A Masquerade in the Moonlight (37 page)

“Really?” She lifted her head, wanting to kiss him now, then frowned. “Donovan! I knew there was something different about you. Your mustache. It’s gone!”

He smiled, and she saw the hint of a dimple close beside his mouth, where the mustache had once hidden it. “Of course it is. If we’re going to be sneaking about like thieves in the night, I couldn’t have you going back into well-lit ballrooms with your soft skin all scraped, now could I?”

She traced his smooth upper lip with a single fingertip. “Donovan, you’re as much a schemer as I could ever be, do you know that?”

He tipped his head back slightly and nipped at her finger with his even white teeth. “Of course. It’s a vast part of me charms, don’t ye know,” he said lightly before helping her to rise, inspecting her gown for any stray leaves that might give them away when she went back inside.

Marguerite watched in silence as he smoothed down his own clothing, then folded what was in reality a good size blanket and stuffed it back in the bushes, probably putting it there so he could retrieve it later. “But only one part of them, Donovan,” she answered, allowing him to guide her back to the steps. “The other is your ability to turn your head away as I go about my business—no questions asked. It’s one of the reasons I love you so.”

“Yes, well, about that, Marguerite,” he said, stepping in front of her so that she could not pass by him and climb the steps. “I’ll settle for half a loaf for a while, but not forever. I’m many things, but I am not a patient man.”

William is,
Marguerite remembered, wishing she could banish thoughts of revenge from her mind for at least an hour, at least during these precious moments with Donovan. “You won’t get in my way, Donovan,” she declared, tilting her chin defiantly, “and I won’t get in yours. What we do apart is entirely different from the way we feel when we’re together. You promised. You said you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I’ll have Paddy refresh my memory on what to say in the Confessional when next I go to clear my soul of sins,” Donovan said, stepping back so that she could return to the party. “But for now, I’ll be on my best behavior.”

Marguerite climbed two steps, then turned to look down at him. He looked so young, so handsome, so very wonderful, and she hated leaving him. “Donovan,” she whispered, her heart in her voice, “I worried I wasn’t really, truly in love with you—that I was confusing passion for love. But I was wrong. Do you know how I can be so sure?”

He shook his head, grinning. “No, but it’s my heart that’ll be pleased to hear it, m’darlin’,” he said, his brogue now so thick she believed she could slice it with a knife.

“I know,” she answered, refusing to react to his foolishness, “because you present nothing but trouble to me, and I still feel quite confident I’ll love you until they put pennies on my eyes—and beyond.”

And then she lifted her skirts and ran up to the balcony, only stopping to collect herself—and to wipe the smile off her face—before stepping over the low sill and into the room where Lady Southby was blistering the air with her nasal soprano.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

— Confucius

“W
ell now, Tommie, would you take a look at this!”

Thomas, who had been lying full length on the couch once again, silently trying to figure out why he was allowing Marguerite—his Marguerite—to run rampant all over London causing trouble with the men he had been sent to deal with, and most probably getting herself into a mess of her own trouble, raised his head a notch and opened his eyes. “Will I look at what, Paddy? I’ve clapped eyes on your face a thousand times since we’ve been stuck in these rooms, and I have to tell you—Bridget must be a saint to see you before noon and still love you.”

“Hell! Scrape a bit of hair off his upper lip and he thinks himself a gentleman!” Dooley stood, still holding the morning newspaper, and shoved it in Thomas’s face. “Look here, you vain peacock—it says here that looby Totton is about to make himself a discovery.”

Thomas was on his way to the Tower within the hour, Dooley sitting beside him in the hack, still grumbling about having to shave and dress so fast that he’d all but sliced his own neck with the razor—and he still wasn’t quite sure he’d put his boots on the right feet.

Although Thomas had no idea precisely where inside the high stone walls he would locate the Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula, it wasn’t difficult to fall into place behind the snaking line of fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen who were parading in the same general direction, some of them with servants in tow, the latter carrying chairs and picnicking baskets and, in case the gray, overcast day should turn wet, umbrellas.

“Sir Peregrine must think he’s died and been lifted to heaven on angels’ shoulders, Paddy, to have nearly all the
ton
here to witness his triumph,” Thomas commented, seeing that the Prince of Wales himself was in attendance, seated in a large, gilded chair that must have been brought outside just for him, His Royal Highness surrounded by giggling ladies of indeterminate age and one especially well-dressed gentleman Thomas immediately recognized as Beau Brummell himself.

“Let’s go over there, Paddy,” he said, motioning toward the prince and his entourage. “I have a feeling they’ve picked out the best vantage point for Sir Peregrine’s show.”

Dooley, who had just purchased a meat pie from a wide-awake peddler who had brought himself and his tray into the grounds, spoke around a bite of hot pastry. “Are you sure, Tommie? I see Miss Balfour over there, with her prune-faced chaperone. Sir Ralph is with her, and Lord Mappleton and his golden pigeon. Don’t you want to join her, or are you afraid you can’t be within ten feet of her without pouncing on the poor child?”

Thomas shook his head, pushing his way through the crowd toward the prince. “This is her party, Paddy, and since she didn’t send me an invitation, I think I’ll keep my distance. We’ve made a promise to each other, you see.”

“A promise, is it? As I recall, you promised me not so long ago that you’d explain why we had to go chasing down that chambermaid at four in the morning and beg her for clean linens. I’m still waiting, boyo, although I don’t think I want to hear it. I’m too old and feeble to have m’ears sullied with any more of your whopping crammers.”

Smiling and tipping his hat to a trio of ladies he could remember having met early in his visit to London, Thomas took up a position several yards from the prince’s entourage and shaded his eyes with his hand, for it was nearing eleven, and a watery sun had belatedly crept out from behind a near solid blanket of clouds just at precisely the correct angle to shine overtop the tall stone walls and into the courtyard. “There’s Sir Peregrine now, Paddy,” he said, watching as Totton, dressed in sober brown—his shoulders almost half again as wide as Thomas remembered them, his shirt points dangerously high—strutted into the middle of the circle formed by his observers and swept an elaborate leg in the direction of the prince.

“There’s a whacking mass of sense outside that man’s head, Tommie, I’m thinking,” Paddy said as a group of about a dozen poorly dressed men carrying spades and picks on their shoulders gathered around Sir Peregrine. “He hasn’t turned a shovelful of dirt, and he’s primping and preening like he’s just discovered diamonds in his morning porridge. Heading for a fall, he is—I can feel it in m’bones.”

Thomas didn’t answer, for he was busy watching Marguerite, who was dressed this morning in a lovely pale blue gown, the shadow cast by the wall and the brim of her fetching straw hat decorated with bluish purple grapes hiding her expression from him. She was clutching her unfurled parasol with both hands, though, and he could almost feel her tension. “Little she-devil,” he whispered under his breath. Oh, yes, this wasn’t Sir Peregrine’s party, he concluded, this was Marguerite’s, and he had a feeling he was going to enjoy it very much.

“Your royal highness, ladies and gentlemen,” Sir Peregrine announced in a carrying voice just as the sun (Ominously? Portentously? Predictably? Thomas wondered) disappeared behind the clouds once more, bowing in each direction of the compass, “thank you so much for your kind attendance at this, the most momentous moment in our nation’s history.”

“That’s putting it on a little too thick and rare, isn’t it Totton? Surely, dear man, there have been other moments? The birth of our beloved Prince of Wales, for instance? Or mayhap that day is yet to dawn, that day being the one in which you discover a tailor who does not list his address in Piccadilly?”

A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd as Sir Peregrine bowed to Brummell, who, after issuing his statement, was in the process of elegantly taking snuff.

“I should like to take a moment to explain to those who did not have the pleasure of thoroughly perusing the articles so graciously carried by all of our newspapers this morning some little background on the history of the Roman occupation of our grand island.”

“God’s teeth!” the prince exclaimed, his deep voice carrying over the moans and groans of Sir Peregrine’s audience. “If I had wanted a history lesson, Totton, I would have traveled up to Cambridge. Get on with it man—before the skies open and lay ruin to all our fair ladies’ fine clothes!”

“Very well,” Sir Peregrine said, sighing audibly. “From my studies I have deduced that the household property and, hopefully, much of the fortune of one Roman citizen named Balbus was buried just here, where the walls of the Tower of London were to rise several centuries later. I have in my possession”—he paused for a moment, to pull the parchment from his waistcoat—“a copy of the gentleman’s map, pinpointing the place where the treasure lies buried.

“The message was coded, and in Latin, so that it took me many hours of concentrated effort to unlock its secrets, but as I am a Latin scholar I am convinced that I have been successful in my intellectual pursuit. For I am not concerned with any personal gain and have already promised His Royal Highness that the Crown shall be the sole proprietor of Balbus’s treasure. Remember the name, ladies and gentlemen—Balbus, the Roman.”

“If the little banty keeps puffing out his chest like that, Tommie, and the sun chances to creep out again, he’ll scratch and crow like the cock of the walk,” Dooley whispered rather loudly, causing the three ladies in front of them to titter behind their hands.

Sir Peregrine looked to the small group, frowned, and then continued: “I have done all but the final pacing, leaving that historic moment until now, after which the men behind me will commence digging. Your Royal Highness,” he said questioningly, “with your kind permission?”

“You’ve had his permission forever, Totton,” Brummell called out. “It’s His Royal Highness’s patience you’re in danger of losing.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” Sir Peregrine said hastily, turning to the laborers, one of whom was yawning widely, while another was scratching an itch close by his crotch. “Stand back, you fools, and let me get my bearings.”

“Go on the hunt for your wits while you’re about it! You’ll have plaguey little luck finding either, I’ll wager,” somebody called from the crowd.

“I’ll take that bet!” someone else called out. “Ten pounds says he can’t locate either of them.”

A dozen voices joined the debate, wagers flying faster than Sir Peregrine could pace from a point he must have plotted earlier, taking twelve carefully spaced steps before ending with his highly polished Hessians sinking in the middle of a circle of freshly planted spring flowers that had to be the glory of the Tower gardeners.

“Oh, surely, Totton, not the posies!” Brummell exclaimed dramatically, lifting a snowy white handkerchief to his eyes, as if to wipe away a tear at the sad fate of the flowers.

Sir Peregrine’s angry glare was not enough to stop the laughter of the crowd of more than one hundred easily amused onlookers, and he motioned jerkily to the laborers to begin digging just left of the center of the circle.

The men dug, as more ladies unfurled their parasols against the hint of a damp mist, as the gentlemen’s taunts and jeers increased in boldness, as tradesmen plied their wares throughout the crowd... as Thomas watched Marguerite watching Totton, her normally smiling mouth pinched, her ramrod straight posture betraying her excitement.

Lord Mappleton and Miss Rollins soon tired of the scene, and Thomas saw them leaving, Lord Mappleton solicitously holding her elbow as she picked her way across the grass to one of the stone paths. There was something strange about the rich Miss Rollins, as Thomas had believed from the very beginning, something about her that just did not seem quite real, but still he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what bothered him. Perhaps the flaw was too obvious, like a forest, so that he could not see the most important tree. But he couldn’t be bothered with such thoughts now.

Sir Ralph, Thomas noticed, remained stationed beside Marguerite, shaking his head, although otherwise looking as noncommittal as always. It was impossible to determine whether he was angry or amused or simply bored by the spectacle of his friend’s “scientific investigation.”