A Masquerade in the Moonlight(26)
There was fear mad King George might die, and equal fear he would live forever. There was talk circulating again about elevating the vain, vacuous, expensive Prince of Wales to the position of Prince Regent, and handing the reins of the government into those patently incompetent hands.
The time wasn’t coming for a new order based on the sanity of raising the chosen few to the rank they deserved and weeding out the best of the worst to serve those few, aid them to build the British Empire into the most envied power in the world. The time was now!
And he would be the one to rule that empire. He would be king one day. No, more than king. He would be All. Everything. The supreme power. Men would one day soon tremble at his feet. And Marguerite, the fair, fiery Marguerite, would be his. All his. The way Victoria had always been meant to be his.
Damn fate! Fate had taken him from home long enough for Geoffrey Balfour to turn Victoria’s pretty head with his poetry and foolishness. Who would have thought her father would be silly enough to allow her to wed at sixteen, before she had even been presented at court? It had mattered at the time, losing Victoria, but it hadn’t mattered as much as losing her to Geoffrey Balfour, his inferior in every way.
He had lost again last year when his calculations had proved wrong and Victoria had shown she was not the woman he had always believed her to be. But he should not have lost his temper. It had been a silly thing to do—foolish, actually, and potentially dangerous. She had been already almost too old, and most certainly too feeble—and had turned stupid into the bargain in the years since that dangerous debacle with Geoffrey. She had been a part of his dream for so long that he hadn’t stopped to consider the consequences of taking on a possibly barren, most probably mentally unbalanced consort.
But he wasn’t hidebound. He could adapt to some small changes in his plan. He had even, in this last year, improved upon it.
For he wouldn’t lose a third time. What had been lacking in the mother was present in abundance in the daughter. Where Victoria had been weak, Marguerite was strong. Where Victoria had let her youth, her promise, slip away, Marguerite fairly brimmed with life and energy and passion.
Soon he would come out into the open, let her know of his growing admiration and affection for her, and begin to gently, subtly ease her toward the thought of a marriage between them. What a dynasty they would found together as he slipped between her silken thighs... to plunge his manhood past her veil of virginity... and home... to spill his seed deep inside her as she arched her back in ecstasy and called out his name....
“William? Ah, William—there you are, standing in that dark corner! Your man said I’d find you in here. Hatching vain empires again, are you?”
William Renfrew, Earl of Laleham, turned away from the window to nod a perfunctory greeting to Sir Ralph Harewood. “Possibly, Ralph,” he answered blandly, taking up a seat on the curved back couch in the middle of the room, his spine straight, his two feet firmly on the floor, “but with two exceptions. I, unlike Milton, am not blind to reality, and our empire, as you term it, will be the product of planning and determination, and not the result of application to either Heaven or Hell.”
He smiled invitingly, indicating that Sir Ralph should seat himself on the facing couch. “And now, how are you this fine morning, Ralph? Filled to the brim with good news of our impending success, I trust.”
“Not particularly, William,” Sir Ralph said. “And I’ve not yet found my bed, unlike you, who rise at the black backside of dawn. I’ve come to tell you, the American is useless.” He crossed one booted leg over the other as he slumped against the cushions, his even, nondescript facial features composed in what a close observer might believe to be a frown. It was difficult to tell with Sir Ralph, who rarely displayed any recognizable expression, whether it be one of fear, or amusement, or even intelligence.
Sir Ralph, William had long ago decided, was like a blank slate, and you could write on him what you wished, drawing your own conclusions as to what lay hidden behind his eyes. If you cared to delve that far, of course, which most men didn’t. It was enough, in this age of selfishness, to assume a man like he was simply an agreeable sort, a man who believed what you believed, felt what you felt, and wanted what you wanted. No one, save William, would ever be moved to declare Sir Ralph had an ounce of ambition.
Like and yet unlike himself, William concluded, patiently waiting for his friend to expand on his statement. William knew the face he himself presented to the world, the image projected by his dark good looks, the distinguished smattering of silver that had appeared at his temples these last few years, his aristocratic features, his exemplary carriage and air of impeccable breeding. Only the world could look as long and as hard as it wished and still not discover the real William Renfrew. Not even Ralph Harewood, his friend since childhood, could do that.