A Masquerade in the Moonlight

PROLOGUE

WHERE THERE’S

SMOKE...

Innocence has nothing to dread.

— Jean Racine

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice, and everything nice:

That’s what little girls are made of.

— Anonymous

CHERTSEY ABBEY

1795

Marguerite Balfour sat on the very edge of the unyielding wooden pew, her slippered feet swinging freely some six inches above the wooden floor. Her plump, dimpled fingers twisted the satin sash of her pretty new gown—a lovely blush pink creation fashioned in the exact image of the merveilleux style worn by her dear mother and presented to her just that morning in honor of her fourth birthday.

It didn’t seem fair to Marguerite that her birthday should so inconveniently fall on a Sunday, so that she must spend a substantial part of this most precious of days in church, pressed in on all sides by Grandfather’s guests, people so very much larger than herself—her nose tickled by the overpowering odors of scent, powder, and perspiration.

Because her grandfather was Sir Gilbert Selkirk, and because Sir Gilbert’s great-great-grandfather had commissioned the building of the church, Marguerite sat at a right angle to the pulpit in the second row of the Selkirk family pews, the ones that rose higher than all the other pews. Mama and Papa had impressed upon her the necessity to never fidget, for all the people could see her, and it was her responsibility to set a good example, no matter how boring or overlong the vicar’s sermon.

Or at least Marguerite thought that was what her parents had said, for the child hadn’t paid very strict attention, considering that she was very small and the people around her were enormously tall, so that no one could possibly espy her anyway unless they climbed to the tip-top of the rafters like acrobats and looked down on her, to yell out accusingly, “Look, everyone—that godless little heathen is fidgeting!”

Grandfather had invited so many of his acquaintance to Chertsey for this house party that Marguerite felt she must be exceedingly careful of where she wandered whenever indoors, for fear of being stepped on by one of the odd, exotic creatures as they stumbled about, drinking and eating everything in sight as if they had been starving themselves for a fortnight in anticipation of a few days of feasting. She had been sternly told not to laugh at these people who clung to the old ways, or point her fingers at them for their strange clothing that was so unlike the relaxed country wardrobes she was used to seeing.

But she could not help but stare at them. They were all so thoroughly ancient, both the gentlemen and their ladies, and they wore brightly colored satins and powdered their ridiculously high hair, and patted her cheek while they tsk-tsked over the sad fact that Marguerite’s grandmother and namesake had died even before “the poor, dear infant was more than a gleam in her papa’s eye.”

It was all most bothersome, especially since Marguerite didn’t miss her grandmother in the least, for it was difficult to miss what she’d never had. Besides, she had Mama, and Papa, and even Grandfather, and all the servants at Chertsey as well. What need had she of such a nebulous thing as a grandmother?

Marguerite loved her parents very much, as she did her grandfather, and she always did her utmost to obey them, which was why she had promised to behave in church today. But this was her birthday, and Grandfather had promised her yet another surprise after luncheon, and, besides, the collar of her lovely palest pink merveilleuse gown was digging into the back of her neck in the most fearsome way, and she had grown again so that her best slippers were just that much too snug, and the vicar was talking about eternal damnation for ever so long—whatever eternal damnation meant. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with birthdays.

Oh, dear.

She had been good—very, very good—for more than an hour, and the strain was beginning to show.

Marguerite sighed again, audibly this time, as she wriggled her stiff bottom from side to side on the unyielding wooden seat. She would much rather be back at Chertsey, sitting in the kitchens and listening to Cook tell her yet again of last night’s dinner, when Finch, the butler, and Snipe, one of the footmen, had collided in the hallway just outside the dining room—with Snipe laboring along under the weight of an elaborate ice sculpture especially designed for this same party of London ladies and gentlemen, who were already seated at the long mahogany table. Finch had been highly insulted to find himself rump down on the floor, a rapidly melting swan in his lap as all the ladies and lords stood around him clucking their tongues and commenting on the clumsiness of the hired help in today’s world while Snipe, who was a most fainthearted and generally useless person, had only stood by, to wring his hands and cry.

But there was nothing else for it; she would simply have to remain here, bored to flinders, until the vicar had done with his sermon and the choir had sung yet another dozen dreary hymns. Only then would she be set free.

How would she ever survive it?

“Hello?” she breathed, sitting forward. Something about the elderly woman in the pew in front of Marguerite had caught her attention.

The woman was most exceptionally unusual, even in this gaggle of rara avises. Her heavy gown smelled somewhat of bacon left too long in the smokehouse, and she sported an outdated coiffure that climbed a foot or more into the air. The latter was an immense creation of greased wool and horsehair and false curls overlaid with a paste of white powder—the whole of it crowned by a large feather hat in the shape of a bird. A molting bird.

Marguerite thought the woman looked silly in the extreme and did not suppose that anyone could possibly believe such a creation worth the trouble of sleeping with her head in a box in order to maintain it. But Maisie, one of the upstairs maids, had explained that the old woman had precious little hair of her own left after years of wigs rubbing at her scalp. She refused to give up the style that took hours and hours to weave into that sparse hair, so that it was most often kept intact for weeks on end before being “broken out.”

Maisie had also only yesterday sneaked Marguerite into the lady’s guest chamber to show her the pretty silver wire cage that the woman wore over her head at night, a trap guaranteed strong enough that no hungry mouse or rat could gnaw through it to sneak inside the creation and feast on the grease.

Or so Maisie had said.

Now Marguerite’s mouth opened in a small O of wonder as her hands flew to her cheeks and she blinked, then looked once again at what she thought she had seen. Yes! She hadn’t been mistaken. There it was again! As Marguerite peeked through her spread fingers at the lady’s head, a tiny, pink-nosed field mouse peeked back at her from inside the woman’s tower of fake powdered curls!

Poor little creature, Marguerite commiserated silently, imprisoned in a mound of hair, stuck in church, and forced to listen to the vicar prose on and on of everlasting damnation. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide—trapped inside a nest of greasy curls by day and locked up all night by the silver wire cage.

Obviously, something must be done!

Marguerite tucked her bottom lip behind her top front teeth and quickly slid her eyes to the left. Grandfather was sound asleep, as usual, his chin propped on his broad chest, his deep breathing ruffling the lace at his neck. Marguerite shifted her gaze to her right. Mama, delicately wielding an ivory-sticked fan whose panels depicted the martyrdom of Saint Peter in horrifying detail, appeared to be oblivious to all but the nasal droning of the vicar’s voice.

As for her papa, well, he might tell Marguerite how to behave in church, but he did not attend services himself, preferring to take up his pole and seek “heavenly quiet” at the stream behind the spinney, saying the best way to keep God in his heart was to keep his immortal soul as far removed from organized religion as possible.

Not that Marguerite would think about such things now, even if she had almost weekly wished that she had been born a boy, so that she could have a pole of her own and spend her Sunday mornings with Papa, sprawled on a grassy bank, her stockings wadded into balls beside her, dangling her bare toes in the deliciously cool water.

But now, for the moment, she would concentrate on the mouse.

If she were quick about the thing, she opined with the sure conviction of her four years—and very, very lucky—perhaps she could do it. Perhaps she could liberate the adorable, pink-nosed rodent.

Marguerite counted to three and then wriggled off the hard wooden pew to stand directly behind the woman, holding her breath against the odor of spoiled bacon. Reaching up her hands, she crooned soft cooing noises to the mouse, hoping to lure it from its sure-to-be uncomfortable home.

But the mouse proved to be most odiously stubborn and quite possibly brick stupid. Its head disappeared abruptly (it looked to Marguerite as if some elf inside the wig had yanked on its tail) only to poke out again a moment later, a little lower, just beside the woman’s right ear.

Silly creature! Marguerite thought. Didn’t it know she meant it no harm?

She concluded that she could not allow the mouse to disappear a second time, for only the good Lord knew where it would show up next!

Marguerite jumped as high as she could manage, launching herself against the top rail of the pew, her hands outstretched to grab at the mouse before it could dive back into the greasy center of the woman’s coiffure.

The small rodent, seeing itself under attack, belatedly attempted to engineer its own escape, its small, sharp front paws digging furiously at the powdered curls, until it had pulled itself free. It then scampered hotfoot down the woman’s withered, faintly dirty throat and into the bodice of her low-cut gown—Marguerite’s eager hands almost immediately following where the mouse had led.

In an instant all was bedlam.

The old woman screeched worse than the wheezing pipe organ as she catapulted from the pew to claw at the front of her gown as if she had gone into a fit and was attempting to strip herself bare in the middle of services. Marguerite screamed straight back at her, telling her not to be such a queer goose and hurt the little mouse who, after all, hadn’t done anything all that terrible.

As the mouse burrowed its way back up through the narrow valley between the woman’s mountainous cleavage to stare her straight in the face, its small pink nose and whiskers twitching furiously, the woman shrieked once more, then fell sideways in a dead faint, all but toppling the elderly gentleman next to her out into the aisle.

Marguerite saw her chance and took it. Her waist-length carroty curls flying every which way and her undergarments very much in evidence, she hiked up her skirts once more, agilely hopped over the back of the pew, scooped up the mouse as he sat perched on the seat and, happy to have effected the rescue, then proudly held it up for all the churchgoers to see.

This action quite naturally resulted almost immediately in the swooning of a half dozen fainthearted ladies in the nearby pews, a near stampede of gentlemen volunteering to remove the pesky scrap of vermin (eager as they most probably were for any interruption that might save them from the remainder of the vicar’s sermon), and, lastly, the loud guffaws of her grandfather, who had awakened just in time to witness the undeniably hilarious sport of the thing.

Even Marguerite’s mama—who had earlier confided in her daughter her secret hope that today, for just this one, single day, Marguerite would go through the hours without causing a catastrophe—only smiled with vague benevolence while discreetly tugging the child’s skirts back down over her exposed rump.

Within the hour Marguerite had been released from her too-tight shoes, her lovely but uncomfortable palest pink merveilleuse frock, and all constraints as to the behavior expected of grown-up young ladies of four, and was on her way to the stream, eager to regale her beloved papa with the story of her glorious rescue of one badly misplaced country mouse.

Geoffrey Balfour greeted her with a smile and with a pole of her own as his private birthday present to her, so that she could catch herself a fish or two Cook might then poach and garnish with fresh lemon for her dinner in the nursery. Then, later, her papa took her into the fields to meet with the Gypsies that camped there every spring, and she danced with them around the fire.

All in all, Marguerite would always remember, it was one of the most excruciatingly wonderful birthdays she’d ever had.



“Papa? Is it true there’s a man who lives in the moon? I know I can see a man’s features if I scrunch up my face and look very, very hard—two eyes, a mouth, even a nose—but where does he keep the rest of his body?”

Marguerite turned her head to the side to see her father, who was lying next to her on the soft ground, for the two of them had been gazing up into the starlit sky. Both of them had their arms crossed behind their heads, and their knees were bent in order to brace themselves better against the hillside, just the way they had been accustomed to lying there during every full moon for at least one night of every pleasant month this past year or more.

During that time Marguerite had been taught the names of all the constellations and had learned much about her father as well, for Geoffrey Balfour had spoken freely during these intimate interludes in the dark, sharing much of his unique philosophy of life with his only child now that she had reached the ripe age of ten.

“Papa?”

“Hush, kitten, I’m thinking about your question. If there truly is a man in the moon, and you can see his face, wherever does the gentleman keep his body? Ah, but Marguerite, dearest child—why do you suppose he even possesses a body? Are the grand doings of the moon and the stars to be measured by the paltry yardstick of the earthbound?”

“But, Papa, it is only to be expected. If the man in the moon has a head, he has to have a body.”

“Is that so? Only consider this, kitten, on a more worldly level: because a man possesses a purse, does that mean he must necessarily have money? Possibly. But not necessarily. In short, Marguerite, do not presuppose everything or even everyone in this universe is as you expect from your own experience. Look at each creature you meet, every situation that presents itself to you, and see its individuality, its variables, its strengths, and even its weaknesses.”

“Very well, Papa, if you want to be stuffy. I shall do as ordered.” Marguerite scrambled onto her knees to beam down at her papa. “I see before me now the most handsome, the most wonderful, the most kind and positively brilliant gentleman on this entire earth, in this entire universe.” And then she frowned in sudden confusion. “What don’t I see, Papa?”

Geoffrey Balfour smiled up at his daughter. The smile was somehow sad, and tugged at her heart. “Now you’re beginning to understand. You see only that which I deign to show you. Like the man in the moon, kitten, I might keep very disparate parts of myself hidden. Or possibly I do not possess any other parts and am as shallow as our Chertsey streams in the midst of a blistering summer. But, no. I’ll answer your question. I’ll tell you what you don’t see, so that you learn nothing is as it seems. You don’t see inside my very pretty, yet also very empty purse, Marguerite—that object I spoke of a moment ago. You don’t see my flaws, my laziness, my failures. Neither, Lord bless her, does your dearest mama. Your grandfather—ah, well, he tolerates me, doesn’t he? But, then, I am always a scintillating conversationalist at table, and I don’t pick at my teeth with my dinner knife. In short, I do my best to please. So you see, kitten, if you look carefully, look deeply, you will find the goodness and the flaws as well. When you love you can overlook the flaws, but when you have need, you can use those same shortcomings to your own advantage. Perhaps that’s why the man in the moon hides most of himself from view. To protect himself. God knows we all have something to hide.”

Marguerite lowered herself to the ground once more, again taking up the position of stargazer. Her papa had shared something important and intensely personal with her, and she felt she had to return the favor. “I have a most terrible temper, Papa,” she said as the silence between them grew to be uncomfortable, the first such interlude Marguerite could remember. “But I take especial care to hide it very well.”

“So you have, kitten, and so you did—until this moment,” her father pointed out. “Not that I was ever unaware of that particular failing. Remember, I have known you forever, and it’s difficult for a small child to hide her temper, especially when she is shrieking and kicking and launching her toys at her loving papa’s head. But you’ve learned to control your ferocity these past years, for which, might I add, your mama and I are endlessly grateful, even if we know that terrible force could be roused if the right pressures were applied. Loving you, we don’t employ those pressures. But an enemy, someone who wished you ill or was searching for a way to best you—”

“—would go looking for the body the man in the moon hides so well,” Marguerite finished for him, feeling slightly smug that she had digested this latest lesson so well.

“If the man in the moon truly has a body,” Geoffrey said, confusing her once more, but only for a moment.

“Ah, Papa, yet the lack of a body is a weakness in and by itself,” she countered as Geoffrey helped her to her feet. “Real or imagined, everyone has a weakness that can be seen, used to our own purpose, if we but look closely enough. Isn’t that right, Papa? Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to teach me? To look for the obvious, yes, but also for that which is concealed?”

Geoffrey gathered his daughter close against his side, then pressed a kiss on her smooth forehead. “You’re quick, kitten—almost too quick for me—and you have yet to put up your hair. Heaven help the young bucks once we take you to London—you’ll dance rings around them.”

“And I’ll have none of them,” Marguerite pronounced flatly, lifting her faintly pointed chin defiantly, so that her long, wrist-thick pigtails slapped against her elbows. “There is only one true love for me, and that is my own dearest papa!”

Geoffrey threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Ah, kitten, you still have so much to learn. And learn it you will.” He flung out his right arm, as if declaiming to the world, and said, “Ladies, good milords! Behold before you Miss Marguerite Balfour—she may not set the world ablaze, but she most assuredly will make it smoke!”



Two years later, without warning, Geoffrey Balfour was gone.

It had been left to her grandfather to tell Marguerite after she skipped down the stairs in her riding habit early one sunny April day, eagerly calling for her papa to accompany her in a gallop across the fields; her mama, cursed with a frail constitution, had already collapsed and been put to bed, to be cared for by Maisie.

Her father’s heart, his pure, loving heart, had simply given out, Sir Gilbert had told Marguerite as she stared at him, shivering with an unnatural cold and hating him for saying what he was saying—hating everything and everyone who was alive when her papa was dead.

Dead! No! It couldn’t be! Not her papa. Never her papa.

But Sir Gilbert had said it again, as if she hadn’t heard him correctly the first time. Death had been swift and painless, he had promised her, coming to meet Geoffrey as he sat in his study sometime after midnight, a book in his lap, and Marguerite should not grieve, but only remember her father with fondness, for he had been a good man. “It’s what your father would have wanted, darling child. You must be strong and take care of your mama now.”

Marguerite had nodded slightly as she stood, stunned into immobility, drawing in great gulps of air in an attempt to keep from crying like some idiot child who didn’t understand that grief was useless... and life was for the living... and her mama must be protected... and her grandfather was merely saying what was true, what her papa would have expected from his “kitten.”

She had only kissed Sir Gilbert’s cheek and walked slowly to the stable yard where her pony, Luna, waited for her. Avoiding the pitying eyes of the grooms, who were sniffling and rubbing at their wet cheeks and runny noses with the sleeves of their shirts, Marguerite had mounted at the block and turned Luna toward the open fields in an instant gallop.

It was only after she realized she was in danger of pushing her beloved pony past exhaustion that she reined in and slipped from the saddle in the middle of a newly plowed field. She then fell to her knees, spread her arms wide, and glared up at the heavens, her overwhelming grief and despair tearing at her as she screamed out her unanswerable question to God. Why? Why did her most wonderful papa leave her? Why?



The years passed, time wearing smooth the jagged edges of her grief, and Marguerite Balfour grew to young womanhood at her home in Chertsey, beloved by all who lived there. Indulged by both her grandfather and her mother, she was never really a spoiled child, for there was not a malicious bone in Marguerite’s body—although, according to Maisie, there were more than a few mischievous ones.

Marguerite’s waist-length carroty curls had darkened since that momentous fourth birthday, to become a rich, warm chestnut with flashing hints of red and gold, making a perfect complement for her creamy ivory skin and bewitching green eyes. Tall, a good half foot taller than her petite mother, the chubby figure of her childhood had reformed itself into small, high breasts, a narrow waist, slim hips, and long straight legs.

In short, Marguerite Balfour was a fetchingly, devilishly, intriguingly beautiful young woman.

But Marguerite’s attributes did not begin and end with her beauty and personal charm. Marguerite had been taught as Sir Gilbert would have instructed his son, if he were to have been blessed with a male child rather than the girl child his late wife had educated as was the custom. In his opinion, this was the same as to say Victoria’s academic achievements bordered within an inch of nonexistence.

Short of sending Marguerite off to school, Sir Gilbert had employed the best tutors, so that she spoke French and Italian fluently, could read Latin, was well versed in mathematics and the sciences, could intelligently discuss the politics of the day, and quoted Shakespeare and even some minor poets without appearing to have to think about it first.

She also rode like a man, excelled in fencing, could load and shoot most any firearm with both speed and deadly accuracy—and had not forgotten a single word of any of Geoffrey Balfour’s sometimes contradictory, but always thought-provoking, lessons. She spent her spring months almost daily visiting the Gypsies, who continued to return to Chertsey, and played in the dirt with the Gypsy children, while learning from the women the dubious talents of purse cutting and fortune-telling.

At fourteen, she stole her first chicken. It was the most delicious chicken she had ever eaten.

Her mama’s softening influence showed itself in Marguerite’s love of beautiful clothing, her talent with needle and watercolors, her sweet if not powerful singing voice, and her graceful movements on the dance floor—even if her only partner to date had been her grandfather.

Marguerite had grown as the only child in a household of adults, so that she had matured far beyond her years in some ways while remaining childlike in many others. Her every wish had not been granted, but she had been given enough to make her believe that anything was possible, if she wanted it badly enough.

At the age of eighteen, upon her mother’s collapse and death at a neighbor’s afternoon party, Marguerite unexpectedly learned of something she wanted and almost immediately declared her intention of going to London. Only her grandfather’s pleas for a measure of decorum brought her agreement to wait until the following spring Season, when a suitable period of mourning had passed.

Marguerite was not just being biddable, for she was rarely submissive, even if she was very nearly always kind. She had belatedly realized she would need that time, as she confided to a badly shaken Maisie, to “search out the body of the man in the moon.”

BOOK ONE

THE FLAMES

BUILD

O! Who can hold a fire in his hand...?

— William Shakespeare