Mischievous Miss Murphy by Kasey Michaels

Author:Kasey Michaels [Michaels, Kasey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1987-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

The Pulteney Hotel, with its impressive stone pillars and modern bow windows, looked out across Picadilly on the deer and cattle that browsed near the white-stuccoed Ranger’s Lodge in Green Park and the red- bricked facade of Buckingham House, the whole framed by the Abbey towers and the soft Surrey hills. It was one of the most exclusive and most expensive hotels in the city, and as Lord Coniston hurriedly vaulted up the wide steps and passed into the vast lobby, he was not surprised to see the place stiff with the rich, the titled, and the mighty.

That Maximilien would dare to run another Budge-Budge rig did not surprise Tony in the slightest. But the idea of using the Pulteney as his base of operations was a move the Marquess deemed to be foolhardy in the extreme.

Can’t say the man lacks audacity, Tony thought as he searched out “his highness’s” private suite. He knocked imperiously on the heavily paneled door, which opened under the force of his clenched fist, and strode into the room prepared to do battle.

What he saw and heard stopped him in his tracks.

“I cannot thank you enough for your offer to mention me to his royal highness, your excellency,” Sir George Ringley, a very small cog in the ministry office, was saying with earnest subservience as he bowed in half from the waist.

“‘Tis nothing,” the Maharajah of Budge-Budge, sitting cross-legged in regal splendor amid a dozen silken cushions, replied in a heavily accented singsong voice.

His royal highness? What the devil? Coniston could not fail to notice the matched set of chased silver goblets resting at Max’s feet, obviously put there by Sir George in an overt act of bribery. A quick look about the sitting room revealed the place to be cluttered with similar “welcoming gifts,” ranging from silver tea sets to framed oil paintings.

Greed has many faces, Tony mused, shaking his head at the folly of his fellow man, and Max has elevated taking advantage of that greed into an art form.

“We meet again, your highness,” he said now, causing Sir George to straighten hurriedly and turn to see who else had come to curry favor from the visiting Maharajah.

“Coniston!” Sir George smiled smugly, thinking he had scored a minor coup in courting Budge-Budge if the man hobnobbed with the likes of the Marquess.

“Ringley,” Tony returned lazily, running his gaze up and down the other man before saying dismissingly, “You were, I earnestly hope, on your way out?”

Once Sir George had bowed and scraped his way ungracefully from the suite, Tony closed the door with a meaningful slam and turned to attack. “The Devil take your bladder, Max,” he ejaculated sharply. “We’ll all end in the suds yet, no thanks to you!”

Max ignored this outburst, lifting one of the silver goblets to inspect it, saying, “Nice, don’t you think? I tried to knock another shilling or two out of him, but it’s miserly he is, and ‘tisn’t today or yesterday it happened to him.”

Tony

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