A Masquerade in the Moonlight(78)
Thomas pulled a cheroot from his pocket and stuck it, unlit, between his teeth. “Ah, Paddy, I know,” he said, grinning again. “Isn’t love grand?”
CHAPTER 12
Those who’ll play with cats must expect to be scratched.
— Miguel de Cervantes
The first words Thomas heard upon entering the overheated ballroom were about “that Balfour chit. Doesn’t her chaperone have a ha’p’orth of sense, letting her wear rubies? Running with old men to make up for her lack of dowry is bad enough—but this puts the gel beyond the pale. Rubies! Mark me, next she’ll be rouging her lips.”
Thomas was amused. The woman he had overheard couldn’t hold a candle to his Marguerite—as could none of the other females clogging the ballroom with their ruffles and flounces and overpowering scents. No wonder Marguerite was never found in the company of women—they most probably bored her half to death. She didn’t have time to waste in idle gossip or worrying about what other people would say. She was too busy running her private war against the men who believed themselves to be her beaux.
“Paddy,” Thomas said when he had scanned the room and spied Marguerite sitting alone with her nervously smiling chaperone, her chin high as if she knew very well people were talking about her but didn’t care so much as a jot what anyone thought, “why don’t you take yourself off to the card room and see if Chorley is as busy losing what’s left of his fortune this evening as he was this afternoon? And don’t bother to look for me. I won’t join you for several hours—four at the least.”
Dooley was looking around the violet-bunting-hung chamber with open disgust. “Four hours? You’re going to leave me propping up a wall in this place for four hours?”
“Or more.” Thomas reached into his pocket, drew out a wad of bills, and handed it to his friend. “Here you go, Paddy—that is, if you want to gamble with these Englishmen.”
“Does a fish swim?” Paddy asked, grabbing at the money Donovan had so lately won from the honorable Julian Quist. He pocketed it, then looked at Thomas. “Well? What are you waiting for? Take yourself off, boyo—I’ve got business to attend to in the other room.”
Thomas nodded, idly waving Dooley on his way, for he had just caught sight of Lord Mappleton and the demurely dressed Miss Rollins. The young woman was thin as a rail and almost a full head taller than his lordship, and there was something about her—something faintly familiar in the tilt of her head—that he knew would bother him until he’d figured it out. But he wouldn’t figure it out this evening, for he had something far more important on his mind than Georgianna Rollins.
He had taken no more than a half dozen steps toward Marguerite when he felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Sir Ralph Harewood’s impassive, forgettable face.
“Good evening to you, Sir Ralph,” Thomas said, wishing the fellow on the other side of the moon. “I see you’re in your usual high good humor.”
“We have to talk,” Harewood said out of the corner of his mouth, as if he feared someone might overhear him in the loud, crowded ballroom.
“No,” Thomas answered cheerfully, pointedly looking down at Sir Ralph’s hand so that the man removed it with some alacrity. “We don’t have to talk. As I recall our last conversation, it’s now up to you to act.”
“The arrangements must go through as planned,” Harewood told him fiercely, so that Thomas raised his eyebrows, amazed at the man’s show of emotion. “We have mutual needs, shared objectives. Surely, if we only sit down together for some hours and discuss it, some compromise might be reached that will satisfy both of us. After all, we’re on the same side, so to speak.”
Thomas was pleased by Harewood’s seeming desperation. “Yes, I suppose such an outcome is not beyond the realm of possibility, but I am suddenly put in mind of the tragedy of Lord Thomond’s cocks. You do remember the story, don’t you, Sir Ralph? Lord Thomond’s hired feeder—an Irishman, as I remember—locked up his lordship’s cocks all in the same room the night before matches worth a considerable amount of money to his lordship, only to find the cocks all dead or lamed the next morning, for they had attacked each other quite viciously, as cocks are wont to do. The Irishman, when asked why he had put the birds together answered that, as they were all on the same side, he had not thought they would destroy each other.”