Congratulations Musketeer!

Musketeers aren’t really in fashion anymore. Actually, that’s a bad way to phrase it. Musketeers aren’t really relevant at all anymore. They’re a bygone relic of a time when firearms and swordplay were contemporary forms of warfare, where people were expected to be able to fire off a rifle accurately before defending themselves in close quarters against droves of Britons with their rapier. There isn’t a lot of call for the sort of person who wears a floppy hat and says “Sacre couer” a lot.

But that didn’t stop you. Nor did the career counselor at your high school, or your undergraduate advisor, who informed you that “French language was a dying field and that only an academic would be able to make any meaningful headway in it as a career path.” You laughed at your fencing teacher when he told you that none of what he’d taught you was practical and you dismissed the street gang members who shot you in the shoulder while you were cowering behind a car as “dishonorable cowards who could not face you in single combat” after you murdered one of them with a musketball and then unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the rest of them to a duel.

Which pretty much brings us up to date. That gunshot wound cost you your latest temp job, and without that money life’s looking pretty grim. But today it’s going to get a little better when you get a new day nurse.

She’ll be pretty in a mousy way. Not the kind of girl who would be considered drop dead gorgeous under any set of circumstances, but pretty enough to make her stand out in a small group. She’ll smile at you, at the floppy hat you’ll still be wearing, and she’ll caress your saber with great care each time she stops in to check on you.

“Brave of you to face down those men,” she’ll say in a bad French accent. You’ll twist your mouth into some sort of indecipherable, affected expression when she does.

“My duty,” you’ll say before coughing violently from the effort of speaking. That’ll make the young nurse place her hand upon your head and look down on you affectionately. Then your musketeer training will kick in.

You’ll run your hand across her cheek and bring her head down to yours, kissing her deeply on the mouth. She’ll let you do it, smiling the whole time, and when the two of you finally part for air she’ll whisper in your ear.

“Claire,” she’ll say, lips quivering inches from your flesh.

“Gerard,” you’ll retort in a throaty voice you’ll have been practicing for years.

That’ll make her laugh before she brings her face back down to yours and kisses you once again.

Congratulations Musketeer!