One day, d'Artagnan's elderly landlord, Bonacieux, comes to ask him for help; the landlord's young wife, Constance, has been kidnapped — probably by the cardinal's men because she is the queen's linen maid and knows many of the queen's secrets, secrets which the cardinal desperately wants revealed so that he can discredit the queen, who earlier rejected his romantic advances. D'Artagnan is able to rescue Madame Bonacieux from her abductors and, while doing so, falls in love with her. Later, when he inadvertently sees her cross a bridge with a strange man, he stops them and discovers that the man is an English nobleman, the duke of Buckingham, the queen's secret lover; being an Englishman, the man is also an enemy of France. That night, the queen gives the duke an elegant gift of twelve diamond tags in a rosewood box.