The Mischievous Miss Murphy (17 page)

Max shrugged off the compliment and looked Hugh square in the eye. “Why don’t you do something about it then, laddie? Her ladyship is no match for that grasping harridan. She needs a strong man to send Miss Dillingham about her business before the woman decides to take up permanent residence.”

Hugh bristled momentarily at Max’s censure, but was alarmed enough to ask, “Do you really think she’d actually try to move in?”

Throwing a beaming smile and a small wave to the woman still brutally persecuting a fine musical instrument, Max answered out of the corner of his mouth, “That’s a body that would come for a wedding and stay for the christening. When she wasn’t busy trying to drag me into every dark corner in the garden she was telling me how costly it was to keep her house open in town so as to keep an eye on poor Harry’s widow, watching to see she does nothing to shame his memory or some such rot. She’s been gnawing at Lady M’s door for close on to two years now, I hear, and I believe she’s about to sink her jaws into the poor dear herself. Sure of herself is our Miss Dillingham, so sure that she just may have overplayed her hand. Never show your teeth till you’re ready to bite, I always say, but then women ain’t so subtle as men. There’s still time to head her off, if you’re a man of action.”

Hugh Kinsey chewed on his knuckle as he looked from Miss Dillingham to Lady Montague and then back again. Never before had he seen such an uneven match. Where was Tony when he was needed, the man thought angrily, then berated himself for looking to others when it was his Patsy whose happiness was at stake.

“I wonder if Will and I could—” he began, thinking out loud.

“Mr. Merritt is only fit to mind mice at a crossroads,” Max cut in, sensing the direction Hugh’s mind was taking. “Not that he isn’t a fine gentleman, much like many of his fellow fribbles, but the Dillingham is considerably above his weight. You’d be better served to enlist my niece in your cause. At least she’s got a brain under her hair. Will Merritt has naught but a To Let sign beneath his.”

Her party piece completed, Miss Dillingham accepted the thin applause with a condescending inclination of her head and, as there was no vacant chair near Max, sat herself down next to Patsy and began listing her complaints concerning their recent meal.

“We sent a fortune in shrimps back to the kitchen, my dear,” she pointed out, waving a pudgy finger in Patsy’s face. “You’ll not see them again either, for I saw the footman eyeing them up as he carried the platter away. And five removes! Really, such extravagance is not seemly. Harry would not stand for such waste. You’ll run through your inheritance before another year is out if you keep up this mad pace.”

“Speaking of waste,” Candie cut in, addressing Patsy, who seemed to be shrinking in front of her eyes, “I don’t believe I’ve told you about Max’s shocking interpretation of picnicking. While I had envisioned a leisurely meal spread out on a blanket beneath a shady tree, Uncle had ordered the coachman he’d hired to merely drive through the countryside while we ate our meal inside the coach. When we were done, he lowered the window and, ignoring my protests, tossed everything—silver, glasses, tablecloth, uneaten foodstuffs, utensils—out onto the roadway. Can you imagine that!”

“Only way to picnic without a mess,” Max proclaimed, winking broadly at Lady Montague.

Miss Dillingham could not bring herself to censure her new suitor (and the only suitor to show up for more than thirty years, and that one was only after her dowry), instead smiling weakly before returning to her attack on her sister-in-law.

“Your inept management of the Montague kitchen does not begin and end with tonight’s shrimp, my dear. I have been monitoring your extravagances for quite some time, which is why I have availed myself more frequently of your dutiful invitations to dine with my only living relative. I fear for you,” Miss Dillingham declared in patently false tones. “How could you, untrained in matters of economy, continue to exist once you’ve frittered away my, er, my brother’s fortune?”

“I could give her a lesson or two,” Candie piped up, anxious to put an end to the woman’s harangue before Patsy wilted away before her eyes. “In times of low financial tide I’ve always found the lowly potato to be my greatest ally. A tasty, nutritious food, it can be served so many ways, like champ, which is potatoes mixed with chopped scallions, or pandy, the name we give to potatoes dipped in butter, and even praties, a filling dish of raw grated potatoes, flour, salt, and a bit of milk mixed together into cakes and fried on a hot stove.”

Ivy Dillingham cast Candie a fulminating look. “I find your descriptions extremely unappetizing. You Irish must eat more than potatoes. Do you never serve fish or meat? How uncivilized.”

“Only eat fish on Fridays, don’t you know,” Max piped up, following his niece’s lead and employing a broad brogue, “and that’s because I have to. But we Irish eat meat—when we can get it. There’s a wealth of Irish beef that sees only an English platter, more’s the pity. Candie, tell Miss Dillingham about our potatoes and dip.”

Silently blessing Max for falling in with her intention of shocking Miss Dillingham’s sensibilities to the point where she’d opt for a temporary retreat from Portman Square rather than spend any more time with such vulgar commonfolk as the Murphys, Candie promptly explained that when times were good a family would dip their potatoes in a common bowl of meat gravy before eating them. “And then, when times were bad, we’d have to settle for another dish, potatoes and point. That’s when we’d all skewer our potatoes on our forks, point our utensils at a strip of bacon placed in the center of the table, and then pop the plain spud into our mouths.”

Miss Dillingham, her scented handkerchief pressed to her mouth, mumbled her excuses and bade Patsy call for her carriage. As she was sweeping out of the room she paused, turning to cast a last regretful look at Max, who had seemed such a promising suitor until his common Irish heritage had surfaced and she had been forced to recall the duty owed her ancestral name. He would be crushed, she was certain, remembering his barely hidden passion in the garden as he likened her ear to a miniature seashell, but she was not about to make a cake out of herself like Harry by letting her heart rule her head.

“I will call on you again next week as usual, Cleopatra,” she warned before quitting the room. “With your parents gadding about creation without giving you a thought, never mind the poor example set by your brother, the time has come when I can no longer sit idly by and watch you make a shambles of your life. Harry would want you to be guided by me, you know that. And I believe it is time we consolidated our households.”

Candie had to scramble in her ladyship’s reticule to find the sal volatile she then waved under Patsy’s nose in order to keep that poor lady from swooning dead away. “Vile, nasty woman,” Candie gritted, giving the now empty doorway a withering look. “How I’d like to do that old witch a mischief!”

“Indeed?” Max queried lightly, rising in preparation of making his own departure. “And is it my blessing you’d be wanting, lass, before you do the deed?”

“Now just a minute, please,” Hugh cut in, seeing his one chance to be of service to Patsy—and perhaps getting her to look at him in another light—slipping away from him. “I may have made a sad hash out of it to date, but my sole aim in life is to keep Lady Montague from any sort of unhappiness. If anyone is going to deal with Miss Dillingham it is I, Hugh Kinsey.”

“Why, Hugh,” Patsy breathed, lifting her melting blue gaze to her old friend’s face and feeling a most delicious flutter beginning deep in her breast. “How masterful you sound.”

“Really?” Will asked, looking at his friend curiously. “Funny—reminds me of the play last week at Covent Garden. Chockful of lofty declarations and feats of derring-do. I say, Hugh, you ain’t thinking you can challenge the old bat to pistols at dawn, are you?” He shook his head. “Won’t do, you know. Pity, that. She’s so broad even you couldn’t miss her, poor shot that you are.”

Hugh waited patiently until Will slowly wound himself down and had lapsed into confused silence before extending his hand to Max and thanking him once again for his help with Ivy.

“Enjoyed it, lad,” Max admitted before bowing over Patsy’s trembling hand. “Your servant, ma’am,” he said conventionally, then added, “you’ve a kind, charitable heart, my lady, but a foolish one. The time has come to rid your gentle self of a burden that is not yours. In other words,” he ended, broadly winking his eye, “if Harry’s sister wants to take care of her family—tell her to go with her brother. That’s the sort would feel right at home in a graveyard, and no mistake.”

With the party now reduced to four members, all of them in a somber mood, it was some time before anyone made an attempt at polite conversation. After weakly discussing the latest scandals, the same old scandals merely being replayed with a different cast of bedroom-hopping characters, they lapsed once more into silence until Candie, her temper still urging her to take action, said aloud what they all had been thinking: “We have to get rid of that woman somehow.”

“Poison?” suggested Will, momentarily removing the knob of his cane from his mouth to add his bit to the discussion.

Hugh shook his head, amazed that he had even momentarily included Will in his unformed crusade to oust Miss Dillingham. “Will, it pains me to say this, but when it comes to being a lamebrain, you bear off the palm. Poison! My God!”

“Now, Hugh,” scolded Patsy, taking in Will’s crushed expression. “He meant well. It’s all my fault anyway. If I weren’t such a cowardly peagoose I’d have sent Ivy to the rightabout myself. Harry would be the first to encourage me to cut her off. He never could stand his sister, you know. But I
am
the only family she has. Besides,” she sighed, hugging her arms about her shoulders, “I’m terrified of the woman.”

“What does Tony say?” Candie had to know. She couldn’t understand why he hadn’t helped his sister with her problem.

Patsy gave a shrug. “Tony? Oh, no one was ever more provoking. When I complain to him he says I’m making a big to-do out of nothing. ‘Deny her entry,’ he says as if it were that simple. What am I supposed to do? Arm the footmen and have her expelled at gunpoint? Oh,” she groaned pitifully, “she’s going to move in here and take over my entire life, I just know it!”

“And your entire fortune,” Candie said under her breath. Well, not if Candice Murphy has anything to say about it, she won’t! Ivy Dillingham could only move into Portman Square if she were physically in London. All she, Candie, had to do was to arrange it so that Ivy’s ample body was removed from the city—not permanently, that would be too much to hope for—but at least long enough for someone to coach Hugh Kinsey in the proper approach to courting Lady Montague.

“Have you people ever heard of the ingenious prank someone who shall remain nameless played on a certain Mrs. Tottenham back in 1809 right here in London? It caused quite a stir at the time, Max told me, as I recall he was delighted by the brilliance of the joke even while he was envious that he hadn’t been the one to conceive it.”

“Tottenham. Tottenham,” Hugh mused, tapping his fingers on a side table until his memory cleared and a decidedly wicked smile lit his normally noncommittal features. “I remember now. The woman fell afoul of old Hoo—Whoops, sorry, I almost gave it away. She fell afoul of someone who devised a most ingenious revenge. Poor woman retired to the country for over a year, trying to live down the scandal. And to repair her shattered nerves, I don’t doubt. Miss Murphy, that was a wicked, a very wicked, prank. Surely you aren’t considering—”

“Aren’t I?” Candie purred, tilting her head to one side and smiling sweetly. “Can you think of a better way to get Ivy Dillingham out of the way? Other than poison, I mean.”

Patsy, whose memory did not extend beyond last night’s dinner menu, had been hastily put in the picture by Will, who assured her over and over that it was a jolly good idea.

Patsy’s tender heart fought her burning desire to have Ivy Dillingham banished, however temporarily, from her life, and, in the end, her tender heart was told to mind its own business. “It is a totally reprehensible notion you are suggesting, Candie dearest,” she said with an attempt at severity before throwing her arms out wide and chortling, “Let’s do it!”

“Mr. Kinsey?” Candie urged, crossing her fingers and hoping Hugh would see the coming escapade as a way to Patsy’s heart. “Are you going to refuse to take part in such a madcap prank?”

Hugh looked to Will, wiggling excitedly in his chair like an overage schoolboy longing to go on a spree, and then to Candie, whose mischievous sherry eyes were daring him to join in on the fun, and lastly to Patsy, who was nervously gnawing her full bottom lip while searching his expression with her huge, innocent blue eyes.

And then Hugh Kinsey did something that forever altered Lady Montague’s notion that he was no more than her good and loyal friend, mayhap a bit too stuffy and solemn for her taste at times, and certainly not a romantic figure by any stretch of the imagination.

What Hugh Kinsey did was to rise to his full height and, placing his hands on his lean hips in the best swashbuckler fashion, announce loudly, “Refuse, you say? What? And miss all the fun?”

“Thank you, Blessed Virgin,” Candie murmured under her breath.

“That’s the ticket!” Will shouted, clapping his hands.

“Oh, Hugh!” Patsy gushed, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms around her brave champion, who stood there, or so Candie thought privately, grinning like the village idiot.