A Masquerade in the Moonlight - By Kasey Michaels Page 0,26

she did, her chin held high, her perfume tickling his senses as she swept by him. “Don’t rush so, Miss Balfour,” he told her, taking hold of her arm once more, this time gently tucking it through the crook of his elbow, as befitted an attentive companion. “He’ll wait for you, whoever he is. I, for one, would wait an eternity.”

“You, for one, Mr. Donovan,” she answered sweetly, “would have to. Now, please excuse me. I see Lord Chorley searching for me now. If you will simply deliver me to him, you can return to the ballroom unaccompanied, where I am convinced you will locate at least a half dozen giggling misses eager to hang on your every word, idiotic as each may be—meaning both your words and any female silly enough to give them any sort of credence. Good evening, sir.”

“Idiotic?” Thomas echoed, stepping in front of her so that she could not escape him without causing a scene. Lord, but she was lovely, especially when she was in a temper! Obviously she was not used to losing her verbal battles. “If you find my speech so idiotic, my manner so barbaric, and my presence so unpalatable, why have you agreed to ride out with me tomorrow? Unless you are playing coy, which I cannot believe.”

“Why, I in turn must wonder,” she countered, her voice low but intense, “would you persist in wishing for my company when I have made it so abundantly obvious that you and I are incompatible in the extreme?”

Thomas grinned, shaking his head. “Ah, my argumentative aingeal, isn’t it clear to you yet? Whether we like each other or not, whether we are compatible or not—or if we are as unalike as chalk and cheese—is totally beside the point. I’m mad for you. And you’re mad for me.”

Marguerite closed her eyes and raised a gloved hand to her mouth. A moment later Thomas saw that her shoulders were shaking, and when she opened her eyes they were alight with laughter, “Ah, Donovan,” she said intriguingly, just as Lord Chorley stopped beside her, obviously eager to claim his partner, his starched neck cloth so tight his face was an alarming shade of puce, “perhaps we’re both simply mad.”

“Mad?” Lord Chorley wrinkled his nose in thought. “Whatever are you two mad about, dear Marguerite? The supper not to your liking? I agree. The crepes were depressingly soggy. Hullo, again, Donovan. Leaving so soon? Best to do so quietly, as the better man is here now, for all your bragging. Ain’t I, Marguerite?”

Marguerite looked quickly to Lord Chorley, then to Thomas, and then back again to his lordship. “What are you talking about, Stinky? What sort of bragging?”

Thomas winced and lifted a hand to scratch at a spot behind his left ear. That would teach him to open his potato trap just to get a rise out of his audience. Who would have thought the man would be blockheaded enough to repeat such an insulting tale to the woman in question? He had meant to upset the gentlemen, not infuriate Marguerite.

A prudent retreat seemed a good idea. “Well, now, I believe I must be going,” he said, bowing. “Lord Chorley? Miss Balfour? Your devoted servant. Good evening.”

And then Thomas took himself off before “Stinky” Chorley could repeat the stupid boast he had made earlier, the one that would undoubtedly cost him dearly tomorrow, when he took Miss Marguerite Balfour out riding.

What lies, he wondered as he climbed the stairs to the ballroom, would they tell each other then?

CHAPTER 4

We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have.

— Publilus Syrus

He stood just beside the window overlooking the square, not in front of the window, but three paces back and slightly to the right, so that only he could see, and not be seen in return. He stood there often in the early morning hours before the majority of the world was awake, mentally constructing his empire and arranging it to suit him.

During those hours of contemplation he dealt with the worthless by means of France’s single grand invention, the guillotine, and gained a near sexual release by contemplating the terror he would one day see in the eyes of all those he deemed unworthy—the poor, the lazy, the flawed—as he ordered their elimination from his perfect world.

And the very intelligent. They too must go. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” Shakespeare had written. A laudable sentiment, but it would be foolish to