One For All - Lillie Lainoff - E-Book

One For All E-Book

Lillie Lainoff

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Beschreibung

"There are no limits to the will―and the strength―of this unique female hero." ―Tamora Pierce, writer of the Song of the Lioness and the Protector of the Small quartets This fierce story transports you to 17th century France, to a world of heart-racing duels and seductive soirees as our heroine fights against her chronic illness to train as a Musketeer, uncovering secrets, sisterhood, and self-love. Tania de Batz is most herself with a sword in her hand. Everyone thinks her near-constant dizziness makes her weak, nothing but "a sick girl." But Tania wants to be strong, independent, a fencer like her father—a former Musketeer and her greatest champion. Then Papa is brutally, mysteriously murdered. His dying wish? For Tania to attend finishing school. But L'Académie des Mariées, Tania realizes, is no finishing school. It's a secret training ground for new Musketeers: women who are socialites on the surface, but strap daggers under their skirts, seduce men into giving up dangerous secrets, and protect France from downfall. And they don't shy away from a sword fight. With her newfound sisters at her side, Tania feels that she has a purpose, that she belongs. But then she meets Étienne, her target in uncovering a potential assassination plot. He's kind, charming—and might have information about what really happened to her father. Torn between duty and dizzying emotion, Tania will have to decide where her loyalties lie…or risk losing everything she's ever wanted.

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Author’s Note

About Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

Acknowledgments

About the Author

“There are no limits to the will—and the strength—of this unique female hero.”—Tamora Pierce, writer of the Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small quartets

“A captivating, stereotype-shattering fantasy about defying the odds and finding your place in the world. A heartfelt, gender-bending read featuring a disabled heroine whose differences give her the strength and courage to fight for her dreams.”—Kami Garcia, #1 New York Times–bestselling coauthor of Beautiful Creatures

“A thrilling mystery from start to finish. Lainoff masterfully created a feminist retelling of The Three Musketeers with a strong, determined heroine. Chronically ill readers will delight in seeing themselves starring in their own adventure. Lainoff is a fierce new talent to watch out for.”—Kerri Maniscalco, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Kingdom of the Wicked

“A story brimming with strength. One for All will whirl you away to a 17th century France of pulse-pounding duels in beautiful ball gowns, following a sisterhood knitted together by duty and an indomitable heroine to cheer for.”—Chloe Gong, New York Times–bestselling author of These Violent Delights

“A dashing tale full of heart, courage, and friendship, with an unforgettable disabled heroine. One for All is revolutionary in more ways than one.”—Marieke Nijkamp, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of This is Where it Ends

“One for All is a reimagining that is both poignant and fiery—and like no other Musketeer story you have ever read. Just like the blade her teen protagonist Tania wields, Lainoff’s prose is effortlessly precise, fluid, and sharp. What I love about One for All is that it’s a breathtaking adventure story set in the past that also speaks to our present and future—the best type of historical fiction. Tania’s story is for anyone who has wondered how to carve a path through a world that does not accommodate your whole self.”—Tracy Deonn, New York Times–bestselling author of Legendborn

“A rousing tale of lady spies, swordplay, with a dash of romance. Tania is a formidable heroine, driven to carve out a place for herself among the musketeers. Lillie Lainoff has crafted a story as thrilling and compelling as any fencing match.”—Emily Lloyd-Jones, author of The Bone Houses

“The fierce, disabled heroine of One for All discovers her strengths and defies expectations in this swashbuckling tale of girls who have each other’s backs. A delightful, empowering adventure!”—Joy McCullough, National Book Award-nominated author of Blood Water Paint

“Lainoff’s female Musketeers beguile and swashbuckle their way into the ornate citadel of power that was Louis XIV’s court with wit, tenacity, and stirring sisterhood. You will cheer for them to carry the day in this sweeping story about becoming your best self in the midst of a society trying to relegate you to a specific category.”—Jennieke Cohen, author of Dangerous Alliance and My Fine Fellow

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One For All

Print edition ISBN: 9781803362731

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803362748

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: February 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2022 by Lillie Lainoff

First published by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Mama:You told me once that I was your hero.What I didn’t tell you then, but should have,is that you have been, are, and foreverwill be mine.

One

Lupiac, France, 1655

Even in the darkness, we could see it: the door half-open. A shadow angled across the threshold, spilled into the falling night, then disappeared.

“Stay here,” I said.

“Tania—” my mother whispered, but I was already headed down the twilight-stained cobblestone that led to the front of our house, my fingers clasping onto the fence Papa built me four years ago, right after my twelfth birthday—something to hold on to for balance when the dizziness became too much.

My fingers passed over the smooth, worn stakes. I inched my way along. Soft step after soft step. At the door, dizziness overtook me in an onslaught of gray and black waves. I pressed my face to the cool wood. Once the cloud lifted, I peered around the door.

The kitchen was in disarray. Pots were scattered everywhere; my gut wrenched as I took in the spatter of red along the cabinets—no, not blood. Crushed tomatoes. The table, the countertops, everything was dusted in flour.

Papa hadn’t returned from his trip yet. Maman was by the front gate. And here I was, empty-handed.

“Dammit—check again.” Voices floated short and sharp from the shadows. There wasn’t any time to go to the barn, to draw my sword from the weapons rack. A kitchen knife wouldn’t do any good, unless I was in close combat . . . or somehow managed to throw it, but the very thought curled my stomach. I’d probably end up injuring myself. My eyes scanned the room, finally locking on the fireplace. The fire poker was the best option. The only option.

Fingers vise tight on the iron, with my eyes closed . . . with the feel of metal against my palm, I could almost pretend it was my sword.

I followed the voices to Papa’s study. Two men, cloaked: one riffling through the desk while the other kept watch by the window. We’d taken a shortcut home from the market. He wouldn’t have seen us; his view was of the main road, the one we hadn’t taken. Please, Maman, please stay where I left you. Let me protect you for once.

“Did you hear that?”

My heart lurched at the unfamiliar voice: raspy, as if it was being used for the first time in weeks.

“Probably nothing.” A different voice this time, not as strained, oily and smooth. “It’d be better if the wife and their little invalide show. We could gut them and leave the remains for de Batz to find. Make him think twice about sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.”

My focus slipped, foot sliding along the loose floorboard with a creak. And with the movement, a wheeze of breath.

“Now, what do we have here?”

A man loomed in the doorway, so very tall. The second voice. His eyes lighted on the poker. “And what, pray tell, are you planning to do with that?” I brandished it, doing my best to mimic Papa—fierce, strong, unflappable—even as my legs trembled, even as my vision narrowed. He leered at me, at my unsteady legs; my pulse crashed in my throat. “The invalide has a bit of fire in her, non?”

My world blurred. But even my dizziness couldn’t mask how his body stiffened at the sound of carriage wheels on stone. Had my mother gone to alert the maréchaussées? This would usually have hurt, frothing behind my chest—why did she never trust me?—but for once, with my screeching heart, with my wobbling legs and the tall man in the black cloak, I didn’t care.

The men transformed into a flurry of footsteps and papers. In their haste to escape through the window, one knocked over their lantern. I lunged, but I wasn’t fast enough: It slipped and fell to the floor, flames catching the frayed carpet and careening toward the wall. In the glassless, unshuttered window, the hem of a cloak fluttered, then melted into the night.

I stumbled through heat, through ash, until I reached a side table with a water pitcher and used the last of my strength to overturn it on the fire licking at the curtains. The flames cooled with a slow, charred hiss. My throat was tight with smoke and tears.

I’d let them escape.

Papa wouldn’t have let it happen. Papa was stronger, and faster, and he didn’t have dizziness biting at his corners.

My pulse wouldn’t slow, couldn’t slow, was throbbing in my teeth. The horrible, unshuttered window doubled, then tripled. Three gaping black holes sucked me forward, legs buckling, kneecaps snapping to the floorboards with a crunch.

And then, hovering above me: my father’s worried gaze. It had to be the dizziness warping my vision. He wasn’t here. “Papa,” I tried to say. But my tongue was sealed to the floor of my mouth. The next moment, I was swallowed in pitch.

*   *   *

“Slowly, ma fille. You took quite a spill.”

I winced at the light and pushed myself up so my back rested against the wall. Papa’s desk settled sideways on the ground like a corpse, curtains mauled beyond recognition . . . a trail of ash, fire-eaten wood, and half-charred papers.

And when I turned, there was Papa. I shied away, failure still bitter on my tongue.

“I was so worried,” he said, his eyes darting to his pocket watch. “It felt like so much longer than five minutes, waiting for you to wake.” Then he studied me with a creased brow. “Tania, what happened?”

“Robbers. I couldn’t stop them. I tried, really I did, but there was a fire and I had to—but Papa, how are you here?”

“My meeting ended sooner than I expected. I thought I’d come home a day early. A surprise,” he laughed, hollow, as he surveyed the overturned room.

Papa traveling to nearby towns was nothing new. Wealthy locals were always looking to start a new fencing academy, and Papa was an ideal candidate for head swordsman. He’d never yet agreed; he’d received plenty of requests since retirement, and would occasionally humor the would-be founders: give a few lessons, pocket their money. But I knew him better than to think coin was the major factor luring him away. The visits provided an excuse to visit friends, his comrades from days in service of la Maison du Roi—the Royal Household of the King of France—who now held influential positions as maréchaussées across France or as military advisers. Papa would never admit to it, he wouldn’t, but I knew part of him longed to return. Not to Paris, the dangerous and glittering city with its leaden underbelly and blood-dappled alleys, but to the friends he’d risked life and limb for, day after day. To his family of brothers.

I’d met a few of them, when I was little. Vague childhood memories of large men with booming laughs—but it was like looking through a pool of water at people on the other side: light fractured, features distorted, the final picture not always resembling the original. And with things the way they were now . . . with the dizziness, with Papa’s friends spread across la France, busy with work and families and protecting the country, it wasn’t likely we’d have a chance to meet again.

Papa ushered me into a chair where he worried over me until I assured him I was fine—well, he knew what I meant. Through the haze, I watched him bend down, trail his finger along the dusty remains of a journal with a cover curled from heat, its leather boiled black. I thought I saw relief on his face. His gold signet ring, stamped with the French fleur-de-lis and intersected with two sabers, sparkled against the ash.

He straightened. “How many were there?”

“Two.” Shame leached into my words. I’d done my best. But then, my best was never good enough. “I should have done more.”

“My dearest, most foolish daughter . . . how, exactly, would you propose fighting off two intruders while also ensuring our house didn’t burn down?”

I didn’t respond. Not that it mattered; he was too busy combing through the unscathed papers, the broken desk drawers and their scattered contents.

“What did they take?” I asked.

“Nothing of value.”

“Why were they here, then, if not to take anything of value?”

There, there was the tick in his jaw, the way the corners of his eyes narrowed into dagger points—the face I’d tried to mimic earlier to hide my fear. “No doubt they were rummaging for your mother’s jewels when you walked in.”

“But they knew your name. They said . . . they said they’d kill me and Maman and leave us for you to find.”

Anger flickered in his eyes. But then his arms looped around me and pressed my cheek to his shoulder. And I couldn’t see his face then, not at all. “I’m proud of you.”

“If it wasn’t for the fire . . . if I hadn’t been so dizzy, I would’ve caught them. I would’ve protected us.”

He pulled back to look at me. “How could you ever say—no, even think—such a thing? You showed courage. A true de Batz.”

I wanted to ask where Papa thought they were from. Who else but other villagers knew about us . . . knew about me? But then, the sound of footsteps—and there was Maman in the doorway. Her face wasn’t stained with tears; it was hard as rock. Her gaze swept over me and the destroyed furniture, lips locked, before landing on my father. A look passed between them that I didn’t understand.

“I wasn’t expecting you home for supper. It’ll take a while to pull something together. You see, I’ll have to find food currently not plastered to the walls.”

“Ma chère . . . ,” he attempted, but her eyes blistered him on the spot.

“And don’t even get me started on you,” she said, rounding on me. “Running off in the dark to play hero. You’re just a girl, Tania. And you could have fainted! This very minute, I could have been scraping you off the floor.” Her mouth trembled. “You did faint, didn’t you? The bruise is already forming on your forehead.”

Yes, I was just a girl. A sick girl. One who, when the time came, was helpless. Because that was what being a sick girl meant.

“I’ll see about finding a locksmith in the morning,” Papa finally said, hesitant. “I won’t let anyone hurt us.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” she shot back.

His hand twitched—the right one, the one not supporting my elbow in case my world started spinning—as if he was reaching for her. But by the time I’d closed my eyes and opened them again, my vision was filled with Papa’s frame. Then by my mother bustling around with bowls, the creak of wooden chairs, and Papa’s laughter melting together into a song, one that was less of a memory of years past and more of a feeling, one amid the past few months’ arguments and icy eyes I was sure I’d forgotten.

*   *   *

What do they call someone like me? Fragile. Sickly. Weak. At least, that’s what doctors one, two, and three told my mother when she presented me to them at age twelve, the sky swimming like some inverted lake above me.

Each one looked at me like I was something not of this world. Then again, maybe I wasn’t. That was what the priest thought, at least, when my mother took me to the local church in a last-ditch attempt at a cure.

The dizziness hadn’t happened suddenly. I didn’t wake up one morning and, instead of leaping out of bed bright-eyed and ready to start the day, fall over in a dazed stupor. No, it was slow, careful, pernicious. It crept in, only soft waves at first. A bit of blurred vision while playing in the marketplace, an ache that whined in my head. Then came the weakness in my legs upon standing.

At first, my mother thought it was a trick. I was, after all, a child. That was what children did, wasn’t it? Faked being sick to keep from doing chores?

Normal girls didn’t have to grasp the sides of their chairs before standing. Normal girls didn’t see everything drowning in pools of black ink, didn’t feel their hearts screaming against their rib cages, didn’t have legs that trembled before collapsing underneath them. Normal girls didn’t watch helplessly as men—men who’d threatened to kill their mothers, who’d threatened to kill them—escaped into the night. Normal girls didn’t let those men run between the dark spires of trees with swords ready and waiting until the next time, until the next time they came back and slit their throats through—

I woke up gasping so loudly it almost drowned out the whispers carrying through the cracks in the paneling.

The robbers. They were back.

No—my parents; the lilt of their voices. They were talking about what had happened. Which meant they were talking about me. And this time was different, somehow, than their past discussions. There’d been something different in how my mother regarded me as I stood up carefully amid the ruined study, the blaze in her eyes the one she always used to conceal hurt and pain. Once, when she’d slipped and hit her knee against the table, turning the skin mottled and blue, she’d had fury in her face for days. She’d never looked at me like that before, though. Like she could no longer only blame my body for all the trouble I caused.

Maybe I didn’t know, truly, what normal girls did and did not do. But what I did know? The way how, under my mother’s gaze, I shrank to something so small, so insignificant, I wasn’t sure I could recognize myself in the mirror. And oh, how I wanted her to see me as someone strong and worthy of her arm always supporting mine. How I wanted to be a reflection of her carefully controlled blaze.

“I don’t understand what I did wrong.” My mother’s voice.

Careful not to overexert myself, I raised myself out of bed, paused until my world had righted itself, then went to press my ear against the far wall. My bedroom used to be Papa’s library. But that was before I became sick, before stairs were no longer an option for my dizzy body, my crumbling legs.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Papa soothed. “You and Tania, ma chère, you are all I’ve ever wanted.”

“It’s bad enough I couldn’t give you a son, but I gave you a daughter who’s . . . who’s . . . broken.”

Papa said something I couldn’t hear.

“I don’t want you training her anymore. No more fencing—promise me. I know you want to impart your talent, but you can’t expect to live vicariously through her without consequences. I can’t have her wasting every waking moment, all her energy, on something that will never aid her in the future. She doesn’t need to know how to protect herself—she needs to learn skills. Women’s skills. For when she is . . .” She stopped, but I knew. I knew what she was going to say: when she is married.

“We’ll figure it out. No, listen to me. We will.” A pause; words muffled by the wall. My father’s voice again: “Those bastards waited until I was out of town. Well, they’ve underestimated my willingness to stay home when my family is concerned. They won’t dare try anything while I’m here.”

“You know there’s more to it than that! What will she do when I’m gone? When you are gone? You’re not infallible, especially now that—”

There was a loud sigh. Some crying and the distinct rustling of fabric. I retreated to clutch the bedposts. My head bowed, my feet purpling gray, as they always were when the waves of dizziness were at their strongest.

No matter what my mother said, no matter how much I wanted her to see me and not just my weaknesses, she wouldn’t take fencing from me. I’d heard it all before. How a girl didn’t need to learn the proper way to hold the grip of a sword, didn’t need to learn the angle at which her arm should tuck into her side as she prepared for the onslaught of her opponent’s attack. Girls did not need to know these things—especially not sick girls.

Until tonight, Papa’s response had always been a shake of his head. That wasn’t who I was, he explained. “She is Tania,” he liked to say. It irked my mother to no end. “She is Tania.”

Tania, the daughter who should have been a son, the daughter who should have carried on her father’s legacy. But no one would want a sick girl for his bride. Even if she was a Musketeer’s daughter.

Two

Six Months Later

Mon Dieu!”

“See her, resting against the wall? Comme une invalide, non?”

I lifted my chin, palm against the stone storefront. The girls had been visible from far away, their dresses blotches of color against the cobbled street. I fought against the heat rising in my cheeks, fought against the anger and ripening embarrassment, and smiled a sickly sweet smile. “Geri! What a pleasant surprise.”

Three or four girls I’d known as a child broke off from the group, left Marguerite and the rest behind. I knew their type. Uncomfortable, but only up to a point. Not enough to step in.

Marguerite’s eyes flashed briefly, something pained and fragile in the irises. I was the one who’d given her the nickname. Back when we ruled over fields of sunflowers, ran through the outskirts of town, accidentally braided each other’s hair into knots so fierce that our mothers had to cut them out . . . But the look was gone with a curl of her lip—she’d learned that from the other villagers. There was a proper way to examine pauvre Tania. A proper way to tilt your head and let your gaze travel down the bridge of your nose.

“We’ve been over this. I prefer my true name, Marguerite. Geri is the name of a child.” She sniffed, smoothed her skirt’s pleats, then, scowling, picked an imaginary piece of dirt off the green fabric. She must have bought the gown on her sixteenth birthday, during her visit to Paris, the trip she’d crowed about in the village square. It was too fine to have come from Lupiac.

We used to celebrate birthdays together. Ours were a mere few days apart. One year our families traveled to a lake and we stood on the freckled sand and felt the cold water nipping at our ankles and looked out at the incredible vastness of it all, this wide world we were growing into. But that ended four years ago when everything changed. At twelve, Marguerite let me go, because someone who was forced to spend all her time in the shade, someone who was forced to shadow her anxious mother . . . well, that someone wasn’t much fun at all. Papa had wanted to pay Marguerite’s parents a visit, tell them what he thought of their daughter’s betrayal. But my mother insisted he’d only make things worse. What could he say, what could he do, that my body wouldn’t disavow time and time again?

My thoughts came sharper, harder. I grasped at them like broken threads. Marguerite’s figure blurred. I clenched my toes together, a trick I’d learned by chance to help combat the dizziness and clear my vision. “As engaging as this conversation is, I must be going,” I said.

She clucked her tongue. “Busy? You?” She glanced at my basket full of purpling wildflowers. “Pretty. Such a shame you have no one to give them to.”

“Not like she ever will,” another girl added. “She doesn’t even talk to any boys, let alone know one who’d want to marry her.”

I sucked in a pained breath, pressed the basket closer to conceal it; the wicker scratched at my dress. I wasn’t alone. I had Papa. Maman.

But I had no biting retort. Feelings were difficult to hide, especially when it came to emotions so close to my skin. To my body and how it failed me. To the prospect of life extending after my parents were gone, life without acceptance of who I was, life without anyone who cared for me not despite the dizziness, not because of the dizziness, but just cared, fully. Was it really too much to hope for someone who looked at me and saw me, and me alone?

Marguerite smirked. “I’m off to my fitting. What a scandal it would be to wear gowns from last season’s trip to Paris!” There was a hint of something in the last sentence, as if she was aware of the ridiculousness of the words, of the sentiment. Or maybe I imagined it because I so desperately wanted it to be true.

*   *   *

The sun was still high overhead when I stumbled on a loose stone on the path to the house. I barely managed to catch the fence. Four years ago, white paint was stark against the grass. Now green caterpillar vines crawled up the stakes and ivy sank into the wood.

“Maman?”

The door to the parlor was open a hairline crack: back to that night, the poker in my hand slick with sweat, smoke choking my lungs . . . no.

They weren’t here. We were safe. They weren’t coming back.

I knocked before entering. My mother’s head settled against the back of her favorite chair, a note in her lap. I turned to sneak out the way I’d come. But then there was a shifting sound, a cough. “Tania?”

“I brought you these.” She looked at my outstretched arms, at the basket filled with flowers, then down at the letter. Was she struggling? Perhaps I could help her, like she helped me, and—“Is the handwriting too difficult to read? Too small? I could read it to you—”

“No. It’s fine.” Her words were tense and short as she folded the letter into quarters and tucked it into her shawl, away from my prying gaze.

“It’s really no trouble,” I continued.

“I said it was fine, Tania.”

“All right.” My hand hovered near a small table in case I needed support.

She rubbed at her brow. “Your uncle sends his love. I’ll be fine,” she added as I began to protest. “Go work on that new embroidery pattern, the one your aunt sent you.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

I backed out of the room. But I didn’t go to retrieve the untouched pattern design hidden inside a book in my bedroom.

I would never trade my sword for a needle and thread.

*   *   *

Papa practiced an intricate series of footwork in the barn, the movement of his right hand so fluid that his sword appeared to be an extension of his arm. He hadn’t been the greatest swordsman in the Musketeers, but he’d certainly been one of the best. Though there was a chance he might’ve said that only to keep himself from getting too big a head. It was hard to imagine anyone more talented at fencing than he was. And he loved it more than anything . . . until he met my mother. A widowed vicomte’s daughter who, after she made it clear that Papa wasn’t a courtly fling, was cut off, despite her status as a second child with an older sister married off to a wealthy lord.

The Musketeers might’ve been heroes. But, unless King Louis XIII, and Louis XIV after him, decided to bestow their goodwill, the few who entered the Musketeers without land, without titles, exited in the same fashion. There weren’t many of these men, like Papa; they were vastly outnumbered by the sons of noble families, those who regularly bought their way in. But Papa had his skill with a blade and that couldn’t be bought with any amount of money in the world.

Papa gave up his Musketeer duties when I was born to be a constant presence in our family. At least, that was what he told me when I was little and hung on his every word, begging bedtime stories from the man who’d willingly given up glory beyond my comprehension, all for my mother and me. But now I knew better—Papa would never have given up his post voluntarily. Not even his brothers in arms could have protected him, a titleless Musketeer, against a vicomte’s influence. No, Papa was forced into retirement. But he had my mother, who refused to obey her father’s wishes. And together they had me.

If only they didn’t have me to argue over, or to use up all their funds, perhaps it wouldn’t have been such a terrible trade. Romantic, even. To love someone so much you were willing to give up everything for them. But then, I’d only ever fenced with Papa. I didn’t know what it was like to be part of a community, dedicated to the study of the sword, only to have it ripped away.

Drawn out of my thoughts by a clap of foot to floor, I watched Papa switch seamlessly from pointe en ligne—arm and blade in one straight line, chest height—to a beautifully executed parry. His blade whistled through the air as he performed the block.

“I’m never going to be able to do that.”

My father turned to look over his shoulder and pushed strands of graying hair out of his face with his free hand. “You will.”

While the barn did house Papa’s aging stallion, trusty Beau, its interior wasn’t what one would expect. The walls were lined with practice swords and extra equipment, the center of the floor cleared and swept free of hay. A dummy fashioned from a used sack of flour and leftover straw was mounted in the corner for target practice.

“Not with an opponent running at me with a sword,” I grumbled. Papa opened his mouth, but I continued before he could speak. “Not running; you know I didn’t mean running. It was a figure of speech. You know I meant advancing.”

A smile reached across his whole face, new wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, his mouth. It was times like these when he looked young and old all at once, when I understood how he could have disarmed even my mother, a proper courtier, into considering a man without an impressive title. His stories of wooing her, to my delight and her dismay, were ones filled with intrigue and danger, young lovers destined for one another but hauled apart by rank, by jealousy . . .

As Papa told it, he didn’t want to raise a family in Paris. He griped about the city: how dark the narrow streets were, how bright the wide streets were, how the docks stank of sweat, how the social engagements were unavoidable. He listed them off, each reason as flippant in tone as the last—but even he couldn’t hide the weight behind the final one, the memory of the people he had lost. My parents never returned to the city: for a time, to keep from accidentally crossing paths with my mother’s father. But by the time my grandfather passed away, and Paris was safe for them once more, the dizziness had already started to consume me. A good portion of our family’s money was squandered on failed doctors’ visits. My father wasn’t poor by any means—he had a bit of coin from his late parents, more from his time as a Musketeer—but Paris residences were expensive. Money went much further in Lupiac. A two-story house with an attic wasn’t out of reach for one family. Papa valued saving money more than spending it. Traded fencing lessons for anything pricier than the cost of groceries. But even with his savings we’d be lucky to have a roof over our heads in Paris.

“A dizzy spell?” he asked as I pulled myself back into this time, this place.

“No, just thinking.”

“Ah, well, then. It’s time to get to work, Mademoiselle la Mousquetaire!”

I tucked my skirts into my waistband, the one Papa enlisted the tailor to design, the bottom of the breeches under my dress now visible. Next, I assumed the proper stance: right foot forward, toes pointed straight; left foot back and angled to the side. Knees bent just so, as if I were a coiled spring, ready to shoot forward at any moment. Torso centered and upright.

My father didn’t warn me before he struck. It would defeat the purpose—an opponent would never inform you of his planned attack. Papa’s blade flashed as my sword moved to meet it.

My shoulders were back, loose. Strong enough to take a solid parry to block his attack, relaxed enough to adapt to the unexpected. His favorite action was to wait until I was close enough to land my lunge before knocking my sword aside with a beat.

Beau let out a disgruntled snort from his stall in the corner. His long tail flicked back and forth to swat away des mouches, those pesky flies, as he chewed at his oats. One was redirected and flew into my face. Dieu, how I hated that horse.

I attempted the newest parry we’d been working on, one that covered my left flank and part of my head. Dust kicked up around my heels as I retreated to block Papa’s attack, still keeping him within arm’s reach. I thrust my arm immediately forward.

He hadn’t expected such a quick riposte. As he leaped back, he tossed his sword from his right hand to his left. Then he performed a block so clean that my sword tumbled to the barn floor.

“That’s not fair!” I cried out in indignation.

Seconds later, I was scrambling for my sword, fingers grasping dust as my father triumphantly held my weapon in the air. “Aha! Disarmed!”

“Papa—”

“Don’t you Papa me. You know the rules, Mademoiselle la Mousquetaire—lose your sword during drills, an extra half hour of embroidery.” Of all the ways to assuage his guilt from going against my mother’s wishes, it had to be this.

“You cheated,” I grumbled as I retrieved my sword.

He snorted along with Beau. “Not everyone has a Musketeer’s decency and honor. Few of your opponents will be of that caliber; fewer still will have the training of a Musketeer. Not only brilliant swordsmen, but upstanding individuals.” Papa had a distorted view of his brothers in arms. He saw honor in all of them, even the ones who hadn’t earned their placement, who were there because of their money or titles or families. They were his friends. At least, the Musketeers of his era. The ones who came later, well . . .

“I wish I could have that. That camaraderie,” I murmured, more to myself than to Papa. What a silly wish. What a silly wish for a silly, sick girl. No matter how foolish it was, it unfurled in my mind: the barn transformed into a wide room full of fencers. Yes, the task of protecting the King, protecting France, these brought them together: all this laughter, this clashing of blades. The streak of blue-embroidered cassocks flashing through the air. But together, they were something even greater than their duty. As ridiculous as it was, I imagined them as girls, like me.

Un pour tous, tous pour un. That was how Papa finished all his bedtime stories to me as a child. One for all, all for one.

Papa smiled, a strange expression quickening across his face. “Oh, Tania. How I wish you could have what I had.” There was a faraway look in his eyes, strands of hair sticking to his face, sword in hand, ready to answer a call to arms only he could hear.

“Papa,” I said. He didn’t answer. He was somewhere else. “Papa.” He blinked. “Have you ever thought about going back?”

“Back where?”

“To the Musketeers.”

“There are no more Musketeers.”

Brow wrinkled, I opened my mouth, but he continued: “Oui, the Musketeers of the Guard still exist. They still protect la Maison du Roi. But the true Musketeers, my Musketeers . . . no, they are a thing of the past.” A shadow crossed his face. “They are too much glory now, and not enough honor. Boys who can’t fill the boots their predecessors left behind and are much too occupied with polishing their swords. But that’s what you get when you accept too many full coin purses. Fighting for the King used to be about more than fighting for the monarchy. It was about fighting for la France. Fighting for one another. Keeping your brothers alive, safe. Sometimes,” he whispered, soft enough I had to strain to hear him, “I forgot the King even existed.”

Beau let out a whinny, stamping his hooves in protest. “Ah, Monsieur Beau! All finished with your oats?” My father moved to his stall, apple in hand. I glared at Beau; he glared right back. “Have you spoken to your mother today?”

The hitch in Papa’s voice made me pause. He had his back to me, hand steady as Beau blissfully crunched through the apple core.

“Yes . . . why?”

“We have a guest for supper tonight. Guests, really.”

“Guests?” Papa turned; his shoulders deflated. My gut sank. “You can’t make me. I won’t do it. I won’t!”

*   *   *

I wasn’t built like Marguerite or the other girls in the village, didn’t look comfortable in extravagant fabric. I’d never been plump in the right ways. My body wasn’t one that blended into space. I was all curves and muscle—perfect for a fencer.

Not, however, for a young lady being assessed like a pig on market day.

My parents and the other couple watched us through the window, all of them still seated at the table with their postdinner glasses of wine. All but Papa, who’d sworn off the deep ruby liquid after he left the Musketeers.

The Chaumonts were friends of my uncle . . . and my mother’s main target in her attempt to marry me off. She’d been planning a meeting ever since her brother let slip their son was around my age. That’s what my uncle’s letter had been about—that the Chaumonts would be arriving soon, how he hoped his note would arrive in time, that he knew it was last minute. An imposition, yes, but my mother would forgive anything for what she saw as a chance to secure my future.

The air was thick and sweet in the garden; I hoped it was enough to cover the smell of anxious sweat that pooled in the unforgiving creases of my dress.

Jacques stalled at the beginning of the flower rows. The boy had cheeks that turned pink whenever his parents worked his excellence into the conversation, a feat they’d seemingly mastered. His mother managed it even when discussing completely unrelated subjects, like the efficacy of ladies-in-waiting: “One of the Dowager’s lady’s maids is quite unfortunate looking. And at the last party of the season, not a soul asked her to dance! The poor thing—but Jacques, such a gentleman, asked her for the next two dances. Such a kind and thoughtful young man. Even Madame de Treville said so. She came up to me herself, can you imagine? She started a bridal preparatory school a couple of months ago—all the nobles in Paris are trying to get their daughters on the wait list—I suppose you wouldn’t know, what with your being so . . . isolated from Paris. She must have her sights set on arranging a match between one of her ladies and our Jacques. But she’d do well to realize how high in demand he is. A first son with such good manners!”

In the slowly dimming light, Jacques turned back to the window; Madame Chaumont gave him a little wave. My mother, on the other hand, caught my eye and then jerked her head toward Jacques.

I shifted uncomfortably, slippered feet unsteady on the uneven grass.

“Do they know?” I’d asked my mother earlier, after I was stuffed into an uncomfortable pale blue gown decorated with swirls of gold embroidery.

Her eyes illuminated in comprehension in the mirror. Her hands froze in the middle of smoothing my sleeve. “They know what your uncle has told them.”

“Which is?”

“When he suggested we meet, they inquired as to why they hadn’t seen you during the season. He told them we kept you from traveling to Paris because you were too weak. You were sick, but nothing serious.”

“You want me to lie? Lie about . . . about . . .”

She reached to fix a hairpin, her movements sharp. The pin bit into my scalp. “I’ve done my part. Now you must do yours.” I shook my head. “Tania,” she said, gripping my shoulders, “we must find someone. Don’t you understand?” Of course I did. Her words looped in my head endlessly. She’d thrust me at the village boys more times than I could count. As the dizziness grew worse and my hopes dimmed, the words morphed, multiplied. Even if she didn’t say it, I knew what she truly thought, the reality at the heart of every bodice cinch, of every hairpin stab. It didn’t matter that she’d married for love.

Sick girls didn’t have suitors. Sick girls had to fight for what they could get. But this kind of fighting was infinitely harder than fighting with a sword.

So I nodded at my mother’s gesture and then smiled sweetly at Jacques, pretending to arrange my skirts while actually fumbling for the railing my father had installed around the edge of the fence, low enough for my grip to go unseen. It was too tall of a fence to use the stakes for balance, like I did with the fence at the front of the house.

If one were to search for the perfect mixture of my parents, one would find it in the garden: The refined, manicured shrubs were my mother’s favorites because they looked like the ones at the Palais du Louvre, the main residence of the King. The bursts of color, though, the bright blues and reds. Those were Papa’s doing.

I cast around for something to say. “Well, dinner was . . . interesting.” Interesting? Had I really said interesting?

“Yes. Interesting.”

The skirts of my dress whispered across the grass as we passed a shrub cut into the likeness of a flower.

“Do you—” he said.

“I’ve always thought—” I started.

“Please, go ahead.”

“I . . . I thought—that is, I’ve always thought it strange.” I nodded to the shrub.

His brow furrowed. “How so?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd: the idea that a shrub resembling a flower could ever be considered more beautiful than the original?” Cheeks warm, I glanced at him in the predusk. The waning light cut angles into his face where there were none. “What was it you were going to say?”

“Would you like to sit?” he asked. We’d reached a bench that looked out over the flowers.

Curls of baby hair framed his face, his muted blue eyes. There was nothing passionate lurking in their depths, no fire lying dormant. But there was nothing cruel in them, either. Nothing to make me recoil. And there was kindness in his face, even if I was just determined to see it and painted it there myself. He’d offered to dance with a girl abandoned by everyone. If I couldn’t love, I could have kindness. And kindness, in its own way, was a type of love.

“Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” I assured him, too loud.

“Good.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sure you know why we’re here: I’m of age and will be seeking a bride in the near future. My parents were told you’re in a similar position.”

It was transactional, the language he used. But not everyone could be a poet. Just because he didn’t employ the language of love didn’t mean the potential for the emotion was absent from his body.

“That’s right.” I waited, but he didn’t continue. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“Our parents are discussing matters.” He motioned to the house. “There’s not much else to say.”

“Oh.” I swallowed the feverish feeling in my chest that attempted to make its way up, up and out of my throat.

He did not care about knowing me. Did not care about learning my likes, my dislikes, if there was something in me he could grow to love someday.

It was then, in the haze of upset, needing to be anywhere, anywhere but here, that I made the mistake. Not thinking, blinking away tears, I quickly stood up.

Three

Black petals blossomed before my eyes, more recognizable than any flower in the garden and darker than the center of a sunflower.

Jacques’s concerned face wavered in front of me, fingers light at the bend of my elbow as I returned to my seat. Still, the world kept spinning, spinning. “Is everything all right? Should I call for—”

“No!” I interjected, then adopted as pleasant an expression as I could manage. “No,” I repeated, gentler this time. “There’s no need to worry.”

“No—no need to worry?” he stammered, glancing from me to the house to me again.

I clenched my toes. It didn’t do much to help the dizziness since I was already seated, but the action was natural and familiar and relaxed the frantic terror gripping my chest. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

When my vision focused, I looked at Jacques. I was good at keeping pain off my face. All it took was gritting my teeth. Sinking my nails into my palms.

“I really should fetch our parents,” he said.

“Please don’t; they can’t do anything.”

He peered at me through the dimming light. “What do you mean they can’t do anything?”

The excuse was ready on my lips. But there were his eyes, more well water than clear sky. Eyes that belonged to a boy who once danced with a lonely girl, a boy I might marry. A boy I could try to love someday. “Sometimes I get dizzy. It’s not that bad,” I added at the alarm on his face.

“So, you’re . . . sick?”

“No.” I rushed to explain. “I’m fine, really, I—”

“You don’t have to explain.”

I stopped short. “You . . . you understand?” Relief bloomed from the tips of my toes to the crown of my head.

“Yes, of course. Why don’t I help you back inside?”

Reaching out for his proffered arm, tentatively, hesitantly, my fingers connected with his sleeve, dark blue fabric almost black now that the light had started to fade. He didn’t flinch.

I tried to find his eyes again. But there were too many shadows, so I had to make do with imagining what I’d find there. Perhaps it was better this way. This way, I could make his eyes say whatever I wanted them to.

“Tania!” When we entered, my mother ushered us into the sitting room. “Did you show Monsieur Jacques the garden?”

“It’s charming, Madame.” Jacques led me to a rose-printed settee, flowers twisting together in pale blush and sage. “Are you all right now?” he asked. I nodded. “Thank you again pour la visite du jardin.” He turned back to my mother. “Madame, would you be so kind as to tell me where my parents are?”

“I had my husband escort them to the parlor. It’s at the front of the estate.” As if we lived in a spacious mansion rather than a village house. The moment Jacques disappeared she was at my side, adjusting one of the hairpins clustered on my scalp. “What did he mean, are you all right now? Did you have a dizzy spell?”

“It’s fine.”

“Did he notice? Did he say anything?” A frantic edge stained her voice.

I didn’t know how to respond, so I repeated, “It’s fine,” again.

She took a steadying breath. “What happened?” Her expression shifted as I recounted my interaction with Jacques and tried to ease her worry, tried not to look over my shoulder for fear of the Chaumonts walking through the door. “Tell me you didn’t tell him you’ve had this for years,” she ground out.

“All he knows is I get dizzy sometimes. He said he understood.”

“He said he understood.” She punctuated each word as a question.

“Well . . . yes.”

My mother let out an angry bark of a laugh. “He . . . said . . . he . . . understood? Tania, how could he understand? How could he possibly understand?”

Tears burned; I shrank into the settee. “There wasn’t anything else I could have said, could have done. Maman, please,” I implored, reaching for her. When was the last time we’d touched when she wasn’t providing support for my wavering legs? When was the last time she’d reached for me and it wasn’t because I needed help?

“Now, what’s going on in here?” Papa, who leisurely strolled through the door, halted at the sight of us: my mother, her body an angry, taut string; me, wanting nothing more than to hide in the barn with the swords. A few more tears slipped down my cheeks. He would be so disappointed in me. A coward, afraid of facing disapproval.

“Where are the Chaumonts?” my mother asked.

“The boy requested a word with his parents, so I gave them some privacy. What a stuffy woman his mother is.” He threw me a wink. “Rather unpleasant, if you ask me.”

“Thomas!”

“Whatever is the matter, ma chère?”

“He knows, Thomas.”

“Who knows what . . . ?”

My mother didn’t have a chance to answer. As Papa trailed off, the parlor door opened. Jacques.

Hand gripping the settee, I stood, balanced myself against the armrest. I had to show Jacques I was a normal girl. Convince him the flush from earlier tears was a mere healthy glow.

“Madame. Monsieur. Mademoiselle,” Jacques intoned.

“Monsieur, we thought you retired to the parlor with your parents?” my mother said.

“My mother wanted a moment to collect her things. She feels we’ve delayed our journey long enough.”

“But it’s dangerous to travel at night,” my mother reasoned. “And you need rest. We planned on you staying for one, if not two, nights, at least.”

“With all due respect, that was before . . .” Jacques paused as his gaze landed on me.

“Be careful how you choose your next words, Monsieur.” Papa’s eyes were sword sharp.

Jacques raised his chin. “Monsieur, I assure you I meant no disrespect.”

My mother yanked Papa’s arm, muttering about finding Monsieur and Madame Chaumont, and dragged him after her in the direction of the parlor. She was so flustered she didn’t consider that she was leaving us without the watchful eye of a chaperone.

The edge of the settee dug painfully into my spine. I didn’t move. Not because of dizziness, but because I was frozen there. A block of ice waiting to be sculpted into a swan.

“Mademoiselle, I must bid you adieu.” Jacques performed a polite, shallow bow.

Finally, I regained my voice. “How could you pretend that everything was fine? When we were in the garden?”

A mixture of amusement and confusion marred his face. “I did nothing of the sort. You have these, what do you call them . . . dizzy spells? That is what your mother called them, yes? They make you feel sick and make it difficult for you to walk? It’s unfortunate. I am sorry that you suffer.”

“I don’t understand.”

He laughed. Not mocking, not harsh, but the words themselves, the way they sounded like a prelude to something awful, felt like a slap. “Au contraire, I’m the one who doesn’t understand. Obviously I could never make you an offer of marriage.”

“But you—your mother said you were kind. You danced with—”

“Dancing with a homely, partnerless girl at a party is not the same as marrying a girl like you. Even in your condition, you must be able to understand that.”

There was still no malice in his eyes. No disgust, no cruelty. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. He didn’t think he had said anything wrong.

Madame Chaumont burst through the sitting room doorway. My mother was close on her heels. “We’re leaving.” Madame Chaumont threw the words at her son. “Your father has gone with the driver to ready the carriage.” Her gaze raked the room, eyes narrowing into stormy shards of glass as she marched over to my corner. “Who do you think you are? Was this part of some plot—to seduce my son and spread your ghastly disease on to his offspring? Are you bent on bringing shame to my family? What a horrendous political trick. I, of course, am well versed in court intrigue and scandal on account of spending so much time in Paris, but you outdo even the most power hungry of the lower noblesse—”

“Step away from my daughter.” Papa was in the open doorway, ablaze.

Madame Chaumont spluttered, “I—I must’ve misheard you. No gentleman would speak to a lady of my rank in such a manner!”

“Would you like me to repeat myself? I’d be happy to do so.” Papa took a step into the room.

“Merci, Madame de Batz. Thank you for a wonderful meal,” Jacques cut in. “We won’t encroach on your hospitality any longer.”

“Madame Chaumont.” My mother approached her. “There’s been a misunderstanding—” The older woman shot her a look that made me want to curl into the wall. It wasn’t the anger, although fury did spark at the corners of her eyes. No, it was the intense, palpable disgust. Her gaze ran down the bridge of her nose to fall at my mother’s feet. As if she, for the crime of being my mother, was worth less than the dirt beneath the floorboards. I’d thought I felt small in my mother’s eyes before. But nothing prepared me for the way my mother turned to me, looked me over, as if she had never truly seen me in her entire life.

Four

Slash. The cut of my sword against the target was usually a release. But there was no breath in this, no sigh I could exhale to unclench the knot of my upper arm, the stony expanse of my shoulders.

“This is your fault. You filled her head with those stories. Romance like that can never exist for her.”

Slash. Blade against fabric. Blade against wood. If I squinted, the target was Jacques’s face, open and closed all at once, thinking he had nothing to hide.

The very next moment I flinched, sword clattering to the ground. It was one thing to use upset and anger to fuel my training, but another to picture the face of a boy on my target, to imagine cutting him until he crumpled. Until he understood what he’d done.

The voices outside the barn paused. My breaths were ragged in the quiet.

“She’s still young; she could—”

“She is your daughter. If she spent more time learning what it actually means to be a woman, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“Well, for starters, she would’ve known how to manipulate that simpering little boy.”

“My dear, our daughter is quite possibly the least likely individual to manipulate another person in all of France. She is far too kindhearted for that. She doesn’t use her light, her strength, to hurt others.” There was something off in his voice, but my mother pressed on, continuing to argue.

I would’ve laughed if I didn’t feel like sobbing—here I was imagining a boy’s face on the opposite end of my sword. I wasn’t kind. I was nothing; I was an amalgamation of wrongs.

My father was far too generous with me.

*   *   *

“The invalide has a bit of fire in her, non?” The man advanced through the darkness. But this time my hands were empty: no fire poker, no sword. Nothing to prevent him from stabbing me through the heart.

I was useless. Hopeless.

“Tania.”

I shot awake; my room was bathed in early morning sun. Papa idled by the window, shutters opened. Everything was too bright. “Three days. Three days since those wretched people left, and you’ve barely stepped foot out of your room. You’ve only been to the barn to practice once. You’re not doing yourself any good wallowing.”

“I’m not wallowing,” I muttered.

“Then get up. It’s time for training.”

“I can’t.” I buried my face in my pillow, the fabric damp with tears or sweat or both.

“I don’t need to remind you it’s going to get worse if you don’t practice, especially if you don’t leave this bed—you’ll throw away all your hard work.” I shifted to glare at him. The longer I stayed in bed, the worse the dizziness would be when I eventually stood up: a fact my body never let me forget. A fact that Papa had also learned over the years. “You are too strong for this. Where’s my fierce daughter?”

I was not strong; I was weak and tired. But still, I pushed myself up with a wheeze. Swinging my legs over the side, toes all purple and gray, I attempted to stand.

Papa’s arm shot out to prevent my fall as I stumbled, my legs shaking as they tried to hold up my body. “You told me so, right? Staying in bed makes it worse. You can say it. Go ahead,” I said bitterly as he looped his arm around my waist.

His eyes reflected back mine. He swallowed. “No, Tania. Of course not.” A chest pang twisted, deep.

It’d only been a few days since I was in the barn, but it felt like lifetimes: the familiar tickle of hay at the back of my throat, the wonderful creak of floorboards. Beau’s dark eyes assessed me as I crossed the room, Papa guiding me to an old chair he’d placed in the barn for times like these.

It was like being at my most sick again. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, years when all I had the ability to do was sit and watch Papa train. Every so often I’d practice bladework while seated, learning technique without footwork. I hated this—feeling helpless. Feeling like I was twelve all over again.

“Tania.” Papa was brushing Beau’s mane with a wide-toothed comb, loosening the resistant knots and burrs. “We have to talk about what happened.”

“I thought we were training?”

He set the comb on a nearby stool. “You needed to get out of that room.”

“You lied to me.”

I knew he was going to push the strands of hair out of his face before it happened; the action was that familiar. “Not all lies are bad things, ma fille. With good intentions, they have the potential to help, not harm.”

The corners of my mouth pulled down into a scowl, the one my mother hated. She told me I looked exactly like Papa when I frowned. Ladies didn’t frown. And they definitely didn’t scowl. “You’re talking about him.”