A Masquerade in the Moonlight

Chapter 19

Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.

— Pyrrhus

The light from a single candle threw weird shadows on the wall as Marguerite paced her bedchamber in her dressing gown, wringing her hands, wishing the hours away, wishing for morning.

She couldn’t sleep. She had been living with her schemes and thoughts of revenge for so long she was finding it difficult to believe it was almost over. Yet if she felt no guilt for what she had done, what she had set in motion, she also felt no elation, no relief.

Only anxiety that it be over at last, that it be finished.

She was so tired, yet it was impossible to even think of resting when Marco surely now held the key to William’s destruction, her final revenge. She felt confident Ralph had followed Marco’s instructions to the letter, confessing every sin he’d committed from the time he was young until today—and every man with whom he’d committed those crimes. Ralph wouldn’t want anything to go wrong, and Marco had explained that absolute honesty was imperative, necessary for success.

He would have written down everything to do with whatever past dealings The Club had dabbled in with the French and their planned conspiracy with Donovan.

She would not include that part, any mention of this latest treasonable scheme, whatever it was, when she turned Sir Ralph’s confession over to the proper authorities. The litany of The Club’s crimes would be long enough without exposing Donovan and his president to embarrassment and censure, especially since Donovan had given up the idea of working with them. Besides, she had no intention of instigating a war—her goal was much more personal than that.

They’d go to prison, all five of them. Perhaps two or three of them would even be hanged. But they’d be hanged for their attempted treason, not for forcing her father into suicide. It wouldn’t be her vengeance that pronounced sentence on them or her guilt if they were to be executed. It would be justice, too long denied.

She could live with that. Her papa would rest easier for that. There was no need to bring her father’s name into the matter at all.

If only she could live through this night! She should have told Marco to come to her straight from Green Park and not wait until the morning. At this rate, morning would never come.

She continued to pace, wondering what Donovan would think when Ralph and William and the others were arrested and hauled to prison. Would he hate her for ruining his plans? He’d said he no longer wished to do business with The Club, but he might not have meant it. It was still sometimes difficult for her to be sure exactly what Donovan meant. He seemed so easy to read. Sometimes. But only sometimes. He had depths, parts of him she had not yet seen, or had only glimpsed for a moment. He might only have been trying to be nice to her.

She laughed quietly. Donovan? Nice to her? That was an understatement. He had been wonderful to her, wonderful for her. She felt more alive now than she had for so long. She could now look back on her life with her father, the life she’d had after her father’s death, and smile. Life hadn’t been all that dreadful. Her parents had loved her. She still had her grandfather. And now she had Donovan.

It was time to look to the future. Once Marco brought her Ralph’s confession, once she had read it and turned it over to the proper authorities, she could truly get on with her life.

Her life with Donovan. They’d be so happy in Philadelphia, and her grandfather would visit often and, of course, there would be children...

“Pssst! Aingeal? Give me a hand up, will you? I seem to be stuck.”

“What on earth? Donovan—you idiot!” Marguerite spun on her heels to see Donovan’s head peeking up above the windowsill, his handsome face split by an unholy grin that turned her stomach to water. She knew in a sudden, blinding flash of insight that she could live with this man for one hundred years and never know what he would do next. And that, she decided, was a considerable part of his charm.

She raced to the window as he levered himself onto the sill and half dragged him into the room, so that he landed in a heap at her feet. “You could have killed yourself, climbing up here,” she told him, playfully cuffing the top of his head so that his hair fell forward onto his forehead.

“Ow! I could have, but I have survived the climb, only to face being beaten to death by my beloved.”

“Well, it serves you right,” she countered, cuffing him again. Then she smiled, for she was truly glad to see him and saw no reason to waste time being coy and missish. “Did you use the drainpipe?”

He allowed her to help him to his feet. “I did, and I don’t recommend it. Why aren’t you in bed? It’s nearly two. All young ladies should be sleeping by now.”

“Ha! This is London, Donovan. Most young ladies are still out dancing. How did you know I’d be here?”

He looked at her strangely for a moment, almost as if he felt slightly sorry for her, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I didn’t. Just as I didn’t know for certain which window was yours. I only could see that this one was open. Think about that a moment. I could be having this conversation with Sir Gilbert as he chased me around his bedchamber with a pistol, if it weren’t that I have the luck of the Irish.”

Marguerite nodded, smiling as she conjured up a picture of Sir Gilbert’s bound-to-be-belligerent response to seeing Donovan crawling in his window. “That’s true enough. But why have you come? Did my decision to spend the day with my grandfather leave you so lonely you couldn’t wait until tomorrow to see me?”

“Probably,” he answered, slipping an arm around her waist. “Or maybe I simply decided the time had come to make love to you properly, and not the way we’ve been going about it, hiding in dark corners. Yes, that’s probably it—the second one, and not the first. Are you interested?”

Marguerite glanced around the large room, lit only by the single candle beside her bed, and pretended to have trouble making up her mind. As she continued to hesitate she threaded her fingers into the folds of his cravat, devouring him with her eyes. “Well,” she said slowly at last, “I imagine I should allow you to make good on your bragging. You have told me you’re a wonderful lover, haven’t you? Or perhaps that was some other of my admirers. I can’t remember.”

“Little witch,” Thomas said, pulling her close, his hands splayed against her buttocks. “Are those doors locked?” he asked, tipping his head first toward the door to the hallway and then toward the one leading to the dressing room. “I wouldn’t wish to be interrupted while I’m trying to fend you off.”

Marguerite nodded, pushing against him to feel that he was already aroused. Her blood began to run hot, as it always did when he touched her. “I can’t believe this, Donovan. In my grandfather’s house, in my own bedchamber. We’re wicked, the pair of us.”

“Is that a complaint?” Thomas asked, lifting her into his arms, high against his chest, and moving determinedly toward her bed.

“No,” she answered, nearly purring, kissing his cheek, the side of his throat. She loved this man. How she loved this man! “Merely an observation.”

He settled her in the middle of the bed Maisie had turned down hours earlier, then joined her, stretching out full length beside her, still in his evening shoes. “I missed you, aingeal. A whole day spent without you,” he said, dropping fairy kisses on her forehead, her eyes, her nose. “An entire, endless day.” His hand went to her bodice, tugging open the satin ribbons that held her dressing gown shut. “And all of that day I’ve thought of nothing but this.”

Marguerite swallowed, feeling the now familiar yet welcome tension building deep inside her as the dressing gown fell open, revealing her sheer night rail. “Are you going to love me anytime soon, Donovan,” she asked throatily, beginning to move her legs together on the bed, enjoying the feel of skin brushing against skin beneath the silk, “or merely talk about it?”

“Stay there,” he ordered, pointing at her as he slipped from the bed and began to strip. “You just stay right there, young lady.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Donovan, sir,” she answered brightly, biting her bottom lip as she watched him shed his clothing. She had never seen him entirely naked before, not really, and she refused to hide her curiosity. He was magnificent! His shoulders, so broad! His stomach, so flat! His hips, so narrow! His—

“Donovan?” she felt suddenly shy, and couldn’t understand why.

He slid back onto the bed, beneath the covers, and looked at her inquiringly, teasingly, his hands once more busy, helping her to rise up and slip her arms from the dressing gown. “Yes? You had a question, darlin’?”

“Never mind,” she whispered as he lowered her to the pillows once more, her hair ribbon now missing as well, so that her curls spilled free past her shoulders, tickling her breasts as the night rail slid down her legs and disappeared at the bottom of the bed.

She was naked—entirely naked, even though she was partially covered by the sheet. She turned to see Donovan resting his head on one bent arm, his elbow punched into one of the pillows. He wasn’t grinning at her anymore. His expression was surprisingly solemn as he twirled a lock of her hair around his finger.

All thoughts of Marco, of reading Ralph’s confession, of what would happen in the morning fled her brain, and she concentrated on Donovan, on her love for him, on the heaven she would soon fly to again in his arms.

“The first time, Marguerite,” he said quietly, so quietly that she had to listen very carefully in order to hear him through the pounding of her heart in her ears. “The first time wasn’t the way I wanted it to be. Nor was the second. You deserve better. You deserve to know what this business of lovemaking is really about. So,” he said, sighing, “as far as I’m concerned, aingeal, this is our marriage bed. And this is our wedding night. Our first night. I want to love you the way I would my bride. I want to worship you with my body.”

Marguerite felt tears stinging at her eyes. He was being so earnest, so serious, so wonderful. “All—all right,” she heard herself answer, feeling somewhat awed by the depth of his love. “But you’re frightening me, Donovan. I don’t know what you want—what could possibly be different or better than anything we’ve already shared.”

The corners of his mouth twitched and he leaned forward slowly, stopping when his lips were resting lightly against hers, teasing her with their closeness. “Ah, aingeal,” he breathed against her mouth, “how much you have to learn”—he gently bit her bottom lip—“and how I’ll delight in the teaching.”

His mouth claimed hers then, as she raised her arms to encircle his back and exulted in the feeling of skin against skin, her breasts crushed against his chest, tickled by the mat of hair that covered him.

He didn’t deepen the kiss, as she had half expected, but only kissed her, over and over and over again, before sliding down her body, his lips feathering the skin of her throat, her upper chest, the hollow between her breasts. His hands cupped her, lifted her, molded her, and when she felt his mouth on her nipple she drew her breath in sharply, not expecting the thrill that shot through her.

Now he used his tongue, running it in circles around her nipples, laving her skin as he ministered to both breasts equally, using his fingers to gently pinch, and tease, and excite her. She pushed her fingers into his hair, her eyes shut tight, her head tipped back as he ministered to her—yes, ministered to her—finding all the sensitive, erotic places she had no idea she possessed, the curves beneath her arms, the slight hollow at the base of her throat, the full undersides of her breasts, the taut skin on the sides of her ribs, the dip of her waist, the everyday, usually forgettable indentation of her navel.

The covers slid back as he moved away from her so that she could no longer hold his head, so that she had to raise her hands and press them to her mouth to keep from crying out as he gently spread her legs and pressed his mouth against the inner sides of her thighs.

She was floating somewhere above the mattress when he lifted her legs and deposited them on his shoulders. She experienced no shame, no embarrassment when she felt him high between her legs, his mouth moist and warm against her, his tongue seeking and finding the wet, hot center of her. She held no secrets from him, offering him everything, accepting what he volunteered in return, and gloried in the beauty, the rightness of the exchange—the giving, the taking.

So this is love, she thought before she couldn’t think any more, but only react—before Donovan’s ministrations took her to the very edge of rational thought, and beyond.

Until she could not do anything less than raise her hips, dig her heels into his back, and allow him access to anything he wanted, any intimacy.

Until she felt his fingers inside her—everywhere probing her, learning her, filling her with a pressure that threatened to explode.

Until his mouth drew on her hotly, rapidly, his tongue flicking at her, urging her to even greater heights, aiding and abetting the flowering that was impossible to halt, the pulsing that began deep inside her and traveled downward, to explode in a wild throbbing that surely must kill her, for nothing could be this shatteringly wonderful and not prove fatal!

And then he was fully on top of her, and she reached up to him, needing an anchor, needing something solid to hold on to or else she would spin off the surface of this bed, of this earth. He slid into her, filling her yet again, and the spiraling and the breathtaking pulsing began anew, surprising her, nearly frightening her, because she hadn’t believed she could go any higher.

He moved inside her, his arms slipping around her back, his legs straight and powerfully muscled against her softness. He must have been feeling at least some of what she had felt, was still feeling, for his movements were suddenly swift, and deep, and gloriously urgent.

She helped him, raising her hips to hold him inside her, and felt his hardness swelling her, his body replacing his mouth against that special, mysteriously wonderful part of her.

And then, when she thought she could bear the ecstasy no longer, he pressed into her one last time, his manhood throbbing, gifting her with his seed as her own body convulsed yet a third time, endlessly, leaving her too spent to breathe.

“God, Marguerite, but I love you!” Donovan groaned at last, falling onto his back and dragging her against him, her head on his chest.

“And I love you—Thomas, “she said, her voice catching on a near sob as she buried her face in the mat of hair that delighted her so. She loved him so very, very much. She longed to show him how much.

Later, several glorious minutes later, he agreed to allow her to learn his body, increasing her knowledge a hundredfold, and with this new understanding she knew she had finally become a woman. Complete. Absolute. Controlled and controlling, so that there was no superior, no inferior. Just equals, attuned in mind and body. Two individuals who had become one perfect whole. For now. For tonight. Forever. This time it was for certain!

Later, several glorious hours later, just as a foggy dawn was creeping over the city, Donovan left her, pressing one last kiss against her forehead before tucking the covers around her chin and telling her to sleep—which he didn’t need to do, for she thought she could sleep forever. Or at least until it was dark once more and he came to her again.



Thomas felt his feet touch the flagway and let go of the drainpipe, sagging against the bricks for a few seconds as he took a deep breath of the early morning air. He was exhausted and had wanted nothing more than to curl up with Marguerite and sleep the day away.

His Marguerite. His aingeal. What a glorious woman! Each time he held her he felt her fire, was consumed by her heat, and then was born again, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.

He smiled. All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to spend the next fifty or so years!

He located the knife where he’d left it behind a small bush, then, looking both up and down the street, he tapped his hat down more firmly on his head and began to walk, needing time to think before he met with Harewood at eight. Before he dealt with Harewood.

Thomas was not a killer, and he did not enjoy killing. But this was war—this was kill or be killed. Marco had understood immediately. Marguerite, Lord bless her and her inventive revenges, never would.

Thomas just wanted it to be over.

A closed coach passed by him in the Square, but he didn’t think about it more than to idly wonder how anyone would wish to stay out until dawn when he could be home, in bed with his loving wife.

More than an hour later, still munching on a pastry he’d bought from a hawker—he’d grown to appreciate the greasy delicacy—he turned onto the street where Harewood lived, and stopped. There was already a small carriage sitting outside Harewood’s lodgings, a rough-looking driver sitting up on the box.

Who could be visiting Harewood so early? Donovan walked slowly closer, watching as another rough looking fellow came out of the house, still talking to another man who could only be a servant.

They exchanged a few more words before the man who had to be a considerably weary night watchman mounted the coach beside the driver and drove off.

“You there,” Donovan called out quickly as the servant turned to reenter the house. “I’ve an appointment to see Sir Ralph. Is something wrong?”

The servant nodded, rubbing his hands together nervously. “Yer could say that, sir. ‘E be dead, sir, yer see.”

Thomas stood very still, his blood running cold. The man who would live forever was dead? Could he be so lucky that he would not be forced to carry Harewood’s death on his conscience? So much for the man’s coveted Shield of Invincibility. “Dead, is it? You don’t say? How?”

“Ah, it’s awful, that’s wot it is! Oi wasn’t apposed ta come back till later, but the young lady wot Oi walks out with whenever Oi has an evenin’ off—well, sir, we ‘ad us some words, and Oi ‘adn’t no other place ta go. So Oi brought m’self back ‘ere. An’ Oi found ‘im, swingin’ there, ‘is face all purple an’ all. Why ‘e did it, that’s wot Oi doesn’t ken. Seemed ‘happy enough ta me when Oi took m’self off last night.”

Thomas frowned, immediately discarding any faint notion that Harewood had been carried off by a sudden apoplexy, perhaps brought on by his delight over his supposed immortality. “Swinging there. Are you saying Sir Ralph hanged himself?”

The servant nodded furiously. “That’s ‘ow come ‘e sent us all off, or so the mort from the guardhouse said when Oi fetched ‘im ‘ere. So’s ‘e could do it all alone, with nobody botherin’ ‘im. But it’s up ta me now ta fetch ‘im down and lays ‘im out, an’ Oi gots ta tell yer, sir, Oi ain’t lookin’ forward ta it. Nary a bit!”

“If you’d like some assistance—” Donovan ventured, wanting to see Harewood’s body for himself. He remembered Harewood had hinted he might be able to assist him in removing something from his house when he arrived this morning, but Thomas was certain Harewood had not meant for him to remove a dead body. Or had he? Had the thieves fallen out to the point where an “immortal” Harewood had planned to eliminate Laleham? God! This was getting too complicated—and too dangerous by far.

The servant all but bowed Thomas into the house, and they were soon inside the drawing room, Sir Ralph’s grotesquely suspended body the decided focal piece of the well-kept, plainly furnished chamber.

He was dead all right, Thomas told himself, looking into Harewood’s lifeless eyes, doing his best to ignore the man’s purpled complexion. He walked slowly around the room, taking in the fallen chair, the tied cords, the short distance between Harewood’s toes and the floor, and remembered the man’s description of Geoffrey Balfour’s death and his horror of meeting the same fate.

There was, Thomas knew, no possible way Harewood would commit suicide. Not a man who had longed to live forever. And especially not a death by hanging.

He walked over to the cold fireplace, touching the cord as it was tied to the handle of the damper, then looked down at the ashes and saw the charred remains of several pieces of paper. He lifted one out, recognizing Harewood’s handwriting immediately as he read the words William and confession.

Had Harewood burned an earlier draft of his confession? It was possible. But then he looked at the body once more, at the cords. At all of the carefully knotted cords. Yes, it was possible Harewood had burned the papers. But not probable. He would have saved a copy; he had been that sort of man.

A man like Laleham, however, seeing those pages, would burn them.

What all had been in that confession? What all had Harewood written about Marguerite? About Laleham’s passion for Marguerite?

And then Thomas remembered.

... if he ever learned about the American, about the way he tumbled her, he’d kill her, that’s what William would do.

“Sweet Jesus and all the saints.” Thomas looked at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly nine. Marco and Paddy wouldn’t be arriving in Portman Square before eleven.

Marguerite wouldn’t know—she’d have no idea Laleham had in fact murdered her father, and not driven the man to suicide. She wouldn’t know Laleham had found a copy of Harewood’s confession. She wouldn’t know he had murdered Harewood. She wouldn’t know of Laleham’s obsession with her, wouldn’t realize that, because of her involvement with one very stupid American, she had put herself in the position of not only earning Laleham’s hatred but of becoming a prime suspect in this business of bringing down the members of The Club. Laleham was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d see it, sooner or later, a way to turn all blame away from himself. He may have seen it already.

But Marguerite was still laboring under the perceived brilliance of her plans, her damnably clever revenges that had turned so suddenly deadly. She would still believe herself to be the one with the upper hand. If Laleham came knocking at her door, she’d order him brought inside.

Please, Lord, let her still be sleeping!

Thomas threw down the charred page and started for the door. He had to get to Marguerite, had to see her, hold her—now! No! He had to enlist Marco and Paddy first, then go straight to Portman Square and remove Marguerite from London immediately—even if he had to bind and gag her to do it!

“‘ere now! Where would yer be runnin’ off ta? Oi thought yer said yer wuz gonna ‘elp me?”

“Me?” Thomas asked, pausing only for a moment. “I think not. Here—” he said, tossing a coin to the man, “this should help. Hire somebody to do it, why don’t you? Although, before you do that you might want to call back that watchman who was in here before and ask him a question.”

“Now why would Oi go and do that?” the servant asked, pocketing the coin.

Thomas smiled thinly. “Because you might be interested —as would I be if I were inclined to linger, which I’m not—in hearing him explain how your employer committed suicide with his hands tied behind his back.”