“Truth to tell, I don’t know when Max will be back, as his plans were rather fluid. But don’t concern yourself, my lady.
Uncail
is like the proverbial bad penny and will show up again.”
“But that’s perfectly dreadful!” her ladyship exclaimed, leaving Candice to wonder whether her ladyship was referring to Max’s absence or his inevitable return. “And what are you supposed to do in the meantime? A young girl alone in London? I vow, I cannot believe your uncle to be so blind to his responsibility.”
Candie could tell that Lady Montague was genuinely concerned and tried to ease her mind. “I imagine you must see ours as a rather raffish way of living, but I assure you I am perfectly capable of fending for myself for the sennight or so that Max will be gone. After all, it’s not as if it’s the first time.”
Patsy clutched her hands to her generous bosom, the only one of Lady Montague’s many possessions Candie could truly say she coveted for her own, and shook her head so violently her ebony curls danced about her head. “Please, I beg you not to tell me any more, dearest Candie, for I do not think I could bear it.”
Then, suddenly seeming to hit on a solution that would keep her from believing her new friend would be murdered in her bed before the week was out, Lady Montague’s dazzling smile banished the last traces of anxiety from her lovely face. “I have it!” she fairly shrieked, hugging the dumbstruck Candie to her breast. “You shall move in here with me until your uncle returns. Oh, Candie, I vow it will be famous. We’ll be as merry as grigs, shopping, and entertaining, and staying up to the wee hours talking in my bedchamber.”
Candie sat rigid in Patsy’s embrace, a look of shock on her face, her unblinking eyes staring into the middle distance as Patsy went on to wax poetic over the glorious time they would have. Stay with Lady Montague in Portman Square? Stay with Tony’s own sister when she knew what she knew, both of Tony’s disenchantment with her association with his sister and of Max’s plans to use the mansion in Portman Square for leads on his search for pigeons ripe for the plucking? Stay with dear, scatter-witted Patsy, who was trying her best to marry Candie off to, good Lord, her own brother?
That’s when a small smile appeared on Candie’s face. Stay with Patsy, where not even Tony Betancourt would dare accost her with either his threats or his attempts at seduction? Stay in Portman Square, where her very presence would have that same Tony Betancourt growling and gnashing his teeth, totally powerless as he watched Candie work her wiles on Will Merritt and all the other eligible young gentlemen Patsy planned to parade by her?
Fighting back any lingering feelings that she was, thanks to Max, being handed about like a sack of meal— being picked up by her uncle, Tony, and Patsy and placed down in localities of their choosing—Candie concentrated on the nasty but still quite pleasing feeling of having bested Tony once again. Getting herself tucked up smartly in his sister’s motherly embrace would go a long way in getting some of her own back from the smug Marquess of Coniston.
Disengaging herself from Patsy’s embrace, Candie smiled her sweetest, most self-effacing smile and, lowering her eyes shyly, accepted Lady Montague’s kind invitation. The demonstrative Patsy, thrilled all the way down to her petite painted toes that she would have a whole week of Candie’s pleasant company, swept the girl into yet another perfumed embrace, which Candie returned with real feeling, for it was impossible not to like Tony’s sister.
The older woman sat back, still not releasing Candie’s hands, and pouted prettily. “Now that we are to be bosom chums, Candie, I must insist that you call me Patsy. I declare, it’s been an age since I’ve felt like I had a real female friend.”
“Patsy it is,” Candie agreed, feeling herself well and truly caught up in Lady Montague’s excitement.
Squirming around in her seat in order to face Candie, Patsy began rhapsodizing on the many adventures they would have once Candie was installed in Portman Square, which would be directly after luncheon if the young widow had anything to say on the matter.
“We’ll go through your wardrobe at once, just so we are sure you won’t need any additions. Oh, I do so hope you do, as I just adore shopping. Why, Harry used to say—”
“Cleopatra!” a loud, strident female voice penetrated to every nook and cranny in the room and, Candie imagined, set the fragile figurines to trembling. “Look at you!” the voice went on. “Nearly noon and still dressed in that ridiculous negligee. Thirty years old and still without a single lick of sense. What my Harry ever saw in such a sad clunch as you escapes me. That poor boy, tied to a brainless chit half his age and then hurried into his grave by her hey-go-mad ways. Why, I—”
Candie could barely restrain herself from flinching, Patsy’s grip on her fingers pained her so, and she looked past her friend’s shoulder to locate the author of this nasty speech. What she saw made her bite down hard on her bottom lip to keep from disgracing herself by breaking into vulgar guffaws. For there, in all her ridiculously overdone mourning draperies, stood Miss Ivy Dillingham, one of the London pigeons Max had plucked to a fare-thee-well not eighteen months earlier as he passed himself off as a lottery king selling chances in a half dozen copper mines in South America.
Knowing Miss Dillingham would never recognize her as Juan Montoya, the bogus Lord Fairchild’s South American partner, kept her from feeling any fear of discovery and free to sit back to discover just what the formidable but oh so obtuse woman was doing running tame in Patsy’s sitting room.
“Ivy!” Patsy had exclaimed hastily, cutting off the older woman’s attack as she at last let go of Candie’s hands and strove to rearrange herself in some semblance of dignity. “How, um, unexpected, yes, unexpected-
ly
nice, yes, nice to see you,” she stumbled, flushing. “No! I mean, not that I didn’t expect it to be nice to see you. I mean, I didn’t mean to see you—no! That’s not what I meant. I mean to say—”
“Oh, do shut up, Cleopatra,” Miss Dillingham cut in just as Patsy was in danger of strangling on her twisted tongue. The very short, very round woman walked heavily across the room to seat herself in a chair that, if chairs could speak, would have set up an instant howl of pain. “Who is this, Cleopatra? Didn’t Harry manage to teach you anything? Introduce us, you twit.”
“Murphy, you say?” Miss Dillingham mused once Patsy had stuttered her way through the formalities, clearly intimidated by the woman she had just identified to Candie as being her late husband’s half-sister. “I don’t believe I know any Murphys. Irish, ain’t it? I do know some O’Hares,” she said, her voice trailing off.
It was too good to resist. If Miss Dillingham hadn’t been such a thoroughly disagreeable person she never would have done it, but the woman had upset Patsy—and not for the first time, Candie wagered—and the imp of mischief that was just then sitting on her shoulder nudged her into speech. “I know the name. Would that be the sheep-stealing O’Hares, the barn-burning O’Hares, or the well-poisoning O’Hares, Miss Dillingham?” she trilled, her sherry eyes widening innocently.
It was some moments before Patsy, who had been sipping some restorative tea at the time, could be rescued from her fit of coughing, time in which Miss Dillingham gathered the cloak of injured respectability about herself and prepared to snuff young Miss Murphy’s insolence. “Where is your
dame de compagnie
, Miss Murphy?” she asked in quelling (and atrocious) accents. “I saw no maid sitting in the foyer below. Cleopatra, don’t tell me you have taken to entertaining young females of questionable reputation. Even as a, perish the thought, high-flying young widow, it is not
comme il faut
to so flaunt the conventions.”
Oh, thought Patsy as she felt herself flushing like a schoolgirl caught in a fib, no one was ever more provoking than Ivy. It was one thing to take after her, Lord knew she was used to it, but it was quite another for the old harridan to attack a guest in this house. Rousing herself to the mild show of indignation that was as high as her rarely used temper ever climbed, Patsy was struck by a sudden inspiration.
“Miss Murphy’s abigail was discharged for—for theft. It was very distressing, really, finding the girl sneaking out of the house in the dead of night, Candie’s pearl necklace tied up in a handkerchief. But, as she is my houseguest for this week or more we thought it preferable for us to share my Alice until her uncle, Mr. Maximilien P. Murphy, returns to the city and can interview a suitable replacement.” Sighing deeply in satisfaction over her brilliance, Patsy then sank back against the settee and smiled. “You see, Ivy, it is all most unexceptionable.”
“Indeed,” Miss Dillingham sniffed, still bristling over Candie’s little joke at her expense. Look at the girl, she thought, running her small black eyes up and down Candie’s figure, sitting there looking for all the world like some second-rate artist’s idea of an angel. Surely that white hair was nothing more than a botched dye job. She was a nobody, and an Irish nobody at that. Just the sort of creature Cleopatra would take to.
Although she didn’t speak any of her thoughts aloud, Candie knew what the old biddy was thinking. Harry’s sister, huh, she mused consideringly. Older sister, I’ll wager, and a spinster at that. What would Max have said? Oh, yes. It would seem her intended husband’s mother had died an old maid. Lucky woman, Candie thought—and lucky unborn husband.
She was glad Max had fleeced her so royally. How Patsy stood having the woman for a sister-in-law was beyond Candie’s comprehension.
“Indeed,” she said now, “I am greatly indebted to Lady Montague for her kindness in taking me in while my uncle is away. But, of course, being related to Patsy, even if yours is not a blood relation and even if the reason for associating with each other is now enjoying his eternal reward, you don’t have to be reminded of the great privilege it is to be an invited guest in this house.”
It would have been nice to think that Candie’s barely veiled pointing out of Miss Dillingham’s lack of invitation, combined with Patsy’s very obvious distress at her presence, would serve to discommode the woman to the point where she would take her leave.
Alas, this was not to be the case. Interminable minutes were to pass, a trying time filled entirely by Miss Dillingham’s homilies on manners, deportment, the general flightiness of the younger generation, and the sad state of affairs a house must face when its guiding force (in this case, one Harry Dillingham, the late Lord Montague) was no longer in charge, before, having at last shot her bolt, Ivy departed in a wave of cloying scent.
“Phew!” Candie commented, waving her hand in front of her nose once she and Patsy were alone. “Besides being the most totally disagreeable female it has ever been my misfortune to encounter outside the headmistress of my last boarding school, that woman wears enough perfume to stun an ox at twenty paces. Patsy, however do you bear it—not to mention
why
do you bear it?”
Patsy pulled a pained expression, meant to look long-suffering but serving only to make her resemble a scolded child. “She’s Harry’s only sister, you understand, and I feel I should at least keep a good front on things. Ivy won’t admit it, but Harry was happy with me for the five years we were together, and I owe the poor man something, don’t I?”
“Was Harry much like her?” Candie asked, trying with all her might to picture Patsy married to such a person.
“Good Lord, no,” Patsy laughed, preening a bit. “Harry was a bit odd—odd enough to marry me when everyone said I should either retire to the country to raise dogs or go on the stage, as no one would ever marry such a brainless widgeon as me no matter if I had both face and fortune as inducement—but we rubbed along fairly well until he died. What a sad business that was, Candie. Snuffed like a candle, the poor man, and we had been dancing all the night long at Lady Sefton’s before he just rolled back his eyes all queer-like—right there on the dance floor in the middle of a lovely quadrille—and dropped like a stone. I do believe Lady Sefton holds the grudge to this day. It certainly put the period to her ball, let me tell you.”
Holding back a smile, an exercise that took her greatest efforts, Candie remarked as innocently as she could, “Well, I do see where Harry’s unexpected demise might have put a minor crimp in her guests’ enjoyment of the festivities.”
“Oh, yes,” Patsy said artlessly. “I understand she was left with a veritable mountain of melting Gunther Ices when everyone went home without so much as going down to supper. As if filling their bellies would be some sort of insult to poor Harry, who would have been appalled at the waste of such good food. Ices were his particular favorite, you understand.”
Noting that, as if to belie Patsy’s superficial-sounding comments, the woman’s lower lip was exhibiting a lamentable tendency to quiver, Candie quickly changed the subject. “Don’t you think, seeing as how you do not seem to deal very well together, it would perhaps be best if you saw less of Miss Dillingham?”
“I don’t see her at all, Candie,” Patsy contradicted. “She sees me. I do believe she feels she must keep me in line as a service to Harry. At times I actually pity her, for Harry was her life you know, but I must admit I sometimes find Ivy to be excessively disagreeable.” Lady Montague was silent for a moment, then smiled impishly. “Actually, I always find her to be excessively disagreeable.”
Candie took up her cue. “I thought I would disgrace myself entirely and burst out laughing when she was lecturing us on proper behavior. It put me in mind, as I said before, of my last stint at boarding school and Miss Hardcastle’s incessant recitation of Mr. Matthew Towle’s book for children. The man was a dancing master who imagined himself the arbiter of juvenile behavior. I do believe I can still recite it word for word.”