The Mischievous Miss Murphy (5 page)

In answer to her teasing, Max reached a hand into the hamper and came out holding a fine, plump orange, which he immediately tossed at his niece. She fielded it neatly before handing it to the Marquess.

“You see, your lordship?” she told him, only a slight warning tone in her voice. “You have to be very quick if you plan to cross swords with
Uncail
.”

Tony tipped his dark head to one side and looked deeply into her laughing brown eyes. “And if I wish to indulge in a little lighthearted flirting with his niece?” he prompted softly, so only she could hear.

Candie grinned, showing her white teeth to advantage. “Ah, my lord, for that you must be very quick indeed.” Retrieving the orange from his lordship’s hand, she turned toward the door before, without a word of warning, she sent the orange winging back toward Tony as he followed in her wake.

The orange narrowly missed the tip of his nose as it went singing by, only to be snatched from the air by Max, who snared it almost negligently while he pulled the cork of the whiskey bottle with his teeth.

Tony favored Candie with a deep bow. “I see I must be on my guard, madam. However, I will wager you that you will not catch me napping again.”

The door closed behind them as Max was still offering his lordship rather insulting odds on just such a wager.

I
t was, as the Marquess had assured her, a perfect day for a drive. There was a bit of a breeze, enough to keep the air fresh and clean, but not too strong as to wreak havoc with her bonnet and carefully casual hairstyle. The Park, always beautiful, was in exemplary form, the vivid colors of fall banishing thoughts of the damp, cold winter on its way.

Of course, sitting up behind the Marquess’s perfectly matched bays and beside the handsomest man in all England had not a little to do with Candie’s enjoyment of the scenery. How very nice, how perfectly lovely it was to tool along the tree-lined avenues with such a companion.

Almost, if a woman tried with all of her might, she could believe that the fairy tale could be transformed to reality. How very right, how very natural she felt in her role of society miss. The fact that she could probably outride, outshoot, outtalk, and, perhaps, outwit the Marquess —and worse yet, the fact that she might yet have to do any or all of the aforementioned—served to throw a bit of a damper on her enjoyment, but Candie had long since learned to relish the good times while they lasted and not concentrate too heavily on the future.

Out of the corner of his eye Tony watched the varying emotions come and go on Candie’s face and wondered just what she was thinking. After indulging in several minutes of lighthearted banter, she had lapsed into silence a few minutes after entering the Park, and now he felt reluctant to interrupt her thoughts.

The girl was, he was finding out, composed of a series of contradictions. She had the scruples of a cardsharp, the tongue of either an Irish peasant or a titled gentlewoman, the manners of both a hoyden and a grande dame, and the sort of sharp wit that could dare to cross swords with anyone from the sarcastic Brummel to the condescending Countess Lieven. And the morals of—Ah, that was the rub. Was she a fine-boned Harriette Wilson, courtesan par excellence, or, unbelievably, a sheltered paradox who was a seasoned citizen of the world, yet unschooled in the delights of the flesh?

A sudden lift in the breeze sent a lock of Candie’s baby-soft white-blonde hair to dancing against his cheek, and he caught the aroma of violets as it tickled his nostrils with the age-old scent of innocence. When he reached up a hand to brush the hair away, his fingers lingered in the tangle of soft, warm curls, and he was hard-pressed not to bring them to his lips where he could savor their sweetness.

The fact that his horses were slowing intruded on Candie’s thoughts—just then centering on the story of Cinderella and casting herself in the lead—causing her to turn her head and inquire if something was amiss, thereby catching his lordship in the act of coveting his companion’s hair.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, hastily extracting the last errant strands from Tony’s fingers. “Please forgive me, your lordship. I know it’s dreadfully in the way, this wild mane of mine, but Max refuses utterly whenever I suggest having it cut off. It would be less of a trial if it were a more ordinary color—for whoever heard of white hair on a girl my age, besides there being so very much of it. In truth, half the time I feel like Prinney’s pet pony, all decked out for the fair.”

If Tony had been trying to look nonchalant, Candie’s words destroyed the notion. “Cut your hair?” he fairly shouted. “I absolutely forbid it!”

“Do you now?” Candie purred, her spirits always enlivened by the thought of a good argument. “And who might you be to be giving me orders?”

Tony belatedly found his composure, something he lost so rarely he had little experience in having to carry on without it. Inclining his head in her direction, he apologized smoothly, “Forgive me, Miss Murphy. I presumed on our rather unique acquaintance, hoping that, having served as your rescuer yesterday, I might ask a favor in return. Cut that glorious hair if you so desire, only promise me you will not discard whatever you remove. Give it to me instead, so that I may honor it with a proper burial.”

This piece of absurdity was too much for Candie. “Bury it?” she repeated, shocked. “It wouldn’t be that you were after sampling a bit of Irish whiskey yourself before choosing a suitably fine sort to bribe Max with, would it?”

But inspiration had hit Tony and he would not be sidetracked by her attempt to draw him into defending himself. Heaving a world-weary sigh, he lent his attention to his horses for a moment—although they were a well-behaved pair and there was little traffic on the path—before shaking his head sadly and asking, “Is it so absurd to honor the demise of a part of oneself? You must have lived with that hair for quite some time, and it seems churlish to just toss it away like yesterday’s
Times
.”

Trying hard not to smile, Candie asked him if he had any suggestions as to how to dispose of “the deceased.”

“As a matter of fact, Candie, I do,” Tony replied, using her name quite naturally; so naturally, that she could not bring herself to reprimand him for his informality. “Not that mine is an original idea, for it is the Marquess of Anglesey we have to thank for both the sensitivity and the ingenuity he employed after Waterloo when it became necessary to find something to do with the leg he had lost in battle.”

“You find me utterly at your feet begging for an explanation,” Candie admitted, wondering just what the soldier had contrived, not to mention how he had maintained the sangfroid that would allow him to even think overmuch of such a distressing dilemma.

Tony turned his horses so that they could make yet another turn about the circuit. “Without dressing the thing up in fine linen, the Marquess commissioned his severed leg to be put in a coffin and buried right at Waterloo. And then,” he went on, throwing Candie a quick, assessing look that assured him she was more enthralled than appalled (unlike any debutante, or several matrons he could think of), “he had a headstone carved with an epitaph of his own devising. Would you care to hear the inscription?”

Candie most definitely cared to hear it, and so she told him. So while the sun shone down brightly on the scene, and while the two young people rode on through the Park, oblivious of passersby, Tony recited the words he had learned by heart:

“‘Here rests—and let no saucy knave

Presume to sneer and laugh,

To learn that mouldering in the grave

Is laid—a British calf.

A leg and foot, to speak more plain

Rest here of one commanding,

Who though his wits he may retain

Lost half his under-standing.

And now in England, just as gay

As in the battle brave,

He goes to rout, review and play,

With one foot in the grave.’”

“Bravo!” Candie fairly shouted, clapping her hands. “Bravo, and well done for the Marquess of Anglesey! I vow I’d love to meet the author of such a work. What a rare and levelheaded man to take a tragedy and turn it into a victory.”

Tony was delighted with her instant realization that the Marquess was a man of unusual fortitude. “Ah yes, Candie, I agree,” he told her before giving way to a deep sigh. “But I fear I cannot dare to top the man with any epitaph that would do credit to the glory that is your hair. My talents, such as they are, owe more to sad rehashings of someone else’s words rather than the creation of my own.”

“Indeed, and what, pray, could you ever find to rhyme with Murphy, in any case?” Candie laughed, gifting him with a commiserating pat on the arm. “But now that you have put the idea in my head, I believe I shall refuse to cut so much as a single hair until I can find someone who can pen a suitably fitting epitaph. You have spoiled me for less than a Byronic sonnet, I fear. But what of this talk of rehashing another’s words? I confess I do not understand exactly what you mean.”

The Marquess was about to do something entirely out of character: tell a woman about his little-known penchant for rewriting plays and other works of literature, satirizing them unmercifully for the amusement of his selected group of listeners. That everyone who heard his work read aloud thought him to be brilliant he disregarded as the mouthings of half-drunk lords who couldn’t tell a well-turned phrase from a well-cooked cabbage, only made his sudden need to share his scribbling with Candie seem even more outlandish.

But just as he was about to speak, Candie spied a well-sprung high-perch phaeton approaching, its female driver appearing to be in the control of her team rather than the other way around.

“Oh dear,” Candie exclaimed, watching worriedly as the driver put the reins into one hand so that she, silly woman that she must be, could wave to the Marquess with the other. “I don’t know if your lordship charts his future by the stars, but I do believe I see a meeting with a buxom, dark-haired beauty in your near future,” she said, tilting her head in the direction of the oncoming equipage.

“Oh, my God,” Mark Antony Betancourt groaned, dropping his chin onto his chest, “it’s my sister.”

Candie took another, longer peek at the harassed-looking woman. She saw a deliciously decorated widgeon whose buttercup-yellow driving ensemble was as fashionable as it was unsuitable for its intended use, her lovely, heart-shaped face nearly overwhelmed by a melting pair of wide cobalt-blue eyes—a face that mirrored a mind filled with every virtue save intelligence.

“That’s Cleopatra?” she asked incredulously. “One look at her and the asp would have begged forgiveness and committed suicide rather than harm a hair on her head. I cannot believe you two are related.”

Tony was in a quandary. Introducing your sister to your light-o’-love—even if that title was just a tad premature— was simply not done. Yet if he were to turn his horses, something he should have done the moment he spied Patsy coming toward him, he would never hear the end of it. His sister would be bound to punish him with yet another rambling lecture on the wickedness of his ways, his duty to start his nursery—a legitimate nursery—and the folly of associating with females from which he could conceivably “catch something.”

In the end, he was forced to take a deep breath, stand his ground, and take his medicine like a man.

“There’s no way out of this one,” he hissed in an aside to Candie as he pasted a stiff smile on his face and waved to his sister. “If you promise not to play pranks like a hoyden—introducing yourself as Princess Candlelabra of Lamppost or some such rot—we might just brush through this without any complications.”

Candie immediately took umbrage, and rightly so. Hadn’t she been educated—under various names—at a succession of the best schools Max could finagle her into? What did the Marquess think she was about to do—haul out a racily decorated snuffbox and offer his sister a dip?

“I do believe I can behave circumspectly, if only for the few moments it will take you to warn your sister off. After all, we wouldn’t want her sensibilities unduly overset, would we,” she said coldly, causing Tony to mentally kick himself for his deplorable turn of phrase.

“Don’t poker up on me, Candie,” he implored, still holding firm on his stiff smile. “I just meant that it would be hard for anyone to withstand the urge to run a rig on such a gullible puss as Patsy. Lord knows I’ve succumbed to the temptation more than once.”