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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.
“I will not try to kill you this day, Nicolai,” she said. “I give you my word. Now, will you kiss me again?”
In answer, Nicolai gave a low growl, and lunged forward to catch her around her waist. As their lips met again, he lifted her high, twirling her around to press her up against the wall. Marguerite wrapped her legs tightly about his hips, drawing him into the curve of her body. His hose abraded the soft skin of her thighs, but she didn’t care or even notice. She just wanted him closer, closer.
He trailed a ribbon of kisses to her throat, biting and licking at the curve where her neck met her shoulder, the hollow where her pulse pounded. She let her head fall back against the wall, offering him all she had, all she was.
He tugged her low-cut French bodice down to bare her breasts. Her nipples strained for his kiss, aching.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured. “So very beautiful.”
She had heard those words so often, but never, not until this moment, had she believed them to be true. Perhaps she was beautiful—in his eyes.
He could not see her black-spotted soul. “Not as lovely as you, mon ange,” she whispered.
He captured her nipple between his lips, rolling it, biting gently, teasingly, before he at last gave her what she craved, longed for, and drew it deep into his mouth.
Marguerite found she could stand the intense need, the fire, no longer. She pushed him back until her breast was free of his kiss, until she could touch her feet to the earth. Then she clasped him by the shoulders, moving his unresisting body to the floor.
He watched her closely in the dim light as she straddled him, reaching out with desperate hands to strip him of his doublet and shirt, to tug at the lacings of his hose.
“Marguerite…” he said roughly.
“Non!” she answered. “Don’t say anything, Nicolai, not now.” Words would just break the witch’s spell, and she did not want to awaken. Not yet.
He lay back, his hair pooling around him like the golden allure of the sun. His eyes glowed as he stared up at her, wary and lustful in equal measure.
Marguerite wanted to erase that wariness, to find only passion, a deep need to match her own. She swooped down on him, like a little, lethal kestrel after her prey, trailing her mouth over his throat and naked chest, tasting the clean salt of his skin. Breathing in all his heat and life until she found her own soul stir.
As she kissed him, his fingers moved through her hair, wrapping the strands over his chest, binding them together. Marguerite smiled against his shoulder, and reached down to free the heavy, throbbing length of his erect penis into her hand. It was weighty under her gentle touch, and he shuddered as she ran her fingers up and down its iron-satin, veined shaft. She carefully balanced his balls on her palm, her embrace tightening with a threat—or promise.
In answer, Nicolai grasped her waist, rolling her beneath him in one quick, smooth movement. He pulled her skirts out of his way, parting her legs as his thumb slipped inside her wet, welcoming folds.
“Oui, oui,” she groaned. She would surely burst into flame at his touch! She spread her legs farther, urging him over her, into her, urging him to make her his. Her eyes closed as her head fell back, her body tense as a bowstring as he eased himself into the very core of her.
Their joining was not slow or gentle. They came together with the force of a summer storm, fast, violent, desperate. He thrust into her, and Marguerite wrapped her legs about his back, keeping him inside her as the delicious friction, the heat, built and built. The world turned red and bright orange around her, and a high-pitched sound grew in her ears. Greater and greater, higher and higher.
She exploded in climax, a shower of bits of the sun and stars, too bright. Too much.
Above her, around her, Nicolai shouted out, “Moya dorogaya!” Marguerite grasped his hair, clutching at the tangled strands as his back arched. At the very last instant, he drew out of her body, spilling his seed on the floor. Then he collapsed beside her, their limbs entwined.
Marguerite still held on to him, running her trembling fingers through the bright strands of his hair, smoothing them, spreading them over her breasts and throat. How heavy she felt, as if she could sink down into the earth itself and never be seen again. She was weighted, replete.
And not at all sorry. Remorse would surely come later. At this moment, she felt something she had never known before.
Contentment.
Chapter Eleven
Nicolai slammed the leather ball against the curved wall of the tennis court, his racket arcing through the air with a sharp, swift whine. Again and again he swung, practising his serve, his arm twisting back and overhand, until his shoulder muscles shrieked with the ache and sweat poured down his back. His shirt clung to his damp skin, yet still he swung, beating at the helpless ball in the empty, echoing court.
When he came here, he was sure this would be the one place at Greenwich he could be alone, could sweat out his anger and frustration. Everyone else was in the banquet hall, feasting and drinking yet again. Including Marguerite.
At the thought of her, the mere breath of her name, Nicolai swung the racket harder, the “crack” as loud as a cannon. Yet still she would not be banished. That image of her, sprawled out on the theatre floor with her breasts bare, her hair spread around her, her legs open to him, smiling up at him as she welcomed him into her body—it was all still there. Burned into his memory, his senses. The way she smelled, of lilies and clean water. The smooth feel of her skin, satiny and warm.
The way her green eyes glittered, like the emerald she was named for, as she whispered his name.
Chert poberi! He did not trust her. What was the woman about? Did she try to kill him with sex now, as she could not with her dagger? If so, she was doing wondrously well.
He still hardly knew what had come over them there in the theatre. He had lusted for women before, of course, desired them with what he thought was overwhelming passion. He loved women, loved their laughter, their soft voices, the clean sweetness of them, the complex, mysterious ways their minds worked. And often they loved him back.
But never in his life had he felt anything like what happened with Marguerite Dumas. One moment he sparred with her, his muscles moving in the practised way he employed in so many fights before. To give in to anger was the kiss of death in swordplay, especially with an icy, untrustworthy opponent like the Emerald Lily.
But then the next minute it was as if his body was consumed by a great sun flare, his mind drugged, full of only her. Desperate need. Fully dressed, they copulated on the floor, their bodies bound together in a lust gone unfulfilled since Venice.
Yet why, then, did he still feel so very frustrated? So tied up in anger, tension?
He swooped up another hard leather ball from the bucket and slammed it against the wall. He imagined it was Marc Velazquez’s head, cursing his friend for sending him into this snakepit of a palace. A snakepit ruled by an emerald-eyed viper, as alluring as she was dangerous.
“I am too old for this,” he muttered.
“Oh, on the contrary,” Marguerite’s voice said from behind him, “only a man in the very prime of his life could wield a racket like that.”
He 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, hardly able to breathe, and closed the door behind her.
Nicolai was not asleep. He lay propped up in his bed, a book open beside him, candlelight flickering over the tumble of the bedclothes. She could see that he was naked under the sheet, his skin glistening gold against the white linen, the thin fabric skimming lightly over the lines of his body. She shivered as she recalled the slide of that body against hers.
He frowned as he glanced up, one hand edging toward a bolster where she was sure a dagger was hidden. But he went still when she folded back her hood, his eyes widening as the light fell over her face.
There was surely a price for what she did tonight, Marguerite knew that well. She was willing to pay it.
Would he?
Nicolai sat straight up, watching her in the tense silence. The sheet fell back, revealing the lean, muscled contours of his body. The light glimmered on the fine blond hairs of his legs and arms, making him seem gilded, like an ancient idol.
She shrugged the cloak away, leaving it in a pool on the floor as she moved slowly toward the bed. She didn’t know what he would do. Kill her? Kiss her? Laugh at her, and send her away? She would rather he plunged his dagger into her heart than do that!
He said nothing, just studied her with his unearthly eyes as she slowly climbed on to the mattress beside him. She reached out and gently pushed him back on to the tangle of sheets and velvet blankets.
“Marguerite…” he said tightly.
“I am not Marguerite tonight,” she whispered. “I am your fairy enchantress.”
She leaned over his taut body, her hair falling around them in a pale curtain, closing off the world. She touched the hollow of his throat with the tip of her tongue, feeling the pulse of his life, tasting the salt of the tiny bead of sweat that pooled there. He was so tense under her, like a drawn bow, but he leaned back, gave her her own way.
As she trailed kisses across his shoulder, she reached her fingers down to lightly trace the circle of his flat, brown nipple, which pebbled under her caress. Her tongue followed, darting out to lick before blowing on it gently. Ever so softly.
“An enchantress indeed,” he groaned.
Marguerite laughed, revelling in the sudden wave of power that rushed through her. The heady, giddy pleasure. Her lips trailed along his chest, over his taut abdomen, soft, quick, teasing kisses.
At last her mouth closed over the throbbing length of his manhood. His fingers clasped in her hair, as if to push her away—or hold her closer. In that one, perfect moment, he was hers. And it was everything she wanted.
Chapter Twelve
Marguerite drowsed in Nicolai’s loose embrace, lying on her side in his bed, curled back against him as she ran her fingertips lightly along his arm. From his wrist to his elbow and back again, until she twined her fingers with his and pressed his hand to her stomach.
There were old scars there from the horse’s kicks, the cuts of the iron shoes, a tracery of rough red lines she had never let anyone see before. But now she let Nicolai touch them, his fingertips playing over them gently.
“What will you do when you leave England?” she asked quietly.
Nicolai chuckled, his warm breath stirring her hair. He drew her even closer into the heat of his body. “Why? So you can chase me when I go? Run after me across the continent until you kill me at last?”
