The Mischievous Miss Murphy by Kasey Michaels Page A

the door as she reached seven and Tony’s clear baritone could be heard drawling reminiscently, “Ah, my dearest love, I’ll always remember the evening we stole away to my rooms for a few precious moments of privacy. As you rushed headlong into my waiting arms I—well, hello, Miss Murphy. How nice of you to ask me to tea.”
    Pulling the grinning man inside the room, Candie hastily closed the door—but not before Mrs. Clagley, her nearest and nosiest neighbor, had got a good look at her visitor—and went on the attack. “Are you out of your little mind? What do you hope to accomplish by such inexcusable behavior? I have to live in this place for the next few months you know. Max wishes to keep a low profile while we’re here, and you come knocking down the door, spouting ridiculous nonsense designed to having our neighbors complaining to the landlord that we’re undesirables. Mrs. Clagley already has it half set in her mind we’re running a brothel—I could see it in her eyes, so don’t stand there looking like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth—and waltzing in here while my uncle is out only contributes to the appearance of guilt. Oh !” she exploded, the word uttered in an exasperated growl. “Why can’t you just go away and leave us alone? I’ve had less trouble fending off mad Russians and overzealous bill collectors than I have encountered in attempting to get myself shed of you .”
    The whole time Candie was speaking—stamping angrily up and down the small room, only stopping once in a while to point an accusing finger in his direction—Tony stood quietly, his weight resting mostly on his left leg, his arms crossed carelessly across his broad chest, and his amused expression nearly inciting Candie to mayhem.
    When he was sure she had finished—Candie having flounced to the settee and plopped herself onto it with scant regard for the arrangement of her gown, the furniture’s fragile construction, or the fact that she resembled nothing more than an enraged nursery tot who has just been told she could not have another sugarplum—Tony sat down beside her and cradled her clenched hands in his own.
    “Let us take this conversation in ascending order of importance,” he began smoothly. “First, I am aware you are unchaperoned as I saw Max an hour ago at the Cocoa Tree, where I imagine he is still, having gained himself an adoring audience of one in Will Merritt, whom I left hanging on every pearl of wisdom your uncle let dribble from his mouth, on any subject from Napoleon’s errors at Waterloo to the correct way to judge the quality of small beer.
    “That I chose this time to visit brings us to point two. I’m sorry to have offended Mrs. Clagley’s sensibilities, although I rather believe a little excitement will do the old tabby a world of good, but I am not accustomed to being reduced to conversing through a closed door, especially when the person I’m speaking to is setting me up as the butt of her own warped sense of humor.
    “To get down to it without any further silliness or fits of temper, I am here because we have to decide what I am to do with you,” he ended flatly, realizing as he said the words that they had not come out sounding at all the way they should.
    Candie made a move to reclaim her hands, but Tony wasn’t ready to relinquish them and, rather than stooping to a tugging match, Candie allowed him this small victory, even if his warm touch was doing strange things to her insides.
    “Do with me?” she countered, until that moment not considering any problem but her own. The Marquess, as she saw it, had picked Max and herself up on a whim, and he could just as easily put them back down once his curiosity was satisfied. It was Candie who would feel the void his disappearance would leave in her life while he had a world of friends—not to mention a plethora of willing females—about him so that her disappearance would hardly be noticed.
    “Yes, pet, do with you,” he