A Masquerade in the Moonlight

Chapter 2

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

— Euripides

The 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.”

Maisie lifted the tray and re-deposited it on the bottom of the bed. “I should tell Sir Gilbert what you’re up to, that’s what I should do, and he’d take you away from here and back to Chertsey before the cat could lick her ear. Just what that poor old gentleman needs—to tuck up another of his loved ones with a shovel.”

“I’m not going to die, Maisie,” Marguerite countered, rolling her eyes comically as she lifted another muffin from the plate. Maisie was so prone to exaggeration. “They’re not even going to know I’m the one bringing them down. I’ve made my plans carefully this past year and they’ve all already been set into motion. One by one they’ll soon begin to topple, quite easily, while I act the sympathetic, supporting prop in their tribulation. I have no great desire to advertise my triumphs, Maisie, just a need to know I’ve bested them, one by one by one.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Maisie retorted, sniffing, as she opened the door at the sound of a knock, then stood back to allow a procession of footmen to enter with pails filled with water for her mistress’s bath. “Nothing goes quite so easily as a runaway cart heading downhill toward a ditch, missy, and don’t you forget it. Here, now—boy! Don’t you go slopping water all over m’beautiful carpet!”



The offices of Sir Peregrine Totton, situated in the building housing many of the gentlemen serving the Secretary of the War Ministry, were as impressive as a museum, and nearly as well fitted out with paintings, statuary, and objets d’art. After spending an interminable four hours impatiently waiting in an antechamber crammed full of winged Pegasuses and tapestries depicting successful hunts and bloody battles, Thomas and Dooley were ushered down a hallway lined with portraits of some very sour-looking gentlemen and into a large, airy, high-ceilinged chamber apparently devoted to Greek and Roman statuary.

Dooley raised a hand to scratch behind his ear. “Did you ever see such a mass of ancient grandeur, Tommie?” he asked, leaning to his left to go nose to nose with a statue of Athena, who was sadly missing her left ear and a portion of her right arm. “Put ‘em all together and I doubt you could make one whole person, and that’s a fact. Lookee here,” he said, extending a hand to point at another statue. “It’s like someone took a hulking bite out of this one’s hip. See, Tommie—I can put the whole of my five fingers inside this—”

“Don’t you dare advance by so much as another inch, you ignorant, ham-fisted plebeian!”

Thomas and Dooley whirled about to see Sir Peregrine Totton sweeping into the room, his small, esthetically thin body fairly quivering with rage, a harried-looking clerk following three paces behind him.

“Now, now, sir,” Thomas hastened to assure the man, stepping in front of Dooley, “my assistant meant no harm. Please forgive his ignorance. He is American, yes, but one only lately arrived from Ireland, and forever corrupted by the taint. The poor fellow has no appreciation of art beyond the lovely construction of his favorite potato pot.”

“You’ll pay dear for that, boyo,” Dooley hissed under his breath, before saying loudly, “A thousand pardons, sir,” and retreating a step or two, as befitted an “assistant.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I, too, have to labor under the ignorance of inferiors,” Sir Peregrine said in open scorn, skewering his own assistant with a piercing glare until that man scurried to the desk, pulled out his employer’s high, elaborately carved chair, and assisted the gentleman to his seat. “Good enough, Grouse,” he then commented, so that the clerk quickly retired to the nearest wall, where he stood braced against a tapestry depicting the sacking of Rome, unknowingly putting his head in some danger from the silver-thread depicted ax wielded by some wild-eyed savage.

Looking about him, Thomas saw that, although there were a few straight-back chairs scattered around the perimeter of the chamber, none was close enough to the desk to make conversation below a bellow comprehensible. Clearly Sir Peregrine expected his American visitors to stand, like petitioners come with hat in hand to beg some favor.

Bloody hell they would!

“Paddy, please procure two chairs and place them just here,” he said, pointing to the area directly in front of the desk. “Grouse?” he called out, inclining his head to the clerk. “You want to rest your rump, too, or do you think those spindly shanks of yours can hold you up until Sir Peregrine and I are through talking about the despicable way you skulking Englishers are pulling good Americans from their ships and pressing them into service in your navy?”

Sir Peregrine leapt to his feet, his palms pressed down on the desktop, a reaction that Thomas found eminently soothing to his soul. “How dare you, sirrah!” Sir Peregrine exclaimed, blustering. “Might I remind you that you are here on sufferance and that we wouldn’t be having this interview at all if it weren’t for the fact you sent in documents signed by your own president saying you had his fullest confidence? I am quite sure Mr. Madison is woefully misinformed if he believes that even a letter of introduction penned in his hand is enough to coerce any of His Royal Majesty’s loyal servants to suffer listening to such baseless assertions! You may consider this interview as concluded, Mr. Donovan!”

Dooley noisily plunked down two straight-back chairs, seating himself comfortably before motioning for Thomas to take his own seat. “Ye’ve a winning way about you, Tommie, and that’s a fact,” he said, smiling up at Thomas, who remained standing. “Why don’t you say something nasty about the man’s sainted mother while you’re about if?”

Thomas frowned warningly at his friend and then bowed in Sir Peregrine’s direction. “Forgive me, sir,” he said in subdued tones, smiling ingratiatingly. “I am most heartily sorry for my ill-mannered behavior. I can’t imagine where that reprehensible outburst came from. Perhaps it is just I’ve been waiting without for so long that I have missed my luncheon. Grouse, dear fellow—do you suppose you could find it in your heart to search out a tray of bread and cheese, and perhaps a heavy decanter of burgundy? I’m convinced this meeting will progress much more congenially if I can only quiet my rumbling stomach.”

Sir Peregrine looked to Thomas, who returned that look deliberately, unwaveringly—daring the Englishman to contradict him—then subsided into his chair once more. “Oh, very well,” Sir Peregrine agreed at last. “Grouse, go into my private chamber and see what you can find. I’m sure there’s something we can serve these people.”

“This people wouldn’t be sorry to get a bite or two of meat, boyo,” Dooley called after the clerk, causing Thomas to look down at him and sigh. “And what may I ask, would you be gawking at now, Tommie? There was no sense in asking for ale, now was there?” Dooley countered, shrugging, so that Thomas had to cover his mouth with his fist, and pretend to cough in order to hide an appreciative smile.

Once the door closed behind the clerk, Thomas advanced to the front of the desk and deliberately sat his long frame on the left corner, first shifting a bust of Socrates out of his way. He wanted to be closer to Sir Peregrine, smell the man’s cologne, the man’s fear. He knew he was twice the man physically as his reluctant host, and he wanted Sir Peregrine to be unable to forget it. This might be a game they were all playing, but it was a deadly serious game, and it had deadly serious rules. “Did you think I’d countenance a witness, Totton?” he asked now, conversationally.

“Grouse is completely loyal, if none too bright,” Sir Peregrine countered, snatching up the bust and placing it beside one of Homer. “And what do you think you’re going to accomplish coming here in the first place? I knew nothing about meeting with you here. Can’t you follow the simplest instructions? We are all supposed to gather Saturday, at Richmond.”

“Oh, we are, Totton, and we will,” Thomas told him, reaching into his jacket and extracting a cheroot, placing it, unlit, between his straight white teeth. “I’m here today, suffering the insult of being kept waiting in your antechamber, in order to maintain the outward reason for my presence on this damp island. And I must say, old fellow, you’ve been most cooperative. Four whole hours. Was it difficult, hiding in here, wondering how I’d react to being kept waiting? But then, it wouldn’t do if I were seen to be treated better than you’ve treated the rest of my countrymen who have come begging for audiences.”

“Then this is all for show? We have nothing to discuss privately?”

Thomas took up the small tinderbox that sat on the desktop and struck it, holding the flame to the end of the cheroot until the tip glowed red. He inhaled deeply, then blew a blue-gray stream of smoke directly in Sir Peregrine’s pinched face. “Only one small item, Totton, and then I’ll be off and you can soothe your jangled nerves by beating on Grouse with one of these ancient philosophers. One small question that begs an answer. Tell me—are you and your treasonous cohorts negotiating with the French as well? Hedging your bets, as some might call it?”

Sir Peregrine waved the smoke away from his face, coughing as he looked from Thomas to Dooley and back again. Thomas watched him closely, searching for any outward sign of alarm, and saw nothing but confusion. “Deal with the French? Are you mad? Why would any of us even entertain such a thought? Perhaps you need to be reminded of something, sir. We English are at war with the French.”

“Don’t be an ass, Totton,” Thomas bit out, pushing himself away from the desk, beginning to relax but not about to allow Sir Peregrine to see anything but his anger. It had only been a thought, a vague niggling notion, and hardly worth the four-hour wait it had taken to prove himself wrong. But that didn’t mean the afternoon should be a total loss. As long as he was here, he might as well have some sport with the nervously belligerent Sir Peregrine.

“At war with France, you say? What a curious notion of honor you have. Your countrymen are at war with France. You, however, are at war with England,” Thomas pointed out quietly. “Why else would you want to help America, if not that a strong America will help to foment disenchantment among the masses and pull down your own monarchy? Tell me, which of you is to step forward and take the reins of government? Harewood? Chorley? No? Not Mappleton, surely. Then it must be you, Totton. Yes, I believe I can imagine you enjoying crowing over your fellow man. Dooley—can you see our dear friend draped in royal purple? Or am I wrong, and you and your fellows wish to emulate America and throw open the British Empire to the glories of democracy?”

Dooley snorted. “Now there’s something none of us will ever live to see. They’d have to free Ireland, boyo, remember? And what would these Bugs do for fun, I be asking you, iffen they couldn’t rape the Auld Sod whenever the mood took them?”

“You’re being impertinent—the pair of you!” Sir Peregrine objected, bringing his closed fists smashing down on the desktop, so that the busts of Socrates and Homer rattled. “Our aspirations are none of your concern. I have not asked why you’ve taken on this commission. And what do you covet as reward for your patriotism, Donovan? An ambassadorship? A Cabinet post?”

Donovan smiled around the cheroot. It was best to smile, he’d found, when he felt most like pounding a fellow into flinders. There was always time for violence, but a person stood to win more than a single battle by dueling with his wits. “Me? A simple newspaper publisher and landowner from Philadelphia? Sir, you must have confused me with the late, greatly missed, Benjamin Franklin, another humble journalist from Philadelphia, but one whole worlds more talented than I. Let me assure you, Sir Peregrine, I have absolutely no political ambitions. None whatsoever. Isn’t that correct, Dooley?”

“Not the way I heard it,” Dooley grumbled rather loudly into his haphazardly tied cravat—the clearly disgruntled assistant getting a little of his own back by letting slip information that his superior obviously did not wish made public.

Dear Dooley. Thomas had banked on the fact the Irishman was never slow to pick up on a hint, and he hadn’t been disappointed. Dooley had sensed that Thomas wished Sir Peregrine to think he had found a soul mate, a fellow as greedy and ambitious as himself. Let Sir Peregrine think he “understood” him. Thomas felt sure it would serve to lower Sir Peregrine’s guard if the man were to believe he could measure the American co-conspirator with his own yardstick.

“But as I was saying, Totton,” Thomas continued quickly, after turning his back on Dooley, “it came upon me last night—rather suddenly, as I remember—that you and your brethren, in your zeal to undermine your own country, might just as easily apply to France as to America. Or both. With France, you have another ready market for your diverted goods and armaments. My president would not much care to see France built up, even if she has been our ally. Bonaparte is too unpredictable, too greedy for power.”

“There will be no dealings with the French,” Sir Peregrine stated firmly, rising to his feet, which left him a full, unimpressive head shorter than Thomas. “Sir Ralph would not countenance it!”

Sir Ralph. Now he knew who was in charge. This was almost too easy, Thomas decided. Sir Peregrine peeled like a grape, dispensing information almost without prodding, eager to show his superior knowledge. “Ah, yes,” he said, nodding, “you must mean Sir Ralph Harewood, our mutual friend at the Admiralty. You’re correct—he’s been doing a splendid job of managing your attempted treason thus far. My president is most impressed. Very well, Totton. I’ll suspend my suspicions for the moment. And now,” he said, stubbing out his cheroot in a marble dish that he sincerely hoped was dear to the heart of Sir Peregrine, I suggest you begin to bluster and steam at the ears as you show my assistant and me the door. We wouldn’t want Grouse to return to see us chatting like bosom chums, now would we? A too-congenial scene might raise suspicions.”

“What? We’re going to leave without the bread and cheese?” Dooley pushed himself to his feet, shaking his head. “Doesn’t seem fair somehow, boyo.”

”Little ever is in this life, Paddy,” Thomas told him as he waved his arm, inviting Dooley to precede him back through the maze of statues.

They had almost reached the double doors leading to the antechamber when the carved wooden panels were flung open unceremoniously and Miss Marguerite Balfour swept into the room like brilliant sunshine appearing after a summer storm. “Perry, where are you hiding in this mass of marble? You simply must come with me at once! I know we promised to meet tonight at Lady Sefton’s, but I have just this afternoon discovered the most delicious little bookstall in Haymarket and need your discerning eye to tell me if I have unearthed a heretofore unknown original manuscript or if the owner is attempting to gull me with a brilliant copy.”

She turned to Thomas and blighted him with her smile—a smile that told him she had only been ignoring him thus far because it suited her to do so and she had been aware of his presence all along. “Oh—hello, Mr. Donovan, what a pleasant surprise to see you again. Am I barging in on some dreadfully important conference? Forgive me, please. I’ll just take myself off, and you may continue uninterrupted. There you are, Perry, dear friend and mentor. I’ll just see myself out and then wait downstairs in my carriage with dearest Maisie.”

Marguerite had been beautiful last evening in her demure white gown. This afternoon she was glorious, dressed in a lemon yellow walking dress, a deeply green velvet Spencer flattering her narrow waist as well as her flushed cheeks. Her bonnet, a silly confection of straw and flowers and ribbons, a large bow tied fetchingly close below her left ear, was truly a crowning touch, perched as it was atop her glorious coppery curls.

Her bewitching green eyes were dancing with mischief, as if she had found amusement in some joke the rest of them had somehow failed to comprehend, and Thomas didn’t know if her obvious intelligence intrigued or infuriated him. He did know, either way, he was attracted to this fiery minx, and if it were to turn out she was his enemy, that knowledge would most certainly prove to quite ruin his day.

“No, no, Miss Balfour,” he said hastily, realizing he had been silent too long and quickly bowing over her offered hand. “Sir Peregrine and I have just now completed our meeting, and I was at the point of retiring to my rooms at the Pulteney Hotel to lick my wounds, as he is a most formidable adversary in this business of diplomatic fencing. You are right to seek his counsel on the manuscript you have unearthed, for I’m convinced Sir Peregrine’s opinion on any subject will be invaluable. God knows it certainly will be offered. Good day to you, Miss Balfour—Sir Peregrine. Come, Paddy. Introductions must wait for another day. We must be off and leave Sir Peregrine to his charming visitor.”

So saying, he bowed once more to Sir Peregrine and left the room, Dooley trailing in his wake. The door had barely closed behind them before the portly Irishman piped up, “So that’s the one with the Frenchie name, is it—the girl you were melting over last night? I take it all back, boyo, you were right to wonder about her. What’s she doing here, do you suppose?”

Thomas retrieved his hat and gloves from a small table in the antechamber and strode long-leggedly toward the staircase, his mind whirling as he attempted to make some sense of Marguerite’s unexpected appearance. “I don’t suppose to understand anything at all concerning Miss Balfour, save that she’s English to her toes—and the most delectable morsel I’ve ever seen,” he said, jamming the hat onto his head as he stepped out into the sunshine. “Tell me, Paddy—has my new suit of evening clothes arrived as yet? I believe I’ll be attending Lady Sefton’s ball this evening after all.”

“Feel a seduction coming over you, do you, m’fine boyo?” Dooley asked, hailing a passing hackney cab.

“Ah, Paddy, old friend, how well you know me.” Thomas’s teeth flashed white beneath his mustache as he bent his long frame and slid across the greasy leather seat in front of his friend. “Whoever said serving one’s country should be unremittingly serious work?”