The Mischievous Miss Murphy (3 page)

Candie stepped back a pace and reexamined the man standing beside her. “It would seem Max has put the fox to mind the geese. If it’s a quick tumble in the hay you’re after, my fine upstanding lord, might I suggest that redheaded creature standing near the door? She seems eager enough. As for me, there isn’t gold enough in all England to even tempt me into doing what you are thinking.”

As seductions went, this one wasn’t going so well, a deduction Tony attributed to the fact that he had been up all night and was not appearing at his urbane best. He was sure Max and his “niece” had been down on their luck before, with the comely wench commissioned to replenish their pockets by means of assuming the customary horizontal position.

But perhaps he had misread their situation. He had seen himself as the closest, most accessible target for her attentions, but if he didn’t soon take his foot out of his mouth she would disappear into the bowels of London and he would never know how her white-blonde hair looked when spread out across his pillow.

“Please excuse me for my forwardness,” he begged prettily, bowing. “You will find that I am nearly always stupid at this hour of the morning. My words were spoken in all admiration, mixed perhaps with a bit of concern for you and your uncle now that you are out on the street with nowhere to go. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

At that moment Max reappeared, dressed to the teeth in the trappings of an Italian nobleman, the only recognizable feature to give him away being those same sparkling green eyes.

Executing an elegant leg for his awestruck audience of one (Candie had seen it all before), Max announced in heavily accented English, “I am the Conte di Casals, lately arrived from Florence. You see with you my niece Gina. Would you be so kind as to have some one of these
servitu
load our
bagagli
into a, how-you-say, conveyance so we may repair to our
alloggio
that is on your Half Moon Street?”

 Taking Tony’s arm, as the young lord was standing as still as a wax statue, Max made a shooing motion with his free hand that sent his grinning niece scurrying ahead of them into the sunlight before asking his lordship urbanely, “I am considering either Bigelow or Crimpson to set up my cellars. Who, dear sir, do you recommend for my favor?”

“I am all admiration,” Tony said honestly as the trio settled back in yet another hired vehicle and headed off toward Half Moon Street. From the top of his head to the tip of his toes, Maximilien P. Murphy was every inch the Italian Count, and it would take a more discerning eye than Lord Coniston’s to find any flaw in the appearance the man projected. “But I also confess to being abominably slow. According to your niece, you were without resources. How did you ever command a set of rooms on Half Moon Street?”

The fat is nicely in the fire now, Candie thought, mentally flogging her uncle for giving in to the urge to show himself off in front of this new, unknown outsider. In all her twenty years she could not remember Max exposing himself so—giving away secrets to a total stranger. Their survival depended on snap judgments of people, though, and so far Max’s intuition had been dead center on target. Perhaps, she opined, if the man were not so terribly handsome, with the devil’s own black eyes dancing in his head, she would trust him more.

While Candie sat in her corner of the crowded hackney and muttered to herself, Max took command of the conversation, magnanimously explaining his method of convincing his prospective landlord that he was not only expected to arrive on this date, but had already paid his first quarter’s rent to the man’s agent in the City.

“Are we going to stay at number sixty-three again then,
Uncail
?” Candie asked idly. “There’s such a pretty view from the front windows there, don’t you think?”

Tony’s original mission—bedding one Miss Candice Murphy before the week was out—took a backseat to his interest in Uncle Max and this latest scheme. “You’ve stayed here before? And paid for the privilege?” he asked, suddenly in awe of this great trickster.

“Don’t be a goose, sir,” Candie answered as her uncle went off in a paroxysm of laughter. “We never pay for anything. That’s the beauty of the thing. Oh, we never bilk honest people—just the money-hungry ones or those who have more gold than they’ll ever need.”

“Of course,” Tony affirmed, trying very hard to look solemn. “But won’t the landlord recognize you?”

Max Murphy slapped a beefy hand on his thigh in delight. “O’course not, boyo. Does my darlin’ girl here look anything like an African crown prince?”

Tony looked again at the fair skin and fairer hair of Candice Murphy. “Not at all,” he answered, confusion in his face.

Max laughed again. “Well, she did last summer!” he fairly shouted and, thoroughly enjoying the dumbfounded expression on the Marquess’s face, uncle and niece indulged themselves in their best laugh since before the assistant constable had hauled them away to the guardhouse.

H
aving the famous Marquess of Coniston in their train added consequence to Max’s impressive impersonation of an Italian Count aghast at the landlord’s ignorance of his identity. Indeed, Max’s enactment of an Italian tantrum—complete with loud exclamations, florid gestures, and much dramatic wringing of the hands—was truly inspired, earning him and his niece not only a free quarter year’s residence at number sixty-three, but the promise of twice-weekly domestic help at no extra charge.

It was all Coniston could do to withhold his applause as the landlord, still quaking with fear that the Conte di Casals might still take exception to his shoddy treatment and take his business elsewhere, bowed himself from the cozy first floor apartments.

No sooner had the door closed behind the landlord than did Max turn to Tony with not a trace of humor apparent on his face to, after murmuring only the briefest thanks for all the Marquess had done them, summarily dismiss the man.

Tony, who had been in the process of lowering himself into a comfortable-looking chair, was more than a little taken aback. “Oh,” he said, sudden comprehension bringing a slight sneer to his handsome face, “may I take this to mean my services are no longer required? And just when I was beginning to believe you were a cut above the common crook, too. Pity. Well,” he ended, sauntering toward the door, “at least you were amusing for a time, until you showed me your true colors.”

Candie, who had been in the process of deciding just where to display her one beloved piece of porcelain sculpture, a very pretty rendition of a young girl and her pet kitten reclining on a grassy knoll, hastened to intervene before her uncle made himself a dangerous enemy.

“Please, your lordship,” she pleaded prettily, taking Tony’s arm, “let me explain. The Irish, especially the older, crustier males,” she added, directing a nasty look in her uncle’s direction, “tend to moodiness, treating people they meet as the greatest of good fellows, only to condemn them as bloody nuisances an hour later. It’s a quirk of the species, I believe, one that Uncle Max has elevated to an art form. I should know, as even I am not immune from such treatment. Though personally I believe Max only suffers so because he considers himself a ‘bachelor boy’—vowing that, at close to fifty, he is still too young to marry. Please, consider Max as you would a crotchety old maid, and perhaps you can forgive his rudeness.”

“
Arrah
now,” Max muttered, giving voice to a decidedly vulgar Irish expression that, perhaps thankfully, had no real meaning. Ripping off his elaborate fake mustache, he stomped into his bedchamber, rudely slamming the door behind him.

Max’s departure left Candie and Tony alone in the room, a circumstance that would have had the Irishman pelting hotfoot back to join them if he hadn’t already been involved with the planning of his first escapade meant to put the jingle of gold coins back in his pockets.

“A strange man,” Tony mused, looking at the closed door, “but, believe it or nay, I think I actually like him. Perhaps there is some flaw in my character heretofore undisclosed that draws me to him.”

In her twenty years, Candie Murphy had been, due to her peculiar lifestyle, thrown into company with many, many men—some gentlemen, many more not—and she had no trouble recognizing the difference. The Marquess of Coniston was a gentleman, and would be one even if stripped of his title.

That he was also quite the handsomest man she had ever met did not weigh with her, she told herself emphatically, and had nothing to do with her uncharacteristic objection to Max’s customary shabby treatment of people whom he had deemed to have served out their usefulness to him.

She couldn’t explain her actions; she only knew that now that Max had left them alone, she hadn’t the faintest notion of what to say to the man.

When the silence became noticeable, Tony tried once more to gain a toehold in the door, so to speak, as a step toward ingratiating himself with Candie.

After all, it was plaguey difficult to bed a chit when they weren’t even on speaking terms. Max’s none too subtle message of hands-off Tony could accept as only a minor stumbling block in his pursuit of the niece. He would just have to deal directly with her, a distasteful circumstance, what with plain talk of payment for services rendered and such, but it certainly wouldn’t set a precedent in Coniston’s dealings with females of her ilk.

Besides, why would Murphy have left them alone together if he hadn’t been engineering an alliance between the two of them?

If Candie, who had been busy calling herself every kind of fool while at the same time racking her brain for something sensible to say to end the silence, had been privy to Tony’s thought processes, she would have found her tongue with a vengeance. Because, contrary to what the Marquess believed, although she was of an age when most of her contemporaries were married, she herself could not boast of ever having so much as a single beau.

Her uncle had protected her fiercely from the time she had turned fourteen, and when her appearance, formerly thin and rather gawky, had turned soft and curvy, Max had no longer been able to dress her in pants and have anyone believe she was his nephew.

Fortunately for both Tony’s aspirations and Candie’s romantic dreams, the Marquess, taking note of Candie’s show of shyness (surely a sign that she had at some time trodden the boards), decided to play along, taking the slow approach. To this end he suggested a return visit the next day, when hopefully her uncle would be more himself.

“Uncle Max is always himself,” Candie quipped, her happiness at the thought of seeing the Marquess again freeing her frozen tongue. “That’s what’s so distressing.”

Tony smiled his understanding and then, sobering slightly, asked, “You won’t go taking French leave or anything, will you? I mean, I’d hate to come back here tomorrow to find your uncle had decided to do a flit?” The unaccustomed stab of unease—for the Marquess of Coniston was never uneasy—surprised Tony as much as it delighted Candie, who saw this as a sign of his interest in her.

“Good Lord, no. We may have been in a bit of a pucker when first you saw us this morning, but Max has righted us, as usual, and we are settled now at least until winter. And as Max says, ‘Never dread the winter until the snow is on the blanket’—which means I should not worry my head unless there is no roof above it. I refuse to concern myself about what we shall do then until the time comes.”

She shrugged, looking for a moment to be no more than a child, and then smiled, saying philosophically, “With Max, one must learn to simply relax and follow his lead. He’s not steered us wrong yet.”

“He plays the cards as they are dealt, does he?” Tony opined, feeling a grudging respect for the gamester, and then, bowing from the waist, he took his leave of Miss Candice Murphy, promising to return before noon the next day.

As he walked to the corner, hoping to flag down a passing hackney, Tony smiled knowingly. Let’s see how cold old Maximilien is when I arrive at his door bearing gifts, he thought evilly, visions of Max delivering his niece to him on a platter lending a certain spring to his lordship’s steps as he genially tipped his hat to passersby.