But those eyes—those inhuman, all-seeing eyes. They watched her steadily, not even startled, and she was captured by their sea-like depths.
Only for an instant, one quicksilver flash, but it was enough to lose her the advantage. Nicolai seized her wrist in a bruising grip, tightening until her wrist bone creaked and she cried out. Her fingers opened convulsively, and the dagger clattered to the floor. He swung her beneath him, pinning her to the bed. No lazy, debauched, lustful actor now, but a swift, pitiless predator. Just as she was.
Marguerite was well trained in swordplay and the use of daggers and bows, in courtly fencing and rough street brawling. She knew tricks and dupes to compensate for her small size and feminine weakness. Yet she also knew when she was truly defeated, and that was now. She knew what it was she saw in those eyes. It was doom.
As she stared up at him now, she felt strangely calm, as if she was already hovering above her body, watching the scene from the rafters. Her victim became her murderer, and it was no less than she deserved for her sins. This day had been long in coming. If only she could not die unshriven! She would never meet her mother in heaven now.
But she did see her avenging angel, rising above her in the darkness. He scooped up her dagger, examining the blade while he held her firmly down with his other hand, his strong body. She felt the full force of that lean strength; the smooth, supple muscles that held him on a tightrope or in a backflip now held her easily in place.
He stared at the dagger, so thin and perfectly balanced. So lethal. The small emerald embedded in the hilt gleamed. “Why me?” he said roughly. “Why try to kill a poor actor?”
“You are not a poor actor, Monsieur Ostrovsky, and we both know it,” she said in French. “You have secrets to equal my own.”
“What are your secrets, mademoiselle?” he answered in the same language.
Marguerite laughed bitterly. “It hardly matters. I have failed in my task, but I take my secrets to the grave.”
“Do you, indeed? Well, that might be a long time from now, mademoiselle. I have the feeling that fairies, like cats, have many lives. You are young; I’m sure you have some to go.”
Marguerite stared up at him, baffled, but his face gave nothing away. He was as beautiful, as cold, as the marble statues in the piazza. Her passionate lover was gone. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, mademoiselle whatever-your-name-is, that this is not your night to die. Nor mine, though you would have had it otherwise.” The dagger arced down, but not into her heart. It sliced into her skirt, cutting away thick strips of silk. Holding the blade between his teeth like a corsair, he bound her hands and feet tightly, with expert knots.
“What are you doing?” Marguerite cried, bewildered. This was not how the game was meant to be played! “I would have killed you! Do you mean you won’t kill me? You won’t take your revenge?”
“Oh, I will take my revenge, mademoiselle, but not on this night.” He tied off the final knot around her wrists, so firm she could not even wriggle her fingers. “It will be some day when you least expect it.”
Once she was trussed up like a banquet goose, he leaned down and pressed one gentle kiss to her lips. He still tasted of herbs, ale and her own waxen rouge. And he still smelled of an alluring summer day. Quel con!
“I just can’t bring myself to destroy such rare beauty,” he whispered. “Not after your fine services, incomplete though they were. Adieu, mademoiselle—for now.”
He tied the last strip of silk over her mouth, and opened the very window Marguerite had planned for her escape. As she stared, infuriated, he gave her a wink, and with one graceful movement leaped through the casement and was gone.
Marguerite screamed through her gag. She arched her back and kicked her legs, all to no avail. She was bound fast, caught in her own scheme. And the cochon didn’t even have the decency to kill her! To follow the code all spies and assassins adhered to. At least French ones.
“Have his revenge,” would he, the beautiful, arrogant Russian pig? Never! She would find him first, and finish this task, no matter what. No matter how far she had to go, even to the frozen wastes of his Russia itself.
For the Emerald Lily never failed.
Chapter One
Venice—1525
Oh, yes. He was really dead.
“Madre de dio,” Julietta Bassano whispered, leaning close to examine the man’s corpse, sprawled across the rich silk cushions of his gilded bed. It had not been an easy death, nor a pretty one. His face, so florid in life, was turned a dark, mottled purple-blue, his black beard matted with bile and spittle and blood. The wide, staring, sightless eyes were dotted with tiny spots of red, and his stiffening limbs were thrown wide in abruptly frozen death throes.
No—not an easy demise at all. She recognised the signs. She had seen them in her own husband three years ago, as he collapsed in the middle of their own bed, convulsing and heaving.
“Witch!” he had screamed. “Sorceress! You have murdered me.” And his clawlike hands had snatched at her gown, his blood and vomit spraying her flesh with death.
No! she thought sternly, closing her eyes and her mind to the memories. Giovanni was long dead; he had deserved his end, the pig. He could not hurt anyone ever again.
Unlike this man…
Julietta opened her eyes to stare down at the corpse of Michelotto Landucci, noble of the Most Serene Republic, high member of the Savio ai Cerimoniali. His richly brocaded robe hung open, revealing a heavy, hairy stomach, a flaccid, blue-tinged member. With a snort of disgust, she grabbed the edge of a silk sheet and drew it up over him, hiding him from view.
Behind her, she heard a soft, frightened sob, a stifled gasp. Julietta tried to take in a deep, steadying breath to calm herself, but the stench of death had grown too strong. It stuck in her nostrils, clung to her hair and cloak. Clasping the black velvet closer about her throat, she spun around to face the woman who huddled in the shadows of the palatial bedchamber. Cosima Landucci, wife—nay, widow—of the man beneath the sheet. Unlike her spouse, she was still fully dressed in an elaborate gown of gold-embroidered blue silk. Thick, dark red hair spilled down her back and fell over her white, unlined brow, proclaiming how very much younger than her husband she was. Just a child, really.
A child whose husband lay poisoned in his own bed. Well, well. She would not have thought it of timid little Cosima. People were surprising. Ever surprising.
“What happened here, signora?” Julietta asked, as gently as she could. She knew this girl—Cosima had been a loyal patroness of Julietta’s perfume shop for almost two years, coming in weekly to buy her special scent, jasmine and lily, and to talk to Julietta. And talk, and talk, as if she had no other friend in the world but her perfumer. And Julietta had been glad to listen. She felt sorry for the girl, who seemed so lost and unhappy despite her fine gowns and flashing jewels. She—well, she rather reminded Julietta of herself so long ago, when all her dreams of marriage and family were shattered in the face of cold reality.
But this—this was something else altogether.
“Well, signora?” Julietta prompted, when the girl just went on sniffling.
Cosima pressed a lace handkerchief to her face, her hands shaking. “I—I do not know what happened, Signora Bassano!”
“You were not here? You simply came in to find your husband dead?” Julietta gave a pointed glance at the dainty slippers and jewelled headdress discarded on the lavish Turkish rug.
Cosima followed her gaze and shook her head, the waves