A Masquerade in the Moonlight (11 page)

Laleham delicately adjusted the lapels of his morning coat. “Don’t be vulgar, Ralph,” he said, sighing. “Be specific. What about this American has led you to believe that he is—in your words—an ignorant ass?”

Sir Ralph stood and began pacing the Oriental carpet laid in front of the couch. “Perry says ignorance is a failing all Irishmen subscribe to in the womb but, although Donovan is definitely not far removed from his Irish roots, I don’t believe the answer is that simple.” He stopped pacing and looked piercingly at the earl. “You see, I really don’t think the man is stupid. On the contrary, I believe him to be quite bright. But he’s approaching this entire business as if it is all a game, some sort of amusing lark—which shows his ignorance. Do you understand, William?”

“I understand this Donovan person has recognized what you still do not see. He has nothing to lose, Ralph. Once we have set our plan in motion, once we’ve concluded our business with him, our Irish-American conspirator will return to Philadelphia, safely away from any of the consequences if our plan is discovered. And, by the simple act of approaching Madison, we have shown that England is already facing trouble from within. The Americans can’t lose no matter how it all falls out.”

The earl slowly rose to his feet and walked over to the Sheraton mirror that hung above the sideboard, to stare at his own reflection. “I had rather hoped they wouldn’t realize our vulnerability. This will make things more difficult.”

“That,” Sir Ralph conceded in his usual flat tone, so that the earl did not know if he should interpret it as fearful or triumphant, “and the fact our wily Mr. Donovan has arrogantly declared he’s bent on seducing Marguerite Balfour before the week is out. Cheeky bastard. I have it on good authority he has all but tipped more than one of this season’s crop of debutantes over on her heels since he arrived in England, so I imagine it isn’t an idle boast. William? William—did you hear me?”

William Renfrew didn’t answer. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He refused to react. He only watched his reflection as, in spite of years spent learning never to betray himself, a small muscle began spasmodically contracting just below his left eye.

“Good morning, Grandfather. You’re up and about early this morning, aren’t you? And don’t you look fine as nine pence in your new waistcoat.” Marguerite dropped a kiss on Sir Gilbert Selkirk’s bald pate, then turned to the buffet and began filling her plate with a selection of the foods nestled inside various silver serving pieces. Clamping a piece of toast between her teeth after ladling out a generous mound of coddled eggs and stabbing a double rasher of bacon and placing it on her plate, she slid onto a chair across from Sir Gilbert, grinning at him around the still warm bread.

“You’re dressed for riding, I see,” Sir Gilbert said, his voice deep and rumbling, as if it arose from the very pit of his rather enormous stomach. “I’ll have Finch here”—he smiled up at the butler who had appeared silently to pour steaming coffee into Marguerite’s cup— “send round word to the stables that you’ll have need of my winch in order to set yourself in the saddle. You’ve enough food there, gel, to keep a full battalion moving for a week.”

“Very good, sir,” Finch said, backing away from the table. “I’ll see that your order is delivered at once.”

“Yes, you do that, Finch,” Marguerite warned the man genially, taking the wedge of toast from her mouth, “and then I’ll tell Maisie how you were ogling that new upstairs maid yesterday when she bent over to pick up her pail.”

“Miss Marguerite, please no. Maisie will lecture me for an hour, probably making me listen to her read from that book of sermons she’s always carrying in her pocket. You wouldn’t do such a thing.”

Sir Gilbert’s appreciative laughter boomed throughout the breakfast room, threatening to rattle the cutlery. “God’s teeth, man, don’t make it worse by daring her
not
to. Of course she would. The child lives for mischief.”

Marguerite’s giggle ushered the butler out of the room, and then she turned to Sir Gilbert. He was looking fit this morning. “Naughty old man,” she told him, picking up her fork and pointing it in his direction. “Anyone would think I was some devil’s spawn, to hear you tell it. Did you take your morning dose of the new tonic the doctor gave you yesterday?”

“Of course I did,” Sir Gilbert answered, his rheumy blue eyes shifting to his plate, where remnants of his own substantial breakfast obscured the pattern on the china. “You’re going out of your way to be impertinent this morning, aren’t you, gel?”

Marguerite frowned and laid down her fork. Her grandfather was all she had, and she was becoming increasingly aware of the man’s age. No matter how hard she tried to deny it, he was growing older, especially since her mother’s death last year, and she was terrified of his dying, of his leaving her. She was going to keep him alive for another ten years—another twenty years—even if she had to do it through sheer force of will. “You shouldn’t lie, old man. You do it very badly.”

Sir Gilbert lifted his serviette to his mouth and coughed into it, eying her owlishly. “Damn, if you ain’t twice the woman your grandmother was, and that’s three times as much woman as I like riding herd on me. I’ll take the blasted tonic later, child—I promise—and follow its nastiness down with a medicinal nip of gin.”

Marguerite smiled, then took a healthy bite of bacon and looked around the sun-drenched room, glorying in the promise of good weather. “Fair enough,” she told Sir Gilbert when she had done chewing. “Only it shall be a half glass of canary, and not your usual Blue Ruin, that terrible name you have for gin. Now—don’t you wish to hear about the gentleman who is coming to take your only grandchild out riding?”

Sir Gilbert pushed his plate away from him and propped his elbows on the table. “That depends. Is he younger than God? You’ve got a queer way about you, Marguerite, allowing yourself to be surrounded with men more suited to have courted your dear, departed mother in her grass time. And they all did, now that I think of it.”

Marguerite kept her eyes on her plate. “None of them is all that much older than my father would be if he were still alive,” she agreed quietly. “Hardly ancient. But this morning’s gentleman is considerably younger.”
And quite possibly twice as dangerous,
she added silently.

Sir Gilbert leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes narrowed, “How young? I’ve got a wager going with Finch. Forty? Thirty? Well, speak up, gel—I’ve got five pounds resting on your answer.”

“One and thirty on my last birthday, sir, and it may please you to know I still have all my teeth.”

Marguerite’s head whipped around toward the hall and she saw Thomas Joseph Donovan leaning his long frame against the archway, Finch beside him, his mouth open, as he had been about to announce the visitor’s presence. The butler recovered quickly, more rapidly than Marguerite, who found herself struck yet again by Thomas’s laughing blue eyes. “That’s a fiver you owe me, Sir Gilbert,” Finch said, grinning in obvious satisfaction, then bowed respectfully and withdrew.

“And I’ll pay it, your grinning jackanapes. I’ll pay it gladly!” Sir Gilbert bellowed after the man, then motioned for Thomas to join them at table. “Sit down, my boy, sit down! We don’t stand on ceremony around here, do we, Marguerite? Picked yourself a prime specimen here, didn’t you? Must stand eighteen hands high at the least.”

“Top to toe, closer to twenty, sir, although I have never before considered measuring myself against a horse,” Thomas replied genially, slipping into the chair at the head of the table—just as if he belonged there, Marguerite thought, longing to hate the man. But he looked so good, dressed in fawn riding breeches that outlined his muscular thighs and a well-fitting hacking jacket that showed his broad shoulders to advantage, that she chose to say nothing.

“Yes, well, I’m a country-minded sort,” Sir Gilbert answered, “for all this grandeur you see around here. My deceased wife had the furnishing of this place, you understand. Can’t plant your rump down on half the chairs without worrying you’re going to blast them into splinters. I’m far happier mucking about in the stables, or at least I was, until I ate my way into this condition you see before you now. Marguerite—introduce me to this young man. Where are your manners, gel?”

“Yes, Miss Balfour,” Thomas chided, smiling at her, “wherever are your manners? I believe you have just lately performed an introduction with aplomb, although I also seem to remember you had to be prodded on that occasion also.”

“Grandfather,” Marguerite said sweetly, determined to be polite—at least until she had the impertinent American alone, at which point she just might throttle the man, “may I introduce to you Mr. Thomas Joseph Donovan of County Clare and, more lately, of the city of Philadelphia. That’s in America, Grandfather. Mr. Donovan? My grandfather, Sir Gilbert Selkirk.”

“I know where Philadelphia is, gel!” Sir Gilbert exclaimed, slamming a fist against the tabletop. “An American, is it? Splendid! I always wanted to meet an American. Tell me about the wild Indians, my boy.
Finch!
” he called out sharply. “Get your spindly shanks in here. More coffee! Another cup! Don’t you know how to serve a guest?” He smiled at Thomas, waving his hand as if to encourage him to speak. “Well, don’t just sit there. Get on with it, lad. Tell me about the scalpings, the massacres. Humor a bloodthirsty old man!”

A full hour later than she had wished to leave, Marguerite was standing in front of the Portman Square mansion, outwardly calm and inwardly seething.

It no longer mattered to her that she was looking her best, clad in a forest green riding habit and military-styled shako hat, her hands enclosed in matching green kid gloves.

It no longer concerned her that she had spent the better part of an hour dressing for this ride in Hyde Park, with Maisie outdoing herself in fashioning her mistress’s long, heavy hair in a fetching-single braid, then winding it artfully at Marguerite’s nape so that it did not interfere with the jaunty placement of the shako, which was tilted forward ever so daringly over her left eye.

It did not thrill her that her mare, Trickster, was dancing about on the cobblestones as the groom held the bridle, eager to be off, or even that the often uncooperative London weather was perfect for a ride.

How could she be happy about any of these things, when Thomas Joseph Donovan was to be her companion for the next hour or more—her
unchaperoned
companion, no less—his insufferable self riding next to her on the ugly, rawboned, mud-brown gelding he must have hired from some second-rate public stable?

How could her grandfather have been so beguiled by the man that he had suggested, nay,
demanded
, they take themselves off for a fine gallop without the bother of having to worry about a groom following along behind them on an inferior mount? Could he have been so taken in by the glib American—or his young age—that he had lost all his usual concerns for his only grandchild’s reputation? Donovan must be beside himself with glee!

Oh, how she’d like to turn on her heels and leave the fellow standing in the street with nothing but his atrocious horse and his overweening arrogance for company.

“Allow me to be of assistance, Miss Balfour,” Thomas said, interrupting her internal tantrum. She sliced a look in his direction, to see he was cupping his hands together, forming a cradle for her to use to step up onto the sidesaddle.

“I’ll use the mounting block, thank you Mr. Donovan,” she replied coolly. “I would avail myself of your kind offer only if I were wearing spurs, and could satisfy my curiosity as to whether or not you bleed insincerity when you are pricked.”

And then, before the groom could step forward to assist her, she stepped up on the mounting block, slipped one black-leather-boot-clad foot into the stirrup, and mounted Trickster with the effortless grace of the superior rider. “Are you coming, Mr. Donovan,” she asked, looking down at him, “or shall I ask the groom to give you a boost up?”

Her satisfaction was short-lived, however, for Thomas merely executed an elegant leg in her direction, then took three quick steps toward his mount. The last step was a mighty bound that launched him into the air as if he had been shot from a cannon, so that his palms hit firmly on the gelding’s rump momentarily before pushing off again to grab the reins, so that Thomas landed in the saddle from behind, without once touching the stirrups.