A Masquerade in the Moonlight (5 page)

“That had been my belief, yes, your lordship—and the name is Donovan,” Thomas replied evenly, looking to Marguerite, who now stood smiling at him with an expression that told him he was no longer wanted and should know enough to take himself off. “However,” he added hastily, seeing the cloud of displeasure that descended on Lord Mappleton’s face, “I, too, can no longer remember precisely why. I believe my brains have become muddled from the moment I first was introduced to the most delightful Miss Balfour by that nice gentleman, Mr. Julian Quist. Do you by chance know the fellow, my lord?”

“Quist? Wonderful lad. Ten thousand a year, I hear, but with not a jiggle of sense of how to set up his stable.” He took Marguerite’s hand and laid it on his forearm, patting her fingertips with not quite avuncular affection. “Not nearly good enough for you, though, my sweet child. And an encroaching mama to boot. No, no, not good enough by half. Well, a pleasure seeing you, Danvers. We must be off now, mustn’t we, m’dear? All the good seats will be snatched up if we don’t hurry. I hear they’re serving up some lovely fat shrimp.”

“Donovan, Arthur,” Marguerite corrected the man, inclining her head slightly in Thomas’s direction as Lord Mappleton made to pull her toward the stairs. “I believe Americans are very touchy about things like that. We wouldn’t wish to seem
unneighborly
, now would we? Good evening, Mr. Donovan—and thank you so much for rescuing me. I’m sure I could not have asked for a more eventful interlude.”

“What? What?
Donovan
, you say?” Lord Mappleton blustered as the pair moved out of earshot. “Ain’t that Irish? Bad enough we have to do the pretty with these colonials without them being bloody Boglanders into the bargain.”

“And the top of the evening to you, too, Lord
Mapletree
,” Thomas muttered under his breath in disgust as he watched the tall, slim Miss Balfour and the shorter, decidedly stouter peer join the throng of people descending to the supper room. And then, left without many options, but not without questions, he repaired to the game room. There he proceeded to handily separate one very disgruntled, talkative Julian Quist from five hundred pounds of his “encroaching” mama’s money.

“Well, now, Tommie, you’re late enough, aren’t you? Did you see him? Did you talk to him?”

Patrick Dooley had thrown open the door to the suite of rooms in the Pulteney Hotel the moment he’d heard his friend’s distinctive, confident tread in the hallway outside, then stood back smartly to let Thomas pass by him and into the stylishly furnished sitting room that had been the scene of Dooley’s agitated pacing for the shank of the evening. Thomas’s dark, tight-lipped expression didn’t cheer Dooley’s heart after several long hours spent in nervous expectation of good news.

Thomas collapsed into the closest chair, his long legs sprawled out in front of him as he ripped at his neck cloth, freeing it, only to send the thing winging in Dooley’s direction. “What do you think, Paddy?”

“I think you’re getting the same runaround these bloody Bugs are giving every one of our diplomats, that’s what I think,” Dooley spat, grabbing the neck cloth out of the air and wadding the starched material into a ball before dashing it to the floor. “I’d not have dealings with the likes of them. We’re going to have to whip their tails again in an out-and-out war if we mean to see an end to this. Madison was mad to send you. It’s like sending a goose to the fox’s den, that’s what it is.”

“We all know it will come to war. It’s just the when and the how of the business that we don’t know.” Thomas pushed himself up out of the chair and went over to the drinks table, pouring himself three fingers of brandy. He took a lusty gulp of the liquid, then grinned at his companion. “And if you don’t mind, my good friend, I’d like to think our esteemed president has sent the fox to mind the geese. Besides, the evening wasn’t a total waste.”

He reached into his pocket and drew out a satisfyingly thick wad of notes, tossing them onto the table. “We’ve added another five hundred pounds to the war effort, Paddy. Another such month in this fair metropolis, and we won’t need Harewood or any of his troupe. We’ll simply bankrupt all of England and have done with it.”

Dooley snatched up the money and stuffed it into the top drawer of the sideboard beside the rest of Thomas’s winnings. He took a moment to look into the mirror, seeing the worry lines that creased his forehead beneath his thick shock of liberally graying red hair. He was on the shady side of sixty and years too old for this sort of thing—and that was the truth. “It’s a lovely talent you have, boyo,” he said, turning back to Thomas, “but it’s not enough. You know what we were sent to do. Cooling our heels waiting in antechambers all the day long, only to be told this minister or that has gone for the day, is not my idea of the way to get things done. Treat us like dogs, they do—less than dogs!”

Thomas put down his drink and stretched his arms into the air, yawning widely. “Enough, Paddy. We both know they’re only treating us as they’re supposed to do—the way they’ve been abusing all of Madison’s emissaries. If they fell on our necks we’d be under immediate suspicion, and so would Harewood and the others. Although I must admit I have my doubts about the business. If Lord Mappleton’s behavior tonight is any indication of the caliber of these great intriguers, I fear Madison has placed his hope in the wrong quarter. Why, the young lady I met tonight is twice the man Mappleton will ever be.”

“Young lady, is it now?” Dooley smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Well, call me seven kinds of fool for thinking you were serious about this thing, Tommie Donovan. May the good Lord save me from any patriot whose brain lives between his legs.”

Thomas grinned, causing Dooley to wish he wasn’t almost thirty years older and only half so strong as his companion in intrigue, for he’d dearly love to whack the youngster upside his handsome head. “Now, Paddy, you wouldn’t begrudge a man for looking, would you? And that’s all I did, I swear it. Although Miss Marguerite Balfour might merit watching.”

“A pretty puss, I wager. Is that
watching
you plan to be doing, boyo, or
tumbling
?”

“She calls Mappleton by his Christian name, Paddy, and—or so I have heard tonight from our latest contributor to the war effort—she’s also known to openly favor the attentions of rich old men like Totton, Chorley, and even Harewood—among others. Gaining quite the reputation, our Miss Balfour is, for a young lady who is just making her come-out.”

“Oh, is she now?” Dooley asked, suddenly interested in the conversation once more. “Marguerite, you say? Isn’t that one of those fancy Frenchie names? Could they be courting the Froggies, too? That isn’t fair, Tommie—they came to us first.”

Thomas subsided into the chair once more, again cradling the snifter of brandy. “Don’t read too much into this, Paddy. All of these men are old as dirt—although Harewood is slightly younger than the rest—and they all have fortunes no ambitious young lady would sniff at. Perhaps she hopes to wed one of them this year and bury him the next. God knows she’s sharp enough to have thought of such a scheme, and independent-minded enough to wish to have the social freedom of a young, beautiful widow.”

Dooley looked closely at Thomas and saw that he was gnawing on his lower lip, something he did when in deep thought—or when he was frustrated. “Independent? That’s a strange word for it. Gave you the brush, didn’t she?” he asked, grinning. “Sounds like a woman after m’own heart.”

Thomas rose from the chair once more, stripping off his jacket with more haste than care, so that Dooley could have sworn he heard the seams groaning. “And you can have her, with my blessings,” Thomas said, flinging the jacket onto a chair in a heap. “The last thing this American needs is an intelligent woman. All this man wants is a
willing
one. Good night, Paddy—we’ve a long day in front of us tomorrow, numbing our worthless colonial rumps in the anteroom of the Department of the Admiralty.”

Dooley picked up the discarded jacket and folded it over his arm, knowing he would be the one called upon to take a pressing iron to the thing the next time Thomas needed it so he could go strut about in society like some damned peacock. “And a goodnight to you, boyo—but remember this. I’m in this
with
you, and not your bloody maid of all work.”

I know indeed the evil of that I purpose; but my inclination gets the better of my judgment

— Euripides

T
he sun stole slowly across the tastefully decorated bedchamber, picking out the distinctive lines of a Sheraton chaise longue, dappling the cabbage rose design of the expanse of carpet, and finally slanting toward the wide tester bed topped with wrinkled sheets and a trailing coverlet, and piled high with pillows—but minus its occupant for the past two hours, although it had just gone eleven.

Marguerite Balfour, her buttercup yellow dressing gown cinched tightly at the waist by a satin ribbon, her long, glorious dark copper hair haphazardly tied up with a yellow satin riband, did not notice the sun’s advance as she sat with her usual elegantly erect posture at her mother’s tambour desk, tracing one manicured fingertip down the page of an old diary.

“‘Lord M—Loves money more than anything. A skirt-chasing buffoon with the wits of a flea,’” she read out loud, then closed the book and leaned against the back of her chair, smiling sadly as she looked at the portrait of an extremely handsome, yet faintly melodramatic-looking young man that hung over a nearby table. “An apt description, Papa, but you neglected to mention ‘Lord M’ also
pinches
. Much as I’m convinced your friend Arthur had designs on Mama—for the man would have designs on anything in skirts—I believe he was only a minor player. His disposal, already in progress, should not be a problem.”

Marguerite sat forward once again and reopened the diary, turning directly to the page she had dog-eared last summer, after the funeral, when she had first discovered her father’s private papers among her mother’s belongings, obviously unread by that woman. She could recite the remainder of the list labeled “The Club” without looking:

P.T.—Vain and believes he knows everything. Just ask him, and he’ll tell you.

R.H.—Greedy. Ambitious and unnaturally superstitious. Poor fellow, so afraid to die that he has yet to live!

Stinky—Never saw a penny he couldn’t gamble away.

W.R.—Enigma, damn him. Beware the man without weaknesses
.

“Oh, Papa,” she said, propping her elbows on the desktop and dropping her forehead into her hands, “how could you have been so smart and yet not heeded your own warning?”

“At it again, are you?” Maisie asked from the open doorway, her hands full, holding a silver tray laden with teapot, creamer, cup, and a plate piled with steaming muffins. “A body could busy herself reading from the Good Book and not have half again so many worries,” she said as she placed the tray on the edge of the dressing table. “Dead’s dead, little miss, and no amount of scheming will bring either of them back, may the good Lord rest their souls. Life is for the living, and not for digging up old hurts.”

Marguerite closed the diary and rose from her chair, the long, full skirt of her dressing gown whispering against the carpet as she moved. “Thank you, Maisie, for that most insightful lesson. My father as good as murdered and my mother succumbing to the shock of being forced to relive that death—and you say I should forget it all and get on with my life? It’s so stunningly simple the way you present it. Why can’t I see that for myself? Why don’t I know lie piled upon deception, disaster following after tragedy, is the natural order of the world? Did you find this knowledge in your Good Book, Maisie—perhaps somewhere close beside that drivel about always turning the other cheek?”

She then grinned at the old woman and snatched up one of the still-warm muffins, taking a lusty bite out of it before launching herself onto the bed, to sit cross-legged at its very center, her expression suddenly solemn. “I’m sorry, Maisie, for I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that I’m afraid my soul simply doesn’t possess much in the way of Christian charity.”