A Masquerade in the Moonlight - By Kasey Michaels Page 0,50
only nodded and climbed the shallow steps that led out into the hallway without asking for assistance, brushing past Thomas as if he were some vile creature she could not bear to touch.
She had taken no more than three quick steps on the vividly patterned carpeting when Thomas took hold of her elbow, slowing her pace. “Aren’t you going to tell me you’re glad to see me, aingeal? I’ve been longing for another sight of your pretty face ever since leaving you this morning.”
She smiled at a passerby, then attempted, unsuccessfully, to pull her arm free of Thomas’s grip. “I told you I didn’t wish to see you again until tomorrow night. I’ve had hounds that took direction better than you, Donovan.”
“But none half so adoring as I, I’m convinced,” he responded silkily, so that she longed to batter him around the head and shoulders with her reticule. “Now stop frowning, or someone will think we’re having a lover’s quarrel. Besides, aren’t you going to ask me about my very painful injury, suffered since last I saw you?”
Marguerite had seen the wrapping around his right hand, but had refused to care. “Not unless it might prove fatal. If that were the case, I should be prepared to have a fireworks launching by way of celebration. Is it a life-threatening injury?” she asked him with a blighting smile. “And, please, Donovan, I must beg you don’t tease me with false hopes.”
“I’ll not be dying anytime soon, darlin’,” he answered, helping her to thread her way through the crush of people surrounding a table where refreshments were being served, Lord Mappleton and Georgianna following behind, his lordship asking some rather pointed questions about the size of her uncle’s fortune. “It’s only a bruise, I think, although painful enough. Would you wish to kiss the hurt away for me, the way my sainted mother did whenever I scraped myself?”
“Thank you, no. I’d much rather throw myself off the roof of this building,” Marguerite answered quietly, still smiling at acquaintances who were moving about in all their jewels and finery, eager to see and be seen by the rest of the ton. “But, just out of curiosity, what did you do to hurt yourself—put your hand somewhere else it didn’t belong and have someone swat it with a mallet?”
“Nothing so exciting. I merely punched a man.”
Marguerite stopped in her tracks, to look up at him inquiringly. Georgianna and Lord Mappleton were still talking nineteen to the dozen behind her, but she had ceased to listen. “Punched a man? Hit a man?” she asked, suddenly feeling chilled in the overheated room. The blockhead shouldn’t be let loose without a keeper! How could he come to their country as an emissary from his government and then go around bashing people? “Who? Why?”
“The Earl of Laleham,” Thomas told her, his tone maddeningly calm and unconcerned, “and I did it because he asked me to. Very agreeable fellow, the earl, and although I haven’t talked to him since leaving Gentleman Jackson’s this afternoon—where I was the guest of Sir Ralph Harewood—I did have some flowers and a container of gruel sent round to his residence. But he may not appreciate my gifts for, now that I’ve had time to think on the thing, he may have asked me to spar with him because he overheard what I said about my deep affection for you.”
Marguerite was no longer chilled. She was icy cold. Thomas had hit the Earl of Laleham? He had milled down William Renfrew? William knew that Donovan was courting her—if anyone could call his outlandish assault on her emotions courting? First Arthur, then Perry, and now Ralph and William. Did he know about Stinky as well? How could he have stumbled into such a viper’s nest? Dear God! Was the American a total lunatic? She looked up at him warily as the remainder of what he had said penetrated her brain. “Gruel? Donovan—don’t just stand there. Explain yourself, you grinning jackanapes.”
Thomas grimaced as he scratched a spot just below his right ear with his bandaged hand. “Why, I rather suppose I broke the man’s jaw,” he said, then grinned, so that she longed to punch him herself. “I at least cracked it. Paddy said I gave him a ‘wisty castor,’ whatever that is. But it was all in sport.”
“So is bear baiting, or so I’m told,” Marguerite spat out, not caring that anyone close by might hear her. “Of all the stupid, paper-skulled, idiotic, dangerous—Donovan, no