Amanda McCabe - NOTORIOUS in the Tudor Court

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 the moonlight. He was certainly still handsome, the sharp, symmetrical angles of his face softened by that mocking half-smile, his pale blue eyes glowing. His hair, his lean acrobat’s body—all perfection. But beauty, as Marguerite well knew, was only a tool, a weapon like any other that a person could learn to wield with skill. She was usually unmoved by that weapon, both in herself and in others. Unmoved by a handsome man’s touch.

Why, then, did his clasp make her tremble so? Make her thoughts tilt drunkenly in her mind? She had to get away from him, to regroup.

She pressed back tight against the wall, but he followed, his hair trailing like silk over her throat, her bare décolletage above the velvet bodice. “I have esteem for any worthy enemy.”

“Am I a worthy enemy?”

“You have defeated me twice now, which no one else has ever done. You are obviously strong and clever, monsieur. Yet you will not defeat me three times.”

His smile widened. “I see I shall have to watch my back while I am in England.” “At every moment.”

“I shall consider myself fairly warned, mademoiselle. ”

They stood in silence for a long moment, studying each other warily. Marguerite glanced away first, her gaze shifting over his shoulder to the stone faun, who seemed to laugh at her predicament.

“What are you doing here?” she asked tightly. “Do you work for the Spanish now? Was your task in Venice complete?”

He laughed, a low, rough sound that seemed to echo through her very core. “ Mademoiselle, you must know I work for no one but myself. As do you. And as for what I am doing here at Greenwich—well, I must keep some secrets, yes?”

Secrets. That was all life was. Yet Marguerite had spent her own life keeping her own secrets, and discovering those of other people. Even ones they thought so well hidden. She would find his, too.

He seemed to have read her very thoughts, for he leaned closer, so close his breath stirred the fine, loose curls at her temple, and his lips softly brushed her cheek. “Some things, petite, are buried so deeply even you cannot dig them out again.”

“Secrets are my speciality,” she whispered back. “I have not met a man yet who could withhold them from me. One way or another, I always fulfil my task.”

“Ah, but I am not as other men, Mademoiselle Dumas.” He pressed one light, fleeting kiss to her jaw, so swift she was not even sure it happened. “I shall look forward with great anticipation to our next battle. Do svidaniya. ”