The Mischievous Miss Murphy (24 page)

“Ah, so loverlike. Well, no matter. Where do you expect him to be?”

Candie was clearly exasperated. “How should I know?  No, I do know.  He’s clearly in some horrible jail. Will comes in here telling me you’ll be bringing Max to me shortly and then goes on to tell me about Malcolm P. MacAdam, who just has to be Max, and how he was caught up by the Runners.”

She ran a hand distractedly through her hair, a habit she seemed to have picked up from Coniston, “You’ve already said he’s
detained.
Can’t you tell me where he is?”

Tony nodded, rather condescendingly, Candie thought. “Of course I can tell you. Max is, in point of fact, in the guardhouse. When last I saw him he was rummaging through the picnic basket I brought him. Seems I’m always bringing that man a housewarming gift.”

“And you
left
him there? Couldn’t you do anything for him?  What’s the good of being a Marquess, if you can’t
do
anything?” Candie hated her feeling of helplessness, but in all their travels and travails, never before had Max run afoul of the law to this extent. She was at a loss as to how to go about engineering a jailbreak, and besides, it seemed natural for her to look to Tony for assistance.

At Candie’s sad, lost look, Tony at last relented and told her what he had done. “I’ve already set matters in motion, love, and your uncle should be a free man by breakfast time tomorrow. Even a Marquess has limits, you know. I have, by way of a letter left with my solicitor to be delivered to Max once he is outside the guardhouse walls, suggested that Maximilien P. Murphy may have some out of the city business to attend to that cannot wait. It just seemed prudent to have him away from London for a space; at least until I can make arrangements to reimburse all the silly young gentlemen he fleeced. Pity he won’t be around for our wedding, but there was nothing else for it, as I plan to have you at the altar before Patsy gets the bit between her teeth and tries to make a grand spectacle of the ceremony. Let her take care of her own, I say.”

“You—you talked to Max?” Candie stammered, still finding this whole chain of events very difficult to believe.

Tony nodded his head once more. “You’re no bastard, sweetings, although I will ask you not to go inviting any of your relatives to tea, save Max, of course, when he’s in town. Now, enough of this talking. Come here, you delectable creature, and this time, when you tell me you love me—please, don’t shout.”

It was a long, very long, satisfying time later that Candie, her head snuggled comfortably in the curve of her beloved’s shoulder, mused dreamily, “Elizabeth Fitzgerald, you were a bloody fool.”

I
t was a small wedding, numbering only a few of Coniston’s closest friends and relatives, with even his parents, those perennial travelers, not in attendance. But that did not mean that it wasn’t a traditional wedding, complete with virginal white wedding gown, an altar banked with fragrant floral bouquets, and organ music accompanying the bride’s march down the aisle on the arm of the fatuously smiling Hugh Kinsey while Patsy, soon to be a bride herself, wept happily into a scented lace handkerchief.

The groom, waiting nervously alongside his groomsman, Will Merritt, drew himself up proudly at the first sight of his bride, and even the few guests were heard to gasp as Candie’s beauty filled the church. Her smile dazzled, as her sherry eyes sparkled, and Candice Murphy was the most beautiful woman in the world as she walked toward her beloved to begin living the happily ever after she had always dreamed about as a child sleeping on a bed of leaves beneath a hedgerow in County Donegal.

The ceremony itself passed quickly. Indeed, Patsy was to say later, the longest part of it seemed to be the unseemly passionate kiss the newlywed couple exchanged after the vows had been said.

As they walked back up the aisle, man and wife in the sight of God and man, Tony whispered in his bride’s ear, “I know you must be missing Max, sweetings. I guess he felt it too soon to show his face in town. But I’ll make it up to you, I swear I will. I’ll settle an income on him—”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Candie contradicted somewhat heatedly, making Will think once again that he was the smart one in steering clear of matrimony. “Max wouldn’t take your charity. He’ll do just fine by himself, just like we always did. But I do miss him. I had so wished... oh!”

Breaking from Tony’s grasp, Candie raced down the rest of the aisle to a spot near the entrance.

“Twigging it,” Will pronounced dolefully. “Hardly worth buying this new suit, if she’s off already.”

But Tony wasn’t listening. He saw Candie drop to her knees beside a small wooden object lying in the aisle and hastened to see what had attracted her attention. When he reached her she was running a hand lovingly along the carved wood side of, of all things, a cradle. Recognizing it as the one that had lately rested in a corner of the lodgings on Half Moon Street, Tony looked about for Max, who was the only one he could think of who could have brought it to the church.

“I say,” Will spoke from behind Coniston’s shoulder, “rushing things just a tad, ain’t you? I mean, we ain’t even had the wedding breakfast yet.”

Tony ignored his friend’s latest taunt (really, having had his two best friends fall victim to cupid’s dart and escaping unscathed himself had made Will more than a little cocky), and helped Candie to her feet. “What’s in it, sweetings?” he asked, seeing the note in her hands.

“It’s a letter from Max,” she told him, looking up at him with tear bright eyes. With a charming accent she read aloud, “
Aingeal cailin. Dealbh go deo na raibh tii. Go meadai Dia duit. Slàn leat.
”

“That’s lovely, Candie, whatever it means,” Patsy, who had come to see what all the fuss was about, put in softly.

Candie grinned at her new sister and translated: “It says, ‘Angel girl. May you never be poor. May God bless you. Good—’” Her voice broke a little. “‘Goodbye.’”

“He’ll be back, sweetings,” Tony crooned as Candie buried her face in his shoulder. “You know what they say about bad pennies,” he joked feebly, trying hard not to admit how much he too missed the wily Irishman with the heart of purest gold. “Come now, my love, be happy. Max has given us his blessing.”

Lifting her head to smile up at Tony, all her love for him in her eyes, Candie took his hand and they turned to walk out into the winter sunshine together.

From a darkened corner of the church stepped a short, pudgy, black-clad nun, her face hidden in her prayer book. “May the sons of your sons smile up in your faces,” the holy woman said in a surprisingly baritone voice before, looking about her carefully, she tipped her hand in salute and melted back into the shadows.

Thank you for reading
The Mischievous Miss Murphy
.

Please read on for an excerpt for
The Wagered Miss Winslow
. And visit me on my website
www.KaseyMichaels.com
for information on the release of my upcoming eBooks as well as my new books in print.

Chapter One

“S
o it’s out and about you’ll be going’ again tonight, Bobby m’ love?” the apple-cheeked little woman asked worriedly as she entered the sparsely furnished study, drying her hands on the hem of the large white apron that girdled her ample figure. “And it’s thinkin’ you were done with this evil business I’ve been,” she added, shaking her gray head as she sat herself heavily in a burgundy leather chair. “Enough, Bobby. It’s not natural, it’s not, ta keep on with this. It’s the devil’s own dirty business, don’t you know.”

The tall, wide-shouldered man dressed to perfection in a dark-blue frock coat buttoned over a sparkling white waistcoat—which was topped by not one but two impeccably tied cravats, his fawn-colored trousers neatly strapped beneath the soles of his highly polished short boots—replaced his watch in the right-hand pocket of his trousers, adjusted the fob, and turned to smile at Bridget Reilly.

“The devil’s own dirty business, dearest Bridget?” he repeated, amused, his wide smile lighting his startlingly blue eyes, carving vertical slashes into his tanned, high-boned cheeks, and revealing a perfect set of whiter-than-white teeth. “That does sound ominous. Perhaps it’s retreat you have in mind for me now, when I am within hours of my final success? Is that how you raised me, dear lady—to run away just when victory is in sight? Or is it that you fear for your little Bobby’s safety?”

“Your safety?” Bridget sniffed, giving her gray curls a toss at this ludicrous question. “Hasn’t the man been born what could harm you, don’t you know, for it’s a charmed life you’ve been leaden’. No, Bobby. It’s your immortal soul what’s in danger now, and no mistake. Think, boy, before you go letting’ the sins of the past become the troubles of the future.”

Beaumont Remington, known to Bridget as Bobby for so many years that he’d long ago ceased to correct her and had resigned himself to answering to that name, picked up his enameled snuffbox from a nearby table and dropped a kiss on the woman’s head as he made for the doorway leading to the foyer of his mansion in Portman Square. “And sure an’ it’s that future that awaits me now, m’lovely,” he said, his deep voice hinting at more than a nodding acquaintance with that melodious Irish brogue. “The luck is with me tonight—I can feel it. So give me your best blessing, Bridget, and let me be on with it.”