spun around to see her standing in the doorway, outlined by the torchlight. The dishevelled, flushed woman who had fled the theatre after their lovemaking was no longer to be seen. She was again an elegant lady of the French Court in her rosy-red silk gown, her silvery hair parted in the middle and swept back beneath a jewelled band.
But her eyes shimmered with the dark light of memory. Her hand was tense where she braced it against the doorframe. That thin, delicate cord grew tense in the air between them, taut and quivering.
Nicolai tossed aside the racket, swiping his sleeve over his damp brow. His hair clung to his neck. “How did you find me?”
“Dona Elena asked me to discover what had become of you, and one of the pages told me of the ‘mad Spaniard’ in the empty tennis court,” she said. “I did not take the time to explain the difference between Spain and Russia.”
He gave a rough laugh. “It would seem a pointless exercise. What did Dona Elena want?”
“She was worried about you, and did not believe your excuses to avoid the banquet.”
“She is surrounded by her attendants. I’m sure she can do without me for an hour. I will join her for the pageant after.”
“’Tis true that King Henry’s banquets seem to last far past the point where they are amusing,” Marguerite said, taking a step closer. Her hands clasped at the fine fabric of her skirts, and she seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. “But I think she was concerned you might be ill.”
He grinned at her. “I have never felt better, thanks to you, mademoiselle.”
She laughed, ducking her chin so her face was cast half in shadows. “I was glad of the excuse to escape the feast. All that noise, the stares…”
“The stares of your companion, the priest?” Nicolai said, remembering the thin, pale cleric who seemed to be her Court shadow.
“Father Pierre, yes. He is always warning me to beware of spending too much time with the Spanish. He says you are all not as you seem.”
“That seems a pointless warning to someone like you.”
Her head tilted quizzically. “Someone like me?”
“Someone who lives at Court.”
“Hmm, yes. Surely your own life as a travelling player has prepared you well to be a courtier.”
“The ability to pretend to be someone we are not is useful anywhere. To be able to shift and change whenever we desire.”
“To deceive,” she murmured.
Nicolai moved closer to her, reaching out to gently take her chin in his hand, lifting her face toward him, into the light. The shadows played over her fair skin, the slant of her cheekbones. She stared up at him solemnly, giving nothing away.
Yet she trembled under his touch, like a tiny captive bird trying to escape.
“Who are you, really?” he said softly. “I called you a fairy enchantress, a witch, and so you seem to be.”
“I could not tell you.”
“Because you do not trust me?”
She reached up to take his fingers in hers, bending her head to press a kiss to them. It was a soft, gentle salute, strangely sad. “Because I do not know.”
She let him go, stepping back, easing away from him, from their situation. “I have to go back. I will tell Dona Elena you are well, and will see her at the pageant.”
Then she spun around and dashed away, leaving her lily scent, and her cryptic words, heavy in the air. Nicolai followed to the doorway, watching after her as she hurried into the night, a shimmering, silken figure, like the fairy he called her. She vanished not into some enchanted, misty realm, but into the well-lit, noisy banquet hall. Into her courtiers’ life.
As Nicolai stared after her, a tall, thin shadow detached itself from the night and trailed behind her. An ominous crow flocking after the bright, trembling bird. Father Pierre.
So, Marguerite was far from the only French person with secrets tonight.
Marguerite sat on her clothes chest, her body erect, tense, as she listened to the palace around her. It was deep into the darkest part of the night, the sky outside her little window a purplish indigo. Almost everyone tucked inside Greenwich’s stout walls slept. Claudine’s chamber next door was silent.
But Marguerite could not sleep, could not even lie down on her turned-back bed. She was too restless, every sense humming with acute awareness of the world around her.
What had she meant when she told Nicolai she could not tell him who she was, because she did not know? Of course she knew who she was! She was Marguerite Dumas, the Emerald Lily. Faithful servant of France. Dependent on no one as she made her way through the world. It was all she had worked for, all she had wanted since she was fifteen years old.
Yet when she was near Nicolai, all that vanished. Her world shifted, cracked, reformed into something new and strange, something she did not recognise. When she was near him, these restless longings for she knew not what overwhelmed her.
And she did not know who she was.
Marguerite rose from the chest, drifting toward the looking glass. She wore only a sleeveless sleeping chemise, as thin and light as cobwebs, her hair loose over her shoulders. The glow from the one candle shone through the fine fabric, revealing the slender lines of her body, the high, erect, pink circles of her nipples. She was all white and silver, like a ghost in the night.
She hardly recognised herself. Surely she would just vanish like a wisp of mist, and no one would remember she was there at all.
Marguerite shrugged one long strand of hair back from her shoulder, staring at the tiny red mark just at the upper curve of her breast. Nicolai had left it there, his kiss on her skin a reminder of their wild sex on the theatre floor. A reminder of his touch, of the exploding need that overcame her.
It couldn’t go on. He was a distraction from her work, and any misstep now could prove fatal. She was given this chance after her failure in Venice, this one last chance. She balanced on that acrobat’s tightrope, wobbling, wavering, unable to move forward or back.
She had to decide which way to jump.
Marguerite spun away from the glass, reaching for her cloak before she could let caution overtake her. She swung the black velvet over her chemise, and left her chamber on silent, bare feet.
The corridors were silent, filled only with the soft snores of the pages on their pallets, the sputter of torches in their sconces. From behind some of the closed doors could be heard the cries and sighs of passion. No one stopped her as she crept down the stairs and through the labyrinthine halls, her hood up to cover her pale hair and conceal her face. Surely she was turning to mist already.
The wing housing the Spanish was just as deserted as the rest of the palace, though there were signs of an abandoned gathering in empty goblets and scattered cards, a lute in the corner. Marguerite tiptoed up to a door, half-hidden behind a tapestry, and reached down to test the latch. It was not locked, and clicked open at her touch. She slid inside,
