The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (14 page)

He didn’t mean he regretted kissing her,
dammit, in fact, it ranked as quite the most enjoyable kiss in his
memory. He only wanted to save her embarrassment when she had time
to recall that she had, instead of resisting or even fainting, as
any female might, in actual fact, kissed him back with unschooled
but extremely unmaidenly ardor. He knew she was past hearing his
explanation but gave it a try anyway.

“You are quite wrong, Tansy, my dear,” he
contented himself with saying, as Tansy’s tirade seemed spent. “I
far from regret our, er, recent closer acquaintance. I also quite
enjoyed it, actually,” he informed her in an only slightly amused
voice. Tansy’s wavering smile allowed him to think he was
forgiven.

Deeper pondering of this incident would come
easier at his Club, with a glass or two of port to hand. For now he
contented himself by simply dipping his head quickly and kissing
the tip of her nose before making for the door, leaving a bemused
Tansy staring at his retreating back—one hand absently touching her
lips.

Avanoll turned just after he pulled open the
door and—in celebration of his startling discovery of a new and
vastly intriguing side of his cousin, not to mention his superior
handling of a sticky situation the girl could have mushroomed into
an ugly tale of compromise if not for his quick talking—jauntily
saluted her.

Be good to give the girl a little romance to
dream about, he congratulated himself. The incident wouldn’t be
repeated, for that could lead to problems, but now that she had had
a taste of womanhood, perhaps she would join Emily in her
husband-hunting and he would be rid of her. Strangely, that thought
destroyed some of his good mood, but he refused to let it ruin his
day.

As he made to turn away again Tansy suddenly
called out his name but he merely smiled, letting her know that
although romantic dalliance had its place, it was time now for
other pursuits. He shook his head in the negative and wagged a
finger at her that meant “Naughty puss, I must be off,” and turned
once more for the door, the hero making his exit, and with one step
turned his hoped-for dramatic exit into a circus stunt as he
tripped over Horatio and went sprawling head-first onto the black
and white tiles of the foyer.

As he fell, one outstretched hand struck up a
passing acquaintance with a bust of Homer perched atop a pedestal,
and both objects immediately joined him in making a closer
acquaintance with the rapidly-rising floor. After the resounding
crash—which deprived that noted poet of one of his finely sculpted
marble ears and the tip of his majestic nose—there was a brief,
succinct utterance describing, in a high degree of color, the
Duke’s conclusion as to Horatio’s base character and an unnecessary
pointing out of his mother’s sex.

Naturally, Horatio took exception to this
vulgar abuse, not to mention the insult of a booted toe being
stubbed mightily into his slumbering form. He immediately took up a
menacing stance at the head of his fallen foe, and with barks and
growls and bared teeth gave back as good as he had got.

The Duke, picturing his face in peril of
being disfigured in much the same way as the head slowly rocking to
and fro nearby—be it by way of canine teeth rather than a hard
floor—made haste to remove his head (indeed his entire body) from
said canine’s proximity. But upon attempting to rise a stabbing
pain in his right ankle brought yet another string of unmentionable
words past his lips, and he had to content himself with an
ignominious slithering retreat across the tiles on his hindquarters
to put any distance between himself and his attacker.

By this time Tansy was kneeling at his side
and trying desperately to hold the enraged Horatio in check. “Oh,
my dear Ashley,” she inquired breathlessly, “are you all right? I
did try to warn you.”

He favored her with a speaking glance and
spat, “Am I all right, she asks? I go flying to the floor, landing
heavily I might add, am nearly concussed by an avalanche of marble,
suffer what will surely prove to be no less than a broken ankle, am
threatened by a mad dog, and she asks if I’m all right. Oh, I’m
just fine, Miss Tamerlane, right as a trivet,” he informed her
sarcastically. “Ah, you smile. How wonderful. I live only to please
you, you know. Perhaps you wish me to feed my hand to your vicious
brute here as a reward for nearly killing me—but not the left one,
I implore you, for it is only just healed from my last encounter
with the bloody beast.”

“‘Pride goeth before destruction, and an
haughty spirit before a fall.’ Proverbs,” came a voice from behind
and above the fallen hero.

Avanoll ignored the voice. He had more than
enough on his plate without encouraging Lucinda to expound more
fully on this last uncalled for and grossly undeserved observation
on a probable reason for his having been so badly used.

Aside from his aunt, the noise of the
accident had roused nearly all the family and staff so that by the
time of the Duke’s little speech the dowager, Emily, Dunstan,
Farnley, three footmen, two chambermaids, and a tweeny who had yet
to learn better, had all converged on the foyer to make up a not
insignificant audience.

“Dunstan,” Tansy ordered, “kindly remove
Horatio before the master goes into a taking. Have Leo rub some
liniment into his back where he was kicked, and perhaps Cook will
give him a nice bone to soothe his feelings.”

Turning to the Duke she queried politely,
“Perhaps a soup bone to gnaw on will help your disposition as well,
your grace, or would you rather a vinaigrette or some feathers
burnt under your nose? I do fear you are suffering from shock and
hysterics.”

A titter running through the onlookers
brought a thunderous look from the Duke, and the servants quickly
melted away.

What an unusual household thought the tweeny,
fresh from the country. First they come home all wet and
evil-smelling, and then they roll about on the floor talking about
soup bones. Queer in the attic, she surmised, and wished she could
write so she could tell her mum of the frightful goings on in
London Town.

The dowager stood looking down at the pair on
the floor, glaring hotly at each other with angry words fairly
bursting to be uttered, and her hopes came down a peg or two.
Surely any progress made by their seeming enjoyment of each other
during the waltz had evaporated, thanks once again to that mangy,
ill-favored cur Tansy set so much store by.

Actually, the dowager was only half right.
Both Avanoll and Tansy were on their high ropes about their
conflicting opinions on the worth of Horatio’s presence on this
Earth, but neither could entirely dismiss from their minds the
events preceding Avanoll’s latest mishap. Tansy felt pity, and not
a little guilt, as she tried vainly to assist her cousin to his
feet. Her hand, as she grasped his, tingled, and her heart did a
nasty flip-flop in her breast.

As Avanoll’s larger hand closed around
Tansy’s, his fingers touched her wrist, and he could feel the
increased tempo of her pulse. He felt a momentary gladness because
her touch did much the same to him. But then sanity took over.

“Unhand me you—you nemesis! Your assistance
is not needed, not now, and not ever,” he blustered in
self-defense. “Since your advent in my life, I have walked around
with a thundercloud over my head and a stream of cold rain
constantly running down the back of my neck. I haven’t had a
peaceful moment since we met. Unless I seek an early grave—or at
the least, permanent disability—I intend to give you a very wide
berth in the future. You may remain under my roof until Emily is
bracketed, and then I will settle an allowance on you to keep you
from endangering any other poor souls who would be so unfortunate
as to employ you. But from now on, madam, we are as strangers.
Kindly remove yourself from my presence whilst I endeavor to haul
what is left of my body upstairs to my chamber.”

And so Ashley waved away Tansy’s helping hand
and tried to rise, only to fall back down once more.

“‘Not easily do they rise whose powers are
hindered by straitened circumstances.’ Juvenal,” his aunt pointed
out, causing her nephew to utter some few phrases of his own that
the woman barely understood, let alone ventured to commit to
memory. Which was extremely fortunate, as they were more earthy
than profound.

It was a white-faced Tansy who wrung her
hands helplessly as she watched the Duke crawl to the newel post,
haul himself upright, and hop ungainly up the long staircase. Not
even the dowager’s attempt at mimicking Lucinda by calling out
after her grandson, “‘He that lies with the dogs, riseth with
fleas.’ Herbert,” was able to lift her spirits for more than a
moment.

Emily went to Tansy and started to speak,
then thought better of it, simply kissed Tansy’s cheek, and went
quietly away. The dowager tried for some minutes to alternately
joke, cajole, or lecture Tansy into a better humor, but in the end
she too simply patted Tansy’s ashen cheek. Then she was off to
instruct Dunstan to summon the doctor to look at his grace’s
ankle.

Lucinda walked over and gave it her best
shot: “‘There’s no cause for despair.’ Horace.”

“Where have you been these last minutes,
Aunt? On the moon? Of course there is cause for despair. I am in
disgrace—again—and the Duke cannot stand the sight of me.”

Lucinda kissed Tansy’s cheek. “‘To have been
acceptable to the great is not the last of praises. It is not every
man’s lot to gain Corinth.’ Horace,” she said bracingly before
wandering off to the library, there to reread her Horace and find
out just who this man Corinth was for the poet to speak of him so
highly.

All alone now in the foyer, Tansy hung her
head in shame. Her disgrace had been too public, too profound, to
leave her able to see even one silver lining in the dark clouds
overhead. She deserved nothing more than to pack her portmanteau
and slink off to a damp hole in the ground and expire, but she had
only two pounds and sixpence to her name—and no references. She
simply had no choice but to stay in this house where the servants
might worship her as a savior, where Emily and the dowager and even
Aunt Lucinda might feel some slight affection for her, but the
master of the house chose to pretend she didn’t exist.

And what was worse—as if anything more could
be added and still be borne!—was her revelation in the middle of
Avanoll’s scathing denunciation that he was the one person in the
house who held the power to make her happy ever again. And he hated
her, really hated her. Only a complete idiot could fail to realize
that.

Well, she told herself philosophically, she
had opened her heart to at least the beginnings of something that
may have grown into love in the space of an afternoon. Surely it
could take no more than a few days to restore herself to her
previous heart-whole state.

Tansy squared her shoulders and marched
purposefully up the stairs to her room. But before she reached the
door her shoulders had slumped, and once the door closed behind her
the proud chin quivered and the pent-up tears fell like silent
rain.

Maybe she should give herself more time.
Perhaps a fortnight, or a year, or a lifetime.

A
s it turned out,
Avanoll’s ankle was not broken, but merely sprained, a painful
nuisance that his doctor warned him could eventually turn into a
chronic weakness if he dared put any weight on the foot for at
least a week.

His guilt-ridden cousin made sure Mrs.
Birdwell, the new housekeeper, did not stint on the trays of
tempting dishes that seemed to be traveling in an almost constant
parade up the back staircase to the Duke’s chambers. Tansy herself
carefully cut a wide path around those same chambers, especially
after Horatio somehow gained admittance to the bedroom and promptly
leapt upon the Duke’s bed (perhaps to offer a woofed apology) and
landed squarely on Avanoll’s swollen and sore ankle. A loud howl
from the sadly abused man brought Aunt Lucinda on the run, and she
entered the chamber just as Horatio—slightly upset by the incident,
but not so much so as to not notice and claim for his own a
succulent pork chop that was to be a part of the Duke’s
dinner—flashed past her and into the hall, his pilfered treasure
protruding from his larcenous phiz.

“‘The dog, to gain some private ends, went
mad, and bit the man. The man recovered of the bite—the dog it was
that died.’ Goldsmith,” she offered by way of comfort.

It wanted only this, the Duke thought,
feeling himself sadly used. “He didn’t bite me this time out, Aunt,
though more’s the pity if I could hold out the hope your fellow
Goldsmith had a grain of truth in his little ditty. The cursed
hound merely did his canine imitation of a whirling dervish on my
injured ankle and then, low-life that he is, absconded with my
supper,” the Duke told her testily.

Aunt Lucinda tut-tutted and intoned severely,
“‘Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of
our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble
and incapable of deceit.’ Sir Waller Scott.”

Avanoll laughed ruefully. “And there you have
your answer, my oh-so-wise aunt. Disabuse yourself of the notion
that the Almighty had anything whatsoever to do with that
particular gift. No, his creator comes from a much warmer clime, I
am sure.”

His aunt looked puzzled for a moment. Then an
affronted flush rose in her cheeks before she gathered up her
heavily-ruffled, lime-green skirts and stalked from the room, her
sensibilities highly insulted by her nephew’s effrontery in
speaking of heathens in her hearing. She was further boosted on her
way by the sound of the hearty laughter brought on by the Duke’s
first real amusement in days.

On Monday afternoon two of the Duke’s cronies
passed a few hours with him, but instead of raising his sullen
spirits, he seemed even more tense and restless after they had
gone. Farnley, thinking his master to be still in pain, offered to
send for his cousin Betty’s second-born son Tom, who had been a
footling (born feet-first), so that worthy could press his feet
against the Duke’s “affected part,” thereby drawing off the “evil
humors” within.