A Masquerade in the Moonlight (43 page)

Sir Ralph blinked, nodded, and went on his way.

Couples were streaming toward the center of the gardens as midnight neared, giggling debutantes with their elaborate gowns mussed from Dark Walk assignations, gentlemen strutting like satisfied peacocks, their grins advertising their amorous successes of the evening.

Marguerite could barely contain her impatience for the unmasking. Everything was falling into place. One by one by one her enemies were toppling, just as she had planned for so long, and she was anxious to see Mappleton take his fall.

She looked around her, frowning, wondering if Donovan had forgotten to meet her, then waved to him gaily as she saw him approaching from one of the walkways. He was alone, so Sir Ralph must already be gone, sneaking away into the darkness. That was a pity. She would have liked to see his face when Mappleton was brought low. It might make him understand, at last, that he, too, was about to suffer a major tumble from grace. After all, it might do him good to worry. He couldn’t change anything. The die was already cast.

“Here you are, Miss Balfour,” Thomas said by way of greeting before bowing to Mrs. Billings, who was dressed as a lady-in-waiting to the queen, and looking woefully uncomfortable in the role. “Thank you for the hint. I have no idea why, but Sir Ralph was a most agreeable companion this evening. But now—I have appeared, as ordered, for the unmasking. Where’s his lordship?”

“Be quiet, will you?” Marguerite whispered fiercely. Honestly, the man had simply no finesse, much as she loved him. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to overhear him saying anything that would draw attention to her. “He’s over there, behind you, dressed as His Royal Highness Henry VIII at his most corpulent. Miss Rollins is costumed as the ghost of Anne Boleyn—right down to the necklace bearing the initial B that she always wore. She lost her head, you know. Miss Rollins can’t quite duplicate that feat, but it should be interesting to see her make the attempt, don’t you agree?”

Thomas swiveled sharply on his heels to look at the pair of them, then turned back, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Well, at least he didn’t need much padding around his middle, now did he?”

Mrs. Billings tittered behind her hand and Marguerite smiled, surprised to see her chaperone possessed at least a limited sense of humor.

“What do you think of Miss Rollins’s costume, Mr. Donovan?” Marguerite asked, eager to hear his answer. She had selected the costume personally, and it was fashioned like all of Georgianna’s wardrobe—high-necked and long-sleeved, although tonight’s ghostly white rig-out was more dramatic. The creature’s blond hair was piled high on her head and hung in fetching ringlets on the lace of her usual high collar around which was strung the short, distinctive necklace.

Thomas’s next words took Marguerite by surprise, even though she knew she should have counted on him to come up with a workable theory sooner or later. “Although I cannot see behind her mask, I do recall her features with some clarity. That, and the tilt of her head. Tell me, Miss Balfour, is she the Tower gardener’s sister? She has that same sort of rawboned, good-peasant-stock look to her even though she’s very slim. Is that the joke? I’m thinking of the eyebrow, you understand, in case you’re supposing I’m only guessing at her identity. Is she going to strip off her mask at midnight and then break into a loud cockney? It’s good, and will doubtless cause Lord Mappleton a considerable deal of embarrassment, but it’s not, I fear, up to your previous genius.”

“What’s Mr. Donovan talking about, Marguerite?” Mrs. Billings asked, already searching in her reticule for her vinaigrette. “I’m not going to like this, am I? Oh, I simply
know
I’m not going to like this.”

Marguerite ignored the woman. “Don’t damn me with faint praise, Donovan,” she said, grinning up at Thomas. “I may not be able to take full credit for Arthur’s insistence upon sending in notice of his upcoming nuptials to all the papers—the announcements should appear tomorrow morning, by the way—but I am willing to accept your compliments on the rest of it. So, no, Donovan. The so very rich and willing Georgianna is not Maxwell’s sister. But you’re close, I’ll give you that.”

The orchestra seated behind a low barrier struck up a loud fanfare before Thomas could answer and, amid a round of giggles and teasing entreaties, the ladies and gentlemen began to unmask, their identities revealed to shouts of “I knew it was you!” and “You! I never guessed!” and a single, “Good Lord! It’s m’wife! M’own wife! Gad, I’m done for!”

Marguerite lifted the eye mask from her own face as Thomas did the same, and then they both leaned slightly forward, watching as Lord Mappleton pulled a sequined half-mask from his features and motioned for Miss Rollins to do the same.

She did.

She removed her pink eye mask, the one with three long feathers attached to it.

She then went a step farther and pulled off her wig, the glorious blond one that had come to be known throughout the
ton
, exposing a sadly matted Brutus crop of dark brown hair.

As Lord Mappleton stared, his mouth at half cock, Miss Georgianna Rollins stripped off her gloves—Miss Rollins
always
wore-above-the-elbow gloves—flinging them, one after the other, in his lordship’s face.

Next to go—as heads turned and more mouths gaped and a single, overly volatile lady fainted into her partner’s arms—were the necklace and Miss Rollins’s modest circlet of lace ruching, so that the bodice of the low-cut, loosely fitting gown was exposed—as well as a faint, unimpressive, but nonetheless shocking scattering of dark brown chest hair.

One more unveiling was to follow, Marguerite knew as she stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth to keep from laughing out loud, and within a moment Miss Georgianna Rollins had ripped the bodice of her gown to the waist, revealing a slim but muscular expanse of chest—that, and the certain knowledge that she was no more a female than Lord Mappleton was a king.

“Georgianna!” Lord Mappleton choked out above the laughs and catcalls of the crowd, his difficulty in speaking most probably caused by the tight constriction of his throat as he swallowed his dreams for wedding a fortune and what little, if anything, remained of his reputation. Had his conveniently slow-moving mind leapt ahead to thoughts of the morning papers? Marguerite certainly hoped so!

“Not Georgianna, you monumental ignoramus,” Miss Rollins said in a surprisingly baritone voice. “
George
!”

Marguerite spoke quietly as Thomas busily attempted to keep a swooning Mrs. Billings from slipping to the ground. “Not Maxwell’s sister, Donovan, but his brother. George makes a fairly presentable debutante for a boy just turned fifteen, don’t you agree?” she asked, turning to him, her smile so wide her cheeks felt stretched. “Society will laugh at first, then become angered to realize that, in a way, they were as duped as poor Arthur. It will take years and years for them to forgive him. So that’s three,” she purred, and then held up her fingers. “And you doubted me. For shame, Donovan. What do you have to say for yourself now?”

Thomas didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He, like the rest of the world who had been unsuspecting witnesses to Mappleton’s avid courtship of George Rollins, was laughing too hard to say a single, solitary thing.

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

— Proverbs 26:11

“W
ell, now, boyo, if this isn’t the loveliest time you’ve ever shown me,” Dooley said as he crouched behind a large bush he had learned, too late, was dotted with thorns. “Make me stand the whole day long at Laleham’s, where absolutely nothing was happening—I coulda had pigeons roosting on me for all the moving I did—then you force me to gulp down m’dinner in two bites before dragging me off to watch Harewood over there stumbling around in the dark in this park. Bridget will be that pleased that her dear husband has seen so much of Londontown.”

Thomas hunkered down beside Dooley, squinting in order to spot Sir Ralph’s dim form in the moonlight. “You nag worse than a fishwife, Paddy, do you know that? Now, keep your voice down. Harewood’s stopped again, and this time I don’t think he’s going any farther.”

They had positioned themselves in a hired coach outside Sir Ralph’s residence before seven that night and been forced to cool their heels until half past eleven, until the man finally came out and entered his own closed carriage. They had then followed as the carriage led them to the entrance to what Donovan believed to be Green Park, where Sir Ralph had abandoned his carriage and walked into the park, guided only by the same moonlight that made him visible now.

Donovan and Dooley had joined him in the dark a few prudent seconds later, careful to keep their distance, and had been running, crouched over, from tree to bush to tree ever since, until a few moments ago.

“Tell me why we’re here, Tommie,” Dooley whispered to him. “I know you already told me, but now that my feet are wet and my bent back feels ready to break, I seem to have some need of hearing it all again.”

Thomas sighed and said quietly, “She’s taking them down one by one, thinking they pushed her father into suicide. Totton was allowed to bring himself low in his quest for intellectual recognition.”

“Served him right, with all his prosing and posturing. He was always running a losing race, boyo,” Dooley interrupted. “All the world would not make a racehorse of a jackass.”

Thomas nodded, agreeing. Marguerite had read her man correctly. “And then Chorley was brought down by his incredibly bad luck at cards—and a little help from the man we now know as Maxwell.”

“He was happy enough when he was winning, wasn’t he, Tommie? As my beloved mother-in-law has been heard to say, the man who wagers his fortune on the turning of a card is a fool, and it isn’t today or yesterday that it happened to him. He was born a fool, Chorley was, and had to lose. There was no other way.”

“Thank you, Paddy, and my compliments to your mother-in-law. I couldn’t have said it better myself—but keep your voice down. Harewood’s waiting for someone, and I don’t want him to think we’re his company. Now, as I was saying—Totton and Chorley helped to bring themselves down and, in a way, because of his vain belief that a rich young woman would favor his suit, so did Mappleton.”

“I would have given a year’s growth to see that! I’ve been chuckling all the day long just thinking about it.”

Thomas rolled his eyes, then smiled in spite of himself. Mappleton had stood very still for a long moment after George’s declaration, then turned and run faster than the man’s bulk would have made anyone believe. For all Thomas knew, the fellow was
still
running. “Marguerite has taken the easy ones out of the way, but now she’s heading for trouble—not that she’ll let me help. That’s why we’re here tonight, Paddy—to help her. Can you remember that?”

“I can remember anything, boyo, except why I agreed to come to London with you. We’ve seen these fellas and we’ve decided not to have dealings with the likes of them. I still say we take up the girl and her grandfather, find ourselves a lovely big ship heading for Philadelphia, and have done with it. All this revenge business and sneaking around in the middle of the night is sure to bring us all to grief. What ho? I think I see someone, Tommie. Look—over there. Be quiet now, boyo, or you’ll give the game away.”

“
I’ll
give the game away?” Thomas sliced a quick, amused look at Dooley, then parted the branches of the bush he was hiding behind to see another male form beside Harewood’s. “Maxwell,” he breathed softly. “How you do get around, my beetle-browed
friend
. Where’s your baby brother—rigged out in another wig and dancing at Covent Garden?”

Dooley, a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing, gave Thomas a shove on the shoulder and motioned for him to be quiet. It would appear, Thomas thought ruefully, his reluctant Irish friend was at last beginning to feel some of the thrill of the thing.

They watched, alternately amused and intrigued, as Harewood handed Maxwell a large packet, then sat on the damp ground as Maxwell did the same. Thomas could hear mumblings, although he was too far away to make out any of the words.