A Masquerade in the Moonlight(21)
“If Willie says so, then I guess that’s right,” Lord Chorley said at the mention of William Renfrew, Earl of Laleham, “not that I know what I’d say to him. Do you think the Irishman gambles?”
“Willie, is it?” Lord Mappleton asked, wiping at his perspiration-sheened forehead with a large handkerchief. “Best not let William hear you call him by that childhood nickname, Stinky. He don’t like it above half, you know.”
“And that’s another thing that discommodes me!” Sir Peregrine exclaimed, leaning forward to place his elbows on the tabletop. “Why are we dancing around like this, with Willie standing back, his hands lily white? Why isn’t he meeting with this upstart Irishman?”
Sir Ralph speared Sir Peregrine with a steely stare so that Totton abruptly coughed into his hand and sat back, his gaze suddenly intent on inspecting his manicured fingertips, and the small group lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
When, Sir Ralph wondered, had his three friends crumbled into such decrepit piles of faded splendor?
He continued to look at the trim, diminutive Perry, seeing little of the brilliant youth who had once dazzled them all with his store of knowledge on most any subject. His understanding of government, his affinity for numbers, his ability to astonish gullible investors with his seemingly endless store of information on most any subject from ancient architecture to zoology, had grown stultifyingly boring over the years, until he had developed a supercilious attitude of superiority that barely hid his disdain for any he believed to be his intellectual inferiors.
Condescending, arrogant, chicken-hearted, dried-up little twit! If it weren’t for his position in the War Ministry Sir Peregrine Totton would not only be insufferable, he would be expendable.
Sir Ralph looked next to the graying, portly, yet elegantly clad Lord Chorley, whom they all had called Stinky since their days at school. Once his bluff friendliness and universal popularity—and his well-known, limited brainpower—had been useful, even amusing, but now these same traits were becoming oppressive. He had come to believe himself a true bosom crony of the ever-fickle Prinny. Stinky now used that friendship to lord it over his fellows at this table, as if he were not James, but another wily Jack Horner, who had stuck his thumb in the kingly pie and picked himself out a royal plum. Poor, superficial Stinky. Did he really think Prinny would bail him out of the River Tick if his constant gaming finally outstripped his once considerable fortune?
But Stinky did have connections in the royal clique. And as William had pointed out, it was far better to work from the inside than from the outside.
And then there was Arthur. God’s teeth, had there ever been such a fall as Mappleton’s? Once quite the man about town, the dream of every foolish young girl, the nearly bald Arthur had aged with less grace than any of them. He’d become little more than a laughably inept, fortune-hunting roué, harmless if embarrassing to behold whilst he chased after each year’s new crop of wealthy debutantes as if unaware that he had ballooned to twice his size, becoming pudding-faced and ungainly. While his sad intellect—never his most shining light—could no longer be overlooked because of his handsome face or his well-turned leg.
But Arthur held a post with the Lord of the Treasury, a result of birth and political connections and not a reward for any hint of brilliance. Sir Ralph didn’t need William Renfrew to tell him how important the aging, biddable, money-mad Lothario was to their plans.
Luckily, once the deed was done, all three of them would be superfluous. Only he, Sir Ralph Harewood, a peer who worked diligently at the Admiralty, and William Renfrew, Earl of Laleham, one of the most eloquent, universally beloved peers in the House of Lords, deserved to reap the bounty that would come when they harvested the result of the seeds of revolution all five of them were so busily planting.
Only he would survive—he who had always been what he was now, an average man of average size, of forgettable features, of impeccable lineage and adequate fortune, but possessing a hidden agenda of treason no one could suspect. And William, of course—William, the ultimate gentleman, the smooth night-dark devil who had all the handsomeness and wealth and ancestry handed to him as rights of birth, but who longed for dominance over mankind more than the devil himself.
Neither of them had changed over the years, succumbed to the debilitating diseases of laziness, age, and easy living as the other three had. No, he and William had only become more so than they had been before—himself more covetous of wealth and William more eager for power... and each of them growing daily more desperate to attain both.