A blind alley

[igenlode]

It doesn't work to have Aramis responsible for pushing Athos into this (and I'm not sure it works to have a Raoul who is *not* Athos's own son as being the start of it all; if he is going to take in an unprecedented foundling at Aramis' insistence then it would need a whole lot more detailed backstory to explain how Aramis argues him into it). So having written this section I then deleted it and replaced it with an alternative version that is less heavily based on the canon scenario where dealing with Raoul basically pulls Athos out of depression ;-) In the current version, the 'school' is implicitly something he goes into by his own choice, with Raoul then being added to the collection subsequently, which makes more sense of Aramis teasing him about his 'menagerie'... and requires less explanation at a point where it ruins the pacing of the chapter!
I quite liked this one, but it wasn't working in the context of tying up the end of a chapter with a focus back on Venya...

NB Raoul may or may not still be the secret son of Marie de Chevreuse in this AU -- only Aramis knows, and he is not telling :-p

It had been no part of his intention, upon inheriting this little pocket-handkerchief estate at Bragelonne, to fill the empty rooms of the chateau with a crowd of waifs and strays. Still less had he thought to find himself, as by stages imperceptible it had come to pass, entrusted with the upbringing of certain ill-disciplined sprigs of the nobility. He had embarked upon the raising of Raoul, when the latter had, unsolicited, been wished upon him, in much the same spirit, if truth be told, that an elderly lady of the Court might have acquired a lap-dog to fill the emptiness of her days.

For his days then had been pointless and barren beyond belief, and perhaps d'Herblay, who had once been his brother-in-arms Aramis and was far from being a fool, had guessed at it. At any rate he had arrived without warning with a very small Raoul in tow, and the cryptic remark that some evils of the world, at least, could be mended.