seconda, the second guard position, palm down, arm at shoulder height. Terza, arm at waist level, palm to left.
Then she raised her arm again, lunging forward on the right foot, sword thrusting ahead. She imagined it plunged into Nicolai’s maddening, confusing heart. The blade was light, and whistled in the still air as she sliced it across and stepped into a reverse pass, her right foot moving back, kicking her skirts out of the way.
“Brava, mademoiselle,” she heard Nicolai’s Slavic voice say. She whirled around to find him standing just inside the doorway, arms crossed over his chest as he watched her intently. “You are very deft.”
“I was trained by Signor Lunelli, the famous sword master from Milan,” she answered. Her heart still pounded, and she remembered pretending it was him she stabbed at, his muscled chest that met her slicing blade. “But I fear I am out of practice, with these easy days at Greenwich.”
“You? Ah, no, mademoiselle. I am sure you could never be—out of practice.”
“Perhaps not any longer.” She reached down and slid the tip of her sword beneath the blade that still lay on the ground. She caught it up, flipping it in one neat movement toward Nicolai.
He caught the hilt in his hand, reflexes sharp despite his lazy appearance. He gave her an amused half-smile.
Marguerite adjusted her stance, lifting her blade invitingly while also carefully situating her guard. “En guard, monsieur.”
Nicolai’s smile widened, and he took up his own stance. At first they circled each other warily, blades poised, trying to gauge weaknesses, techniques, strengths. Marguerite’s senses shimmered with tense awareness; it was as if time slowed around her, and she was attuned to every tiny flicker of his muscles. Every shift and movement and breath of his body.
There was a small noise outside their hidden room, the distant fall of a hammer. Nicolai did not turn, but she saw his eyes widen slightly and she took the perceived advantage. She moved in with a lunge and a low, straight thrust.
But he was not distracted. His blade came up in a smooth stop-thrust. Marguerite fell back, bringing her sword up to attack again.
She heard the echo of Signor Lunelli’s voice in her head. Remember, signorina, your male opponents will have two advantages over you—reach and strength. But you, you have speed and agility. Use them! And never lose your calm centre. That is fatal.
She rose up on the balls of her feet as if dancing, her blade flashing in delicate, swift feints, faking her line of attack. Speed and agility—he would think she was one place, as she delivered quick, small blows until she moved into compound attack.
Yet Nicolai did not fight as she expected. He parried her blows, his blade shifting as hers did, almost imperceptibly. He had a lean, easy strength she could not match, and that infuriating half-smile never left his lips.
Marguerite felt her calm centre, so essential to Signor Lunelli’s instructions, melt away under a hot flare of anger. She rushed in close to his strong side, wrapping her weaker arm about his sword arm and twirling her body around to slide her blade into place. She had to do it quickly, before he realised her impulsive plan and dropped his sword to grapple with her. Then all her agility could never stand up to that strength.
The tip of her blunted blade just touched him when he did drop his sword, his fingers closing tightly over her wrist, like an iron vise.
“Chert poberi!” he growled. “You do fight dirty.”
“Oui. But I always win.”
“Almost always.”
His grip tightened on her wrist, not painful but numbing, until the blade fell from her nerveless grasp to clatter on to the floor. Marguerite cursed herself for forgetting all her training, for getting too close to him, allowing him to gain the advantage. That speed and agility had availed her naught in the end, it was too bound up in that boiling anger.
He didn’t let go of her wrist, and she stared up at him, her breath quick. His breath, too, was hard and uneven, his pulse thrumming through his veins and into hers, their heartbeats mingling. She still stared up at him into the glow of his eyes. His face was expressionless, yet she saw the faint flush of his cheeks, beneath the sun-bronzed colour of his Italian life. A muscle ticked along his jaw. So, he was not unaffected by their nearness, by whatever this was that flowed between them so inexorably.
Marguerite stretched up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his, unable to resist for an instant longer. She had to taste him, feel him. Maybe then she could decipher this mysterious force that turned her cold, careful life tip over tail. Exorcise his spell. But she made another mistake, for his kiss only bound her tighter in the silken noose of anger, lust and painful need.
His lips opened beneath hers, and he let go of her wrist, freeing her to wrap his arms around her, to draw her closer and closer. If she was to be his prisoner, he would be hers, too, the two of them bound together as they tumbled down into the abyss. He groaned, a low, hoarse sound she felt deep inside of her. Their tongues met and clashed as their swords had, a humid blur that erased everything else. There was only Nicolai, the dark taste of him, the heavy press of his hard arousal against her skirts.
Not breaking their kiss, Marguerite snatched at his clothes, tearing the fastenings of his doublet, the thin linen of his shirt until her touch met naked, smooth, hot skin.
Nicolai dragged his lips from hers, pressing a kiss to her temple, her cheek. “Marguerite,” he groaned. “Dorogaya. What are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, her fingers playing lightly over his bare chest, the uneven pounding of his heart. She traced a circle over the flat disc of his nipple, and felt his breath suck in. “I tried to fight it, deny it. But you have some strange spell, you beautiful demon, some magic…”
He gave a harsh laugh, and took her hand to drag it down over his hard penis, sheathed in the rough cloth of his hose. “Is this magic?”
She laughed, too, running her touch over his throbbing erection, feeling it strain for her caress. “Do you not think so?”
“You are the one with the spell, vedma!”
“What does that word mean?”
“It means you are a witch. A sorceress, come from the dark fairy realms to torment us poor mortals. You tried to kill me once in the midst of passion.”
Marguerite swallowed hard, remembering Venice, her dagger arcing toward that heartbeat. The thought of his lifeblood spilling out, of the warm flesh she now caressed turning ice-cold, made her shiver.
She stepped back from him, reaching up to unlace her sleeves and draw them off, dropping them at her feet in a black velvet puddle. “I have no hidden daggers today,” she said, loosening the thin sleeves of her chemise. “Not there—not here.”
She clasped the hem of her overskirt and petticoat, drawing the heavy fabric up, up, until his narrowed gaze could take in the length of her legs, clad in silk stockings and jewelled garters. She drew it up farther until he could see the shadow of her womanhood, damp with desire.
Still holding her skirts with one hand, she reached up with the other to free her hair from its gilded veil, shaking the silvery length free over her shoulders.
