The Mischievous Miss Murphy (16 page)

A slow smile lit Candie’s face and she sank back against the settee. “I don’t know, Max. Actually, I think he’s beginning to get used to it.”

“Oh, Mr. Murphy, you shouldn’t say such things!”

“Of course I should, ma’am,” Max soothed silkily, “for it is naught but the truth. You really do have the most incredible eyebrows I have ever seen. They are like soaring birds, lifting my spirits with them as they glide through the heavens. I tell you, Miss Dillingham, it fair unmans me to be in the presence of such a woman as yourself.”

“Ohhh, Mr. Murphy!”

“Come, my dear, and we’ll walk a bit in the garden. It’s so unseasonably warm tonight. On my way here, as a matter of fact, I do believe I felt a bit of a fairy breeze. Perhaps we’ll come upon a band of fairies traveling from one of their forts to another. We must say a short prayer, and no mistake, as there’s no knowing if the good people are bent on doing good or evil.”

“A prayer, Mr. Murphy?” Ivy Dillingham repeated, picking up her shawl and heading for the doorway to the garden. “Are these fairies anything like leprechauns? Perhaps we’ll find their pot of gold.”

Leave it to the old bat to bring the conversation back to money. If the creature were only ten years younger, five stone lighter, and had a new face, Max mused, I might just enjoy this little stroll.

Aloud, he explained, “Ah, my dear lady, the leprechaun is ever more crafty than the fairy. You see them in the shade of the evening or by moonlight such as this, hiding under a bush mending a shoe. If you’re very, very quiet, you can sneak up on one and—”

Max’s voice faded as the two passed through the door to the garden, leaving a bemused audience behind. All through dinner Max had handled Miss Dillingham through a combination of blatant flattery and unbelievable tall tales, until Patsy had risen to her feet to signal an end to the meal before her sister-in-law could so forget herself as to proposition Murphy at table.

Now, sitting beside Candice on the settee, she turned to her new friend to exclaim, “Did you ever before see the like? ‘Incredible eyebrows’ the man says. I should say so! She shaves them off, Candie, did you know that? Those soaring birds are nothing but glued-on mouse fur! Has your uncle gone senile?”

Looking at Patsy, her pretty face flushed with indignation, and then over toward Will, who was silently mouthing the words
mouse fur
and pulling a face, and lastly at Hugh, whose twinkling eyes were the only indication she had that he had noticed the undercurrents that had been threading through the dinner conversation, Candie at last gave in to her mirth. “Max is blarneying Miss Dillingham, Patsy. He means no real harm, but with Max, if he’s not fishing he’s mending his nets. Always tries to gather allies to him, Uncle Maximilien does.”

“Does Max often find himself in need of allies, Miss Murphy?” Hugh asked, easing himself away from his stance near the fireplace and seating himself in a chair nearer to the women.

“A person can never have too many friends, Mr. Kinsey,” Candie replied slowly, fixing her sherry gaze on the man. “Besides, Max means no harm. He’s only codding her. Perfectly harmless flattery. Not that my uncle is above a good joke if the spirit hits him.”

“It’s a shame Tony couldn’t be here with us tonight,” Hugh told the group. “Off at his shooting box at Grantham I believe, though I can’t imagine what he’d want up there all alone. Now there’s a fellow who would appreciate your uncle’s performance here tonight. Will, you remember that to-do Tony stirred up while we were at Cambridge. I’ll never forget the look on that professor’s face when Tony owned up to what he had done.”

“It was marvelous all right,” Will agreed, a wide smile lighting his face. “I only wish I had thought of it, but I’ve never been the sort that could dream up such a clever stunt. None too bright, you know,” he acknowledged, inclining his head toward the ladies.

While Patsy went about assuring Will that he was indeed very clever, Candice asked Hugh to tell her about Tony’s Cambridge prank.

The young Marquess, Hugh cheerfully informed them, was ever one to enjoy knocking the stuffing out of the pompous, posturing sort of know-it-alls that considered themselves to be superior to the rest of mankind. Indeed, weren’t his so-called scribblings all satires of the great?

While at Cambridge, Mr. Kinsey went on, Tony was cast in the way of a certain professor of antiquities who thought himself the world’s best critic of ancient sculpture. “You know the sort,” he said, looking toward the ladies. “His was absolutely the final word on the subject.”

“Like Ivy Dillingham?” Candie asked, tongue in cheek.

“Two peas in a pod,” Will concurred, trying to ignore Patsy’s halfhearted objection.

“Anyway,” Hugh went on, “one fine day while we were all digging at some Roman site or another as part of our class, one of the fellows unearthed a marble sculpture of an early Roman goddess.”

“Can’t say as how it should have caused all the ruckus it did,” Will interjected, shaking his head. “Missing its nose, it was, and half a leg. Dirty too, of course, being stuck underground like that all those years.”

“If I may continue?” Mr. Kinsey said coolly, giving his friend a meaningful look. “Will is correct, however. The goddess was a little the worse for wear. But we dragged her back to the professor’s laboratory anyway, where that good man examined the statue at length and proclaimed it to be a prime example of early Roman sculpture. Called in the press and everything, the man did.”

“Must have been more than a score of them hanging about when Tony showed up,” Will interrupted, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.

“Indeed,” the primary teller of the tale went on. “It was a full house all right. Well, there was the professor, puffing out his chest and pontificating about his great find when in walks Tony, a marble nose in his hand, half a marble leg tucked under his arm, and the female the sculptor had used as a model, large as life, draped on his other elbow. Tony had commissioned the statue, you see, then buried it where he knew the class was digging. Depressed the professor’s expectations of glory no end, I tell you.”

Now Will took over the conversation. “It was a lark, all right, but it doesn’t hold a patch to the time dear Tony borrowed his mama’s genuine elephant-foot table and made a long trail of suspicious-looking tracks all along the banks of the Serpentine. The trail led to the lake, you understand, but none led out again. Half the town was convinced someone’s runaway pachyderm had come to grief. In three feet of water! There was even a committee of concerned ladies who petitioned the government to drag the lake. Tony volunteered to have the beast stuffed and put on display at Astley’s if anyone could raise it.”

“I didn’t know that,” Lady Montague chortled delightedly. “And to think, Mama was on the committee! It’s no little wonder he never confessed to that particular prank.”

Candie was highly diverted by these tales of Tony’s antics, making her feel closer to him, in spirit if not in person. Hugh’s earlier conversation had supplied her with Coniston’s probable whereabouts, but it seemed he was seeking solitude not only from her but from his closest friends as well. Why she felt responsible for Tony’s retreat from society she did not know—after all, it wasn’t she who had been pursuing him—but it afforded her not so much as a smidgen of satisfaction to know that he was now running away from his attraction to her.

If Coniston were less noble, less of a gentleman, he would have stayed and made good his threat to bed her. But his discovery of her virginity had thrown him into confusion, his honor vying with his lust.

Remember that, Candie, she told herself sternly, remember that Tony desires only your body, not your affection. Now, she informed herself dolefully, you understand the definition of limbo, for that is where you reside. Neither fallen woman nor marriageable miss, you are destined to inhabit a sphere where you are considered an untouchable.

“Yoohoo, I say, Miss Murphy,” Will called, interrupting Candie’s unhappy thoughts. “I asked if there weren’t a tale or two about your uncle you’d wish to impart to us. I’ll bet you have a whole storehouse of pranks the wily Max has played, seeing as how his blarneying, as you called it, worked such a miracle on old prune-face.”

As her latest bout of introspection had only served to make her feel even more sorry for herself, she was more than happy to steer the conversation away from Tony, the man responsible for her alarmingly frequent bouts of self-pity, and toward Max, the one man who could read her with a single, piercing look. Before her uncle reappeared in the room, she had better put a bright face on things or else prepare herself for a stinging lecture on facing reality the next time the two of them were alone.

Candie sat front in her seat and looked around her at the three expectantly waiting listeners. “Let me think,” she began, tapping her index finger against her chin. “Max’s little pranks are more self-serving than the Marquess’s, seeing as how my uncle can’t see the sport in the thing unless a sum of money or other prize is in the offing.”

Will bobbed his head in agreement. “Tony warned me never to bet against Mr. Murphy, telling me that the man was a—pardon my words but remember they are really Tony’s, not mine—‘odds-stacking, silver-tongued conniver of the first water.’”

“How coincidental that you should mention wagering, Mr. Merritt,” Candie slid in smoothly just as Hugh’s judiciously applied toe brought Will to the realization that not only had he opened his mouth to put his foot in it, but he had stuffed Coniston in there as well. “The episode that first comes to mind took place after a very boring dinner party during which our host delivered the most flagrantly self-serving monologue extolling his own virtues, talents, and lucrative business dealings that it seemed to me the man was just begging to be taken down a peg or two.

“Well, Max, who had been sorely trying my patience the whole evening long by agreeing with every word the man said and even adding to the man’s inflated image of himself by blarneying the man in a way that would make his performance tonight with Miss Dillingham seem like he had been insulting the lady, finally took umbrage with one of our host’s statements.

“The man had been assuring us that he was known far and wide as the premier billiards player in the land. ‘Not so,’ challenged Maximilien P. Murphy, ‘as I am the best billiards player, not only in this land, but in all of Europe.’

“Our host immediately challenged Max to a game, of course, and we all adjourned to the billiards room to witness their epic combat. ‘I’m the better player,’ announces Max, bowing to his host magnanimously, ‘so I’ll play left-handed.’”

“Oh, I say, jolly sporting of him, giving himself a handicap,” commented an impressed Mr. Merritt.

“Yes, indeed,” Candie replied, lowering her head to hide her smile. “Not to appear shabby, the host agreed to play left-handed as well. Max won the match quite handily, gaining for himself not only the heartfelt thanks of the rest of the guests, who had waited a long time to see their pompous host bested, but a fat purse of gold from the loser as well.

“Our host remembered his manners well enough that, as we were about to descend the stairs to our carriage, he belatedly complimented my uncle’s play, then remarked, ‘I would like very much to see you play right-handed if you can do so well using your left.’”

“Here comes the catch,” Hugh whispered close by Patsy’s ear.

Candie heard and smiled. “‘Oh, I don’t do nearly as well,’” she quoted Max as having informed his victim. “‘You see, my good sir, I am left-handed.’”

The small party was still laughing as Max and Ivy Dillingham reentered the room, the former to be heard waxing poetic over the lady’s pleasing speaking voice (that in reality assaulted the ear like a fingernail dragged across a slate) and the latter still lapping it all up like a sow at the trough.

“Do you play?” Max asked his companion as they neared the pianoforte, and then retreated to a chair between Hugh and his niece as Miss Dillingham prepared to regale her audience with a piece she knew from memory.

“Ah, I don’t believe I know that one,” Max whispered to Hugh in an aside. “But we Irish have a saying that might apply—‘It’s the tune the old cow died of.’ Good thing we’re in the city, else many a milkmaid would find herself out of a job come morning, and no mistake.”

“Mr. Murphy,” Hugh whispered back, “I don’t know just what it is you have up your sleeve, but I’m in your debt for diverting Miss Dillingham this evening. I do believe Lady Montague is beginning to crumble under the strain of her sister-in-law’s vile tongue and depressingly more frequent appearances in Portman Square.”