“I would not let King Henry hear you say such things,” Marguerite warned. “You could find yourself sent back to Paris in a trice.” Which might not be such a bad thing, Marguerite reflected, except for the bad light it would cast on the whole French party.
“And why is that? She will surely be gone soon enough, just like Elizabeth Blount and Mistress Shelton.”
Marguerite reached for her goblet, sipping at the wine left in its gilded depths. “What do you know of them?”
“I know they are not at Court, even though Mistress Blount gave the king a son. They have no place here once the king tires of them. They were sent away, an embarrassment, and Mistress Boleyn will be, too. Just as her sister was before her.” Father Pierre’s voice was filled with low, bitter spite.
Marguerite watched the dancing. Mistress Boleyn was very deft; she leaped and ran, snapped her fingers, twirled in a graceful snap of her sky-blue silk skirts. And Henry stared, enraptured, his hands reaching for her as a praying supplicant would touch the Virgin’s robe. “I am not so sure of that.”
“Why, these English dances are only trotting and running,” Don Carlos said, laughing. “Not at all graceful. We should show them what true dancing looks like, querida.”
Marguerite looked back to see Dona Elena hide her own laughter behind her fan. “My dancing days are long done, I fear.”
Her husband smiled ruefully. “As are mine.” He pressed his hand to his wife’s arm, a couple obviously united in deepest contentment.
Marguerite’s heart gave a sour pang, and she longed to turn away from the whole room. All these damnably loving couples. Dona Elena stopped her with a word. “I am sure Señorita Dumas’s dancing days are in their prime!”
“Oh, no, Dona Elena,” she protested. “I do not care to dance tonight, and my skills in the saltarello are nothing to Mistress Boleyn’s.” Beside her, she felt Father Pierre’s stare burning on her skin.
Dona Elena would not hear it, though. “Nonsense! They say you French ladies are the finest of all dancers, that you begin to learn as soon as you can walk.” She waved her hand, calling, “Nicolai! Come here a moment, I need you.”
The duke laughed, giving Marguerite a complicit shrug. “My wife, you see, will not be turned when she gets a thought into her head. If she wants to see you dance, mademoiselle, you will surely dance.”
Marguerite had to laugh. Was that not what she always did? Dance when commanded? First for her father, then King François. Why not for Dona Elena?
But did it have to be with Nicolai? She watched warily as he drew nearer, the abandoned Spanish girl taking his departure with a pretty little pout. He went down on one knee next to Dona Elena, smiling up at her. Marguerite saw, though, that he was also cautious, his blue eyes shadowed.
“I am at your command, as ever, Dona Elena,” he said gallantly. “What is your desire? Shall I fetch oranges from Madrid? Cinnamon from the Indies? Pearls from the depths of the seas?”
Dona Elena laughed merrily, patting his cheek with her soft hand. “Perhaps later! For now, I have a far simpler task, one I think you will enjoy.”
“Merely name it, my duchess, and it is yours.”
“You must partner Señorita Dumas in the next dance. I want to see her dance, and there is no more skilled a partner than you.”
Marguerite remembered Nicolai on his tightrope, the light, effortless movements of his bare feet, the powerful contraction of his lean body as he leaped in a backwards arc. Oui, he would be a skilled dancer indeed. She shivered as she imagined his steps guiding hers, his touch on her body. The friction and caress as he lifted her. Could she trust him?
Could she trust herself?
Nicolai glanced at her from the corner of his eye, as unreadable as a cat. “It would be my pleasure to dance with Mademoiselle Dumas, if she will have me as a partner,” he said.
Dona Elena smiled with obvious satisfaction, like a soft, devious kitten who had just filched a dish of cream. That was what the entire Spanish contingent was like, then—a pack of cats, sly, changeable, beautiful, untrustworthy.
As Nicolai came around the long table, Father Pierre suddenly seized her arm in a hard grasp. Marguerite stared at him, startled. He was so silent she had almost forgotten he was there, lurking beside her.
“You should not be so involved with these people, mademoiselle,” he hissed. “They are not what they seem!”
Marguerite tried to laugh lightly, tried to extract her arm from his dry, fevered touch. What had possessed him? True, she did not care at all for his intent stares, but he had never grabbed her before. “La, Father Pierre, I am only dancing with the man! I am not running away to Madrid with him.”
Though, at that moment, fleeing this place, all these people with their hidden agendas, for the sunny dustiness of faraway Spain was tempting. She wrenched her arm away just as Nicolai reached her side, and gratefully accepted his hand. He led her to the edge of the floor, where they waited for the saltarello to end. The king and Anne Boleyn were lost to sight now amid a press of dancers, a shifting constellation of bright silks and flashing feet. The thunder of stamping and clapping.
“Who is that skeletal young man?” Nicolai asked.
Marguerite glanced back at Father Pierre, who still watched her, and shivered. He did look rather skeletal, like a figure in an old memento mori painting, death come to the banquet. Pale and solemn, an ever-present reminder of duty and fate.
As if she needed him to remind her she was damned! She knew it every moment.
“Father Pierre LeBeque,” she answered. “He is one of Bishop Grammont’s attendants.”
“He seemed most reluctant to let you go, though I can scarcely blame him.”
“I do not know what he wants,” she said impatiently. She turned resolutely away from the priest, fiddling with a ribbon at her sleeve. She had to keep her fingers busy, to prevent them from reaching instinctively for the beckoning golden flame of Nicolai’s hair. It rippled down his back like a smooth, bright banner, warm as the summer sun after a long winter.
But his eyes were so, so cool.
“I am sorry Dona Elena importuned you,” she said. “I told her I did not care to dance tonight.”
Nicolai shrugged. “As the duke said, once she has a thought in her head you will never get it out again. Besides, it is no great hardship to dance with the most beautiful lady at the banquet.”
Marguerite laughed, ridiculously pleased at the gallant, empty compliment. “More beautiful than your Spanish companion? She seemed so very fascinated by all you had to say.”
“You noticed that, did you? How very observant you are, mademoiselle.”
“I like to know all things about all people.”
“An ambitious goal indeed. And yes, Señorita Alva is quite pretty.”
“Dona Elena told me how convinced she is that a fine wife and home would surely add greatly to your happiness, Monsieur Ostrovsky.”
Nicolai gave a startled laugh. “She confides in you already, does she? You do have a gift for drawing people in.”
“We took a stroll by the river this afternoon. I think that Dona Elena would not be a difficult person to ‘draw in’ by anyone. She seems a very sweet-natured lady, so open and artless. Perhaps it was the convent that made her so?”
“Ah, Mademoiselle Dumas, and here I thought you knew better. The people who appear the most artless are usually the most dangerous of all.”
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