The Mischievous Miss Murphy (20 page)

Walking idly about the morning room, absentmindedly touching her fingers to an art object here, trailing her hand over the curved back of a satin settee there, Candie tried hard to convince herself that all she would miss once she and her uncle finally put London behind them was the house in Portman Square. Oh, how hard she tried.

What is he doing to me? her mind screamed loudly inside her head. Why is he torturing me so? What have I done to deserve this terrible punishment?

The object of Candie’s silent questions was, obviously, one Mark Antony Betancourt, who had appeared in this same morning room every day for the past week to bow over her hand, spend precisely one half hour conversing civilly on the weather and the latest on-dits of society, and then take himself off again. Never did he bring up the subject of his late-night visit to her bedchamber. Not by the flickering of an eyelash did he acknowledge that they had unresolved business between them, that he was still waiting for an answer to his proposal, that he cared any more for her than he did the flowers he brought her daily.

“I bid you good morning, ma’am,” said a voice from the doorway, so startling Candie that she nearly upended a vase as she whirled to face the person whose actions, so very unexceptionable in any other gentleman but so out of character for him, had over the course of the last week nearly reduced her to nervous spasms.

But not this morning, she vowed silently as she stiffened her spirit. Not if I have anything to say in the matter. Gifting Coniston with her brightest smile, she cooed sweetly, “Come to play propriety again, my lord? Tell me, are you in training for taking holy orders? You have become so circumspect in your actions of late that I do believe, if Patsy is serious about giving a ball next month, you will not be able to find it in your prudish heart to dance on more than one foot. Come,” she said, spreading her right arm wide and motioning toward the solitary straight-backed chair he had occupied on all his other visits, “sit yourself down, my lord, and let us wax poetic over the rain that seems to be showing no signs of stopping. That is what you came by to discuss, isn’t it?”

Tony allowed one finely chiseled eyebrow to rise as he took in Candie’s high color and belligerent stance. So she’d had enough, had she? Max had advised him to court her as he would any gently reared female, the idea being that Tony should win her heart with gentle wooing, but it now looked like the time had come for more than polite phrases and a few moments spent gently fondling her hand.

“Madam,” he ended, striving for some measure of dignity, “I have spent the past week striving my utmost to be deserving of your regard.”

“Have you now?” Candie asked, seating herself on the settee and eyeing him curiously. “Then I imagine it would sadden you to know that you have fallen far short of the mark. The only thing I have found you to be this past week is a crushing bore. What I don’t understand is why you would bother to go to such extremes. Have you committed some terrible faux pas for which you hope to atone by way of turning yourself into a tiresome society gentleman?”

Candie saw Tony stiffen at her allusion to his poor behavior the night he had made such a muddle out of asking her to marry him and took secret delight in his discomfiture. “So that rankled, did it, my lord? How very gratifying to see that you are not suffering from some dread loss of memory.” She was being mean-spirited she knew, but she considered herself to be the injured party in this affair and getting a little of her own back seemed to be only fitting in the circumstances.

Perhaps Betancourt would take Max to task for the failure of this latest strategy, scoring for herself yet another point, as Max, who had hauled himself off in a fit of the sullens after berating her for neglecting to inform him of his lordship’s proposal, had no right to interfere with her life in this matter—no right at all!

There was a pregnant silence while Coniston refigured his strategy. That he should drop his pose of gentlemanly suitor seemed obvious, a point which he would discuss with Max at length when next he met up with the once again elusive Irishman, but now he was left with deciding which of the several options now open to him would prove most beneficial to his suit.

Looking at Candie, beautiful in her belligerence, he found himself feeling proud of her for not allowing this charade of civility to continue when they had already come so close to the ultimate passion.

Still, dare he say what was in his heart without branding himself a hardened seducer? Should he give in to the nearly overwhelming impulse to crush her in his embrace, or would that damn him forever as a man who craved only her delectable body?

At last he found the silence to be even more discommoding than Candie’s incisive questions, and broke into speech, giving voice to the first thing that popped into his head.

“I admit to taking your uncle’s advice, sweetings, but only because such a device as he suggested is not new to me. You remember that I told you a hobby of mine is rewriting other’s literary works? Well, at the time Max suggested this bit of tame courting, reworking our relationship seemed to be a capital idea! Now, alas, it appears such a strategy has served only to blow the last of my hopes to bits.”

“Perhaps you should keep to fiddling with plays like John Grey’s Love in a Tub and refrain from diddling with your personal relationships for fear of tumbling into a
real
bubblebath?” Candie suggested, tongue in cheek.

“Ah, Candie, my sweet,” he said, smiling in relief as he made to gather her into his arms (believing he had at last landed on the right stratagem), “what a great deal of time we have wasted.”

Neatly sidestepping his encircling arms, Candie retorted, “
We
, is it? Don’t you dare try to put any of the blame for your latest descent into idiocy on my doorstep, my lord. And don’t, for pity’s sake, compound your stupidity by thinking I shall now drop into your arms like a ripe plum and let bygones be bygones. You are not that irresistible, you know.”

“Idiocy? Stupidity?” Tony fairly shouted back at her. “One of these days, madam, you will go a step too far! What must I do to make you understand that I am serious in asking you to marry me? Better yet, why on earth do I want to marry such a shrew? Lord, Shakespeare had a tame kitten in Kate if only he knew it.”

“Perhaps rewriting that little tale should become your next project,” Candie replied scathingly. “As for me, I would rather retire to the country to raise dogs than spend another moment in the same room with such a conceited womanizer as yourself. Good day, sirrah!” Candie turned, indicating her intent to quit the room.

Tony snaked out an arm as she swept by him and roughly hauled her about by the elbow. “Oh no you don’t, missy. If I’m to be condemned as a man sunk to irreclaimable depths of depravity, I might as well live up to my sordid reputation.”

So saying, he pulled Candie unceremoniously into his arms and captured her mouth in a brutal kiss. She fought him for a moment (mainly due to the discomfort his grinding mouth was inflicting, although he wasn’t to know that), before he could feel her body melting beneath his questing hands. As her resistance ebbed he allowed some tenderness into his kiss, and that tenderness set off a mutual spark of passion that soon had them clinging to each other like shipwrecked sailors hugging a bit of flotsam to keep from drowning.

When it became impossible to continue the kiss for lack of breath, Tony raised his head a fraction of an inch and crooned unintelligently, “Do you see now how very compatible we are, you irresistible Irishwoman? Come now, admit I’m right and be done with it.”

There are times when a wise man resorts to action, times when words aren’t enough. This was definitely one of those times. But Coniston, being a man and therefore prone not to know when to leave well enough alone, had chosen to open his mouth and destroy what could have been a major victory.

Candie’s once more stiffened stance gave him his first clue as to his error. Her firm little palm, making stinging contact with his left cheek, succeeded in removing any lingering doubt as to his glaring error in judgment. The slamming of the morning room door behind Candie’s departing back was like the coffin lid coming down on all his fondest hopes and dreams.

And the whole of it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow.  Even he knew that!

“A-a-a-choo! Good God, that’s all it needed! You! Stop cringing and come here!”

The servant who had just set down yet another bottle at Lord Coniston’s elbow shuffled indecisively a moment or two before taking a few quavering steps forward. “Who sir? Me, sir?” the man asked in a frightened voice. “Whatever did I do, sir?”

Sitting as he was in the dirty end of the coffee room at Boodle’s at the unfashionable hour of two in the afternoon, and being quite the only other person in the vicinity, Coniston took exception to the servant’s implied suggestion that he could possibly have meant anyone else. “Yes, my good man, I mean you,” he gritted, rising to his feet. “As to what you have done, why, I think that I should be obvious. Your periwig reeks of dust. Why else do you think I sneezed?”

“Your snuff, sir?” the servant was foolish enough to suggest, motioning toward the open box in Coniston’s hand.

“Damn and blast! Am I to be contradicted on everything I say today?” Tony asked the room at large. He had been drinking steadily since arriving at the club, seeking to ease his bruised sensibilities (while holding a cool bottle to his still smarting cheek), and, besides trying to drown his sorrows, he was in dire need of expressing himself in some physical manner.

“Give that to me,” he commanded now, pointing to the offending hairpiece.

“My—my periwig, sir?” the servant questioned, beginning to shake.

“I’d just as soon have your liver,” Tony offered, an evil grin lighting his intimidating expression. “The choice is yours.”

“But—but—” the servant stuttered, hesitating.

Tony’s slender hold on his temper slipped entirely from his grasp, and with a muttered oath he snaked out his hand and yanked the offending hairpiece from the man’s head. Looking about for some handy place to stow the thing, he spied out a spittoon and, with a violence that served to totally unhinge his hapless victim, hurled the periwig into the brass pot.

It wasn’t many minutes later that the starch-backed majordomo appeared at Coniston’s elbow to say, “That periwig, sir, was the property of this establishment. I’m afraid I was forced to put it on your bill.”

Tony looked up at the man, his dark eyes twinkling. “Very well, my good man. Never let it be said I refuse to pay for my little pleasures.”

“Yes, your lordship. But there remains the problem of James Oglesby.”

“Who or what is a James Oglesby?”

“The servant you accosted, my lord,” the majordomo informed him. “He’s highly overset. I can’t see how I can get him to work at all for the remainder of the day.”

The Marquess shrugged his broad shoulders. “Gad, that is a disaster, isn’t it? Very well. Put him on my bill as well—and add a guinea or two for his injured sensibilities. Now, if we’re quite finished, I’m attempting to drink my own self under this table, man, and you’re disturbing my concentration.”

The majordomo bowed himself from the scene, satisfied that he had both protected Boodle’s good name and warned the young Marquess away from any further disturbance of the staff.

“Put him on my bill,” Tony chuckled, wondering just how the majordomo would phrase the charges. “One purloined periwig—£2.6. One overset Oglesby—£3.2. It’s a good job I didn’t decide to take exception to him as well. I can’t imagine how the fellow would settle on a charge for one manhandled majordomo.”

“Talking to yourself, Tony? I can’t believe that’s a good sign.” Hugh Kinsey pulled out a chair and sat himself down beside his friend. “Patsy told me you’d been to see Miss Murphy again today and left in a bit of a huff. I’ve been searching you out up and down the street for over an hour.”

“And now you’ve found me. Congratulations,” Coniston drawled sarcastically, wondering if he was ever to get any peace. “I’ll put in a good word for you in Bow Street. I imagine they always have room for another Runner. Can’t say as how a red vest would become you, though.”

Hugh pursed his lips and gave a silent whistle. “A little out of sorts, are we? Perhaps my business should wait till another time.”

Tony’s interest was piqued. “What business? Are you in some sort of trouble, Hugh?”

Smiling sheepishly, Hugh leaned back against his chair and quipped, “That, my dear friend, would depend on one’s particular feelings regarding matrimony. I’m here to ask your permission to pay my address to your sister. She’s not averse to me, you know, and we’ve gotten on quite famously ever since working shoulder to shoulder on that little prank we organized to oust Miss Dillingham.”