A Masquerade in the Moonlight (2 page)

Not that Marguerite would think about such things now, even if she had almost weekly wished that she had been born a boy, so that she could have a pole of her own and spend her Sunday mornings with Papa, sprawled on a grassy bank, her stockings wadded into balls beside her, dangling her bare toes in the deliciously cool water.

But now, for the moment, she would concentrate on the mouse.

If she were quick about the thing, she opined with the sure conviction of her four years—and very, very lucky—perhaps she could do it. Perhaps she could liberate the adorable, pink-nosed rodent.

Marguerite counted to three and then wriggled off the hard wooden pew to stand directly behind the woman, holding her breath against the odor of spoiled bacon. Reaching up her hands, she crooned soft cooing noises to the mouse, hoping to lure it from its sure-to-be uncomfortable home.

But the mouse proved to be most odiously stubborn and quite possibly brick stupid. Its head disappeared abruptly (it looked to Marguerite as if some elf inside the wig had yanked on its tail) only to poke out again a moment later, a little lower, just beside the woman’s right ear.

Silly creature! Marguerite thought. Didn’t it know she meant it no harm?

She concluded that she could not allow the mouse to disappear a second time, for only the good Lord knew where it would show up next!

Marguerite jumped as high as she could manage, launching herself against the top rail of the pew, her hands outstretched to grab at the mouse before it could dive back into the greasy center of the woman’s coiffure.

The small rodent, seeing itself under attack, belatedly attempted to engineer its own escape, its small, sharp front paws digging furiously at the powdered curls, until it had pulled itself free. It then scampered hotfoot down the woman’s withered, faintly dirty throat and into the bodice of her low-cut gown—Marguerite’s eager hands almost immediately following where the mouse had led.

In an instant all was bedlam.

The old woman screeched worse than the wheezing pipe organ as she catapulted from the pew to claw at the front of her gown as if she had gone into a fit and was attempting to strip herself bare in the middle of services. Marguerite screamed straight back at her, telling her not to be such a queer goose and hurt the little mouse who, after all, hadn’t done anything all that terrible.

As the mouse burrowed its way back up through the narrow valley between the woman’s mountainous cleavage to stare her straight in the face, its small pink nose and whiskers twitching furiously, the woman shrieked once more, then fell sideways in a dead faint, all but toppling the elderly gentleman next to her out into the aisle.

Marguerite saw her chance and took it. Her waist-length carroty curls flying every which way and her undergarments very much in evidence, she hiked up her skirts once more, agilely hopped over the back of the pew, scooped up the mouse as he sat perched on the seat and, happy to have effected the rescue, then proudly held it up for all the churchgoers to see.

This action quite naturally resulted almost immediately in the swooning of a half dozen fainthearted ladies in the nearby pews, a near stampede of gentlemen volunteering to remove the pesky scrap of vermin (eager as they most probably were for any interruption that might save them from the remainder of the vicar’s sermon), and, lastly, the loud guffaws of her grandfather, who had awakened just in time to witness the undeniably hilarious sport of the thing.

Even Marguerite’s mama—who had earlier confided in her daughter her secret hope that today, for just this one, single day, Marguerite would go through the hours without causing a catastrophe—only smiled with vague benevolence while discreetly tugging the child’s skirts back down over her exposed rump.

Within the hour Marguerite had been released from her too-tight shoes, her lovely but uncomfortable palest pink merveilleuse frock, and all constraints as to the behavior expected of grown-up young ladies of four, and was on her way to the stream, eager to regale her beloved papa with the story of her glorious rescue of one badly misplaced country mouse.

Geoffrey Balfour greeted her with a smile and with a pole of her own as his private birthday present to her, so that she could catch herself a fish or two Cook might then poach and garnish with fresh lemon for her dinner in the nursery. Then, later, her papa took her into the fields to meet with the Gypsies that camped there every spring, and she danced with them around the fire.

All in all, Marguerite would always remember, it was one of the most excruciatingly wonderful birthdays she’d ever had.

“Papa? Is it true there’s a man who lives in the moon? I know I can see a man’s features if I scrunch up my face and look very, very hard—two eyes, a mouth, even a nose—but where does he keep the rest of his body?”

Marguerite turned her head to the side to see her father, who was lying next to her on the soft ground, for the two of them had been gazing up into the starlit sky. Both of them had their arms crossed behind their heads, and their knees were bent in order to brace themselves better against the hillside, just the way they had been accustomed to lying there during every full moon for at least one night of every pleasant month this past year or more.

During that time Marguerite had been taught the names of all the constellations and had learned much about her father as well, for Geoffrey Balfour had spoken freely during these intimate interludes in the dark, sharing much of his unique philosophy of life with his only child now that she had reached the ripe age of ten.

“Papa?”

“Hush, kitten, I’m thinking about your question. If there truly is a man in the moon, and you can see his face, wherever does the gentleman keep his body? Ah, but Marguerite, dearest child—why do you suppose he even
possesses
a body? Are the grand doings of the moon and the stars to be measured by the paltry yardstick of the earthbound?”

“But, Papa, it is only to be expected. If the man in the moon has a head, he has to have a body.”

“Is that so? Only consider this, kitten, on a more worldly level: because a man possesses a purse, does that mean he must necessarily have money? Possibly. But
not
necessarily. In short, Marguerite, do not presuppose everything or even every
one
in this universe is as you expect from your own experience. Look at each creature you meet, every situation that presents itself to you, and see its individuality, its variables, its strengths, and even its weaknesses.”

“Very well, Papa, if you want to be stuffy. I shall do as ordered.” Marguerite scrambled onto her knees to beam down at her papa. “I see before me now the most handsome, the most wonderful, the most kind and positively
brilliant
gentleman on this entire earth, in this entire universe.” And then she frowned in sudden confusion. “What don’t I see, Papa?”

Geoffrey Balfour smiled up at his daughter. The smile was somehow sad, and tugged at her heart. “Now you’re beginning to understand. You see only that which I deign to show you. Like the man in the moon, kitten, I might keep very disparate parts of myself hidden. Or possibly I do not possess any other parts and am as shallow as our Chertsey streams in the midst of a blistering summer. But, no. I’ll answer your question. I’ll tell you what you don’t see, so that you learn nothing is as it seems. You don’t see inside my very pretty, yet also very empty purse, Marguerite—that object I spoke of a moment ago. You don’t see my flaws, my laziness, my failures. Neither, Lord bless her, does your dearest mama. Your grandfather—ah, well, he tolerates me, doesn’t he? But, then, I am always a scintillating conversationalist at table, and I don’t pick at my teeth with my dinner knife. In short, I do my best to please. So you see, kitten, if you look carefully, look deeply, you will find the goodness and the flaws as well. When you love you can overlook the flaws, but when you have need, you can use those same shortcomings to your own advantage. Perhaps that’s why the man in the moon hides most of himself from view. To protect himself. God knows we all have something to hide.”

Marguerite lowered herself to the ground once more, again taking up the position of stargazer. Her papa had shared something important and intensely personal with her, and she felt she had to return the favor. “I have a most terrible temper, Papa,” she said as the silence between them grew to be uncomfortable, the first such interlude Marguerite could remember. “But I take especial care to hide it very well.”

“So you have, kitten, and so you did—until this moment,” her father pointed out. “Not that
I
was ever unaware of that particular failing. Remember, I have known you forever, and it’s difficult for a small child to hide her temper, especially when she is shrieking and kicking and launching her toys at her loving papa’s head. But you’ve learned to control your ferocity these past years, for which, might I add, your mama and I are endlessly grateful, even if we know that terrible force could be roused if the right pressures were applied. Loving you, we don’t employ those pressures. But an enemy, someone who wished you ill or was searching for a way to best you—”

“—would go looking for the body the man in the moon hides so well,” Marguerite finished for him, feeling slightly smug that she had digested this latest lesson so well.

“If the man in the moon truly has a body,” Geoffrey said, confusing her once more, but only for a moment.

“Ah, Papa, yet the lack of a body is a weakness in and by itself,” she countered as Geoffrey helped her to her feet. “Real or imagined,
everyone
has a weakness that can be seen, used to our own purpose, if we but look closely enough. Isn’t that right, Papa? Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to teach me? To look for the obvious, yes, but also for that which is concealed?”

Geoffrey gathered his daughter close against his side, then pressed a kiss on her smooth forehead. “You’re quick, kitten—almost too quick for me—and you have yet to put up your hair. Heaven help the young bucks once we take you to London—you’ll dance rings around them.”

“And I’ll have none of them,” Marguerite pronounced flatly, lifting her faintly pointed chin defiantly, so that her long, wrist-thick pigtails slapped against her elbows. “There is only one true love for me, and that is my own dearest papa!”

Geoffrey threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Ah, kitten, you still have so much to learn. And learn it you will.” He flung out his right arm, as if declaiming to the world, and said, “Ladies, good milords! Behold before you Miss Marguerite Balfour—she may not set the world ablaze, but she most assuredly will make it smoke!”

Two years later, without warning, Geoffrey Balfour was gone.

It had been left to her grandfather to tell Marguerite after she skipped down the stairs in her riding habit early one sunny April day, eagerly calling for her papa to accompany her in a gallop across the fields; her mama, cursed with a frail constitution, had already collapsed and been put to bed, to be cared for by Maisie.

Her father’s heart, his pure, loving heart, had simply given out, Sir Gilbert had told Marguerite as she stared at him, shivering with an unnatural cold and hating him for saying what he was saying—hating everything and everyone who was alive when her papa was dead.

Dead!
No! It couldn’t be! Not her papa. Never her papa.

But Sir Gilbert had said it again, as if she hadn’t heard him correctly the first time. Death had been swift and painless, he had promised her, coming to meet Geoffrey as he sat in his study sometime after midnight, a book in his lap, and Marguerite should not grieve, but only remember her father with fondness, for he had been a good man. “It’s what your father would have wanted, darling child. You must be strong and take care of your mama now.”

Marguerite had nodded slightly as she stood, stunned into immobility, drawing in great gulps of air in an attempt to keep from crying like some idiot child who didn’t understand that grief was useless... and life was for the living... and her mama must be protected... and her grandfather was merely saying what was true, what her papa would have expected from his “kitten.”

She had only kissed Sir Gilbert’s cheek and walked slowly to the stable yard where her pony, Luna, waited for her. Avoiding the pitying eyes of the grooms, who were sniffling and rubbing at their wet cheeks and runny noses with the sleeves of their shirts, Marguerite had mounted at the block and turned Luna toward the open fields in an instant gallop.