A Masquerade in the Moonlight (6 page)

Maisie lifted the tray and re-deposited it on the bottom of the bed. “I should tell Sir Gilbert what you’re up to, that’s what I should do, and he’d take you away from here and back to Chertsey before the cat could lick her ear. Just what that poor old gentleman needs—to tuck up another of his loved ones with a shovel.”

“I’m not going to
die
, Maisie,” Marguerite countered, rolling her eyes comically as she lifted another muffin from the plate. Maisie was so prone to exaggeration. “They’re not even going to know I’m the one bringing them down. I’ve made my plans carefully this past year and they’ve all already been set into motion. One by one they’ll soon begin to topple, quite easily, while I act the sympathetic, supporting prop in their tribulation. I have no great desire to advertise my triumphs, Maisie, just a need to know I’ve bested them,
one by one by one
.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Maisie retorted, sniffing, as she opened the door at the sound of a knock, then stood back to allow a procession of footmen to enter with pails filled with water for her mistress’s bath. “Nothing goes quite so
easily
as a runaway cart heading downhill toward a ditch, missy, and don’t you forget it. Here, now—boy! Don’t you go slopping water all over m’beautiful carpet!”

The offices of Sir Peregrine Totton, situated in the building housing many of the gentlemen serving the Secretary of the War Ministry, were as impressive as a museum, and nearly as well fitted out with paintings, statuary, and
objets d’art
. After spending an interminable four hours impatiently waiting in an antechamber crammed full of winged Pegasuses and tapestries depicting successful hunts and bloody battles, Thomas and Dooley were ushered down a hallway lined with portraits of some very sour-looking gentlemen and into a large, airy, high-ceilinged chamber apparently devoted to Greek and Roman statuary.

Dooley raised a hand to scratch behind his ear. “Did you ever see such a mass of ancient grandeur, Tommie?” he asked, leaning to his left to go nose to nose with a statue of Athena, who was sadly missing her left ear and a portion of her right arm. “Put ‘em all together and I doubt you could make one whole person, and that’s a fact. Lookee here,” he said, extending a hand to point at another statue. “It’s like someone took a hulking bite out of this one’s hip. See, Tommie—I can put the whole of my five fingers inside this—”

“Don’t you dare advance by so much as another inch, you ignorant, ham-fisted plebeian!”

Thomas and Dooley whirled about to see Sir Peregrine Totton sweeping into the room, his small, esthetically thin body fairly quivering with rage, a harried-looking clerk following three paces behind him.

“Now, now, sir,” Thomas hastened to assure the man, stepping in front of Dooley, “my assistant meant no harm. Please forgive his ignorance. He is American, yes, but one only lately arrived from Ireland, and forever corrupted by the taint. The poor fellow has no appreciation of art beyond the lovely construction of his favorite potato pot.”

“You’ll pay dear for that, boyo,” Dooley hissed under his breath, before saying loudly, “A thousand pardons, sir,” and retreating a step or two, as befitted an “assistant.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I, too, have to labor under the ignorance of inferiors,” Sir Peregrine said in open scorn, skewering his own assistant with a piercing glare until that man scurried to the desk, pulled out his employer’s high, elaborately carved chair, and assisted the gentleman to his seat. “Good enough, Grouse,” he then commented, so that the clerk quickly retired to the nearest wall, where he stood braced against a tapestry depicting the sacking of Rome, unknowingly putting his head in some danger from the silver-thread depicted ax wielded by some wild-eyed savage.

Looking about him, Thomas saw that, although there were a few straight-back chairs scattered around the perimeter of the chamber, none was close enough to the desk to make conversation below a bellow comprehensible. Clearly Sir Peregrine expected his American visitors to stand, like petitioners come with hat in hand to beg some favor.

Bloody hell they would!

“Paddy, please procure two chairs and place them just here,” he said, pointing to the area directly in front of the desk. “Grouse?” he called out, inclining his head to the clerk. “You want to rest your rump, too, or do you think those spindly shanks of yours can hold you up until Sir Peregrine and I are through talking about the despicable way you skulking Englishers are pulling good Americans from their ships and pressing them into service in your navy?”

Sir Peregrine leapt to his feet, his palms pressed down on the desktop, a reaction that Thomas found eminently soothing to his soul. “How
dare
you, sirrah!” Sir Peregrine exclaimed, blustering. “Might I remind you that you are here on sufferance and that we wouldn’t be having this interview at all if it weren’t for the fact you sent in documents signed by your own president saying you had his fullest confidence? I am quite sure Mr. Madison is woefully misinformed if he believes that even a letter of introduction penned in his hand is enough to coerce any of His Royal Majesty’s loyal servants to suffer listening to such baseless assertions! You may consider this interview as concluded,
Mr
. Donovan!”

Dooley noisily plunked down two straight-back chairs, seating himself comfortably before motioning for Thomas to take his own seat. “Ye’ve a winning way about you, Tommie, and that’s a fact,” he said, smiling up at Thomas, who remained standing. “Why don’t you say something nasty about the man’s sainted mother while you’re about if?”

Thomas frowned warningly at his friend and then bowed in Sir Peregrine’s direction. “Forgive me, sir,” he said in subdued tones, smiling ingratiatingly. “I am most heartily sorry for my ill-mannered behavior. I can’t imagine where that reprehensible outburst came from. Perhaps it is just I’ve been waiting without for so long that I have missed my luncheon. Grouse, dear fellow—do you suppose you could find it in your heart to search out a tray of bread and cheese, and perhaps a heavy decanter of burgundy? I’m convinced this meeting will progress much more congenially if I can only quiet my rumbling stomach.”

Sir Peregrine looked to Thomas, who returned that look deliberately, unwaveringly—daring the Englishman to contradict him—then subsided into his chair once more. “Oh, very well,” Sir Peregrine agreed at last. “Grouse, go into my private chamber and see what you can find. I’m sure there’s something we can serve these people.”

“This
people
wouldn’t be sorry to get a bite or two of meat, boyo,” Dooley called after the clerk, causing Thomas to look down at him and sigh. “And what may I ask, would you be gawking at now, Tommie? There was no sense in asking for
ale
, now was there?” Dooley countered, shrugging, so that Thomas had to cover his mouth with his fist, and pretend to cough in order to hide an appreciative smile.

Once the door closed behind the clerk, Thomas advanced to the front of the desk and deliberately sat his long frame on the left corner, first shifting a bust of Socrates out of his way. He wanted to be closer to Sir Peregrine, smell the man’s cologne, the man’s fear. He knew he was twice the man physically as his reluctant host, and he wanted Sir Peregrine to be unable to forget it. This might be a game they were all playing, but it was a deadly serious game, and it had deadly serious rules. “Did you think I’d countenance a witness, Totton?” he asked now, conversationally.

“Grouse is completely loyal, if none too bright,” Sir Peregrine countered, snatching up the bust and placing it beside one of Homer. “And what do you think you’re going to accomplish coming here in the first place? I knew nothing about meeting with you here. Can’t you follow the simplest instructions? We are all supposed to gather Saturday, at Richmond.”

“Oh, we are, Totton, and we will,” Thomas told him, reaching into his jacket and extracting a cheroot, placing it, unlit, between his straight white teeth. “I’m here today, suffering the insult of being kept waiting in your antechamber, in order to maintain the outward reason for my presence on this damp island. And I must say, old fellow, you’ve been most cooperative. Four whole hours. Was it difficult, hiding in here, wondering how I’d react to being kept waiting? But then, it wouldn’t do if I were seen to be treated better than you’ve treated the rest of my countrymen who have come begging for audiences.”

“Then this is all for show? We have nothing to discuss privately?”

Thomas took up the small tinderbox that sat on the desktop and struck it, holding the flame to the end of the cheroot until the tip glowed red. He inhaled deeply, then blew a blue-gray stream of smoke directly in Sir Peregrine’s pinched face. “Only one small item, Totton, and then I’ll be off and you can soothe your jangled nerves by beating on Grouse with one of these ancient philosophers. One small question that begs an answer. Tell me—are you and your treasonous cohorts negotiating with the French as well? Hedging your bets, as some might call it?”

Sir Peregrine waved the smoke away from his face, coughing as he looked from Thomas to Dooley and back again. Thomas watched him closely, searching for any outward sign of alarm, and saw nothing but confusion. “Deal with the French? Are you mad? Why would any of us even entertain such a thought? Perhaps you need to be reminded of something, sir. We English are at
war
with the French.”

“Don’t be an ass, Totton,” Thomas bit out, pushing himself away from the desk, beginning to relax but not about to allow Sir Peregrine to see anything but his anger. It had only been a thought, a vague niggling notion, and hardly worth the four-hour wait it had taken to prove himself wrong. But that didn’t mean the afternoon should be a total loss. As long as he was here, he might as well have some sport with the nervously belligerent Sir Peregrine.

“At war with France, you say? What a curious notion of honor you have. Your countrymen are at war with France.
You
, however, are at war with
England
,” Thomas pointed out quietly. “Why else would you want to help America, if not that a strong America will help to foment disenchantment among the masses and pull down your own monarchy? Tell me, which of you is to step forward and take the reins of government? Harewood? Chorley? No? Not Mappleton, surely. Then it must be you, Totton. Yes, I believe I can imagine you enjoying crowing over your fellow man. Dooley—can you see our dear friend draped in royal purple? Or am I wrong, and you and your fellows wish to emulate America and throw open the British Empire to the glories of democracy?”

Dooley snorted. “Now there’s something none of us will ever live to see. They’d have to free Ireland, boyo, remember? And what would these Bugs do for fun, I be asking you, iffen they couldn’t rape the Auld Sod whenever the mood took them?”

“You’re being impertinent—the pair of you!” Sir Peregrine objected, bringing his closed fists smashing down on the desktop, so that the busts of Socrates and Homer rattled. “Our aspirations are none of your concern. I have not asked why you’ve taken on this commission. And what do you covet as reward for your patriotism, Donovan? An ambassadorship? A Cabinet post?”

Donovan smiled around the cheroot. It was best to smile, he’d found, when he felt most like pounding a fellow into flinders. There was always time for violence, but a person stood to win more than a single battle by dueling with his wits. “Me? A simple newspaper publisher and landowner from Philadelphia? Sir, you must have confused me with the late, greatly missed, Benjamin Franklin, another humble journalist from Philadelphia, but one whole worlds more talented than I. Let me assure you, Sir Peregrine, I have absolutely
no
political ambitions. None whatsoever. Isn’t that correct, Dooley?”

“Not the way I heard it,” Dooley grumbled rather loudly into his haphazardly tied cravat—the clearly disgruntled assistant getting a little of his own back by letting slip information that his superior obviously did not wish made public.

Dear Dooley.
Thomas had banked on the fact the Irishman was never slow to pick up on a hint, and he hadn’t been disappointed. Dooley had sensed that Thomas wished Sir Peregrine to think he had found a soul mate, a fellow as greedy and ambitious as himself. Let Sir Peregrine think he “understood” him. Thomas felt sure it would serve to lower Sir Peregrine’s guard if the man were to believe he could measure the American co-conspirator with his own yardstick.

“But as I was saying, Totton,” Thomas continued quickly, after turning his back on Dooley, “it came upon me last night—rather suddenly, as I remember—that you and your brethren, in your zeal to undermine your own country, might just as easily apply to France as to America. Or both. With France, you have another ready market for your diverted goods and armaments. My president would not much care to see France built up, even if she has been our ally. Bonaparte is too unpredictable, too greedy for power.”

“There will be no dealings with the French,” Sir Peregrine stated firmly, rising to his feet, which left him a full, unimpressive head shorter than Thomas. “Sir Ralph would not countenance it!”