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A Sinful Alliance. Amanda McCabe
Читать онлайн.Название A Sinful Alliance
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781408921241
Автор произведения Amanda McCabe
Издательство HarperCollins
She also ruminated on the comment about how Mistress Boleyn had been in France and was thus “fashionable.” Had not the Russian himself said she, Marguerite, lacked the famed French charm? It was hard to be charming in a knife fight, but she knew she had charm a-plenty when she needed it. Maybe it was time to employ it…
Nicolai reached up to test the tensile strength of the tightrope, to make sure it was taut and firmly anchored. From outside his small, hidden nook in the theatre, he could hear Sir Henry Guildford directing his assistants. Their voices, the sounds of hammering and sawing, seemed far away, as if he hid in a cave where the real world could not touch him.
If only there was such a place, a single, hidden spot of peace. Yet if there was, he had never found it in all his travels. Everywhere—Moscow, Venice, England, Holland, Spain—people were the same. Noisy and striving, beautiful and cruel, strutting about in all their vanity and longing until everything was extinguished in only a moment.
Only in friendship had he found a true haven, a reminder of grace and kindness that could be found, if one searched hard enough. Cherished it when it was discovered, like rubies and gold. Nicolai had lost his family so long ago, had wandered the world alone until he discovered a new family—Marc and Julietta, Marc’s long-lost brother Balthazar, Nicolai’s own acting troupe.
Only these bonds, so precious and fragile, could have brought him to this nest of French, Spanish and English vipers, all spitting and hissing. Yet, now that he was here, he felt some of the old excitement coming back to him. The soaring exhilaration only danger could create.
He felt restless today, filled with a crackling energy. A good fight would take that edge off, yet thus far at Greenwich everyone was behaving with disappointing civility. Except for Marguerite Dumas, of course, but she was nowhere to be seen. Probably she was safely ensconced with the other French ladies in Queen Katherine’s chamber, where she could hopefully cause very little trouble.
And she was part of this restlessness, if not its entire cause.
So, that left acrobatic tricks. Nicolai shed his fine velvet doublet, his Spanish leather boots, and, clad only in shirt and hose, swung himself up on to the rope. He balanced there on his bare feet, tall and straight, carefully centred, and took a few steps.
He was stiff from the long, idle days aboard ship and on horseback, out of shape after too much rich food and fine wine. It was fortunate the Emerald Lily was not able to overpower him last night, when he was foolish enough to ambush her in his poor condition!
But as he traversed the length of the rope, balancing on one foot and then the other, he felt his muscles warm, felt them grow pliant and supple again. His mind, too, was centred, leaving England and Marguerite Dumas and Marc’s mother behind, until there was only his body and the thin rope.
Nicolai tucked and rolled into a forward somersault, springing up to do a backflip. One, two, then he was still again, his arms outstretched.
A flurry of applause burst the shimmering, delicate bubble of his concentration. He glanced up to find Marguerite standing in the curtained doorway, clapping her jewelled hands.
He would have expected to see sarcasm written on her face as she watched him, cold calculation. Yet there was none of that. Her cheeks glowed pink, and her eyes were bright, clear of their usual opaque green ice. Her lips parted in a delighted smile.
How very young she looked in that moment, young and free and alive. If he had thought her beautiful before, he saw now he never knew what real beauty was.
“Oh, Monsieur Ostrovsky, how very extraordinary that was,” she exclaimed. “How can a human being perform such feats?”
Nicolai swung down from the rope, landing lightly on his feet. He stayed a wary distance from her, not trusting that she did not conceal a blade up her fine brown velvet sleeve. Not trusting himself to be near her, to step into the circle of that silvery glow she seemed to carry everywhere.
“‘Tis merely practice, mademoiselle,” he answered. “Many years of it.”
“You must have a great gift,” she said. “Anyone else would have cracked their skulls open!”
“And so I did, a dozen times.”
“Yet you lived to tell about it.”
“I have a very hard skull.”
“And so you do. Thick-headed, indeed.” She stepped closer to the rope, reaching up tentatively to test its strength. “Why, it’s as thin as my embroidery silks.”
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