All for One Read Online Free

“friend” died in his best bedchamber, Léandre took the stairs two at a time to the upper story. He found Aristide with the sleeves of his doublet rolled back, wringing out a cloth from a ewer of pink-tinged water. The stranger lay on the bed, stripped to his waist, revealing a smooth chest thin enough that his ribs showed plainly. The makeshift bandage had been removed and the worst of the blood and dirt cleaned away, though the wound continued to seep blood slowly. “How is he?” Léandre asked, suspecting from the man’s pale face that he might yet be robbed of the chance of running him through.
    “The ball’s still in him,” Aristide answered, rubbing the back of his neck and leaving a streak of red. “We’ll have to cut it out or he’ll bleed to death.”
    Léandre was fairly sure that might happen in any case, but knowing better than to argue with Aristide, he nodded and pushed up his own sleeves. “You cut; I’ll hold him still,” the blond offered, moving around the bed to grasp the wounded man by the shoulders, pinning him to the mattress. Even if he was unconscious, an involuntary movement could cause the knife to cut deeper than Aristide intended, rendering even more damage than the ball itself.
    “Oh, are we fucking him before we cut his heart out?” Perrin asked as he walked into the room to find Léandre on the bed straddling the wounded man and Aristide with a knife in his hand.
    “Shut up, Perrin,” Aristide growled, easing his belt knife carefully under the musket ball until he could work it free. The wounded man breathed heavily but made no other sound, worrying Aristide even more than the loss of blood. Staunching the bleeding with a clean cloth, he ran a hand through his hair, hoping now that the ball was gone the wound could begin to close. Nodding his thanks as Léandre handed him another length of the bed sheet he’d torn up for wrappings, he tied off the bandage and examined the stranger’s face more closely than he’d had the opportunity to do until now. Long, dark lashes brushed the man’s olive cheekbones beneath a broad, smooth forehead; a light beard surrounded thin, well-shaped lips. Aristide would put him at roughly a score and five years, older than he had originally seemed. His slim build in part had lent that impression, though Aristide suspected that was due to illness or hunger rather than immaturity; his arms and chest revealed firm muscle for all their thinness. Aristide found it hard to imagine what reason this stranger would have to plot treachery against the captain of the musketeers.
    Perrin examined the injured man as well, seeing the poor quality of fabric the stranger wore, the threadbare breeches worn nearly white at the knees, the cracked and broken leather that proclaimed the age of his boots as well as the general lack of care. “He doesn’t look like much. What motive could he possibly have for carrying such lies?”
    “We won’t know until he’s well enough to question—then we’ll have it out of him, one way or another,” Léandre promised. Perrin’s earlier remark having put sex, never far from his mind, back in the forefront of his thoughts, he ran a critical eye over the stranger, adding in fairness, “He wouldn’t be half bad if he wasn’t so thin. I wager he’d clean up well enough.”
    “That’s not what I meant,” Perrin contradicted. “Look at his clothes. He’s a peasant, or the next thing to it. What would he know of the kind of political intrigue implied in the letter?”
    “I wouldn’t wager he even knows how to write—certainly not in as cultured a hand as that,” Léandre considered. “He must be working with, or for, someone. Don’t you agree, Aristide?”
    “Hmmn?” Aristide started at hearing his name, lost in his consideration of the stranger. Shaking his head to refocus his thoughts, he frowned. “You’re right about one thing—we won’t know until he’s well enough to talk. It doesn’t appear that