“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.”
Then he let her go, his hands and body sliding away from her as one long caress. He melted away, vanishing into the night as if he had never been there at all. Except for the spot of fire that marked his kiss.
Marguerite spun around, but she could find no glimpse of him, no trace of his bright hair or red silk doublet. She was completely alone in the cold garden.
“Abruti,” she muttered. Her whole body felt boneless, exhausted. She longed to fall to the walkway in a heap, to sob out her frustration, to beat her fists against the jagged gravel until they bled!
But there was no time to give into such childish, useless tantrums. Womanish tears would never gain her the revenge she sought, would never achieve her goals for her. So, she scooped up her dagger where it had fallen and hurried back toward the palace, running up the stairs to her quiet little room.
Soon, very soon, a new day would dawn. A new chance to at last best the Russian and get back her emerald dagger.
This time, she would not fail.
Nicolai closed the door to his small chamber, sliding a heavy clothes chest in front of it. He was wary enough to take the Emerald Lily at her word. She would be coming sooner or later for her dagger. At least this way she would have to make a great deal of noise forcing the door open. Unless she could somehow transform herself into a column of mist and come down the chimney, which would not surprise him in the least.
She was not like any woman he had ever met, this French fairy-sprite. She looked so very delicate, so angelic, and yet she was a veritable hellcat. A powerful, shrieking vodyanoi, a sea witch, just like the terrifying tales his nurse told him when he was child.
Perhaps her claws only came out in the moonlight, though, for at the banquet she was all smiles and light charm, even with the dour young priest who sat beside her. None of the men in the vast hall could turn his eyes from her, and that included him, though he carefully did not let her see that. He pretended