A Masquerade in the Moonlight (13 page)

She could feel herself trembling, and feared her teeth would begin to chatter if he didn’t kiss her and get it over with. For once he’d kissed her she’d be cured of him, relieved of her ridiculous attraction for him, no longer afraid of dreaming of him as she had done last night. A wicked dream, full of strong arms and twining legs and hungry lips and dark longings, and one that—if Marguerite were to be so silly as to divulge it to Maisie—would result in a recital of sermons that would last a full month of Sundays. She had no time for sermons, or for dreams, or for kisses. She had a mission before her, and Thomas Joseph Donovan was getting in her way.

“For pity’s sake, don’t lecture me, Donovan!” she demanded fiercely, placing her hands on his shoulders and squeezing her eyes shut once more, bewildered and slightly afraid of the bizarre sensation of heat and, yes, even moisture between her legs. “Just
do
it!”

It would appear he was nothing if not obedient, for a moment later she could feel his mouth slanted against hers, warm and firm and infinitely pleasurable.

Her eyes shot open, widened with reaction, for some force akin to lightning had shot through her body in that instant.

Her throat felt tight, almost as if she were choking, yet she wasn’t choking.

She was
needing
.

Needing his arms around her, holding her so that she wouldn’t spin off the edge of the world.

Needing him to deepen the kiss, his possession, although she had no idea what that entailed.

Needing him to touch her, mold her, meld her to him, take her inside him even as she longed to have him inside her, a part of her, a new whole made of two disparate yet perfectly matched halves.

Somehow Marguerite had opened her mouth in response to her thoughts, and Thomas plunged his tongue between her lips, rubbing its tantalizing roughness against the sensitive roof of her mouth.

It felt so good.

His hand had left her thigh, to hold her at her waist, his long fingers spanning her along her spine, his thumb pressing into the soft skin of her belly.

So
very
good.

His right hand was... Oh, God, his hand; his
hand
.

Her nipple became a budding flower, straining against the fabric of her blouse, eager to lift itself to the nourishing sun of Thomas’s roving hand, hungry for the freedom to grow and blossom and come into the fullness of its splendor.

And then it was over, and she was clinging to him even as he clung to her, their heads close together, the both of them breathing heavily, as if they, rather than their mounts, had just run a long race.

“Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Thomas breathed close to her ear. “I thought... I imagined... but I never...
damn
.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away from him. “Little girl, you could prove to be a monstrous mass of trouble to a lonely American far from his own shores. Do you know that?”

“Not half the trouble you could be to me, Thomas Joseph Donovan,” Marguerite answered honestly, allowing her hands to slide from his shoulders, down the length of his arms, to his elbows, before finally, reluctantly, drawing away.

The pain of releasing him, of allowing the moment to pass into memory, was surely visible in her face, and would have betrayed her utterly. So she averted her head, picked up her gloves, and busied herself in easing them back onto her fingers. “I suggest you escort me back to Portman Square now, Mr. Donovan—at once, before someone comes along and my reputation gains itself another black mark in society’s copybook.”

When Thomas spoke again, which he did immediately, his voice was once more teasing, jaunty, as if to give the lie to his earlier remark, as if to prove he had not been at all affected by their kiss. Not
truly
, as she had been. “Your reputation. Ah, yes. I know all about that. Young ladies aren’t the only ones who talk out of turn. You’re known far and wide as the Autumn Miss—something about your penchant for being courted by gentlemen who will never see the summer of their lives again, I suppose. I wonder why you’re so interested in them. Even more so, I wonder—are you still so enamored of old men, Marguerite, now that you have tasted a young one?”

She still refused to look at him, or to further react to either his insult or his distressing, persistent interest in something that was none of his business. Why did he have to come to England? Why did his government have to send him to deal with two of the same men she was out to destroy? Why did she have to be so overwhelmingly attracted to him?

Could her world get any more complicated?

“We must go now, Mr. Donovan,” Marguerite said at last, refusing to be baited, then stood, feeling strangely dizzy as she walked back to Trickster, as if all the blood in her brain had somehow been transported to her feet—which it probably had, or else she wouldn’t have acted in such a reckless, dangerous manner. “And I did not give you permission to call me by my Christian name, Mr. Donovan!” she added lamely as she stopped beside the mare.

“You damn well gave me permission for nearly everything else,” Thomas told her as he boosted her into the saddle, then mounted his own horse before she could think of anything else to say that might finally succeed in shutting his infuriatingly frank mouth.

Together, in complete silence, they held the horses to a respectable trot on the short trip back to Portman Square.

Marguerite realized she now hated the quiet she had hoped for and felt as if the journey lasted three lifetimes.

Thomas dismounted first, asking the waiting groom to walk his horse in the square while he helped Miss Balfour down. “So what happens now, Marguerite?” he asked a moment later, looking up into her face as she remained seated on Trickster so that she couldn’t ignore his blue eyes, or his tanned skin, or that damn, insufferable mustache that had faintly abraded the tender skin above her upper lip.

“What happens now?” Marguerite repeated, frowning. “Grandfather won’t be announcing any banns at our church in Chertsey, if that’s what you mean. What do you expect will happen now?”

“I’ve been racking my brains for an answer to that question all the way back from the park. Do you propose we should pretend this morning never happened? To pretend the only thing that kept either of us from tearing off our clothes and making frenzied, impassioned love to each other was the fact we were in the middle of Hyde Park? Not that such a minor inconvenience would have stopped me for much longer if you had kept on mewling softly in your throat as my fingers explored the lovely contours of your extremely inviting body.”

“You’re
coarse
.” Marguerite whispered hoarsely, feeling her cheeks flame with embarrassed color. She knew she had behaved like an absolute wanton, but it was not his position to point it out to her. “Coarse, and vulgar, and common, and—and
American
. I never want to see you again.”

She froze as she felt his hand slide beneath the hem of her divided skirt, his fingertips running from the top of her boot, up and over her knee, and onto the bare skin of her thigh. No one had ever touched her so intimately. No one save Thomas, who had touched her breast. Her breast! Dear God! Her
breast
! And now—now her leg! As if she belonged to him, her body if not her soul his possession.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t react, couldn’t slap at him with her riding crop, couldn’t admonish him without causing a scene. No one in the square could see what he was doing—not even the groom. But she knew.
Oh, God
. She knew. She knew, and she was not about to make a single move to discourage him. How could she—when the feeling was so delicious, so dangerously delightful, that she never, ever wanted him to stop?

His blue eyes had gone as dark and stormy as the sea in winter. “Never see me again? Are you quite sure, Marguerite? Never is such a long, long time. A long, cold, and
lonely
time.”

Marguerite closed her eyes, knowing she was wrong, that what he was doing was wrong, that what they had done together was wrong—and that she’d die a thousand deaths a day if they’d never do it again.

Recognize your shortcomings,
she heard her father whisper in her ear,
and learn to forgive them if you are ever to be entirely happy. At the same time, recognize the failings, the flaws, the weaknesses of others, and use them to your advantage. Unless you love, little Marguerite. When you love, you overlook everything
....

Marguerite felt tears stinging her eyes.
But I don’t love him, Papa,
she argued silently.
You can’t love what you don’t know, or what you have reason to mistrust, to fear. You can only hope
.

She wet her lips, for her mouth had gone dry as the coal dust that lay on the cobblestones. “Not tomorrow,” she told Thomas quietly, mentally reviewing her plans for the next two days, then recklessly giving in to what she could only consider a heretofore unknown, yet potentially fatal flaw in her character. “Saturday. Just after midnight. I am to have an early evening and Grandfather will be with friends at his club until well-past two. I—I will meet you behind the mansion, just in front of the stables. We can talk then.”

His smile lit her entire world, and she hated him for it. Hated herself for it. “
Talk
, Mr. Donovan—so you can stop grinning like an ape, thank you. And until then, I would appreciate it greatly if you pretended you did not know I exist.”

“Two days. Two long, lonely, anticipation-filled days. Ah,
aingeal
, now you’ve gone and done it,” he told her as he withdrew his hand from beneath her skirt and lifted her smoothly to the ground, his teasing Irish brogue turning his voice to music and her bones to jelly. “You’ve gone and proved I’m not wrong to love you so.”

Something inside Marguerite snapped, bringing her to her senses, and she no longer wanted him anywhere but gone so she could be alone with her conflicting emotions. “Go to hell, Donovan. What’s between us has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of love, and we both know it,” she bit out before brushing past him and all but running up the shallow marble steps to the front door of the mansion. She slammed the door behind her and leaned her body against it, feeling almost physically ill.

“Damn you, Thomas Joseph Donovan,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I’ll have to move my plans ahead more than is safe, no thanks to you, and the devil with your negotiations with Totton and Mappleton. And although I may want you with every breath that’s in me, God help me—you’d better not get in my way!”

People who make no noise are dangerous.

— Jean de la Fontaine

W
ell, look who’s here—and only two hours late. It’s a good messenger you’d be, Tommie, if I was to send you looking for Death.”

Thomas stripped off his hacking jacket and aimed it at Dooley, then headed for the drinks table. “I was,” he began, then threw back two fingers of whiskey before turning to look at his friend, “
pleasurably
detained, Paddy. Do I have time for a quick wash and brush-up before we meet with Harewood? I smell all over like sweaty horse.”

“And that I noticed, boyo. Horse, and mayhap just a tad like a randy goat,” Dooley sniped, throwing himself into a chair and glaring at Thomas. “We’re to meet with that fella, Sir Ralph, at someplace called Gentleman Jackson’s in Bond Street in little over an hour. He sent a note ‘round this morning after you took yourself off a-wooing. Now, why d’you suppose he changed the meeting place, that’s what I’m after asking you? And don’t you go flinging that shirt on the floor!”

Thomas looked owlishly at the shirt and neck cloth he had just stripped off, shrugged, and tossed both onto a chair. “Gentleman Jackson’s? Really, Paddy?” He motioned for Dooley to follow him into the bedroom.

The water in the pitcher on the washstand was cold, but Thomas poured some into the bowl anyway, then plunged his face into it, splashing some on his neck and back, and coming up like a hound out of a pond, shaking his head to rid himself of the excess water. He soaped his face, hands, and chest in advance of subjecting himself to the cold water again before blindly reaching out a hand for the towel Dooley was sure to place in it. Dear Dooley. He was better than a valet, if underpaid for the job. But a hired servant might hear something not meant for his ears.

“Ah, that’s better. Thanks, Paddy,” Thomas said, dropping the towel and accepting the shirt his friend was holding out to him. “You’re going to enjoy this,” he told him as he searched in the cabinet for a fresh neck cloth. He tied it without looking into the mirror over the washstand, so that it hung loosely around his neck, giving him the air of a man who knew his linen should be clean, but had better things to do with his life than spend his time primping. And, he also knew, he was young enough and handsome enough to carry off such sartorial nonchalance. He ran his brushes through his hair, then smoothed his mustache with his thumb and index finger.

Less than ten minutes had passed since Dooley had greeted him at the door.

“Gentleman Jackson’s is a boxing saloon, Paddy. I’ve heard all about the place. For a fee, any gentleman of ability can step into the ring with the retired English champion for the honor of having his nose broken by the great man. They also square off with each other, which I admit must be a treat to watch. Do you suppose Harewood will challenge me to a bout?”