A Masquerade in the Moonlight(113)
Thomas shook his head, enticed by her teasing air, but unfortunately aware of their surroundings. “I’d rather not begin anything I couldn’t finish, and, by the looks of that gown, we’d both only end up weeping in frustration. May I offer you my compliments?”
“On my excruciatingly lovely gown? Why, thank you, kind monsieur. I’ve had a fascination with these outlandish styles since my childhood. Once, when I was very young, I was sitting in church and—”
“Not on your costume, darlin’, although it is rather fetching, in a forbidding sort of way. I doubt the ladies who wore them ever dallied successfully in a garden.” He threw back the hood of his black domino and pushed the matching eye mask up onto the top of his head. “I was complimenting you on your Balbus. However did you manage it?”
She turned her head, avoiding his eyes. “I have a friend who ingeniously found employ for some days this spring as one of the Tower gardeners.”
“Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? He would be the same friend who played the Balbus hawker this afternoon and, I do believe, is also so handy with a fuzzed card. I finally got a good peek at the eyebrow, you understand. It’s a most betraying feature, and I can understand why he takes such pains to hide it. A familiar feature as well. Rather reminiscent of Miss Rollins’s most unique feature, as a matter of fact.”
Marguerite turned back to him, smiling widely. “Oh, you’re good, Donovan. Very good. And so busy! May I gather you saw him with Stinky?”
He lifted her gloved hand and began pressing kisses on the soft skin at the inside of her elbow. “Hmm, and you taste good, aingeal. Like fresh, sweet cream. Yes, I saw him. That’s two, isn’t it? Tell me—who topples tonight? Mappleton? Harewood? Not Laleham. Not yet, at least.”
“Allow me to correct my last statement, Donovan. You’re not just good. You’re very good. And tonight it’s Arthur who will fall. You will stay out of my way, won’t you? Not that it matters, for it’s too late now to stop my plan from coming to fruition.”
Thomas couldn’t help himself. He allowed her to lower her hand, holding it tightly in his, then asked the questions that had been burning in his brain. He had to, for he knew that somehow, some way, these men stood between him and complete happiness with the woman he loved. “What did they do to you, Marguerite? What hurt did they deal you that they should be punished? Do they even know? They couldn’t, and still be your friends.”
Marguerite looked at him for long moments, and he could see she was balancing her need for secrecy with her love for him. At last, when he was about to beg her forgiveness for having broken his promise not to question her, she said quietly, “I believe that guilt, like Shakespeare’s misery, ‘acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.’ I can only assume they are—at least four of them—trying to make amends in their own twisted fashion, and ease this orphan’s entry into society. You see, Donovan, those men, those five pathetic men, forced my father to commit suicide. My mother was never the same after that, hardly a mother at all, and she died last year—of a broken heart.”
The night, and the mood, suddenly turned cold, and perhaps dangerous.
“Your father,” Thomas repeated, remembering Marguerite’s vehemence when he had dared to call her by her father’s pet name for her. He racked his brain for an explanation. Clearly, she had adored the man. Also clearly, she’d woven a fantasy to remove blame from her father for his self-destruction and placed it on the heads of others. A reasonable if misguided conception. “Marguerite, sweetheart—no man can force another to commit suicide.” He held up his hands to stop her from interrupting him. “All right, all right, I know. Socrates. Hemlock. But he was an ancient Greek—those people went in for all kinds of melodrama. That sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, not in this enlightened age.”
“You don’t understand,” Marguerite bit out angrily. “For years I didn’t understand, didn’t know. Maisie still doesn’t understand. Nobody understands. Those five men, those terrible, greedy, godless men, lured my father into an unwise business investment—a bubble—and convinced him to bring several of our neighbors in with him. They lost their money, Donovan. All of it. Papa was so ashamed, and wretchedly despondent to have failed once more—for he’d always chafed at the fact he and Mama and I had to live off my grandfather’s largess, the knowledge that so many people believed my mother had married beneath her. He didn’t know how he could face Mama or me with what he’d done. That was bad enough, but then The Club, teasing him with the chance to make a fortune and repay his friends, attempted to involve him in treason—”