A Masquerade in the Moonlight (27 page)

Finch turned, shaking his head as he made for the doorway. “Never met such a perishing, puffed-up prig in the whole of my life.”

Marguerite laid aside the copy of
La Belle Assemblée
she had been leafing through without really paying attention to any of the announcements of beauty creams and figure-enhancers advertised on its pages, and prepared her mind for her first encounter with Sir Peregrine since he had holed himself up in his offices with the coded manuscript he’d unearthed the afternoon he had visited the bookstalls with her.

She had expected him sooner, which was her own fault, for she had somehow flattered him by believing he possessed at least half the intelligence he boasted of with such depressing regularity. She must be careful not to fall victim to Sir Peregrine’s high opinion of himself, or she might not be able to guide him toward the next step without first employing both a lantern and bell she could ring over his head as she led him down the path to public disgrace.

She’d just folded her hands in her lap and pinned a demure, expectant smile on her wide-eyed face when Sir Peregrine’s slim figure fairly bounded into the room. He was waving the yellowed manuscript above his head.

“Marguerite!” he exclaimed, falling to one knee in front of her with a youthful sprightliness that, if Finch were to have witnessed the maneuver, doubtlessly would have surprised the butler no end. “Give me your dainty hand, so that I might salute it! Allow me to kiss the nethermost hem of your garment! For I owe it to you. I owe it
all
to you!”

“La. sir, you make my girlish head swim with these compliments,” she answered, extending her hand and rolling her eyes as he planted a fervent kiss on her third knuckle. “But, rise, please, and explain yourself, for I vow I cannot understand a word of what you are saying. Surely, Perry, you have not been imbibing so early in the day? It’s not at all like you.”

He clambered to his feet, sparing a moment in his enthusiasm to wipe at the knee of his pantaloons, then sat down beside her, his two hands clutching the brittle manuscript in a death grip. “But I
am
drunk, my dear girl. Drunk with excitement! With the thrill of discovery! With the thought of what that discovery will bring to the intellectual community!”

And to yourself,
Marguerite thought happily.
Dear Perry, you won’t disappoint me by allowing your genius to remain hidden under a bushel. Not if my father and I know our man.
She extracted a lace-edged handkerchief and began fanning herself with it. “Please, Perry, you move too quickly for a lowly female. Can you not control yourself enough to explain? And what do I have to do with anything even the slightest bit intellectual? You know as well as I that I’m barely out of the schoolroom. If there is credit to be earned in whatever it is you’re speaking of, it belongs solely to you, dear Perry. I would not have it any other way!”

Sir Peregrine frowned, as if the thought of openly sharing credit for his grand discovery had never entered his mind, then patted Marguerite’s hand. “Not to worry, dear child. I have no desire to bandy your name in public. I only meant that you had been the one to lead me to the bookstalls that fateful day. Of course, you had nothing to do with my brilliant discovery. Why, if you’ll recall, Marguerite, you were about to lay down twenty pounds of your quarterly allowance for a clumsily rendered copy of Chaucer.”

“Machiavelli, Perry. It was a clumsy copy of Machiavelli,” Marguerite corrected him, a line from the cunning Machiavelli’s
Il Principe
popping into her head. “There are three sorts of intellect,” the political philosopher had written, “the one understands things by its own quickness of perception; another understands them when explained by some one else; and the third understands them neither by itself nor by the explanation of others. The first is the best; the second very good, and the third useless.”
Donovan, bless and damn him, comprehends by himself
, she decided.
Sir Peregrine, blown up by his own assessment of his intellect, was “useless.”

But he could be
used
.

“Yes, yes. If you insist. Machiavelli. Whatever,” Sir Peregrine responded testily, for he loathed being contradicted, even in minor things. “But you must listen. You must understand, as best your female brain can comprehend it, the importance of my discovery.”

“Of course, Perry. If you insist. But first, would you like me to ring for a fresh pot of tea and another cup? Finch will be most delighted to serve you, as he has often spoken to me about how much he admires and respects you.”

“Tea?” Sir Peregrine looked at her as if she had just offered to set his hair on fire. “I don’t want tea. Don’t you understand? I’m attempting to tell you of a discovery that will rock this island to its foundation.”

“Really? Goodness, how exciting. Then we most certainly shall not have tea. Some warm scones, perhaps? No? All right, Perry—only speak slowly as you tell me your news, so that I might absorb some scant particles of what you are to say.” She longed to box his ears, but refrained. At least Sir Ralph appreciated that she might possess a mind.

Sir Peregrine laid the thin manuscript on his lap, spreading it flat with reverent fingers. “It was exceedingly difficult, you understand, but I knew from the first that I had stumbled onto something of the most preeminent importance.” He leaned toward her, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “It is written in code, you know.
Latin
code, and deuced difficult to decipher until I found the key.”

“Written by whom, Perry?” Marguerite whispered back, once more blessing her grandfather for having insisted she learn Latin, and Maxwell for his many and varied talents. “Why? And to what purpose?”

Sir Peregrine looked to the single entrance to the morning room, as if half expecting someone to be secreted behind the door, eavesdropping. He flicked out his tongue, wetting his lips, then said, “His name was Balbus. Even his name served as a clue, for it means ‘indistinct speaker.’ But that’s not important. He and his family resided here—in London—until the Roman legions withdrew to protect Italy. He was forced to leave hurriedly, so that his fortune and household goods had to be left behind. He hid everything—buried it, actually—and left this coded manuscript detailing where he had buried it.”

Marguerite looked down at the yellowed parchment. “But, surely, Perry, no mere parchment could have survived this long. It has to be, like my Machiavelli, a forgery—a fake.”

He shook his head, waving his hands in front of his face as if to ward off her glaring stupidity. “Balbus may have gone, but he never gave up hope of returning to claim his treasure. His words were copied by his son, and his son’s son, and his son’s son’s sons, one of whom eventually found his way back to England several dozen years after William the Conqueror invaded our shores. Here he and his sons, and his sons’ sons, and his sons’ sons’ sons must have waited through the long centuries, hoping, until somehow the parchment was lost.” He pressed his hands to his bony chest. “How they must have suffered, so close to their treasure and unable to retrieve it. Until now.”

And then he smiled, all traces of sympathy for the long dead Balbus and his frustrated family fleeing as his eyes lit with pleasure. “You will never guess where the fool man buried his treasure, Marguerite. You will never guess, if I allowed you to try for the next hundred years, why Balbus’s descendants were unable to claim that treasure.”

“I imagine you’re correct, Perry. Please, you mustn’t keep me on tenterhooks. You must tell me at once, or I vow I shall perish of anticipation!”

Sir Peregrine rubbed his hands together as his eyes took on the fevered glaze of the true adventurer. “If my calculations are correct—and I have no reason to doubt them, for mathematics have always been my strongest suit—Balbus buried his most prized possessions not more than a dozen feet outside what is now the south wall of the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula!”

“But the chapel is inside the walls of the Tower of London, which were built by William the Conqueror! I know I remember that from my lessons.” Marguerite’s voice rose, displaying a mixture of delight and anguish. “Oh, how terrible! No wonder the man’s family couldn’t retrieve their booty. But neither will you, Perry. You will never be able to obtain royal permission to sink so much as a single spade within the grounds of the Tower.”

“But I already have, dear child. I have just come from Stinky, who has convinced the Prince of Wales to allow the excavation.” He frowned momentarily, adding, “I shall be forced to share the credit with the prince, but that is of no real moment. Only think of it, Marguerite! Think of what has been discovered to date, here in London and elsewhere. Ancient coins, statuary, mosaics! I have invited all the chairmen of the greatest societies to witness the digging that will commence two days from now—I needed time to have a public announcement forwarded to the newspapers, you understand. The prince has promised a museum to exhibit the treasures. It will be built right on the grounds of the Tower—and he has hinted that he will name me as curator. At long last, after all the years of ridicule, of neglect by my peers, my inferiors! My reputation is made!”

“Yes, Perry,” Marguerite answered solemnly, reaching for her teacup as she bit on the tender skin inside her cheeks nearly hard enough to draw blood. “I rather imagine it is.”

The remainder of the afternoon passed quickly for Marguerite, now that she’d decided she understood what Donovan was about. “This bud... may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.”

Donovan had told her he disliked
Romeo and Juliet
, but that hadn’t kept him from using lines from the play to his own advantage. The man had no scruples when it came to something he wanted.

But then, neither did she.

No wonder she was so attracted to him.

No wonder that she would go more than halfway to meet him.

She passed an hour poring over the stack of invitations that sat in a dish on the mantelpiece in the drawing room, at last determining that Lady Jersey was the one woman she could depend upon to have invited the American to her ball, as the Almack’s patroness was the sort who never overlooked a chance for a whiff of scandal or daring.

That decision behind her, Marguerite soaked in a scented tub before dinner until Maisie threatened to pour a pitcher of cold water on her head if she didn’t soon rouse herself, then ate sparingly from a cold collation she had asked to have served in her room.

Her gown had to be perfect, and no less than another hour was devoted to its selection as she and Maisie sat on the hearth rug before the fire and the maid brushed her drying curls until they were gleaming. She would wear white, Marguerite concluded, which was not an unusual color for a young lady just Out, but it had to be just the correct shade of white. Not too close to pink or so dull it would glow yellow in the candlelight.

No. It had to be sparkling white—white as the sun at noon on the hottest day of summer, white as bed sheets hung to dry in the garden at Chertsey, white as a virgin bride going to her marriage bed.

And it couldn’t have too many buttons.

Once she was dressed, the simple but elegant gown of heavy silk boasting only a single ruffle at its hem, but accenting her small, rounded bosom, its square-cut neckline showing her shoulders to advantage, she sat in front of the dressing table and all but reduced Maisie to tears with her detailed instructions as to precisely how to draw her coppery hair severely back from her brow and to the left, catching the thick mass just above and behind her left ear with the jeweled hairpin Donovan had given her, so that the curls cascaded onto her shoulder while leaving her slim neck exposed.

Maisie helped her into tight-fitting white kid gloves that ended above her elbows, a tedious exercise that occupied nearly a quarter-hour, then muttered under her breath as Marguerite decided against gloves entirely and the maid was called to duty for another fifteen minutes, working the kid back down her mistress’s arms.

But at last she was ready, a decorative gold-spangled gauze shawl dangling from her elbows beneath her short, puffed sleeves, and she impulsively kissed Maisie on the cheek as that woman sat sprawled in a slipper chair, breathing heavily from her exertions, before going off in search of her grandfather.

She found Sir Gilbert in his study, grumbling into his too-tight cravat, for he disliked Lady Jersey five times worse than he disliked balls, and would much rather spend the night with Finch, playing Whist for coppers.

“Ah, here’s my most handsome escort,” Marguerite said, sweeping into the room in her new evening slippers that were so comfortable they reminded her of barefoot strolls on the sweet spring grass at Chertsey. “Oh, dear,” she said, frowning as she halted not three feet in front of Sir Gilbert. “Is that a scowl I see, Grandfather? Don’t tell me you’re planning to cry off at the last possible moment. That would be so unfair, for I’m convinced Lady Jersey is counting on you to make up one of the numbers of eligible gentlemen who will squire all the unlovelies she’s so prone to launch at their heads.”