Miss Marcie’s Mischief
To Woo an Heiress
Book Two
by
Lindsay Randall
MISS MARCIE’S MISCHIEF
Reviews & Accolades
“A warm, tender Valentine’s treat of opposites attract… Ms. Randall displays a wonderful talent for writing humor. I caught myself laughing out loud several times.”
~Rendezvous
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ISBN: 978-1-61417374-8
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Chapter 1
It was the eve of Saint Valentine’s Day, and Miss Marcelon Victoria Darlington was feeling far lonelier than she’d ever felt in her life. Valentine’s Day was a day for falling in love. It was a day when anticipation should sweep a young woman from a morning filled with dreams into an evening filled with dancing in the arms of that one special other person.
Unfortunately, Marcie had no “special other,” no potential suitor with whom she could look forward to a day of merrymaking, a day for hiding a gilt-edged heart made by her own hands and intended for her chosen gentleman to find.
There would not be a posy of flowers left on her doorstep by an anonymous admirer, no loving Valentine verse, and certainly no waltzing within a man’s warm embrace at a Valentine’s Day ball for Marcie.
It saddened her to think of the old saying that whichever gentleman a young woman spied first on Saint Valentine’s Day would become her groom before a year had passed. At the moment, Marcie stood alone amid a wintry world. Soon it would be midnight, yet Saint Valentine’s Day might as well be a world away from her, Marcie thought miserably.
Though late of St. Ives and much accustomed to the cold and the wet, Marcie found herself in high fidgets as she stood shivering in the snowfall and awaiting her ride out of London Town. She was, after all, running away from boarding school. The fact that her hired carriage was dreadfully late did not sit well with the eager-to-be-gone Miss Marcie.
Saddened by the approaching day intended for love and lovers, she drew her fur-lined pelisse more closely about her and swore soundly as though she’d had not a whit of schooling under the stern Betina Cheltenham.
Marcie stared grimly out from the snowy mews near Mistress Cheltenham’s School for Young Ladies and verily cursed her luck. By all accounts, she should have been far away from the City by now… and far away from the switch-wielding Mistress Cheltenham.
Somewhere, a church clock struck the midnight hour. Where the devil was the conveyance her good friend Nan Farthington had promised would come?
Marcie didn’t fear the high-and-mighty Mistress Cheltenham’s sense of outrage should the old bat discover Marcie’s plot to be free; she feared the woman’s switch! Marcie had had the back of her hands stung by Mistress Cheltenham’s switch too many times to count. The last flick of that horrible stick had been because Marcie had not properly executed the precise procedure in eating an artichoke.
Artichokes. What a perfectly senseless waste of time in even bothering with them. Marcie hated artichokes perhaps more than she despised Mistress Cheltenham’s rule. Marcie had suffered the old hen’s horridness only because traveling to London and enrolling in Mistress Cheltenham’s School for Young Ladies had been the final request of Marcie’s dear beloved father who had snapped his foolish but lovable neck when he’d toppled from his horse. He’d just celebrated his sixtieth birthdayâand Marcie her seventeenthâon the day he decided he could still ride with the best of the young horsemen.
Marcie’s grief at her father’s passing knew no bounds, and surely it had been profound sadness that propelled her to do precisely as her father had wished. She’d dutifully come to London and unpacked her trunks in Betina Cheltenham’s drafty attic room, determined to mold herself into the fine lady her father had longed for her to become.
But life within Mistress Cheltenham’s crumbling walls was surely a fate worse than death. Marcie’s spoilt schoolmates looked down their prettily upturned noses at her, viewing her as naught but a wild West Country girl who would never achieve the genteel manners necessary to catching the interest of a fine man. As for Betina Cheltenham, the woman had immediately tried to crush Marcie’s inherent sense of adventure and fun. Mistress Cheltenham and Marcie locked horns from the moment they’d met.
Betina preferred teaching the daughters of those Cits who weren’t as wild as Marcie’s father had been. Betina preferred her charges to be like porcelain dolls, and she’d gotten her wish. All of Mistress Cheltenham’s students, save Marcie, had been fashioned to be helpless, pretty, and as far as Marcie was concerned, proved to be oftentimes deucedly temperamental.
Marcie, however, was neither spoilt nor demanding. She was her own person, and she was as lively as the day was long.
For Marcie, the supreme idea of fleeing the boarding school to the safety of her godmother’s home in the north had seemed a simple and very smart thing to do only a few hours past. But that had been before the snow began coming down in heavy, pristine flakes that chilled to the bone. Not even Marcie’s ermine tippet could keep her fingers warm now.
All her other schoolmates had been whisked away from the school by loving family members who promised their cherished daughters sweet Valentine buns to eat, time enough to carve hearts from paper and embellish them with lace and verses and, no doubt, expensive bottles of perfume with which to scent those same hearts. There would be late-night banquets for her schoolmates to enjoy, and dancing until the wee hours of the morning.
For Marcie, though, there would be too little merriment this Saint Valentine’s Day. Her dear father was dead, leaving only his vast monetary holdings in his wake. Marcie’s mother had died in childbirth when Marcie was but five years old. She had no siblings. All the family left to her were two girl cousinsâthe lovely Meredith and the independent Mirabellaâboth of whom had written to Marcie begging her to join them for Saint Valentine’s Day in the Cotswolds, and both of whom she hadn’t seen in years.
It seemed her Darlington cousins had now found Marcie the perfect parti in the form of some boring Marquis of Sherringham. It was paramount, they’d written, that Marcie come join them for the holiday so that both Meredith and Mirabella could help school the younger Marcie in the fine art of capturing his lordship’s interest. They, too, intended to transform her int
o a lady.
In a pig’s eye, thought Marcie. She was naught but the willful youngest Darlington cousin, with a wealth of riotous red hair and a spirit more prone to riding with the wind than suffering a moment of unease in any gentleman’s presence.
Her father, after a colossal argument with his brothers, had abruptly cut himself off from the Darlington family. Though he and his two brothers had pooled their collective geniuses and created a wildly successful financial industry known as the Darlington Three, the men had been too prickly to work together for long.
Once her father had amassed a staggering fortune, one vast enough and steep enough to see that Marcie as well as several generations beyond her need never want for a thing, he’d severed his ties with the Darlington Three. He’d then whisked a young Marcie off to the extremities of Cornwall where he indulged them both in fresh air and restless seas. Though he’d been thrilled by the challenge of creating something from nothing with his brothers, once the future was secured, he chose to spend his time enjoying life to the fullest.
While Marcie’s cousins had learned to dance and be witty, Marcie had been set free on the rugged coasts of Cornwall, unfettered by any reins. Surely Mirabella and Meredith didn’t realize what a challenge they faced in trying to reform Marcie.
At last, horn blaring, a conveyance came careening down the snowy lane.
Gracious, Marcie thought to herself, that loud horn would wake the deadânot to mention the crotchety Mistress Cheltenham! Leave it to Nan to come for her with a telltale clatter of noise.
Marcie grabbed her portmanteau and scurried out of her hiding spot, intent on waving down the driver and encouraging him to quiet his loud horn. She gave not a whit of thought for her own safety as she ran pell-mell into the lane. Her only thoughts were to quiet the incessantly blaring horn, and then to board the conveyance and be forever gone from Mistress Cheltenham’s stuffy school. With the promise of sweet freedom only a few steps awayâand with only part of her brain registering the fact that the man driving the coach would be the first man she spied on Saint Valentine’s DayâMarcie ran straight into the path of the oncoming carriage.
*
Cole swore loudly as he steered the spirited team of horses deucedly close to the body of a caper-witted female bent on destruction. He reined in sharply. The horses reared dangerously, then ground to a halt on the snow-covered lane, barely missing the wench by inches.
“Are you all right?” Cole demanded, watching the girl’s wide-eyed face through a gust of snow spitting up from the horses’ hooves.
“Oh, quite fine,” she called back, rallying herself magnificently. “Now if you would please settle those beasts I will be but a minute climbing in the carriage.”
Cole wondered if he’d heard her aright. Didn’t the female realize he was running a mail coach out of London to the Cotswolds? The Royal Mail stopped for no one and for nothing! Dash it all, but her caper was going to set him behind time.
Cole strained to make out her slight form amidst the heavily falling snow as she bent to retrieve something from the middle of the lane. Being a gentleman, Cole had no choice but to secure the reins, drop down off the bench and go to her aid.
“You ought to take more care when crossing the street at such an hour and in such foul weather.” He spied the article she sought and quickly lifted the ugly portmanteau she’d dropped during the confusion. “Blast, but it’s heavy. What have you got in it? The family jewels?”
“Heavens, no.” Her prettily-sculpted features took on a look of absolute dread as she mistook Cole’s attempt at humor quite seriously. “My eldest cousin was bequeathed all of the jewels my father had purchased over the years. And to my middle cousin went most of the lands my father acquired during his lifetime.”
“And you?” asked Cole, not expecting a plausible answer. Though a moment ago he’d been annoyed by the female’s presence, he now found himself unwillingly interested by this mere slip of a girl who’d scampered out of the snowy mews and talked as though she were a miss of means with great wealth in her family tree. She intrigued him not only with her foolish bravery of waving down his coach, her outrageous talk of acquired lands and jewels, but also with her stunning good looks.
“Fossils,” she answered, craning her neck to view the carriage behind him. Absently, she added, “Lots and lots of fossils. I never was much interested in precious gems or gold, and as for land, I don’t believe it should be owned by only one person but should be shared with all of God’s creatures.” She nodded toward her bag. “I’ve my best fossils in the bag you hold, you know. I intend to give them as Saint Valentine’s Day gifts. I say,” she said, frowning when she realized both the fore and hind boots of the carriage were crammed with parcels and hampers, “do you think my portmanteau will fit beneath that large box lashed to the hind boot? I do hope so, for I fear there is no other place for it.”
She immediately took the bag from his gloved hands, giving him a nod of thanks for retrieving it, then headed for the back of the carriage, clearly intending to strap the thing in place on her own. She called a cheery “Hallo!” to John Reeve, the stone-faced guard who clung to the conveyance near the hind boot, and whose sole duty it was to protect the letter mails. Surprisingly enough, the usually dour Reeve actually cracked a smile at the female!
What the devil? Cole wondered.
“Now see here,” he called out. Cole forced himself to forget her pretty features and even the fact that he’d nearly run her down. “I have a schedule to keep, and keep it I will. I haven’t the time to take on any extra parcels. And more importantly, neither you nor your parcels are listed on my way-bill. This is a mail coach, mistress!”
“But I’ll only take a minuteâ”
“A minute I haven’t got,” he grumbled. “You’d best find yourself a stage coach in the morning.”
“But morning will be too late! Oh, dash it all,” she muttered, looking forlornly at the coach festooned with wild game and barrels of wine, all destined for the snowy north of a Valentine’s Day England. “Can you not find a place for me within the carriage? I’ll sit on boxes. I’ll hold my own baggage upon my lap. Why, I’ll even hold several bags!”
Just then, there came the sharp sound of a woman’s oily, high-pitched voice. “Marcelon Victoria Darlington, if you’re out here, you’d best show yourself!”
A buxom woman, heaving mightily, her face pinched, came wheezing out of the mews. She wielded a sturdy switch which she slapped forcefully against one large thigh.
“I am warning you, Marcelon!” Slap! went the switch, cutting through the crisp night air. “You don’t want me to lock you in your attic room again, now do you?” Slap! “What a pity it will be for you to have nothing but bread and water, and be alone on Saint Valentine’s Day.” Slap… slap… slap!
The pixie-faced girl turned wide, emerald-green eyes on Cole.
“Oh, please,” she whispered. “Do you have room for me or not? My good friend Nan promised me you would. She saidâ”
“Nan? Nan Farthington?”
“None other.”
Devil take it. Cole should have known his illegitimateâand decidedly rambunctiousâhalf sister Nan, now perched within the coach and looking forward to her journey into the Cotswolds aboard a fast vehicle, would promise a convenient escape for a runaway minx!
He wondered if Nan had also mentioned that Cole was in fact the Marquis of Sherringham and had arranged this coach drive in keeping with his membership duties in the Whip Driving Club.
He hoped not. His lordship was looking forward to a rousing drive through the North country, and he rather liked the idea of teaming through the lanes in the guise of Cole Coachman.
“Well, then, do climb in the carriage,” ordered Cole, unwilling to disappoint his half sister. God knew Nan had been dealt a harsh blow in life due to the fact she’d been born on the wrong side of the sheets. Cole had long tried to make some amends toward her.
He quickly moved to pro
p open the door and deposit the girl into the mass of bandboxes, Valentine hearts, and ribbons inside. He helped stuff her oversized portmanteau in after her. She would have to take it upon herself to find a place to perch in the crammed quarters.
Cole slammed the door shut, then made a quick leg for the bench. He’d no sooner scooped up the reins and clicked his fine beasts into motion than the overweight woman came tottering round the mounting block, switch in hand and a very unladylike curse on her overly reddened lips.
Cole tipped his broad-brimmed low-crowned hat in her direction as his horses shot forward. Within moments, he was riding hard for the north. He could only imagine what he’d gotten himself into by helping one Marcelon Victoria Darlington in her queer dash for freedom. He reminded himself to give Nan a good dressing down. Until then, though, he had a schedule to keep, wayward runaway onboard the coach or not.
*
Marcie, thrown off balance by the jolt of the coach, slapped her palms against the ceiling of the crowded interior, and soundly cursed both the switch-wielding Mistress Cheltenham and the fact that her friend Nan had obviously not forewarned the coachman of her plan to board his conveyance.
“I know you’re here somewhere, Nan,” said Marcie into the darkness of the coach. “You might as well present yourself.”
Nan Farthington, stifling a yawn, propped her head up between a pile of bandboxes and pink ribbons that had spilled free of a package.
“Marcie? Is that you?”
“Of course it is me, you ninny! Who else would so foolishly step into the path of an oncoming coach? Really, Nan, when you said you’d come for me in a coach before midnight, I’d thought you meant a hired conveyance and certainly not a Royal Mail coach!”
Nan, wiping the sleep from her eyes, giggled when she spied a tousled Marcie looming above her and holding on for dear life.
“I fail to see the humor in all of this,” said Marcie.
Nan’s grin widened. “You look a fright, Marcie, not at all like the heiress you truly are.”
Miss Marcie's Mischief (To Woo an Heiress, Book 2) Page 1