A Masquerade in the Moonlight (20 page)

Totton frowned, then slowly his features cleared. “She has well-lined pockets, I imagine?” he inquired, shaking his head.

“Why, yes, I believe so. She mentioned a wealthy guardian in the country, and her diamonds were
most
impressive. Really lovely.”

Totton spread his hands, palms up, as if to indicate that he had uncovered the source of any confusion. “There you have it, my dear. Arthur would fall top over tails in love with any woman of fortune who so much as vaguely encouraged his suit—which, might I insert, no woman has done in more than a score of years. She is doubtless a rich tradesman’s offshoot in search of marrying a title. Will that overblown fool never grow up? Say no more, my dear. I shall handle things from here.”

Marguerite held out her hand, laying it on Totton’s forearm. “Such a good friend you are, to all of us. You won’t press him too hard, will you, Perry? I mean, Arthur is—as you yourself have just said—still a child in many ways. If you tell him
not
to see this Georgianna creature again he might persist in his acquaintance simply because you warned him off.”

“You have a point, my dear,” Totton responded, patting her hand. “And you’re a good friend. I’ll keep a close eye on our overage Lothario and step in only if things look serious. Money or not, we cannot have Arthur wedding anyone who smells even remotely of the shop! Ah,” he said, looking to his left to see they were once more entering Portman Square. “Here you are, my dear, home again, safe and dry. I should come in and speak with Sir Gilbert for a moment, save that I have an important appointment later today in Richmond. Government business,” he whispered confidentially. “Vastly important government business.”

Marguerite kissed Totton’s cheek after he had helped her to the flagstones. “I cannot tell you how much safer I feel, how much safer all of England feels, with you and Arthur and Perry holding the reins on the King’s business.”

And then she left him there on the flagway and hurried inside to rinse her mouth.

Thomas stood off in the corner of the large room, an untouched drink in his hand, watching Lord Chorley win hand after hand against his opponent, a crafty-looking gentleman of indeterminate age whose streak of bad luck would have long ago reduced a lesser man to tears.

Thomas had been surprised at first Lord Chorley would not be suspicious of his good luck, but then he remembered the old Irish saying that fit his lordship like a fool’s cap:
The pig does not look up to see where the acorns are falling from.

Not that the stakes were so very high, for they were not. It was just the sheer number of hands the seemingly down-at-the-heels gambler Lord Chorley faced lost over the course of two hours. No one could be that unlucky.

Thomas and Dooley had followed Lord Chorley from his mansion in Grosvenor Square to the ramshackle gaming hell on the fringes of Piccadilly, amazed his lordship would lower himself to gambling with such an obviously common creature in such an equally common establishment. This was a place, Thomas was sure, greenheads flocked to from the country, eager to be stripped of their quarterly allowance. It wasn’t the sort of venue a peer of the realm would seek out—especially not a friend of the Prince Regent’s.

But then, Thomas also imagined, a man with dreams of winning and little money to lose might choose to play where no one he knew could see him.

“We’ve been here for close on to three hours, Tommie, skulking in corners so as not to be seen. Are we going to stand here all the afternoon, our feet stuck to this filthy floor? My Bridget would have taken a mop to the place long since.” Dooley said, stifling a yawn. “And the place reeks of gin.”

“Quiet, Paddy,” Thomas warned, stepping even deeper into the shadows and pulling the Irishman along with him. “Chorley and his friend are leaving now. Just stay here a minute, and then we’ll follow.”

“Why? We already know where he lives. Followed him here from there, didn’t we? There’s a precious lot of sense outside your head, Tommie, do you know that?”

“Not Chorley, Paddy,” Thomas said, starting toward the door once it had closed behind his lordship’s back. “I want to follow the other one. There’s something not quite right about the man.”

“If you’re talking about the sad state of his coat, then I agree with you,” Dooley said, threading his way through the tables behind Thomas. “I think he’s turned the collar and cuffs three times, which is twice more than Bridget turns the kiddies’ when they start to fray.”

Once out in the street, Thomas saw the hapless gambler hail a hackney cab and quickly flagged down another for Dooley and himself. “Paddy,” he said, once they were squashed together on the greasy leather seat, “why do you suppose a man who can fuzz a card as well as our friend of the ugly coat would deliberately lose hand after hand to a far inferior opponent?”

“You’re bamming me!” Dooley swiveled around on the seat to stare at Thomas. “He was losing money back there like a leaky bucket loses water—but
on purpose?
Why?”

“That’s a first-rate question, Paddy,” Thomas responded, leaning out the side of the hackney to make sure his driver was following the correct cab as it made its way toward Mayfair. “Almost as good a question as to wonder why Lord Chorley, an intimate of the Prince Regent’s, is gambling for such low stakes when he could be losing his blunt at White’s or Boodle’s or in any other more pleasant surroundings. Anyone would think he’s at the edge of ruin and desperately trying to recoup his fortune out of sight of his cronies. You did notice his nondescript clothing, didn’t you, Paddy, and the fact he arrived at the gaming hall in a hired coach? I only wish that I could have seen his partner’s eyes, but he kept them well hidden beneath that leather visor, and then that brimmed hat he slapped on his head the moment he quit the table. Eyes tell you a lot, you know.”

Dooley shook his head. “I don’t understand, boyo, and I’m not about to lie and say I do. The devil fly away with the man’s eyes. And so what if Lord Chorley is pockets to let? What does that have to do with us?”

“Precious little, I suppose, except to show why he might be interested in a spot of treason meant to bring down his own government,” Thomas admitted, knowing he was still operating through instinct and not out of any real knowledge of what he was seeking. “But he’s also one of the four—five, if, we include Lord Death—I’ve counted among Marguerite’s aged beaus. We’ve already deduced she’s trying to put a spoke in Lord Mappleton’s wheels—and don’t start arguing with me again on that head, Paddy, because I
know
I’m right—so it’s possible there might be something in the air for Lord Stinky as well. Ah—just as I thought.”

Dooley peered out to see the hackney turning into one of the squares. “Just as you thought? What did you just think? It’s a bleeding pity, but I don’t fathom you anymore, Tommie, I swear I don’t.”

“Neither do I, Paddy,” Thomas admitted, frowning. “Neither do I. But this is Portman Square, and if that hackney doesn’t pull up outside Sir Gilbert’s mansion, I’ll buy you that walking stick you were drooling over in Bond Street yesterday.”

The hackney didn’t stop directly in front of the mansion. It halted a short way away, and the gambler of the frayed collar and cuffs alighted, then disappeared down an alleyway, in the direction of Sir Gilbert’s servant’s entrance.

“Well, I’ll be damned for a tinker!” Dooley exclaimed. “Tommie, I think you’re onto something here. I don’t pretend to know what—but you’re sure as check onto
something
.”

“Thank you, Paddy,” Thomas said, motioning for the driver to move away. “And now I’d like a change of clothes before we ride off to Richmond to break bread with our small group of traitors.”

“Good enough, boyo,” Dooley said, settling himself comfortably. “And I’ll take the cane with the gold knob, just as you promised. It’s a lovely thing, don’t you know, and Bridget’s ma will be that impressed.”

There is a strength in the union even of very sorry men.

— Homer

T
he Star and Garter was sufficiently out of the way, the large inn occupying a spectacular vantage at the top of Richmond Hill, so that it made a favorable site for a meeting that would not hold up well to much scrutiny.

Sir Ralph Harewood stood in the courtyard outside the inn doors, not to admire the spectacular view as the sun slid toward the horizon, but to watch for Thomas Donovan and his companion—Dugan, or Dudley, or whatever the man’s name was. It mattered little. Donovan was the one to watch, the one to fear. The one to eliminate.

Not that William saw it that way, Sir Ralph thought, tossing his cheroot to the ground and dispassionately grinding it into the dirt with the heel of his boot. Oh, no. William saw Donovan as a challenge, as a man he could and would outwit, and use, and then deal with later, when he, William, ruled the world. The cheek of the man—the audacity, the overweening arrogance! It had been all Sir Ralph could do not to laugh out loud when William dropped to the floor under the American’s crushing blows.

William was getting out of hand, getting older rather than wiser, and greedy into the bargain. Plots and plans and ploys had served them all well enough when they were younger, but they were getting past their prime now, and should be more cautious than daring. Hadn’t the affair of Geoffrey Balfour taught William anything? Taught any of them anything?

Sir Ralph knew why Stinky had agreed to this mad scheme. The fool needed money—needed it badly—and if he couldn’t pay off his creditors, what better way to deal with them than to become their ruler, and then banish both them and his debts forever? Stinky would gamble on anything—the length of a whisker on an old crone’s chin, the day of the week Beau Brummell would cut a peer dead on Bond Street, the outcome of a race between a cockroach and a spider—just as he was now gambling on the possible success of William’s convoluted plan to bring down the monarchy.

And Perry. His motives in the business were laughably transparent. His was an intellectual pursuit, one that would leave him as the Premier Authority of all that was taught and touted throughout the entire British Empire. His greatest dream was to become England’s self-proclaimed Socrates, England’s greatest philosopher and teacher—England’s greatest bore on any and all subjects—never realizing he was nothing but William’s usable, disposable tool.

Sir Ralph looked out across the countryside and considered yet again William’s insistence Arthur be a part of their scheme. The fellow was a dead waste, a true aging Lothario, and criminally stupid into the bargain. Surely they could have recruited someone else, then had Stinky whisper the man’s name in Prinny’s ear, so that their man could be inserted into the Treasury? But Arthur had been an original member of The Club, and he knew too much not to be included.
Although if he were to have a carriage accident, or some such unfortunate, fatal mishap it would be no great loss to anyone.

Sir Ralph sighed, leaning back against the outside wall of the inn, wondering yet again why he had submitted to William’s scheme, then just as quickly dismissing the thought. William wouldn’t have hesitated to remove him if he had refused, and Sir Ralph didn’t much like the idea of dying before his time. He didn’t like the idea of dying at all.

He saw road dust rising in the air from somewhere down the hill and pushed himself away from the wall to see two riders cantering up the drive. He didn’t pay too much attention until they had nearly entered the courtyard, for he had been waiting for a hired coach bearing Donovan and his friend and hadn’t expected them to travel down from London on horseback.

But it was Thomas Donovan’s grinning face that assaulted his senses a few moments later, the man pulling an ugly mud-brown horse to a stop not three feet away from him, his companion, red-faced with exertion, bringing up the rear on a gray mare. Gray horses were bad luck, Sir Ralph knew, and quickly inserted a hand into his pocket to finger the hag stone meant to fend off ill fortune he carried with him at all times.

“The top of the evening to you, Sir Ralph,” Donovan said cheerily, dismounting in a fluid movement that was as unorthodox as it was graceful. “You don’t look pleased to see me although, then again, it’s difficult to tell. Do you ever smile, Sir Ralph? No, don’t bother to answer—merely leave me my illusions. I suppose you’d much rather I were Lady Godiva riding in on her great horse, a stiff breeze accommodatingly blowing her lovely long hair away from all her most appealing places. It’s a sight I might enjoy myself. Please excuse my travel dirt, but I’ve an important meeting back in town later and needed the quickest transport I could find. Dooley,” he said, turning to his friend, “see if you can have these beasts taken care of. Sir Ralph and I will meet you inside.”