A Masquerade in the Moonlight

Chapter 6

Thy complexion is black, says the raven.

— Irish Saying

“Here we are, Marguerite. Number Seven, and a whacking great pile of blunt I paid down for a single season, too,” Sir Gilbert grumbled, lowering his considerable bulk into a chair at the back of the box so that he could sleep through the performance without being gawked at by the rest of the company in attendance at the Royal Opera House. “How many flights of stairs did we climb, do you think, Twelve? And I still don’t know why I’m here. Got Mrs. Billings. Got this Georgianna gel meetin’ you here. Can’t imagine why I’m needed, especially since I can’t stand the sort of caterwauling they torture you with in this place.”

Marguerite motioned for Mrs. Billings to seat herself and then bent to kiss her grandfather’s forehead. “Now, now, you lovable old curmudgeon, calm down before you do yourself an injury,” she teased before taking her own chair at the front of the box. And why shouldn’t she be up front—for she knew she was more than presentable in her mauve silk, her hair piled high on her head and woven through with pearls. She looked, or so Maisie had told her less than an hour ago, just like the sweet young lady she wasn’t. “Perhaps you’ll be lucky tonight, Grandfather, and there will be a riot in the pits. Shall I buy us some oranges, so we can launch them at the stage if the caterwauling upsets you overmuch?”

Mrs. Billings, her watery blue eyes wide, leaned forward to whisper to Marguerite. “You mustn’t do any such thing, my dear, much as I’m convinced you are only teasing poor Sir Gilbert and cannot really wish to take part in any such debauchery—if it were to occur, which, of course, any young lady of breeding could only consider to be a deplorable exhibit of the lamentable lack of manners in today’s young gentlemen.”

“Oh, quite, Billie,” Marguerite answered, longing to strangle the woman, who had probably never indulged in a single moment of frivolity in her entire life. But, as Mrs. Billings was as stupid as she was humorless, she made a fitting chaperone, for Marguerite didn’t have time to waste outwitting the woman. Not while she was juggling four plans in her head at once. Four separate yet connected plans—and one maddeningly attractive American. “I was only teasing. Grandfather, did I mention we’re being joined by Lord Mappleton this evening?”

Sir Gilbert sat forward quickly, nearly toppling from his chair. “Awful Arthur? God’s teeth, gel, whatever for? I thought you was done with old men—not that he’ll be breaking down my door, begging for your hand. Holding out for a rich wife, that’s Arthur. Held out so long, nobody’ll have him! Now what’s the matter with that Donovan fella? All right, he’s an American, and with Irish dirt clinging to his boots into the bargain—but at least he’s not got one foot stuck in his dotage and the other already hovering over the grave. You—Mrs. Billings, or whatever your name is—what am I paying you for? Didn’t I tell you to have a talk with the child?”

Mrs. Billings sat up very straight in her chair and inclined her head toward Sir Gilbert. “I most certainly have discussed Miss Balfour’s penchant for favoring older gentlemen,” she said, her voice quiet and slightly pained. “However, as your granddaughter has informed me she will seek my advice if ever she desires it and will most probably do me an injury if I persist in my attempts to lead her down the correct paths, I have held my counsel.”

Sir Gilbert gave a crack of laughter. “What did you say, gel? Did you threaten to put a toad in her bed as you did with one of your nannies?”

Marguerite kept her eyes on the gallery below Box Seven, smiling as she responded to the question. “How you wound me, Grandfather,” she said, feigning insult. “I’m a woman grown now. I haven’t attempted anything so immature in ages.”

“She threatened to insert a notice in all the newspapers that I had become betrothed to the second cousin of the Maharaja of Rampur and would shortly be leaving for India to take up my duties as the man’s fourth wife,” Mrs. Billings said, her voice thin and slightly mean. “She is sometimes not a nice child, your granddaughter. I would have perished of embarrassment.”

“Nonsense, Billie,” Marguerite responded, opening her fan and beginning to wave it in front of her, for the heat in the building was stifling. “I would never be so lucky. You will doubtless live forever, never to leave my side until we are both quite old.”

“You will marry one day soon,” Mrs. Billings pointed out, hope coloring her usually drab voice as she settled back in her chair once more, “and I will expect a glowing letter of recommendation to soothe me as I apply for another position of employment. I have earned it, even more so than when I was squiring that unfortunate Miss Linguist about the city last Season. She may have ended wed to a third son, but then what can one expect of a girl with a squint?”

“Done! You’ll have your recommendation, if that will get us quit of you—but not until we have her safely bracketed. I promised her mother, you know. Marguerite, my pet, I had no idea you were so burdened with this woman. Remind me to buy you something pretty someday soon,” Sir Gilbert announced, banging his cane on the floor a single time for emphasis. “Now, with that settled, where is this Georgianna person you’ve told me about? You say I know her, and I’ve racked my brain all of the afternoon without remembering.”

Marguerite pinned a bright smile on her face. “As I told you, Grandfather, Georgianna Rollins is the daughter of an old school chum of Mama’s—or at least that’s what she wrote in the note she sent round the other morning. As far as I know, you’ve never met her, and neither have I, which is why I suggested we meet at the theater. If we don’t like her, we can shed her quickly enough after the performance, but I felt we owed Mama to be courteous to the girl. Who knows? You may see her and remember her mother or even having met Miss Rollins herself. Just, please, Grandfather, be good, and don’t ask any embarrassing questions.”

“I’m always on my best behavior, gel, which is more than I can say for some people sitting here tonight. But, Marguerite, I have to tell you something. I can’t see the point of meeting people I already know and haven’t seen the need to remember, and I don’t have the patience at my age to meet new people I might not want to remember. Ah, never mind. This must be the gel now.”

Marguerite, realizing that she was more than a little nervous now that another step of her plan for revenge was actually at the point of being commenced, steeled herself not to overreact and rose to meet the young woman who had just come into the box, her shadow of a chaperone quickly seating herself beside Mrs. Billings in the second row.

The young woman who had entered was slightly taller than Marguerite, and most modestly dressed in a simple long-sleeved ivory gown that reached from her satin slippers to the lace ruching and quantity of Berlin floss at the base of her long, slim throat—along with an extremely lovely diamond necklace. Her hair was blond—an exceedingly fashionable color this season—and her pale face was just short of pretty, for her brows were very straight and significantly fuller than could be considered flattering, and her jaw possessed more steel than gentle curves. But she was rather lovely in her own way.

Even surprising.

“You must be Georgianna!” Marguerite trilled, racing up the two shallow steps to envelop the young woman in a welcoming embrace. “How good it is to meet you, and you’ve found us in this immense building without any trouble at all. How utterly brilliant of you.”

“Nope. Never laid m’peepers on either the hen or the chick,” Sir Gilbert grumbled from behind them. “I may be old, but I’m not the sort to have forgotten those eyebrows—a lapse that I’d have to consider to be something only a whisker short of remarkable. Here, here, Marguerite, let the poor thing go before you crush her. There’s little enough air in this box as it is now that Mappleton’s standing here, blocking the doorway. Besides, I don’t want to talk to him.”

“What? What? Oh, you’re funning me, aren’t you, Sir Gilbert?” Lord Mappleton asked, pushing himself into the box, for the area was becoming rather crowded. “Always were one for the jokes, as I remember—those times I met you when we was all visiting down at Laleham Hall. Good times we had then, didn’t we—until that day last year when your dear daughter... yes... well...” His voice trailed off as he lifted a hand to his mouth and indulged in a fit of coughing most probably caused, Marguerite decided, when he’d nearly choked on his babbling tongue.

“Rhubarb and calomel,” Mrs. Billings prescribed, earning herself a corroborating nod from Miss Rollins’s chaperone. “Only thing for a cough like that.”

“Billie, please,” Marguerite said, glaring at the woman before rushing into a dizzying round of introductions that ended with Lord Mappleton being seated to the left of Georgianna, while Marguerite took up her own chair on the other side of the narrow center aisle. “Georgianna,” she prompted as she caught out Lord Mappleton staring at the way Miss Rollins’s thigh pressed intimately, daringly against his own, “are you enjoying your sojourn in our fair metropolis? Have you seen the sights?”

Georgianna smiled, not at Marguerite, but at Lord Mappleton. “Alas,” she said in a high, faintly affected voice, batting her eyelashes at the man, “I have not been more than a few blocks from our rented house in Brook Street. I so wish I could see some of the city before I am forced to return home next week. My uncle, with whom I have lived since my dear parents were run down in that horrid carriage accident, is now poorly himself. I cannot bear to stay from his side for too long, and not simply because I am the sole heir to his considerable fortune. I am only here because he insisted, dear, generous man that he is. You see, Uncle said I should see something of life before putting on my caps.”

“What? What? Your caps? You’re far too young and beautiful to think of any such nonsense,” Lord Mappleton protested, somehow having become possessed of Miss Rollins’s left hand, which he was fondling with more than friendly interest as his fingers toyed with the large pearl and diamond ring on her second finger. “And I should be greatly honored to take you up tomorrow—show you a bit of the sights and all that rubbish. What? What? I say, is that a tear I have spied out in your eye, Miss Rollins? No, no! I won’t hear of it. I am totally unmanned by female tears. Never could abide them without my own heart fairly breaking. You must be happy, my dear, for your smile is like that of the angels, and we mere mortals cannot survive without it.”

Marguerite rolled her eyes at this bit of flattery directed at Miss Rollins. Lord Mappleton, in her eyes, had become the living definition of “an old fool.” Her father would have been pleased, although not even he could have predicted his lordship should have grown so pathetically eager to court young—not to mention, rich—females as he edged closer to a pitiful old age. Why, Lord Mappleton must be near to dropping onto his knees right here in the box to thank the good Lord that the rich Miss Rollins found him attractive. In any event, it was fairly apparent Georgianna already held the fortune-sniffing man in the palm of her hand.

“Oh, Lord Mappleton, how above all that is wonderful it is to meet such a gentleman as yourself,” Georgianna trilled, beaming at him as his usually florid face went a deep shade of scarlet. “And such a sweet, handsome man as well. I am overcome, your lordship, truly I am.”

Marguerite wrinkled her brow and inclined her head in admiration. She hadn’t thought it possible for Miss Rollins to sound more singularly cloying and stupid than Lord Mappleton, but she had done it. Why, Marguerite could almost hear the banns being announced.

“Please, please,” Lord Mappleton insisted, dabbing at Miss Rollins’s damp cheeks with his own handkerchief, obviously pleased that the young lady’s assessment of his character and appearance coincided with his own. “You must not be so formal. Call me Arthur.”

“Oh, I couldn’t, your lordship... I shouldn’t... oh, but how condescending of you, your lordship—I mean, Arthur.” Her eyelashes came into play once more as she beat them furiously in Lord Mappleton’s direction. “And in return you simply must call me Georgianna.”

“God’s teeth! Did you ever hear such sickening drivel?” Sir Gilbert boomed from the shadows, echoing Marguerite’s silently expressed sentiments exactly. “Nobody told me the farce was to take place in our box. Marguerite? I hope you’re happy now, gel, because I’m quite put off my feed, and probably will be for a sennight.”

Poor Grandfather, not to know what is happening, yet be forced to witness it. She’d have to make it up to him somehow. It seemed to Marguerite Lord Mappleton’s tickle had invaded her own throat, and she turned away to cough into her fist just as the first performance of the evening was about to begin. Relaxed, and silently congratulating herself for the initial success of her plan for his lordship, she deliberately turned her concentration to the stage.

That relaxation lasted only until the end of the first act and the appearance in the box of Thomas Joseph Donovan—whom she had distinctly instructed to stay away from her until tomorrow night. Couldn’t anyone be trusted anymore? The man was like a jack-in-the-box, showing up without warning everywhere she went. She turned to glare at him as he entered without invitation, hoping to depress his pretensions without saying a word. The last thing she needed was his too-discerning presence.

“Sir Gilbert!” Thomas exclaimed, bowing to her grandfather while succeeding in winking at Marguerite at the same time. So much for insulting the man. His hide was obviously much too thick to be punctured by something so tame as a pointed stare. “My friend, Mr. Patrick Dooley, and I thought we espied you out from our position in the pits,” he said, straightening. “So good to see you again, sir. You too, Mappleton. I perceive you’re keeping your reputation for being a success with the ladies intact. Every time I see you, it’s with another beautiful young creature dangling from your arm—and such lovely jewels she’s wearing. Why, they dazzle the eyes! I envy you, your lordship, truly. Good evening, Miss—ah! I believe we haven’t as yet gotten around to introductions. Miss Balfour, if I remember correctly, recent practice has made you an acknowledged expert in this category?”

Marguerite gritted her teeth. Obviously Thomas wasn’t about to go away, and she had no other choice but to introduce him to everyone, a task she performed with more civility than grace, doing her best to avoid looking at him, for he appeared simply splendid in his evening clothes.

And his hands, Marguerite remembered, watching him take snuff, her breathing somehow no longer an involuntary act, but one she had to concentrate on in order not to sigh audibly. Yes, he had the most intriguing hands—square, strong, long-fingered, callused, and yet scrupulously clean. Would she ever forget the touch of those calluses on the tender skin of her thigh? Would she ever wish to forget or ever stop longing to feel that touch again? That touch and the nebulous “more” that her senses told her still awaited discovery.

“Lord Mappleton, I’ve just had the happy notion of adjourning from this crowded box for a few minutes to seek out a bit of exercise and some refreshment with the ladies,” she heard Thomas suggest, his words penetrating her brain only muzzily, as if heard from a distance, for she had been concentrating more on his full-lipped mouth than on what he was saying.

“What a lovely idea!” Georgianna trilled before Marguerite could muster a negative reply meant to cut off Thomas at the knees for his insufferable suggestion. “I should adore above all things the opportunity to stroll the area with dear Arthur by my side, for I should then be the envy of every woman in attendance this evening.” She hopped to her feet, pulling Lord Mappleton out of his chair, and preceded him into the aisle. “Marguerite?” she asked, fluttering those eyelashes once more, “you will join us, won’t you? I fear I could not walk with dear Arthur unless we were properly accompanied.”

“I’d rather not leave my grandfather,” Marguerite ground out from between clenched teeth, wondering if Miss Georgianna Rollins wasn’t being too obvious in her intention to impress Lord Mappleton with her rapidly growing admiration. Just as quickly she amended that thought, knowing his lordship had no problem believing every woman in the world most naturally and inevitably adored him.

“Oh, go with them, Marguerite,” Sir Gilbert ordered, readjusting his bulk in the uncomfortable chair. “Let them bill and coo somewheres else for a space. Embarrassing, that’s what it is, watching the pair of them. I’m only surprised he hasn’t pulled out a glass to inspect those stones hanging around her neck, not to say he’s sniffing after a fortune or anything. No, no. I’d never say that. Think it, yes, but never say it! Ha! Mrs. Billings—hand me that pillow before you go back to chattering with your new friend. I’m going to sleep, and damn the lot of you!”

“Good idea, Sir Gilbert,” Dooley seconded cheerfully, seating himself beside the man. “I could use a bit of a nap m’self. Been a long day, one way or another. Go along, Tommie. I’ll stay here with these nice ladies,” he ended, nodding his head in the direction of Mrs. Billings and the second chaperone. “You won’t be minding it if I was to snore once and again, now would you, ladies? You can give me a hit, like my sweet Bridget does, if I get too loud.”

Sir Gilbert gave a hoot of laughter and sat forward, peering at Dooley. “Mayhap I won’t nap after all. Irish, ain’t you? I thought so. Know any good stories, like your friend Donovan? Marguerite! What are you doing sitting there looking like some dashed waxworks dummy? Don’t say I’ve embarrassed you with my plain speech, because it won’t fadge. You’re the one brought me here, remember? Should have known I wouldn’t be happy about it. Go on now—take yourself off for a bit and let us old men talk.”

Torn between the knowledge that Georgianna had put forth exactly the sort of idea she herself should have fostered and the intriguing mental image of how Thomas Joseph Donovan’s grinning, knowing, American face would lose its triumphant look if she were to pull him forward, launching his insufferable body over the railing and into the pit, Marguerite only nodded and climbed the shallow steps that led out into the hallway without asking for assistance, brushing past Thomas as if he were some vile creature she could not bear to touch.

She had taken no more than three quick steps on the vividly patterned carpeting when Thomas took hold of her elbow, slowing her pace. “Aren’t you going to tell me you’re glad to see me, aingeal? I’ve been longing for another sight of your pretty face ever since leaving you this morning.”

She smiled at a passerby, then attempted, unsuccessfully, to pull her arm free of Thomas’s grip. “I told you I didn’t wish to see you again until tomorrow night. I’ve had hounds that took direction better than you, Donovan.”

“But none half so adoring as I, I’m convinced,” he responded silkily, so that she longed to batter him around the head and shoulders with her reticule. “Now stop frowning, or someone will think we’re having a lover’s quarrel. Besides, aren’t you going to ask me about my very painful injury, suffered since last I saw you?”

Marguerite had seen the wrapping around his right hand, but had refused to care. “Not unless it might prove fatal. If that were the case, I should be prepared to have a fireworks launching by way of celebration. Is it a life-threatening injury?” she asked him with a blighting smile. “And, please, Donovan, I must beg you don’t tease me with false hopes.”

“I’ll not be dying anytime soon, darlin’,” he answered, helping her to thread her way through the crush of people surrounding a table where refreshments were being served, Lord Mappleton and Georgianna following behind, his lordship asking some rather pointed questions about the size of her uncle’s fortune. “It’s only a bruise, I think, although painful enough. Would you wish to kiss the hurt away for me, the way my sainted mother did whenever I scraped myself?”

“Thank you, no. I’d much rather throw myself off the roof of this building,” Marguerite answered quietly, still smiling at acquaintances who were moving about in all their jewels and finery, eager to see and be seen by the rest of the ton. “But, just out of curiosity, what did you do to hurt yourself—put your hand somewhere else it didn’t belong and have someone swat it with a mallet?”

“Nothing so exciting. I merely punched a man.”

Marguerite stopped in her tracks, to look up at him inquiringly. Georgianna and Lord Mappleton were still talking nineteen to the dozen behind her, but she had ceased to listen. “Punched a man? Hit a man?” she asked, suddenly feeling chilled in the overheated room. The blockhead shouldn’t be let loose without a keeper! How could he come to their country as an emissary from his government and then go around bashing people? “Who? Why?”

“The Earl of Laleham,” Thomas told her, his tone maddeningly calm and unconcerned, “and I did it because he asked me to. Very agreeable fellow, the earl, and although I haven’t talked to him since leaving Gentleman Jackson’s this afternoon—where I was the guest of Sir Ralph Harewood—I did have some flowers and a container of gruel sent round to his residence. But he may not appreciate my gifts for, now that I’ve had time to think on the thing, he may have asked me to spar with him because he overheard what I said about my deep affection for you.”

Marguerite was no longer chilled. She was icy cold. Thomas had hit the Earl of Laleham? He had milled down William Renfrew? William knew that Donovan was courting her—if anyone could call his outlandish assault on her emotions courting? First Arthur, then Perry, and now Ralph and William. Did he know about Stinky as well? How could he have stumbled into such a viper’s nest? Dear God! Was the American a total lunatic? She looked up at him warily as the remainder of what he had said penetrated her brain. “Gruel? Donovan—don’t just stand there. Explain yourself, you grinning jackanapes.”

Thomas grimaced as he scratched a spot just below his right ear with his bandaged hand. “Why, I rather suppose I broke the man’s jaw,” he said, then grinned, so that she longed to punch him herself. “I at least cracked it. Paddy said I gave him a ‘wisty castor,’ whatever that is. But it was all in sport.”

“So is bear baiting, or so I’m told,” Marguerite spat out, not caring that anyone close by might hear her. “Of all the stupid, paper-skulled, idiotic, dangerous—Donovan, no matter how important you think your mission in England is to your government, I suggest you leave here at once. Pack up your belongings and stow yourself away on the next ship heading to Philadelphia. It served you once, it may save you now.”

“Run away? And leave you, my darlin’? Impossible.” He began to steer her toward a narrow, twisting corridor, away from the crush of bodies.

“Wait!” she protested, realizing what he was about. “We can’t leave Lord Mappleton and Georgianna.”

He continued along as if her words had meant nothing, taking her farther from the light of the chandeliers and the safety of numbers. “Why shouldn’t we leave the two lovebirds alone? That is what you’re doing tonight, isn’t it? Setting his lecherous, money-mad lordship up with your little blond beauty—not that I can say I’m overly enamored of her eyebrows. You see, I already know you invited him here this evening. Quite the matchmaker, aren’t you?”

Marguerite planted her feet firmly, refusing to move another inch. She was human enough to acknowledge she was thrilled Donovan was handsome, intelligent, and exciting—but did he have to be so bloody smart to have immediately seen what Lord Mappleton could not? “You are one for imagining things, aren’t you, Donovan? Why ever would you think that I would have any interest at all in throwing Arthur and Georgianna—a young woman who foisted herself on me for the first time only this evening, by the way, and whom I am not quite sure I like—at each other’s heads?”

“I don’t know, darlin’. For the sport of the thing?” Thomas suggested coolly, stepping closer to her as she backed up until she was against the wall, figuratively as well as literally. He tipped up her chin with his crooked index finger, then rested his other hand against the wall beside her head, effectively blocking her only avenue of escape. “There couldn’t be any other reason, could there?”

Another reason? Damn him! Another man—any other man—would be content to see her as a silly matchmaker. Why did he have to look deeper? Marguerite suppressed a shudder born in reaction to Thomas’s closeness—both to her and to the truth. “You can be excessively disagreeable, Donovan,” she told him, shifting her eyes rapidly from side to side as she attempted to look into his without allowing him to see into hers and read the sudden apprehension she felt.

“But you love me anyway, don’t you?” he drawled, his teeth very white beneath his mustache.

He was so close to her. So very close. She was having trouble thinking, difficulty pretending. Was that what happened to people who wove a web of deceptions—they reached a stage where they could no longer recognize or remember the truth? “On the contrary. With very little urging, I could learn to loathe you with some intensity.”

“Liar,” he said, his voice husky as he lowered his head toward hers. “We’re alike, you and I, so I know when you’re not telling the truth. From that first night, Marguerite, we’ve known each other, been drawn to each other. Why don’t you simply admit it? I have. You couldn’t wait until tomorrow night to see me again, any more than I could wait to see you. And now that we’re together you can’t wait for me to hold you, to kiss you, to—”

“Of all the conceited, insufferable—” Marguerite dislodged his finger with a defiant toss of her head. She looked both right and left, assuring herself no one else was in the hallway, and they were not in danger of being discovered. And what if they were drawn to each other? He was right. She had lied to him earlier, lied to herself, believing that she hadn’t been longing to see him, to have him near her, mouthing blatant lies telling of his “love” for her, even allowing him to glimpse her as she went about her business—and glorying in the risk of discovery.

Was that so terrible?

No.

It was exciting.

He was exciting, and she may as well admit to it.

“Well?” she questioned him in exasperation when he continued to stand there, grinning down at her as if he knew just what she was thinking. “I don’t have all night for this nonsense, Donovan. Are you going to kiss me—or are you merely going to talk about it?”

“Patience, aingeal.” She watched, entranced, as Thomas’s smile disappeared, leaving his expression solemn, his eyes heavy-lidded and intense. “‘Though I am always in haste...’” She heard him through the rush of blood in her ears as he quoted John Wesley in, to her, a most deliciously blasphemous way, “‘... I am never in a hurry.’ You’ll learn that when I first make love to you. And trust me, dearest Marguerite, I will make love to you. Long and slow and delicious love to you.”

And then, before she could think of anything clever to say to deflate his arrogance, he pushed himself away from the wall and offered her his arm, leaving her to realize she had been maneuvered into all but begging for his kiss, just to be rejected.

“Now, come along, Miss Balfour,” she heard him add as she fought down her rapidly flaring anger. She had shown him too much as it was; she could not afford to hand him yet another weapon by revealing her terrible, debilitating temper. “I’ve promised your grandfather some lemonade,” he continued. “Besides, I’m looking forward to the second act of the amusing little romance being played out between Lord Mappleton and the so accommodating Miss Eyebrows. You have an odd way of amusing yourself. Tell me, what sorts of meddling mischief do you have planned for Sir Peregrine and your other aged admirers—or are you going to make me guess?”

So much for good intentions and notions of self-preservation! Marguerite’s wrath caused her tongue to ignore the warnings of her brain. “I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re talking about—and I hope William lops off your head and has it pickled!” she declared in all sincerity. Then, ignoring his proffered arm, she stomped past him, back the way they had come, vowing never, ever to speak to the man again!