone any more.   She wanted to shout out loud with the joy of it.   “I don’t like bullies that pick on people who can’t fight back,” she said.   “He needed to be taught a lesson.”
    “I wondered at the time what had possessed you to fight him.   No man would have gone to the serving girl’s aid.”   The blonde Musketeer’s voice was laced with bitterness.   “Whatever pretty words they may whisper in your ear, men are all alike in their selfish, stupid, pig-headed ways.   They all believe that women are there only to be used, not protected.”
    “I owe you my thanks for coming to fight by my side.   I thought I was done for.”
    “I couldn’t let you fight that battle on your own.   It was a battle that all women should fight against the men that abuse and oppress their sex.”
    A snort of muffled laughter came from the other side of the room where the thief had given up waiting for an answer to her request for more wine and was rifling through the sideboard in a search for something else to drink.   “Pah.   All women indeed.   Don’t feed me any of that codswallop or