Constance is nineteen when she is married.
Nineteen when M. Bonacieux negotiates down the dowry of the overlooked middle daughter of a moderately skilled draper whose family has only just managed to get out of the provinces. Overlooked because she lacks the glamorous piety of her older sister Virginie, who joined a convent as soon as she was able, and because she lacks the gender of her adored baby brother, Louis-Joseph.
Constance isn't unhappy to leave home, and really she feels rather lucky. Jacques Bonacieux is only thirty, not handsome but not ugly either, and his house is pleasant and airy, in a lively neighborhood. If his kisses aren't exactly loving, well, neither are they bruising. All in all, it could be much worse – she knows there are girls who'd give anything for Bonacieux's benign indifference.
Still, at first she tries very hard to warm things between them. She doesn't lack completely in wiles: she flatters and flirts and works impossibly hard to make his home run smoothly, a task made much easier by hiring Marie Armel, a stout and cheerful widow with a far better grasp of housekeeping than her employer. One night, she dismisses Marie early for privacy, fills their little kitchen with candles, sprinkles her bed with lavender and rose water, and waits patiently for her husband to come home, arranging her dress in the most appealing fashion she can imagine. When he arrives, Bonacieux takes one look in the kitchen and frowns.
"I do apologize, Constance, but I thought we had discussed that I do prefer we eat in the dining room." The conversation comes back to her in a flash, and she struggles not to let her smile slip.
"I'm sorry, I only thought… this would be more intimate." She gives him her best under-the-lashes-come-hither gaze. He sighs, returning her look coolly.
"I'm a bit tired tonight anyway. Perhaps you could bring a tray to my room?" Stung, she nods and springs up to snuff out the candles.
"Jacques – " When she turns again, he is gone. She sits up nearly all night, burying her face in her sweet-smelling sheets, but he never comes.
By twenty-one, she's dropped off somewhat. She and Marie while away the days peeling vegetables and gossiping, and she stops greeting her husband with a kiss when he walks through the door every evening. When over dinner he expresses some displeasure over the fact that, after two years, they still have no children, she allows herself to respond tartly that she cannot do it alone. And it's true, they are together infrequently at best – a result of both his monthly trips north to meet with merchants in the Low Countries, and general lack of interest on both their parts. She has utterly spent her reserves of seduction techniques; she is willing when he is but she's given up making the first move. It seems to make him even less eager.
On the rare occasion he comes home from a trip trailing cheap perfume, brushing past her to collapse in his room, she tries very hard not to care, biting her lips hard and swallowing the lump in her throat. Constance thinks she knows him well enough by now to understand that he doesn't love those women. She just doesn't understand why he seems equally incapable of loving her, his pliant, competent, not unattractive (if she did say so herself) little wife.
"His family, they're Bretons originally, yes?" Marie says knowingly. She herself is a Gascon, though she's lived in Paris for twenty-five years or more. "They are always cold fish. No life in them." Marie likes her young mistress very much, and will not let an unsatisfactory husband break Constance's spirit. Constance sniffs and listens to Marie gripe about the varying levels of male frigidity in all the different regions of France.
She is shallow enough to feel somewhat mollified when he presents her with a new pair of earrings, saying its because "business is going so well."
"I…" she falters. "I do want children, Jacques. Very much." She manages to summon up an inviting smile. Bonacieux shuffles his feet and straightens his doublet.
"Yes, well. I feel the same. Good night." He turns on his heel without looking at her and flees the scene. It's anger this time, not nervousness, that sends her in the opposite direction, fuming.
She's also twenty-one when she first meets Athos. He knocks on her door one rainy afternoon, looking for M. Bonacieux the cloth merchant. Constance and Marie stare. They have seen the Musketeers in the streets, milling about in groups of two or three. They're always a bit dashing, but Athos up close, uniform immaculate, eyes as stormy grey as the sky, smelling of leather and good wine, is something else altogether. Then the rain puddled in his hat brim overflows and pours down his finely drawn face.
"Mesdames, I do not wish to intrude, but I fear I will not last long on this stoop without a canoe." He smiles ruefully, and Marie, sensible middle-aged Marie, giggles. Constance laughs, her self-consciousness vanishing, and they usher him in for a glass of something warm. He is charming, quietly droll, and unfailingly polite, even when she tells him her husband won't be home for another half hour at least. Constance doesn't think she's ever met a man quite like him. He reminds her of a much older cousin once apprenticed to her father – the person who taught a young Constance to read, who gave her adventure novels, encouraged her mischievous streak, and treated the bumps and bruises that resulted. Her mother had disapproved, but Constance had worshipped him. Talking to Athos, she feels stirrings of that old affection.
The Musketeers' contract with Bonacieux falls through; Constance's relationship with Athos does not. He tips his hat to her when they pass in the street, and she curtsies, just sarcastically enough to make him smile. When the cloth business begins to struggle, he sends lodgers to Bonacieux's. When he falls on her stoop with his breath sour and his eyes too clouded to read, she and Marie plop him down in the kitchen and force water and bread down his throat until he's strong enough to get back to the garrison. Constance doesn't comment on the woman's locket he wears (clutches in his darker moments), and he doesn't ask why Constance still won't call her husband by his Christian name. They are friends.
When she is twenty-three, a stranger grabs her and kisses her in the market. She pulls a knife on him and feels only slightly guilty when he promptly collapses. She thinks dryly that Bonacieux has never reacted that strongly to one of her kisses, and decides that if for nothing else than to complete the farce, she'll have to take him home. It's only when she finally gets him there that she realizes just how good-looking he is.
D'Artagnan is young- older than her in years, perhaps, but… so young. He gives his loyalty, his humor, his enthusiasm, his ardor so freely. He tells her she is wonderful and generous and kind, like she must hear these things all the time, like they are not revelations. She can see why Athos takes to him, despite their inauspicious first meeting – he is a balm for cold souls like theirs. She'd forgotten that life could be anything but routine, but a quirk of his eyebrow and she's an actress, an adventurer, a warrior. And she's herself, washing dishes in an enormous tub while he eats bread and cheese at the table, chatting about nothing in particular.
"Madame," D'Artagnan drawls, moving to lean on the counter next to her and crossing his arms. "I must say, this looks like an awfully taxing job for a delicate lady such as yourself." Constance whacks him lightly with a rag.
"Monsieur," she replies impishly, "That sounded very much like an offer to dry." And before he can say no, she deposits a stack of plates and a towel in his arms.
When Marie returns from the market, they are doubled over, weeping with laughter, and they do not notice her until she clatters her basket on the table and sits heavily. D'Artagnan coughs to cover the last remaining chuckles and pulls his shirtsleeves down.
"Madame Armel, Madame Bonacieux." He bows slightly, still grinning, and departs. Constance turns back to her dishes. There is a heaviness left in D'Artagnan's wake.
"Our Monsieur Lodger is a handsome man," Marie notes.
"Not as handsome as he thinks he is," Constance answers quickly, but she cannot keep the fondness from her voice.
"Gascon men are often impetuous," Marie is speaking quietly, neutrally. "I should know. But I wouldn't have used that word to describe you, my dear." It is a warning, but a gentle one. Know what it is that you do, Constance Bonacieux. And don't get caught.
They get exactly two weeks: five glorious nights before her husband returns from Bruges, and nine more days of stolen sunlit hours. Her mind changes minute by minute as to the rightness of this, but always she loves him, loves him so much she can't breathe with it. His touch is warm and so casual, as if his hands have always rested on her hips, his mouth on her neck, and his head on her pillow. He traces fleur-de-lis swirls on her bare stomach and they talk lazily.
"You know, I don't know your first name," she tells him, nestling in the crook of his shoulder. He makes a face.
"It's Charles," he says reluctantly. "But I don't like it. D'Artagnan is the name I have always used. And… I'm the only one left, now. So I must honor it." Constance pulls away slightly.
"Where are the rest? All the D'Artagnans of Gascony?" He lets out a long exhale.
"You know what happened to my father," he begins. "My sister and I are my parents' only surviving children. She is almost ten years older than I, and long married. There were three other boys before me. Alexandre, Jean-Luc, Emmanuel," he recites with a practiced air. "None of them reached two years." Constance places a lingering kiss on his jaw.
"Your poor mother," she murmurs.
"Yes," he says. "But my mother was strong. I don't remember everything about her, but I know she was a small woman, very dark and very strong. She taught me to read, and to sing, and to say my prayers. She was never melancholy, not even under the worst of circumstances. She… she was like you." He taps her on the nose with a little smile. Constance purses her lips.
"So I'm like your mother, am I?" she teases softly. He laughs and wraps her tighter in his arms.
"No," he says, voice thick, breath hot on her ear, "you are not like anyone."
And so for a while she can pretend. When they are alone, it is wonderfully easy to forget. She dreams about what a life with D'Artagnan would be like: afternoons full of laughter and fencing with wooden spoons, nights that follow her into the mornings. A home filled with children and light and a happiness that isn't practiced. She can feel that life, somewhere in the distance, and so she kisses him again, reaching for it.
On the fifteenth day everything falls apart. If Bonacieux had any common sense at all, Constance thinks bitterly, he would've discovered them earlier than this. What exactly did he think was behind his wife's dreaminess, her glow? Did he not hear her humming in the kitchen? Of course he hasn't really seen her for ages - maybe he's never seen her. What she does not expect is his palpable jealousy. She didn't imagine he cared.
"Was I ever cruel to you? Did I ever beat you?" No, not until right now. There were horrible moments when I almost wished you would. Is that really all you think a woman needs? A man who is simply better than he might have been? His surprise and hurt give her pause, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
He is vindictive in his revenge and the first strong emotion she ever feels towards her husband is disgust, for his greed and his foppishness and neglect and pretense to nobility. It's not for love of her that he does anything; it's to salvage his wounded pride, and they both know it.
She can't watch D'Artagnan get into Milady de Winter's damnably well turned out carriage. She hunkers down beneath the window, sobbing and hiccupping in fear and heartbreak. Marie finds Constance there, wipes her face, fixes her hair, and says nothing. But she puts her to bed early, claiming the young woman is ill, and burns M. Bonacieux's dinner.