The Mischievous Miss Murphy (23 page)

“But my Brigette was blind to all but his smooth words and his beauty. Candie may have gotten his looks but, the saints be praised, it’s her mother’s sweet nature she carries inside.”

As he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, Tony listened as Max told him how Brigette had been seduced by Blakestone, and how Max’s logical arguments—backed up by a cocked blunderbuss aimed precisely between his lordship’s heavy-lidded blue eyes—had resulted in a hasty wedding before his lordship deserted his bride and returned to Sussex and, very shortly thereafter, to his very own cozy chamber in the Blakestone Mausoleum.

“Then Candie wasn’t born on the wrong side of the blanket?” Coniston questioned, interrupting Max as he happily relived the moment he, with a full dozen of his buddies behind him, had stuck the business end of the blunderbuss in Blakestone’s nose.

Max looked at Tony oddly. “No. Of course not. Whatever put that idea into your head? As if I, Maximilien P. Murphy, would let such a terrible thing happen.  You didn’t know me in my youth, but I was fierce, lad, even dangerous.”

“Candie put that idea into my head, Max. She believes she’s a bastard, and according to her, she got that idea from you.”

Max ran a finger around his collar and swallowed sheepishly. “Well now, looking back, I can see where she might have gotten that idea. But it couldn’t be helped, and there’s the fact. Blakestone had a mother, you see, a veritable viper of a woman. Compared to her, Blakestone was a bloody saint, Lord rest his soul and bless him double for breaking his neck on the hunting field. She came hot-footing to Ireland, she did, tracing a rumor that her son had married and fathered a child. I couldn’t let that old witch find Candie, don’t you know, else she would have taken her just for spite. I couldn’t allow that to happen to a dog, let alone my only relative. Didn’t take me but a minute to know it was time to leave our home in the dust.  We’ve been living by my wits ever since, and not too badly at that, present circumstance excepted, of course.”

“Of course. So you took it upon yourself to raise Candie alone. But why, once she was old enough to understand, didn’t you tell her the truth?”

“Ah lad, by the time the old lady cocked up her toes Candie was nearly grown, and I saw no reason to burden her with the knowledge that her papa was a skunk of the first water. Better to have no father at all than to be saddled with a sire that made that bugger Oliver Cromwell seem like a right pleasant sort in comparison.”

Max looked at Tony and ended sincerely, “I meant no harm, lad, in God’s truth I didn’t.  I did right by Brigette, and I did right by Candice.”

Tony was silent for a few moments, thinking over what he had heard. For a moment, only a heartbeat or two in time, he questioned whether he preferred his Candie to be a bastard rather than have to number the unsavory Blakestones among her ancestors. Who was he kidding—if Candie’s sire had been a one-eyed, humpbacked manure spreader, he could not love her any the less.

“What of the Blakestone estate in Sussex?” he asked as an afterthought. “However did you find the restraint to keep from claiming kinship once the old woman was dead? Surely that would have been preferable to this hand-to-mouth existence you’re forced to endure?”

Max smiled at Coniston’s question and explained that the whole of the Blakestone estate was entailed, and in the hands of a distant cousin whose wife and seven children needed the manor house and income far more than did he and Candie. He had saved his niece from enduring a nightmare childhood in the dower house at the constant beck and call of her pernicious grandmother, and that had been enough reward.

“But enough of this talking of things past, lad,” Max ended, once again coming to the point. “Will you do it? Will you take care of my Candie until I’m free? I know you want her, but I also believe it’s trusting you to do right by her I can be doing.”

In way of an answer, Tony rose and went to knock on the door of the cell so that the guard could let him out. “I’ll take care of Candie, Max, you have no need to worry on that head, especially now that I can tell her that her ancestors are no better or worse than mine. Considering some of the blackguards whose likenesses hang in the halls of our country estate, my only fear is that she’ll now consider herself above me!”

Once the door was open, Tony requested that the guard hand him the picnic hamper he had brought with him and reached a hand inside the basket.

“You sit tight now, Max, not that you can do much else, can you, and I’ll be off to inform your niece that you have given her over into my care. That should serve to liven up her day, don’t you think? Oh yes,” he added, his back already turned to leave, “and don’t get too comfortable here. We can’t let it be said that my wife’s uncle is moldering away in some cell, can we now? Here—catch!”

And before the astonished Max could react, an apple Tony had drawn from the hamper went sailing past the Irishman’s head to splatter against the stone wall.

Twisting his head about to give the man a pointed look, Tony quipped, “Slipping, Mr. Murphy?  You might want to be giving retirement a thought or two as you sit there hoping on a miracle.”

If Candie had been feeling a bit fretful not knowing the reason for Tony’s delay in returning to Portman Square, Will Merritt’s arrival and subsequent explanation had her half out of her mind with worry. For Will, not able to suppress the need to tell yet another person of his intelligence in scenting something amiss in Mr. MacAdam’s offer, had regaled Candie, Hugh, and Patsy with a highly embellished version of the same story he had imparted to Tony earlier that afternoon.

“What sapskulls,” Hugh was moved to say, “taken in by such a rum bite. Will, it compels the admiration, how you saw through the scoundrel’s scheme. Don’t you think so, ladies?”

“Indeed yes,” Patsy seconded. “I believe it to be prodigiously intelligent of you, Will. Candie?” she prompted as her friend remained silent.

Candie smiled weakly. “Oh, I don’t know. Seeing as how I admit to a modicum of larceny in my own soul, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for this Mr. MacAdam. Not that Will isn’t to be complimented for his astuteness in seeing the fellow for what he really was. You did say you weren’t taken in by him for even a moment, didn’t you?” she asked, skewering Mr. Merritt with a knowing look.

“Of course I, er, um... the man was very smooth, I’ll give him that... that is to say... of course he didn’t take me in for even a moment...” Will’s voice trailed off weakly as Hugh and Patsy shared a smile.

Sensing that his friend needed rescuing, Hugh cleared his throat importantly and, encircling Patsy’s shoulder with his arm, made an announcement of his own.

“As Tony is still detained elsewhere, and will only show up here in his own good time, I would like to share my happy news with you, my dear friends. Lady Montague has just this morning made me the happiest man in the world by consenting to become my bride.”

“Oh, I say, Hugh, that’s splendid news,” Will exclaimed, crossing the room to shake his friend’s hand. “Ain’t in the petticoat line m’self, y’understand, but if I were I’d be glad to have Lady M to wife.”

At Hugh’s frown, Will quickly amended, “Not that I’ll be wearing the willow now that you’ve snaggled her, for like I said, I’m not really—”

“Yes, Will, dear, we know,” Patsy cut in, laughing. “You’re not in the petticoat line. Now hush up before your tongue twists into a knot and come here and give me a kiss. After all, it isn’t every day a woman is asked to become a wife.”

Once Will, blushing and still stammering, had backed away from the happy couple it was Candie’s turn to congratulate her friends. Years of practice at hiding her feelings, combined with the total lack of insight displayed by the two self-absorbed lovers, got her through the next few minutes as she thought about her own proposal the day before and its very different ending.

The fact that Tony had not yet returned to Portman Square, with or without her uncle, could not possibly be looked upon with other than a heavy heart. Perhaps, once he had received the information from Max that he had been seeking, Tony’s ardor had at last been well and truly cooled by the sure to be terrible truth and he would refuse to have anything more to do with either of them.

But would Tony actually turn his back on them when it was so obvious that they were in need of his help? Max had a silver tongue, of that there was no doubt, but no amount of blarney could make the prison walls topple down and make him a free man. Ha, she thought in twisted amusement. As if it weren’t bad enough that I’m a bastard; now I’m also the niece of an incarcerated criminal! Even the Marquess of Coniston, with all his wealth and power, couldn’t fashion a silk purse of that particular sow’s ear!

Just as Candie was about to lose the last remaining shred of her composure and burst into tears in front of her still celebrating friends, there came a cheerful voice from the doorway. “What ho? Is it somebody’s birthday? I just passed your butler in the hallway readying a cartload of bottles and glasses.”

Tony! Candie screamed silently, her eyes full of questions as she half rose from her chair and looked in his direction. He was smiling. He was happy. He was
alone
.

“My... my uncle,” she stammered, her lower lip beginning to tremble. “You didn’t find him then?” She couldn’t have misunderstood his message that he and Max would be dining with them this evening. He had recognized Will’s Mr. MacAdam for Max, hadn’t he? He had gone after him? Candie sank back in her chair, totally confused.

“Max is just where you think him, Miss Murphy,” Tony informed her, this cryptic answer being supplemented by as evil a wink as she had ever seen. “That is, he is unavoidably detained, and has asked me to look after you until his return.”

Candie would have pushed for more information but Will took that moment to steal Hugh’s thunder and announce the coming nuptials, a piece of news Tony received most happily, lifting Patsy from her seat and depositing a smacking kiss on her cheek. “And they say you aren’t brilliant. Nonsense! You’ve picked the right man this time, puss, and no mistake. Hugh,” he called, motioning the man to his side, “must I do the brotherly thing and warn you to take good care of my sister? But no, of course not. I am assured you will be the best of husbands, especially when it comes to pruning away clinging Ivy.”

“Tease all you want, friend,” Hugh warned, enfolding Patsy once more in his arms, “but when love hits you amidships I warrant you’ll be following us to the altar.”

“If Mr. Murphy were here I’m sure he’d not take that bet,” Tony offered wryly, and then proceeded to confuse his friends even more by rounding them up and ushering them none too gently toward the door. “Off with you all now and perhaps Candie and I will have some news that will have Hugh here smugly smiling for a week!”

Patsy may have been lacking in many areas, but when it came to sensing romance in the air she was as quick as the rest of her sex. “Oh, Tony, really?” she gushed, looking back over her shoulder as her brother unceremoniously shoved her from the room. “You and Candie? It’s a grande passion, I knew it! Don’t you dare shoo us from the room! Tony, I don’t know anyone who was ever more provoking. How can you tease us so? Tony— “

The door closed on Patsy’s tirade and Tony turned to look at Candie, who was standing in the center of the room, wringing her hands just as if she were not the most beautiful, desirable creature in nature. “Alone at last,” he breathed, starting toward her.

“Could we have a shared ceremony, do you think?” Patsy called from the narrowly opened doorway. “All right, all right, I’m going,” she blustered as Tony began to growl. “Don’t put yourself in a taking. Honestly, Mark Antony, shoving me out of my own parlor. I don’t remember when I—”

When Tony turned back to Candie he was holding the key to the room and, waggling his brows provocatively, he tucked it in his pocket. “As I was saying—”

Candie held out her hands as if to keep him where he was. “Don’t come one step closer, please. How could you make such a May Game of me? What must Patsy and Hugh and Will be thinking right now?”

Tony smiled. “Patsy is busily planning our nuptials, I expect, while Hugh, now that the fuss is over, is probably settled down in the library reading the
Times
as he patiently waits for the dinner gong to go. As for Will, who by his own admission rarely thinks at all, I don’t think we should descend into a case of the dismals over his thoughts, do you? No, I thought not. Would you then, by the by, like to know about your uncle?”

“Of course I would, you jackanapes. And stop grinning. Where is my uncle?”