The Mischievous Miss Murphy (18 page)

I
t had been a long, exhausting day, the second of what the conspirators judged to be the three days of concentrated effort necessary to concluding phase one of their plan, and Candie was more than happy to enter her chamber to see the covers turned back on her bed and her nightgown arranged neatly across the pillow.

She had just opened the third button on the bodice of her simple gown when a slight noise that sounded ominously like someone clearing his throat reached her ears. Whirling about to search the darkened corners of the room, she hissed softly, “Who’s there?”

“A gentleman caller,” said a voice from the direction of the window, and the Marquess of Coniston, looking extremely weary, a bit disheveled, but still devilishly handsome, stepped out of the shadows to make his bow.

“I see no gentleman here,” Candie retorted nastily, wanting nothing more than to throw herself into his arms and smother his dear face with kisses.

“First trick to you, madam,” Tony acknowledged, lowering himself into a chair near the fireplace. “Shall we try again? You say ‘Who’s there?’ I believe, and then I say ‘A rakehell, libertine caller,’ and then you say—what do you say, Miss Murphy?”

Try as she could to hold her heart firm against him, her features softened and she said sympathetically, “You look tired, my lord.”

“No, I don’t,” he contradicted, rubbing a weary hand across his eyes. “I look exhausted. Exhausted and hung over, no thanks to you.”

“Me? Well, if that isn’t the outside of enough! You’re just like Max whenever he falls off the water wagon. That man can go for months without a drop of whiskey—even lord over his friends with his pure-mouthed airs and sanctimonious bleating—only to fall off that same wagon with a mighty splash and embark on one of his, if short, definitely dedicated benders. And when he awakes with a pounding head and a mouth dry as cotton what does he do? He blames me, that’s what he does. Says I drove him to it by asking him to please hang up his coat that he threw on the floor or some such lame excuse. Now you’re blaming me for your dive into a bottle. Well, I won’t have it, you hear me. I won’t!”

Coniston winced and brought his fingertips to his temples in hopes of massaging away some of the pain. “I hear you, madam, as does half of London. Unless you want Patsy in here, I’d consider it a kindness if you’d lower your voice to a quiet shriek. There seems to be an echo living inside my head, and loud noises set it off.”

Candie went to the pitcher sitting on a bureau in a corner of the room and poured Coniston a cool glass of water. “Here,” she said, holding out the container grudgingly. “It’s my tooth glass, but it will have to do unless you want the servants to know you’re here.”

Tony downed the contents greedily and returned the glass, holding her hand when she tried to move away. “I knew you couldn’t just heartlessly dismiss me in my distress. I just got back to town tonight. I could have waited for morning—cleaned up this mess I am a little bit—before presenting myself, but I was afraid I’d lose my courage if I put it off.”

“Pot-valiant, not courageous, Tony,” Candie pointed out, letting him know she realized he had to fortify himself with liquor in order to face her. “If you needs must be half seas over in order to work up the gumption to apologize for your last midnight visit I can tell you that you have abused your liver to no good purpose. I don’t want your apology. I just want you to leave me alone.”

Raising his head belligerently, Tony snapped, “Oh, is that right? I assure you, madam, I fully understand your demand. I too would cherish a bit of peace. So why won’t you oblige and leave
me
alone, hmmm?”

Candie jerked her hand, still holding the empty glass, out of Betancourt’s grip and stepped back a pace, her mouth dropping open. “Me? What are you talking about? I haven’t seen you in over a week, and when we have met it was you who sought me out, not the other way round. You’re drunk, Coniston,” she stated firmly, shaking her head. “Out of your senses with drink. Go home and get some sleep.”

Now Tony laughed, but it was a laugh devoid of humor. “Sleep, she says. That’s a fine joke. How can I sleep when you’re in bed beside me, taunting me with those dancing bedroom eyes, teasing me with the sight of your unbound hair cascading over your breasts? Damn, woman, like Shakespeare wrote, you’ve murdered sleep for me.”

“Oh, Tony—” Candie began sympathetically, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder.

“No, don’t touch me,” he warned, shaking her off. “Let me say what I’ve come to say and then—but no, first things first.” Pushing himself out of the chair, he lowered himself to one knee and grasped her two hands between his. “Miss Murphy, I have come here tonight for the express purpose of asking you to do me the distinct honor of becoming my affianced bride. I have admired you from the—”

“Stop it!” Candie exclaimed, vainly trying to free her hands.

“Nonsense,” Coniston rebutted. “I’m only halfway through my speech.”

“You’re halfway to Bedlam if you think you can barge in here in the middle of the night, admittedly more than three parts drunk, and make a May Game of me with some asinine proposal of marriage you won’t even remember making come morning.”

“Now that’s not fair, Candie,” Coniston objected, rising unsteadily to his feet. “I know just what I’m saying. You’re a virgin, so it’s marriage or nothing. After all, you’re not some brass-faced lightskirt—pity, be easier then, wouldn’t it—so there’s no other way.”

“How very flattering,” she pointed out in a cold voice. “And you figured out this scheme all by yourself, did you? Funny, it smacks of something Will Merritt would have dreamed up. Besides the fact that you have combined your proposal with an insult that is unforgivable, your speech is glaringly devoid of any reference to tender feelings or even mild affection for me. Indeed, if I could somehow find a way to gift you with my eyes and hair I dare say you’d be just as happy to dismiss the rest of me.”

Tony let his gaze run the length of Candie’s trim body. “Oh, I seriously doubt that, sweetings,” he drawled wolfishly.

Suddenly, Candie had had enough. Snatching her hands away, she whirled and stomped halfway across the room before spinning about once more to face her tormentor. “This is all moon madness anyway. A Marquess can’t wed a penniless nobody of no background. What would your parents say? Somewhere in that wine-befogged mind don’t you understand that you are above my touch?”

“Am I by God? By whose standards? Society’s? Conventions? Our marriage will be no more than a nine days’ wonder before some other gossip comes along to distract the tattle-mongers. And as for my esteemed parents, they’d probably give a ball in your honor, seeing as how they’ve been begging me to set up my nursery to ensure the title. You do like children, don’t you?” he asked, eyeing her owlishly.

“Of course I do! But that’s beside the point. We are not going to be married.”

“Don’t you like me?” he asked, trying hard to look crestfallen and not succeeding a mite. “Even,” he held up his thumb and index finger, “a little bit?”

“You know I like you,” Candie said peevishly. “That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point?” he asked, advancing on her with his arms spread wide. “Look, sweetings, I’ve never done this before, this proposing thing, and I must say I didn’t think I’d make such a sad hash of it, but I really do want to marry you. Please”—he grinned imploringly—”have some pity on a desperate man. I haven’t slept a wink in a week.”

Candie was perilously close to bursting into tears. How she longed to be gathered into his arms and swept away from the real world and all its problems. But someone must remain clearheaded. It would never work, this marriage he spoke of so blithely. She was a bastard who would bring shame upon his family; a nameless nobody shunned by polite society.

If he loved her as she loved him, they could fight their detractors together. But he only desired her, and once that desire was satisfied, she would be nothing more than an embarrassing burden.

“Go home, Tony,” she said at last, watching as he swayed wearily on his feet. “You’ll be able to sleep now that you’ve talked to me, and then once your head is free of drink and fatigue we’ll talk again. If you still want to,” she added softly, doubting that he would be of the same mind in the sober light of morning.

“Go home,” Tony parroted, running his fingers through his disheveled hair. “Talk again later.” He nodded his head. “All right. But I’ll be back, sweetings, see if I’m not.”

Candie steered him toward the door, not believing he could negotiate the drainpipe again in his condition without coming to grief, and warned him to let himself out quietly.

“G’dnight, sweetings,” he said, his kiss landing somewhere on her chin, before he tiptoed clumsily down the hallway.

“Goodbye,” she answered, wiping a tear from her cheek before softly closing her bedroom door.

“How very enterprising of you to secure us this excellent vantage point, Hugh.” Lady Montague praised the man sitting beside her as she surveyed the view through her dainty mother-of-pearl opera glasses.

“Best seats in the house,” Will concurred, his seafaring Uncle Bartholomew’s spyglass resting across his knees as he sipped from a crystal wineglass Candie had handed him.

A thick sheaf of closely written papers held in her hands, Candice Murphy sat on a chair placed in front of another smaller window that looked out over the street, her head bent over as she read from the topmost paper. “The bakers should be the first to arrive. There should be two dozen of them, if my figures are correct, all carrying five-tiered wedding cakes meant for the happy event.”

“As close as Ivy Dillingham will ever get to a real wedding,” Will commented. “Uh-oh, here comes the first one. Bit overdone, what? All those pink rosebuds and trailing ivy cluttering up the thing.”

As the four interested observers watched from their borrowed viewing box—Hugh’s second cousin’s bachelor residence—the bakers began wending their way to the Dillingham town house, one by one at first, and then in a sort of iced confection procession, all to be turned away by a flustered housemaid who insisted they had the wrong address.

Next came a growing rumble of discordant sound as dozens of young boys ran before their customers calling “Sweep! Make way, make way! Sweep!” as they cleared the way for the two score of clergymen enroute to minister to the distressed soul who had summoned them for spiritual guidance. The narrow street was well on its way to being clogged with black-clad bodies toting Bibles when ten draymen pulling wagons loaded with beer barrels began vying with each other to stop at Miss Dillingham’s tee-totaling door.

By now the housemaid had ceased closing the door on each applicant for admission and merely stood in the open doorway, wringing her hands in her apron and begging for everyone to go away.

As the first hour melted into the second the flood of humanity rose to high tide as dozens upon dozens of tailors, upholsterers, bootmakers, hatters balancing towering piles of merchandise, and grocers pushing heavily laden vegetable carts battered against the now closed and barricaded doorway, insisting they had appointments with Miss Ivy Dillingham.

And they did have appointments—all preplanned to keep a continuous stream of humanity pouring into the congested street, tying up traffic and creating a general nuisance sure to make Miss Ivy Dillingham very unpopular with her neighbors as well as the laughingstock of the entire city.

“Oh, this makes it all worthwhile,” Patsy gushed, clearly delighted with the scene beneath her window. “When we were writing out all those invitations and summons to service I thought it might all come to nothing, but it has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.”