A Masquerade in the Moonlight - By Kasey Michaels Page 0,151
laughing as he fell dead, a gaping hole blown in his chest.
She made her way down the hall and crept into the study, standing impatiently while her eyes adjusted to the darkness, then crossed to the glass-fronted cabinet that held Sir Gilbert’s pistols. She had just opened the lock—having known since childhood where her grandfather hid the key to the cabinet—when she heard a slight scraping sound behind her and the yellow glow of a single lit candle brightened the room.
A thick Irish brogue split the silence from somewhere behind her. “Top o’ the evenin’ to ye, aingeal. Quite a fetching sight ye are in those breeches, don’t ye know? And would ye be planning to take yerself off somewheres?”
“Donovan,” she breathed quietly, stiffening.
“None other,” he said brightly. She could hear him rising from the leather chair her grandfather refused to part with no matter how ancient and cracked it had become over the years. “You know, I could dearly use a bit of sleep. Loving me as you do, I’d hoped you’d give a thought to me and behave yourself. But, loving you as I do, and learning more about you every day, I didn’t think you’d see things that way.”
She whirled about to glare at him in righteous anger, refusing to see him as anything but a barrier to what she wanted, needed, to do. “Nobody told you to put yourself in charge of me, Thomas Joseph Donovan. Nobody asked. Not me, anyway. So go to bed—go to blazes. Go anywhere—but leave me alone.”
“I can’t do that, sweetheart,” he said, lighting several more candles, so that she could clearly see the twin bruises of fatigue beneath his eyes. “Especially now, since Maisie gave me your father’s diary to read, then told me a few things I should have known long ago. Your father was a good man, Marguerite, a kind and gentle man who loved nature and history—and you, Marguerite. He loved you very, very much, you were the light of his life. Do you really think he would want you to do this? That he’d want his daughter made into a murderer, even to avenge him?”
She turned back to the cabinet and removed two pistols and the small box containing everything necessary to load them. Blast the man for trying to defeat her by appealing to reason! She was in no mood to listen to reason except in relation to how it might apply to removing Laleham from the face of the earth. Then unexpected tears stung her eyes and she lowered her chin, shaking her head slowly. “No, Donovan,” she admitted quietly, reluctantly, her hands shaking slightly as she turned back to him, laid everything on the desk, and began to load the first pistol. “He wouldn’t have wanted me to do this.”
“That’s my aingeal. Now you’re being sensible—or you will be, once you put down that pistol. You look a mite too comfortable with the thing to please me overmuch.”
She raised her head once more, looking at him from between narrowed lids even as she laid the first pistol down, only to reach for the second. “Yes, I do, don’t I?” she bit out in renewed anger. No one, not memories of her papa, not even Thomas Joseph Donovan and his silken tongue and his tired eyes and his loving ways could keep her from her mission. “Would you like to know why? It’s because I’ve been firing these things since I was old enough to lift them. I’m quite proficient with them.”
Thomas approached the desk, standing on the other side, no more than three feet away from her. “I’ll take your word for that, darlin’,” he said, his grin making her long to punch him.
“And for your information,” she added, closing the box before slipping the two pistols into the deep pockets of her vest, “I am being sensible. I’m the only one of the two of us who is being sensible! William murdered Papa, Donovan. You’ve told me he killed Ralph. Frightened, superstitious, invincible Ralph. Yes, I wanted the man disgraced, even sent to prison if possible. I admit it. I wanted all five of them punished, even before I knew all of the horrible truth. But Ralph is dead because of what I started. William got away with murdering Papa. He can’t be allowed to escape justice again. William has already made me a victim—and now he’s made me an unwitting accomplice to Ralph’s murder. I have to do something, Thomas. I