cloak. It was surely somewhere near morning, for the banquet and recital had gone on for long hours. And it was no easy thing to persuade hundreds of courtiers to retire! But all was silent now, almost eerily so in the purple-blackness of deepest night. The only sounds, so soft they were almost imperceptible, were the shuffles of the pages who slept on pallets outside doors, the whispers of Claudine’s maids in their truckle beds.
Marguerite crept down the narrow back stairs, lit on her way by the smoking torches set high in their sconces. She had changed her heeled brocade shoes for soft-soled leather boots and left off her cumbersome petticoats, tucking her skirts into a kirtle to keep them out of her way. Her progress was swift as she dashed down the stairs and out into the gardens.
She had bribed one of the pages into telling her where the Russian was lodged, but it was in a section of the palace off one of the other courtyards, behind the Spanish apartments. She hurried along the twisting pathways, so crowded only that afternoon but now completely deserted. Only the stars and the moon, like tiny crystals in the violet velvet of the sky, watched her progress. The darkened windows of the buildings were blank, turning away from her actions as they had so many others in the past. The doings of humans were swiftly gone, those windows seemed to say, and of no interest at all. Only bricks and mortar, and the river beyond, were eternal.
Or perhaps it was all her own fancy, Marguerite thought, her own imagination taking strange flight. Well, she had no time for fancy now. This was the moment for action.
She had not expected to see Nicolai Ostrovsky again so soon in her life, to have him dropped before her like a ripe prize plum. She had watched him throughout the banquet and during the recital in Henry’s fine new theatre, observing him closely while staying out of his sight.
How very careless he seemed, how caught up in laughter and jokes, the doings of his own companions! How had he ever survived his life of travel and intrigue? She had heard tell of how deftly he moved through the treacherous Courts of Venice, Mantua, Naples, Madrid. Yet he seemed to take no notice of the danger swirling around him.
He could not be so careless and still live, Marguerite knew that well. He and she were two of a kind in many ways, making their way in a cold world with only their wits, their blades, their good looks—their ability to pretend, to be all things to all people. But in his eyes she saw no flicker of awareness, no tense watchfulness like she always felt in herself. And she had watched him very closely all evening.
She finally had to conclude he had indeed taken no notice of her, and that was all to her advantage. Seldom had she found a task so easy. And now it was near to completion. She saw the wing housing the Spanish party just ahead, its silent brick hulk slumbering peacefully.
She slowed her steps, automatically rising on to the balls of her feet as she rounded a marble fountain. The faun poised at its summit stared down at her knowingly, her only witness as she slid the dagger from its sheath beneath her skirt. The hilt was cold and solid in her grasp, a stray beam of moonlight dancing down the polished blade. She was so close now…
Suddenly, a hand shot from behind the fountain, closing like a steel vise on her arm. Startled, Marguerite opened her mouth instinctively to scream, but another hand clamped tight over her lips. She was jerked off her feet in one quick movement, dragged back against a hard chest covered in a soft silk doublet.
Marguerite twisted in that steel trap of an embrace, kicking back with her heels. She managed to work her hand free, and stabbed out with her blade. The sound of tearing fabric echoed loudly in the cold, silent night, but she felt no solid thud of dagger meeting flesh.
“Chert poberi!” her captor cursed roughly. His grasp slid down to her wrist, squeezing until her fingers opened and the knife fell to the pathway.
Of course. She should have known. The Russian. Had she not been sure no one could be as careless as he appeared? Now it seemed she was the careless one.
Her anger at herself, at him, flared up like a white-hot shooting star, and she lashed out madly, kicking and squirming like a wild animal caught in a steel trap.
“Couilles!” she cried out behind his hand.
“Parisian hellcat,” Nicolai growled, his arms tightening around her in a vise. She remembered, in a great fireworks flash, that night in Venice. The coiled, lean strength of his chest and abdomen, the way his long, lazy body, so lithe from years of backflips and somersaults, concealed a core of steel. Her only weapon against such hidden strength was speed and surprise, and she had squandered those with her own carelessness.
She had underestimated him twice now. She could not do so again.
If, that is, she ever had another chance. He could very well slit her throat now, and leave her for the English crows.
The thought was like a cold, nauseating blow to her stomach, and she bent forward in one last struggle to break free. He was too lithe to let her go, though, his body moving with hers.
“We meet again, Emerald Lily,” he said in her ear, his voice full of infuriating amusement. “Or should I say Mademoiselle Dumas?”
“Call me whatever you like,” she said, as his fingers at last loosened over her mouth. “I shall always think of you as cochon. A filthy, barbaric Russian!”
He clicked his tongue chidingly. “How you wound me, mademoiselle. And one always hears of the great charm of the French ladies. How sad to be so disillusioned.”
“I would not waste my charm on you. Muscovite pigs have no appreciation of such delicacies.”
“How you wound me, petite.” He spun her around, backing her up until she felt the solid brick wall at her back, chilly through her velvet. He was outlined by the moonlight, his hair a shimmering curtain, falling in a golden tumble over one shoulder. His face was in shadow so she could not read his expression, but his breath was cool on her cheek, his clean, summery scent surrounding all her senses. He wore no wrap against the cold, and his body in the thin silk was hot where it pressed against her.
She shivered, suddenly frightened beneath her anger.
“I should be the one hurling angry names about,” he said chattily, as if engaged in light conversation in the banquet hall. “After all, mademoiselle, you are the one who tried to kill me. Twice now, if I am not mistaken.”
“You have something that belongs to me.”
“Your pretty dagger, you mean? Ah, but I believe it belongs to me now. I claimed it as a forfeit that memorable night in Venice.”
Marguerite twisted again, overcome by the nearness of him, his heat and strength. She hated this sensation of losing herself, of falling into him, of drowning! “You should have died then.”
“Perhaps I should have, but it seems I have one or two lives yet to go. Fate, mademoiselle, has other plans for me. For us both, it would seem, for here we meet again. What are the odds of that?”
“Fate? Do you believe in it?”
“Of course. Do you not?”
“I believe in skill. In hard work. We all make our own fate, monsieur.”
“Ah, ‘monsieur’ rather than cochon! I must advance in your estimation.”
Marguerite tilted her head back against the hard wall, staring at him in
