That's right folks, a new chapter in a day! This weekend was fairly kind to me in terms of allowing me to sit down and do some more writing, but with a show of mine coming up in the next few weeks, that time might become much smaller. I will, however, continue to piece this story together in the meantime, so please bear with me! Don't forget to post a review and tell me what you think!

Chapter XVII

"I have a message and a package to deliver, sir."

Athos frowned slightly at the servant who had come to knock on the door before turning back to look at the others. They had all come together in D'Artagnan's room to prepare for the ceremony, choosing the opportunity as a moment to conference between them secretly and ensure that they were all aware of the proceedings before they had been interrupted by the messenger's arrival. Porthos stepped forward, frowning heavily himself. "Who are they for?"

Clearly intimidated by the presence of all four men, the messenger shifted his weight in discomfort at having been asked such a direct question. "The letter is for Monsieur Aramis from Her Majesty, Queen Anne. The package is for Monsieur D'Artagnan from Madamoiselle Katherine."

That did not seem right, Aramis thought to himself as he absorbed the messenger's words. If anything, he would have expected Katherine to send him something and Queen Anne to be sending her letter to D'Artagnan in secret correspondence. And yet the man did not seem to feel as though he had made a mistake at all as he stood there awkward, waiting for one of those present to relieve him of his packages so that he could hurry away to something else. Aramis nodded to Athos, who responded in kind before he stepped forward to accept both on behalf of their intended recipients and closed the door firmly as soon as the man had backed away.

"Well?" Aramis asked, laying his uniform over the back of the chair for a moment.

Athos did not immediately respond but looked over both items in his hands with narrowed eyes, as if he were trying to discern the mistake for himself. But in the end, he shook his head and moved back toward his friends with a look of confusion beginning to form on his face. "He was right. The Queen did write to you," he said as he handed the letter to Aramis. "And I would know Katherine's handwriting after all these years."

D'Artagnan accepted the package with a frown, glancing down at the tiny little note that seemed to have been pinned to the top of the wrapped bundle, which weighed next to nothing as he balanced it in one hand. It was written in Katherine's hand all right, he recognized the small elegant way in which she wrote many of her letters, having often teased her in her youth for writing secrets that she wanted no one else to read because it always looked so small to most eyes. He glanced upward at Porthos, who simply shrugged before he turned his gaze over toward Aramis and the letter with the newly broken seal. His dark eyes scanned the page for a moment before he turned his head a little, offering it out to the others to read as well.

"Queen Anne informs me that I shall not be seeing my daughter until the ceremony tonight," he said, seeing the look of surprise that Athos now wore. "It would seem that Her Majesty has taken it upon herself to prepare Katherine for the evening."

A look was exchanged between Athos and Aramis as the letter changed hands, a silent communication that left both of them feeling a little unsure about what might be waiting for them, or what might be done in their absence. They had still not informed D'Artagnan of their fears yet, afraid that his relationship with Katherine was still tumultuous at best despite his insistence that she had spoken to him and cleared the whole matter up. Porthos scratched his head as he too read the letter, clearly as confused as the rest of them.

"I forgot that she had been asked to go," he said absentmindedly.

Athos turned his head sharply to look at Porthos, the frown growing even more on his aged face. "Who asked her to go?" he asked quickly, earning him a strange look from D'Artagnan that he seemed to miss entirely in his haste to learn what had brought his daughter into the proceedings of the ceremony.

"The King," Aramis replied as the letter was handed back to him. "He was walking with her in the gardens the other day and asked her about the details in our story."

The news did not seem to sit well with Athos, who immediately jerked his body around to look at Porthos with wide eyes. "And you did not think to tell us until now?"

Aramis gave his head a small shake, glancing at Athos with warning in his eyes. "Philippe mentioned it to me only an hour or so ago. Though it does account for some of the things that were said in our last meeting."

His choice of words and the tone in which he spoke alerted D'Artagnan that something else was amiss, something he knew nothing about as he picked the tiny letter off of the package he had been sent and looked at Athos questioningly. "Why is it so important for you to know?" he asked smoothly as he rose gingerly from his place at the edge of the bed and started to walk across the room toward the dresser.

"Of course Philippe is going to pay her some kind of attention. She is the only other lady at court that he has truly spoken with aside from his own mother, and none of you can deny that Katherine has blossomed into a beautiful creature."

He did not bother waiting for any of the others to try and dispute the fact before he opened the letter that had been delivered to him, his eyes scanning the page hurriedly before he looked upward and back toward the bed where he had left the parcel. "What?" he breathed, looking back down at the letter again.

"D'Artagnan?" Aramis approached slowly with an outstretched hand, concern written into his face as he tried to piece together the situation without startling his friend.

The captain looked up at the sound of his name and blinked quickly, giving his head a bit of a shake before he held the note up a little higher and read it, his voice shaking a little. "Uncle," he began. "I know how much pride you took in wearing your old uniform, and I know that it caused you great pain that I had to force it from you that night. I did not wish for you to wear the blue uniform when you stood beside Papa, Athos and Porthos, so I hope this finds its way into your hands in time for the ceremony. All my love, Katherine."

Four sets of eyes fell on the wrapping paper that hid Katherine's gift, each wondering what it was that she had done. After a moment of hesitation D'Artagnan finally moved himself back toward the bed and began to pull at the binding until it had released the paper wrapping and stepped back, mouth agape at what he saw. His heart gave a bit of a lurch as he came to recognize the velvety material he had once worn so proudly, carefully folded and stitched up, looking as if it had never been worn a single day. It was his old musketeer uniform, the very one that he had worn to the Bastille the night that they had saved Philippe and he had nearly lost his life. As he turned it over in his hands, eyes scouring the uniform for some kind of marking, he found that not a single one could be seen. Regardless of what Katherine had told him before, it almost looked as if the entire thing had been made for a new recruit, which wasn't possible since they no longer made the uniforms in such a way. Touched by what he saw, D'Artagnan couldn't help but smile. He could only imagine the time that Katherine had taken in order to make this happen for him, knowing how tedious she found sewing to be as it was seen as being a woman's job, and thus one that she shied away from if possible.

"I do not believe it," he murmured softly, turning it over again to look at it from both sides before he unfolded and held it before him. "How could she possibly have done this?"

Athos was the first to chuckle, running a hand through his dirty-blonde locks as he watched the astonished look on D'Artagnan's face. "Sometimes I believe you forget just who she is," he said as he glanced between his friends. "I saw the mess it was in once she removed it from you. And I saw the look in her eyes when she remembered what she had had to do in the hopes of keeping you alive."

Yes, that certainly sounded much more like the Katherine that they knew, Aramis thought to himself as he watched the exchange before him. She would go through a great deal of pain and misery in order to fix the old uniform if it meant that he would be able to wear it next to his three friends at the ceremony. And in doing all of that, she would secretly see his wearing the black uniform as a gesture of resistance against Louis and the old order he had created, especially following his aid to save Philippe from spending the remainder of his life in the Bastille for crimes he had not committed.

"Perhaps my concern for her was misplaced," he said aloud, smiling despite himself at the gesture of love that his daughter had shown toward one of the most important men in her life. "And perhaps, it is time for us to prepare for the ceremony."

Shaking his head a little to return to the present moment, D'Artagnan established eye contact with Aramis briefly before he nodded in agreement and allowed himself to set the uniform back on the bed. If Katherine was indeed to attend the celebrations that night then he knew he would have a chance to find her and thus thank her for the pains she had taken on his behalf.

"We must not keep the King waiting," he said with a small smile, adjusting the way in which the collar of his shirt sat against his shoulders. "It would cause a scandal if we were late for our own party."

Laughter spread between the four men as they each began to move about the room in preparation for the evening, knowing that they would now be able to present themselves before the King in identical uniforms that Philippe was sure to privately like much better than the blue that they had faced before. And now that D'Artagnan had recovered enough to at least walk himself down the length of the ballroom before the King, there was even more to celebrate. Katherine's healing had done wonders, and while he was not yet ready to return to active duty and intense physical movement, it was proof that he was on the mend for the better. Shirts were thrown around between them and boots placed near the fire to warm before they would be worn. There was not much that they needed to do in order to prepare themselves, but the moments that they spent together reminded them of the times that they had dashed off on their wild adventures for King and country as young men. Athos fondly remembered how a young D'Artagnan had come to musketeer headquarters in time to find them disbanded under Cardinal Richelieu, and how he had ended his first day in Paris with a duel arranged between himself and each of the three men separately at varying hours. Porthos roared with laughter when he thought about the moments in which he had first met his young friend, insisting that he could have taken him in a duel without issue had the time come for their swords to cross.

But it was Aramis who brought up the fight between themselves and the Cardinal's guards. They had fully intended to push D'Artagnan away and not count him in their odds against the mightier number of red uniforms, but he had insisted on being involved. And so they had fought, though they all knew that duelling was against the law, and won the day with the help of their young Gascon friend who had come to join the musketeers as his father had done before him.

"We were much younger then," Aramis said with a chuckle from where he now sat in the chair at the desk. "Riding hard for Calais to intercept messengers from the Cardinal was much easier."

The others all nodded from their various places about the room, pulling on boots or straightening shirts as they finally settled into dressing themselves for the night. "Getting out of bed each morning is slowly requiring more strength than it did in the past," Athos said with a bit of a sigh, adjusting the way his boot hugged his calf.

D'Artagnan could not help but smile to himself as he pushed gingerly from the side of the bed until he was standing completely on his own two feet, understanding exactly what it was that Athos was experiencing. And while he hoped that the feeling was only temporary, he could not shake the idea that he might perhaps be forced into a much slower pace of life for the remainder of his days. He knew that he had been lucky to recover at all from the wound he had received at Louis' hand that night, and that his mobility was sure to be impaired now that damage had been done to that side of his body. There was no real way of knowing what he would be able to do when he returned to his post, if indeed he was able to return at all.

As the hour chimed in the distance from the tolling of the church bells, Porthos removed himself from his chair and strolled toward the window, glancing down at the people who had begun to arrive. "We should perhaps make ready," he suggested, allowing his eyes to watch a carriage unload its passengers before it moved further up the lane in order to make room for the next one. "Guests are beginning to arrive."

Without another word the four men pulled their black tunics over their heads and slipped their arms through the sleeves, brushing away any flecks of dust that might still be in the material. The formal occasion they were about to head into did not require their hats, and so they had been left behind in other rooms, but they had previously debated about whether to carry their swords before the King or not, just in case something should happen over the course of the night. In the end, it had been Athos who suggested that the swords remain behind and that daggers be concealed in their boots as a preventative measure. No one thought at there would be any need for them that night, but they could not be too careful after their own attempts to replace Louis with Philippe. They turned to one another in silence and nodded silently before they walked toward the door, anxious to see the plan work and remove them from any lingering danger. And if all went well, Philippe would be secure on his throne as a better version of the King they had had before.