Amanda McCabe - NOTORIOUS in the Tudor Court - A Sinful Alliance / A Notorious Woman

“Oh, no, Dona Elena, one of the pages will light my way back,” Marguerite said. “It is not far, and I would not wish to deprive you of Monsieur Ostrovsky’s interesting company. Thank you for your kind hospitality tonight, I have greatly enjoyed it.”

With a graceful curtsy, a swirl of white-and-silver skirts, she was gone, led by one of the eager young pages. The chamber went back to its low hum of conversation, the soft flicker of new hands of cards being dealt. But to Nicolai it seemed that all the light had vanished, leaving only smoky, smudged shadows.

Dona Elena beckoned him closer. “She is very beautiful, is she not?” she whispered.

Nicolai smiled. “I think that can hardly be denied.”

“Yet she seems so sad. She is an orphan, you know, with no one to look after her interests in this world.”

Nicolai thought Marguerite more than capable of seeing after her own “interests.” But Dona Elena was right about the sadness. Sometimes it seemed to cling to Marguerite like a winter mist, blurring and obscuring her real self, hidden behind that beauty, which was all anyone seemed to see. “It was kind of you to befriend her.”

“And you, too, Nicolai? Your song tonight seemed to cheer her. Truly, amado, you are the most merry person I know!”

“Dona Elena, are you trying to matchmaker again?” Nicolai teased.

She laughed. “You could not marry a French woman! But everyone needs music, diverting company. Especially lonely young ladies—as long as it does not go too far.”

Nicolai remembered Venice, his hand on Marguerite’s naked thigh, his mouth on her breast, the smell and taste of her wrapping around his senses, driving him to lunacy. They had already gone past “too far”!

“I fear Mademoiselle Dumas could hardly escape my company,” he said. “We are to work on a pageant together.”

“Very good! I am sure it will be the finest ever seen in this dull place. Now, will you sing us another song? Señorita Alva seemed to enjoy the last one as well…”

Marguerite slipped the thin wire into the lock and, with a quick flick of her wrist, popped it upward. She felt the give of the mechanism as it parted, and the lock fell from the box’s clasp.

Really, she thought. These Spanish are surprisingly lax. That lock was far too easy to pick. Could it be some kind of trap, a test? She glanced back over her shoulder, but the room was empty. Silent.

She had noticed this box during the card party, a plain, unadorned wooden chest of the sort often used to transport or store documents. It sat amid a welter of empty diplomatic pouches and blank sheets of parchment on a table near the window, too tempting to resist. It could not contain anything too secret; Don Carlos did not strike her as a fool. But any information at all could prove useful.

And Marguerite sorely needed a distraction from thoughts of Nicolai. When she went to lie down in her bed she could not sleep, for she kept hearing his song in her mind. And have no more pity on him that loveth thee.

Marguerite frowned as she slid the lock free and raised the lid of the box. He was a talented actor indeed, for his words, his countenance, his entire being reflected the words as he sang, as if he truly knew what love was, what it could be. As if he alone possessed the secrets to all hearts.

She could never share that knowledge, for love was only a mystery, a puzzlement, to her. She had seen it only as a lie, a game, a flirtatious song with no meaning behind it. A hollow, shining little bubble.

And that was all Nicolai’s poetry was, too. Yet his eyes imbued the sweet words with more…

“ Couilles, ” she cursed. The wire she still held bit into her hand as her fingers tightened over it, leaving a thin line of blood. Nicolai Ostrovsky was a distraction, and she had to forget him. Work was all that mattered.

Hastily wrapping her hand in a handkerchief so she wouldn’t leave telltale spots of blood, she began to sort through the box. The papers appeared to be personal letters to Don Carlos and his attendants, as well as an inventory of the rich gifts brought for King Henry. She had been right, there was not much here to be of help to King François. All the information she gleaned as she surveyed the missives told her only what she already knew, that the Spanish were to stop the French alliance in any way they could. That they were allied with Queen Katherine, as always.

She quickly memorised a few useful titbits, and started to put them back carefully in the order she found them. But in the bottom she found one more letter.

Marguerite unfolded the parchment, soft from its journey, from having been read many times, even though the date written on the back indicated it had only been delivered yesterday.

“For the most exalted Duchess de Bernaldez—or should I say Mother? I trust your journey was safe and England all you expected. May you and Don Carlos achieve all your ends and return home to meet your new grandson, Antonio Velazquez. Julietta was safely delivered…”

Ah, a letter from her son. For the first time, Marguerite felt she was intruding by reading those words. She started to refold the letter, when Nicolai’s name caught her eye and she glanced at it again.

“…as I cannot be there to guard you myself, you must always continue to put your faith in Nicolai and trust him as you would me. I know I told you this before, when I sent him to you, but I will rest easier knowing he watches over you. My dearest Mother, you go into the lion’s den at Greenwich, yet Nicolai’s sword arm is strong, his mind shrewd. He saved my life, and Julietta’s, too, or there would be no Antonio crying in his cradle this morning. Listen to his counsel and stay close to him, and with God’s blessing we will all be together this summer.”

Strong and shrewd. Truly he was both, the most formidable obstacle she had found in England. The Englishmen, like Tilney and his ilk, were blinded by her good looks and fine clothes, her sweet smiles. They did not suspect she was anything more than a French featherhead. And King Henry was too occupied by his diplomatic meetings and Mistress Boleyn to even look about him. Her face, the face she inherited from her beautiful courtesan mother, was always the best mask to hide behind.

Yet when Nicolai looked at her with those sky-blue eyes, she sensed that he saw more than her pretty façade. That his own life of masks enabled him to peer right through hers, to all the tangled, black ugliness beneath.

Why could he not just go away, back to Venice or Russia or—or anywhere but here?

Marguerite put the missive back in the box and slammed the lid. In the next room, Dona Elena’s bedchamber, she heard a burst of laughter and chatter as maids came in to clean. It reminded her that she had lingered too long over the papers. She clasped the lock and dashed out of the room, silent on her tiptoes, skirts held close to her sides. Once in the corridor, she smoothed her hair and glided slowly away, as if she hadn’t a care in the world and no reason to hurry.

It was quiet in this wing of the palace, aside from the servants airing the rooms and setting fires in the grates. The men were all in conference with the English king, and Dona Elena and her ladies walked in the gardens again. Marguerite had seen them set out from her window, and excused herself from Claudine to check this box while she had the chance. Marguerite doubted Claudine, embroidering with her attendants and snappish from morning sickness, missed her at all.

She started to turn back toward the French apartments, but realised she had no desire to sit placidly and sew with a woman who did not like her, who thought she dallied with her husband. Marguerite had listened to the other ladies giggle over the démodé English fashions until she thought she would scream from it. Whatever had come over her in the gardens last night—that wild madness that made her long to fly away into the sky—had not left her. Not entirely.