The Mischievous Miss Murphy (6 page)

And then, before Candie could ease his apprehension by voicing her forgiveness or dash his hopes forever with a crushing setdown, Patsy hauled her team to an ungraceful halt beside his curricle, and all his energies were concentrated on simply getting out of the business with his skin intact.

“Oh, hold still, you ridiculous beasts,” pleaded Lady Cleopatra Charmian Montague in her rather high, childish voice. After staring intently at her team’s still occasionally quivering backs for a few reassuring moments, she turned and directed her next words to her patiently waiting brother. “Really, Antony, you’d think Harry would have had better sense than to have purchased such a high-strung pair for his own wife.”

“Harry didn’t buy those nags, Patsy,” her sibling reminded her cordially. “He won them at Faro the week before your birthday and, ever one to take advantage of a kind providence, he immediately saw it as a sign that you were meant to receive those stupid, showy plugs for your very own. But Harry’s been underground for nearly two years, pet. Surely you couldn’t hurt his feelings by selling that pair before their shenanigans result in having you planted next to the old boy sooner than any of us would like.”

Patsy looked past her brother, shaking her head sorrowfully as she turned to his companion for support against this crass male. “My stars, have you ever heard such hard-heartedness?” she asked Candie, who was just then inspecting Lady Cleopatra’s magnificent bosom and wondering why the Lord in His wisdom had chosen to give so much bounty to others and so little to herself.

“Lord Coniston shows an amazing lack of sensibility, madam, I agree,” Candie responded lightly, seeing the sparkle in the other woman’s eyes that clearly showed she was not averse to his teasing. “I can only offer you my condolences in being saddled with such a brother.”

Patsy Montague leaned sideways on her seat, the better to see the young woman who had spoken, for although her blue eyes were very ornamental, they were also a bit shortsighted. “Antony!” she ordered. “Introduce me to this astute young person at once. It is prodigiously refreshing to find a female who refuses to drool all over your ridiculous self-importance.”

The Marquess quickly effected the introductions, passing lightly on the subject of where he had encountered Candie in the first place. “Her uncle, Maximilien P. Murphy—of the Donegal Murphys, you know—is an old acquaintance. He and his niece are ensconced in Half Moon Street for a short time between his, er, diplomatic engagements.”

Lady Patsy Montague didn’t care a snap what Uncle Maximilien did. She sensed a romance in the air and was already deciding whether or not the Eighth Marquess of Coniston would inherit enough of his father’s countenance to be able to withstand taunts about his ridiculous white- blonde hair, what with Eton schoolboys being so quick to taunt their mates.

“I’m so delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Murphy,” Patsy enthused, jerking on the reins and setting her restless pair to prancing. “But it is impossible to carry on a decent conversation while Harry’s nags insist on fretting like this. Antony simply must bring you to dinner tomorrow night. You and your uncle, of course.”

Tony’s groan was audible. It was also the single inducement that he could have offered to convince Candie to accept her ladyship’s invitation. “My uncle and I would be delighted, madam,” she replied, avoiding Tony’s speaking eyes, which at the moment were giving voice to entire volumes, all of them centering on the silent plea: Refuse her! Refuse her!

“I don’t believe I’ll be available tomorrow, Patsy,” the Marquess said, inspiration rather than regret in his tone. “As a matter of fact, I’m sure I’m not. I’m promised to Hugh and Will for tomorrow.”

His sister dismissed this slight problem with a toss of her head. “Piffle! If the day ever comes when Hugh Kinsey or Will Merritt turn down a chance to slide their legs beneath my dining table—now that I’ve stolen Lady Forsyte’s French chef from her—I’d know the both of them to have completely lost their senses. Bring them along, Antony. You know I like your friends.”

As if they had been conjured up out of a magic hat, the two gentlemen cantered up to the sitting equipages, having been in the Park exercising their mounts. Patsy espied them first, and before Tony could warn his friends off, she had both presented her invitation and acknowledged their eager acceptances.

“Now I know how a condemned man looks,” Candie whispered to Tony in an aside before smiling up prettily at the two gentlemen who were staring at the Marquess, waiting to be introduced to his companion. “Take a stern grip on yourself, my lord. I do believe you are about to launch the Donegal Murphys into polite society.”

It was not quite three of the clock when the Marquess of Coniston entered White’s, so that the bow window set, including Lord Alvanley, John Mills, the Duke of Argyll, and the rest of that select inner circle had not yet arrived for their daily stint of ridiculing passersby through the panes with their cutting wit, in the best tradition of their departed friend and mentor, George Brummell. More than once, the Marquess had been asked to join the gentlemen, but that was not why he had come to the club this day.

Tony had made a dead set at White’s directly after depositing a still maddeningly amused Miss Murphy in Half Moon Street, intent on confronting Messrs. Kinsey and Merritt and demanding they send round their regrets to his sister for the next day’s dinner.

After all, he thought with uncharacteristic concern for the proprieties, entertaining common criminals in one’s sister’s house was just not done. Once shed of Hugh and Will, he could then concentrate his efforts on dissuading the Murphys from attending as well.

He found his two friends in one of the side rooms, heatedly debating the merits of Edward Hughes Ball Hughes’s latest sartorial adventure.

“I say he’s still a demned fine-looking man, no matter how high his shirt-points,” Mr. Hugh Kinsey was saying just as Tony entered the room.

“Rubbish,” Mr. William Merritt countered. “Man walks like he’s swallowed a kitchen poker; completely throws off the cut of his jacket. Divorced, you know.”

“What has that got to do with anything?” Hugh retorted, throwing down his napkin in disgust. “If one limited his friends to those who weren’t divorced—or just acting like it—the clubs would soon be blackballing everyone from Prinney on down. Course, then again, that mightn’t be such a bad idea.”

“Here, here,” Tony called from the doorway, “cease this bickering before one of you ends up calling the other out. Golden Ball would have to come witness the event only because others might consider it the fashion, and Prinney would insist on being Will’s second, a thought too ludicrous to contemplate. Besides,” he ended, pulling out a chair and straddling it backward, “I have a boon to ask of you both.”

“If it has anything to do with staying away from your sister’s tomorrow so as not to cut you out with that delicious-looking morsel you was squiring in the Park earlier, I’ll call
you
out,” Will asserted quickly. “And with Hugh here wearing his heart on his sleeve for Lady Cleo this past year or more, I doubt he’ll bow out gracefully either.”

“Will, you amaze me,” Tony said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how you did it, but you came up with the correct answer—although you missed by a long chalk when it comes to the reason. It seems, you see, that I have become the unwitting tool in having m’sister stumble into inviting two common thieves to Grosvenor Square.”

The hubbub that followed this calm announcement had heads turning all over the room, and Tony was forced to promise to tell all before Will, in his agitation, did himself an injury. Hugh, however, being older and therefore less prone to hysterical outbursts, had only muttered, “For shame, Antony, foisting thieves on that sweet angel,” before sitting back in his chair, shaking his head. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

Tony told his tale over more than a few shared glasses of wine, his recreation of Maximilien P. Murphy as a king among connivers losing nothing in the telling, but merely skimming over Candie’s participation as being no more than a sad consequence of being thrust into her uncle’s care. He was already more than half on his way to believing this to be the true way of things, his impression clouded only by Candie’s seeming enjoyment of her role.

“The Maharajah of Budge-Budge?” Hugh said wonderingly once Tony had signaled the end of his little story by taking a long swallow from his glass. “And you mean to tell me the constable swallowed such a thin tale? It doesn’t say much for the caliber of our London law officers, does it.”

But while Hugh’s logical mind was hard pressed to believe his fellow man’s gullibility, Will had taken another tack. He was more than a little impressed, by both Uncle Max and his beautiful niece, and declared that he couldn’t wait to sit down to dinner with such an interesting couple.

“But, don’t you see, you clothhead,” the Marquess was harried into declaring, “the entire purpose of telling you about the Murphys was so that you would have the good sense to
avoid
them. And to have them in my sister’s house —why, she’d never forgive me once she found out the truth about them.”

Hugh, older than his friend by some half dozen years, inspected the Marquess at length before speaking. “Tony, old fellow,” he said at last, “I do believe you are protesting overmuch. After all, you are still the same Mark Antony Betancourt who brought a lion cub—and not a bit housebroken as I recall—to your sister’s dress ball three Seasons past, are you not? And the same Mark Antony Betancourt who talked that same sister into allowing herself to be rolled up in a dusty old rug for the masquerade this past Yuletide—and then unrolled her in front of a roomful of people to find she had dressed only in her underclothing, as it was so warm inside the rug? Really, I find it hard to believe you’re suddenly under acute attack from your conscience just because Cleo’s invited a pair of gay adventurers to dine a single time.”

Will narrowed his eyes and looked at Tony intently. “Yes, dear Hugh, you’re right. It does seem rather out of character. Perhaps our good friend has designs on the lady in question. We did both comment that she was a fine-looking female. But really, Tony, Hugh’s already spoken for—what with him drooling over your sister—and I’ve got more than I can handle just now with Tilly. Covent Garden Warblers aren’t coming cheap this year, you know.”

“Then you refuse to stand by me in this?” Tony asked dramatically. “You refuse to save my sister from possible embarrassment?”

“Actually, old chap,” Hugh contradicted smoothly, “it’s
you
we refuse to aid. But we are all eagerness to witness your rescue attempts. Such brotherly concern is so affecting.”

Tony rose from his chair in disgust. “I knew I could count on my oldest and dearest friends,” he said waspishly. “All right, gentlemen. I shall handle the situation myself. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Just before he quit the room, he turned to his friends, adding in awful tones, “And if you’re smart, gentlemen, you will keep your purses close to your chests!”

When Max returned from a leisurely stroll about town —just checking up on his old friends and favorite haunts —it was to the sight of his niece curled up in a comfortable chair near the front window, busily mending a slight tear in his blue satin “ambassador” breeches while humming a happy, if somewhat ribald, Irish ditty beneath her breath.

“Ah, m’darling girl, and how goes the siege?” he asked, dropping a light kiss on her blonde head.

“The castle walls are still standing strong,
Uncail
, while the attacking force is rapidly being deserted by his allies, who one by one seem to be coming over to our side,” Candie told him, a smile of unholy glee lighting her face. “Tell me, my dear Mr. Murphy, are you agreeable to dining tomorrow night with the Queen of the Nile?”