A Masquerade in the Moonlight - By Kasey Michaels Page 0,30
dose of the new tonic the doctor gave you yesterday?”
“Of course I did,” Sir Gilbert answered, his rheumy blue eyes shifting to his plate, where remnants of his own substantial breakfast obscured the pattern on the china. “You’re going out of your way to be impertinent this morning, aren’t you, gel?”
Marguerite frowned and laid down her fork. Her grandfather was all she had, and she was becoming increasingly aware of the man’s age. No matter how hard she tried to deny it, he was growing older, especially since her mother’s death last year, and she was terrified of his dying, of his leaving her. She was going to keep him alive for another ten years—another twenty years—even if she had to do it through sheer force of will. “You shouldn’t lie, old man. You do it very badly.”
Sir Gilbert lifted his serviette to his mouth and coughed into it, eying her owlishly. “Damn, if you ain’t twice the woman your grandmother was, and that’s three times as much woman as I like riding herd on me. I’ll take the blasted tonic later, child—I promise—and follow its nastiness down with a medicinal nip of gin.”
Marguerite smiled, then took a healthy bite of bacon and looked around the sun-drenched room, glorying in the promise of good weather. “Fair enough,” she told Sir Gilbert when she had done chewing. “Only it shall be a half glass of canary, and not your usual Blue Ruin, that terrible name you have for gin. Now—don’t you wish to hear about the gentleman who is coming to take your only grandchild out riding?”
Sir Gilbert pushed his plate away from him and propped his elbows on the table. “That depends. Is he younger than God? You’ve got a queer way about you, Marguerite, allowing yourself to be surrounded with men more suited to have courted your dear, departed mother in her grass time. And they all did, now that I think of it.”
Marguerite kept her eyes on her plate. “None of them is all that much older than my father would be if he were still alive,” she agreed quietly. “Hardly ancient. But this morning’s gentleman is considerably younger.” And quite possibly twice as dangerous, she added silently.
Sir Gilbert leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes narrowed, “How young? I’ve got a wager going with Finch. Forty? Thirty? Well, speak up, gel—I’ve got five pounds resting on your answer.”
“One and thirty on my last birthday, sir, and it may please you to know I still have all my teeth.”
Marguerite’s head whipped around toward the hall and she saw Thomas Joseph Donovan leaning his long frame against the archway, Finch beside him, his mouth open, as he had been about to announce the visitor’s presence. The butler recovered quickly, more rapidly than Marguerite, who found herself struck yet again by Thomas’s laughing blue eyes. “That’s a fiver you owe me, Sir Gilbert,” Finch said, grinning in obvious satisfaction, then bowed respectfully and withdrew.
“And I’ll pay it, your grinning jackanapes. I’ll pay it gladly!” Sir Gilbert bellowed after the man, then motioned for Thomas to join them at table. “Sit down, my boy, sit down! We don’t stand on ceremony around here, do we, Marguerite? Picked yourself a prime specimen here, didn’t you? Must stand eighteen hands high at the least.”
“Top to toe, closer to twenty, sir, although I have never before considered measuring myself against a horse,” Thomas replied genially, slipping into the chair at the head of the table—just as if he belonged there, Marguerite thought, longing to hate the man. But he looked so good, dressed in fawn riding breeches that outlined his muscular thighs and a well-fitting hacking jacket that showed his broad shoulders to advantage, that she chose to say nothing.
“Yes, well, I’m a country-minded sort,” Sir Gilbert answered, “for all this grandeur you see around here. My deceased wife had the furnishing of this place, you understand. Can’t plant your rump down on half the chairs without worrying you’re going to blast them into splinters. I’m far happier mucking about in the stables, or at least I was, until I ate my way into this condition you see before you now. Marguerite—introduce me to this young man. Where are your manners, gel?”
“Yes, Miss Balfour,” Thomas chided, smiling at her, “wherever are your manners? I believe you have just lately performed an introduction with aplomb, although I also seem to remember you had to be prodded on that occasion also.”
“Grandfather,” Marguerite said sweetly, determined to