A Masquerade in the Moonlight - By Kasey Michaels Page 0,117

temper in check.

The fool! The bloody stupid, vain blockhead! And even worse—who had taken such pains to disgrace the man, to put him in a position where the only thing he could do was resign his clubs, relinquish his position at the War Ministry, then take himself off to the country and hide his head?

It couldn’t have been William. William didn’t do his own dirty work, no matter that this particular deed had been executed with the sort of wicked finesse William was certainly capable of producing.

He allowed the drapery to fall back into place and turned away from the window. No, it hadn’t been William. William had already ordered him to kill Perry, but surely not until after his usefulness at the War Ministry was at an end.

How would they be able to convince the slow-moving, quick-witted American the transfer of goods would still go on as planned? Totton’s assistant, Grouse, was firmly in William’s deep pockets, and had been for months, not knowingly participating in any plan of treason but merely supplementing his meager wages with what he believed to be the usual sort of graft and corruption rampant in government. But the shipments still had to be sent, and quickly, before Totton’s replacement could be named and Grouse possibly replaced by another clerk. Yes, the whole matter could prove sticky.

How could Perry have set himself up for such a fall? How could he have been so stupid! William would be livid when he heard about this morning’s disaster, and probably blame him.

It was falling apart. It was all falling apart, slipping through their fingers, just the way it had before, when William had tried to strike a deal with the French all those years ago. Why hadn’t he kept to simple schemes like the one they had used on Geoffrey Balfour? They had all five become rich men on those schemes, taking their profits before the bubbles burst, leaving their selected dupe and his investors to mourn their losses.

All right, so Balfour had nearly brought them to grief. But they’d scraped through, even after the French debacle. They had gone on to double their wealth with other less stiff-backed dupes than Balfour, and then retired from the game, going their own way these past years.

Until this latest scheme of William’s. This ridiculous belief he could undermine the government and have Farmer George removed from the throne. He had blackmailed them all into agreeing with him, held Geoffrey Balfour’s name over their heads while dangling visions of increased wealth and power in front of their eyes, making them believe this time it would work.

William had to be destroyed, before they all went to the gibbet for treason. Stinky was no use to Sir Ralph anymore, and he had ample proof of his own desperation in that he had even entertained the thought the bankrupt gambler could bring himself to the sticking point and eliminate William for him.

Well, that was money saved. If duns were following him in public, as Sir Ralph had seen today, there would be no rescuing Stinky with a few miserable thousand pounds. Prinny had turned his back on him. He’d have to rusticate, like Perry, and good riddance to both of them.

Who was left? Who could help him? Arthur? Hardly. The buffoon had told him this morning he was definitely going to marry the rich but unsuitable Georgianna Rollins. He had informed Sir Ralph he had even sent notice of their engagement to all the newspapers today. The newspapers! His companions seemed to have a penchant for advertising their stupidity.

He frowned, his last thought bringing him back to Peregrine Totton. Who had engineered the farce that had been enacted this morning at the Tower? Who could have so cleverly tapped into Sir Peregrine’s vanity, finding precisely the correct route to make the man bring himself down? Who but their little group knew him that well? Who outside that same small group stood to gain by Sir Peregrine’s fall? Who in all the world hated him that much?

And then there was Lord Chorley. Nobody hated Stinky; he was a favorite of all the ton. But someone had given a hefty push to the towering avalanche of debt that had hovered about Stinky’s head all these years, and brought the entire mountain tumbling down around him. He didn’t even know who owned his vowels, who had tipped off his other creditors that he had empty pockets and no real prospects. Nobody hated Stinky? Somebody did. But