A Masquerade in the Moonlight(35)
Marguerite felt tears stinging her eyes. But I don’t love him, Papa, she argued silently. You can’t love what you don’t know, or what you have reason to mistrust, to fear. You can only hope.
She wet her lips, for her mouth had gone dry as the coal dust that lay on the cobblestones. “Not tomorrow,” she told Thomas quietly, mentally reviewing her plans for the next two days, then recklessly giving in to what she could only consider a heretofore unknown, yet potentially fatal flaw in her character. “Saturday. Just after midnight. I am to have an early evening and Grandfather will be with friends at his club until well-past two. I—I will meet you behind the mansion, just in front of the stables. We can talk then.”
His smile lit her entire world, and she hated him for it. Hated herself for it. “Talk, Mr. Donovan—so you can stop grinning like an ape, thank you. And until then, I would appreciate it greatly if you pretended you did not know I exist.”
“Two days. Two long, lonely, anticipation-filled days. Ah, aingeal, now you’ve gone and done it,” he told her as he withdrew his hand from beneath her skirt and lifted her smoothly to the ground, his teasing Irish brogue turning his voice to music and her bones to jelly. “You’ve gone and proved I’m not wrong to love you so.”
Something inside Marguerite snapped, bringing her to her senses, and she no longer wanted him anywhere but gone so she could be alone with her conflicting emotions. “Go to hell, Donovan. What’s between us has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of love, and we both know it,” she bit out before brushing past him and all but running up the shallow marble steps to the front door of the mansion. She slammed the door behind her and leaned her body against it, feeling almost physically ill.
“Damn you, Thomas Joseph Donovan,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I’ll have to move my plans ahead more than is safe, no thanks to you, and the devil with your negotiations with Totton and Mappleton. And although I may want you with every breath that’s in me, God help me—you’d better not get in my way!”
CHAPTER 5
People who make no noise are dangerous.
— Jean de la Fontaine
Well, look who’s here—and only two hours late. It’s a good messenger you’d be, Tommie, if I was to send you looking for Death.”
Thomas stripped off his hacking jacket and aimed it at Dooley, then headed for the drinks table. “I was,” he began, then threw back two fingers of whiskey before turning to look at his friend, “pleasurably detained, Paddy. Do I have time for a quick wash and brush-up before we meet with Harewood? I smell all over like sweaty horse.”
“And that I noticed, boyo. Horse, and mayhap just a tad like a randy goat,” Dooley sniped, throwing himself into a chair and glaring at Thomas. “We’re to meet with that fella, Sir Ralph, at someplace called Gentleman Jackson’s in Bond Street in little over an hour. He sent a note ‘round this morning after you took yourself off a-wooing. Now, why d’you suppose he changed the meeting place, that’s what I’m after asking you? And don’t you go flinging that shirt on the floor!”
Thomas looked owlishly at the shirt and neck cloth he had just stripped off, shrugged, and tossed both onto a chair. “Gentleman Jackson’s? Really, Paddy?” He motioned for Dooley to follow him into the bedroom.
The water in the pitcher on the washstand was cold, but Thomas poured some into the bowl anyway, then plunged his face into it, splashing some on his neck and back, and coming up like a hound out of a pond, shaking his head to rid himself of the excess water. He soaped his face, hands, and chest in advance of subjecting himself to the cold water again before blindly reaching out a hand for the towel Dooley was sure to place in it. Dear Dooley. He was better than a valet, if underpaid for the job. But a hired servant might hear something not meant for his ears.
“Ah, that’s better. Thanks, Paddy,” Thomas said, dropping the towel and accepting the shirt his friend was holding out to him. “You’re going to enjoy this,” he told him as he searched in the cabinet for a fresh neck cloth. He tied it without looking into the mirror over the washstand, so that it hung loosely around his neck, giving him the air of a man who knew his linen should be clean, but had better things to do with his life than spend his time primping. And, he also knew, he was young enough and handsome enough to carry off such sartorial nonchalance. He ran his brushes through his hair, then smoothed his mustache with his thumb and index finger.