The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (17 page)

So what was wrong?

Suddenly his eyes lit up as he realized what
was missing from the picture. “Cousin, have you no jewelry?” he
asked baldly as the last dishes were being removed.

Tansy instantly drew back her shoulders and
raised her firm chin. “I do not, your grace,’ she told him in a
carefully controlled fury. “I came within Ames-Ace of a rather
tacky ruby pendant once, but my father’s horse stumbled in the
stretch and the stone remained safe in the tout’s hip pocket—to be
joined shortly by my silver teething ring, which Papa had put up
against it.”

“Good girl!” yelped the dowager, and dealt
Lucinda one firm clap between the shoulder blades as the woman
choked on the water she had been swallowing at the moment of
Tansy’s outburst. “That was well done, with full marks for spirit
and honesty. And don’t you go screwing on your Friday Face, Ashley,
for you got that set-down as reward for your uncouth, uncalled-for
prying. Does she own any jewelry? If she did, do you think she’d be
wiping noses or bear-leading silly chits like our Emily here?
Whatever my sins, I cannot believe I deserved such a muckworm as
you as a grandson.”

“Oh, gemini,” Emily hooted, for once not on
the receiving end of one of her grandmother’s great scolds. Being
called a silly chit was an everyday occurrence. “Box his ears,
Grandmama! Muckworm! Oh, that is so good, Grandmama!”

“‘And in one scene no more than three should
speak.” Horace,” admonished her aunt softly, with little hope Emily
would either understand or heed the advice.

The Duke was more direct. “Stow it, brat.
You’re not too grown up for a little ear-boxing closer to home, you
know.”

The dowager was forced to rap her fork
sharply on her water goblet to restore order. “Enough, I say. Our
guests will be arriving shortly, and I would as lief they were left
in the dark about this particular strain of insanity in the family
that makes you two revert to childhood at the drop of a
napkin.”

“Yes, Grandmama,” Emily said soulfully,
clearly trying to get back into her grandmother’s good graces, and
clearly still holding out hope of at least the emerald tiara.

“All right, Ashley,” the dowager said more
softly as the room fell silent, “now that I am recovered from your
lapse of manners I must admit I understand the object of your
inquiry, even if I cannot commend your approach. Perhaps you can
suggest a remedy?”

At once Ashley winked at his grandparent and
quipped, “Exactly, and I believe you and I even have the same piece
in mind.”

With her own protests pushed aside as too
trivial to be considered, it was only a matter of minutes before
Tansy found herself in the library with the Duke, standing
nervously by as he worked open the hidden panel in the huge
mahogany buffet and withdrew a slender, velvet-covered box.

“If you will oblige me by turning around,
cousin,” the Duke said kindly, and Tansy’s eyes caught sight of an
unbelievably lovely strand of bright, aquamarine stones just before
they descended to lie comfortably in the hollow between her
breasts. But even this joy was overshadowed by the nervous
flutterings of her pulse as Avanoll’s finders brushed her nape when
he secured the diamond clasp. His fingers lingered even after the
task was done, his thumbs rotating slowly as they raised
goose-bumps along her spine.

Tansy knew she must move, and move quickly,
to break the spell she felt enveloping her. But when she began to
step away, Avanoll’s grip pulled her back against his hard, lean
frame. She could feel his warm, sweet breath on her neck moments
before his lips descended to blaze a gossamer-light trail of kisses
from her nape to the tip of her creamy shoulder.

“Oh, Tansy,” Avanoll groaned hoarsely, before
he turned her in his arms and captured her startled lips in a very
different manner than he had ever done before. It was a gentler
contact, almost reverent in its soft caress.

When he at last lifted his head he marveled
at the change one small bauble of jewelry could make. The girl was
more than tolerably fair, she was really quite lovely.

After she had quit the room, running from it
with only an incoherent mumbling of thanks for the loan of his
mother’s necklace, the Duke stood puzzling the odd compulsion to
take his cousin in his arms that seemed to be constantly overcoming
his best intentions, as well as his native intelligence. The last
thing his well-ordered life needed was an entanglement with his
irksome cousin.

As the evening progressed, it became apparent
that the Duke was not alone in his opinion that Tansy was in prime
good looks, and the bewildered
dame de compagnie
found
herself being whirled from partner to partner without a break until
the musicians struck up a waltz. Of course, Lady Emily was
forbidden the dance until the patronesses of Almack’s gave their
seal of approval—but even if this stricture did not apply to Tansy
she had been warned not to insult the ladies by appearing to
disregard their silent authority.

While she, Aunt Lucinda, and Emily sat on a
comfortable striped sofa, taking a well-deserved rest, a young man
Tansy judged to be about four-and-twenty approached, balancing
three glasses of punch that threatened to spill over at any moment.
Tansy was drawn to the handsome youth immediately, as she was
always prejudiced toward the shy and uncertain. He was a strikingly
handsome gentleman, she noted quickly, though not quite her type:
tall, but slightly built, with bronze curls as silky and soft as
Emily’s, and cursed with an almost feminine pink-and-white
complexion that—as one of the glasses tilted and the punch ran over
to stain his lace cuff a bright crimson—showed a most lamentable
tendency to blush.

“Hoo!” Emily chortled. “Did you ever see such
a gudgeon, Tansy? I swear that Digby Eagleton is the most pathetic
creature in Nature. The simple fool believes himself hopelessly in
love with me, you know,” she added in a highly audible whisper. “It
is most embarrassing, really, the way he tags at my skirts like a
mewling kitten.”

A second punch glass twisted awkwardly in
Digby’s grasp, probably as a result of overhearing the love of his
life speak so blightingly of his devotion, and with two out of
three refreshments running down his sleeve he gave up the effort
and withdrew before gaining his objective.

“‘No one regards what is before his feet; we
all gaze at the stars.’ Quintus Ennius,” Lucinda observed
solemnly.

“At my feet is right. Aunt Ce-Ce. Digby
clings like a limpet whenever he spies me. He is such a child! I
wish he might find someone else to drool over, as I am mightily
fatigued with both his romantic prattlings and his tortured sighs.
Do you know he had the nerve, the absolute gall, to ask me to marry
him? It was all I could do not to laugh in his face!”

Lucinda let go with her appraisal of the
young gentleman. “‘The flower of our young manhood.’ Sophocles,”
she gushed girlishly.

Emily picked pettishly at her demure, white
skirts and declared, “If you are so smitten. Aunt, you may have
him. I give him to you, or Tansy here for that matter, as a
gift!”

Tansy had listened to as much—nay, more—of
this smug recital than she had wished to hear. “Keep up your
foolishness, young lady, and you may just whistle a fine young man
down the wind.”

“Never!” Emily declared airily. “If ever I
were so unladylike as to whistle, that dumb Digby would come to
heel at once like a faithful hound—tongue lolling and tail wagging
in ecstasy.”

“Lord love a duck!” Tansy groaned
contemptuously. “If ever there was a more unfeeling, self-centered,
vain, ungrateful, and cruel—yes, cruel,” she repeated as Emily
opened her rosebud lips in protest, “creature, Emily Benedict, I
cannot imagine who she might be. I have not met Mr. Eagleton, and
know nothing of him except for his misguided opinion of what
constitutes a lady of breeding sufficient to doing her the honor of
a proposal of marriage. But I tell you this: if he were a Tothill
Fields link-boy he’d be too good for you.”

Emily’s pouty bottom lip began to
tremble.

“And don’t try tears, my fine young actress,”
Tansy hinted when Emily added a furious blinking of her china-blue
eyes to her repertoire,” for it cuts no wheedle with me. I live for
the day Mr. Eagleton finds a new place to fix his interest and
snaps his fingers in your face like this.” So saying, Tansy lifted
her hand to Emily’s nose and demonstrated with a loud snap.

Aunt Lucinda leaned across Emily to impart
complacently, ‘“This and a great deal more I have had to put up
with.’ Terence.”

“You have my deepest sympathy, Aunt Lucinda,”
Tansy said absently, for a plan was just then forming in her agile
brain. From under her dark lashes she studied the hapless Digby
until his beautiful face was thoroughly familiar and she could not
help but recognize him when next she saw him. It was about time one
top-lofty young puss was taken down a peg or two, and Tansy
Tamerlane was just the one to do it!

Just then the musicians decided to take a
short rest, and the dowager marched over to place herself down
rather wearily in the remaining end seat. “How goes the ball,
ladies? I never saw a room so stuffed with toadies. Emily, I think
you are flinging yourself about just a bit too enthusiastically, my
dear. Try for a little less spirit and a tad more decorum, if you
please.”

Emily told her companions they were always
trying to throw a damper on her fun and reminded them that it was,
after all, her ball. She then escaped, before she could be scolded
for her impertinence, with a dashing young hussar who approached to
beg leave to lead her into the set now forming on the floor.

“Outrageous little baggage,” the dowager
remarked calmly to Emily’s retreating skirts. “Tansy, did you see
that fool Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Harrington if you wish to be
precise, prancing about as yet?”

Tansy shook her head.

“Oh, my dear, you must keep your eyes peeled
for him. He is really quite odd. It was bad enough when he began
affecting that inane lisp, but now he has gone beyond the pale.
Only imagine, he has painted on a beard!”

Aunt Lucinda clucked at the dowager’s obvious
enjoyment of the foibles of a peer. “‘Society in shipwreck is a
comfort to us all.’ Syrus,” she pointed out facetiously.

The dowager, the bit between her teeth now,
agreed. “And you’ll never guess what Lady Clark told me about a
very highly-placed personage who shall remain nameless. It seems he
has an entire collection of snuffboxes with false lids. Under those
lids, on the second covers that he shows about in public quite
freely, thinking none are up to his tricks, are dirty pictures!
Yes, naughty pictures—painted up in natural colors and drawn in
fine detail—with a different scene for each lid. Tansy, I did not
bother to measure my words, for I know you are no prudish miss
after living with that rakehell father of yours. But if you cannot
blush, at least have the decency to wipe that obnoxious grin off
your face!”

“‘What a time! What a civilization!’ Cicero,”
Lucinda cried in horror.

“If I might change the subject, your grace,”
Tansy put in, “I would appreciate your opinion of one young Digby
Eagleton.”

“Digby Eagleton? Oh, yes. Fine family, the
Eagletons, only son of his widowed mother, and with a good deal of
money invested with the four percents, I believe. He’s in line for
a baronetcy too, once his uncle sticks his spoon in the wall, and
that should be any time now. Why? Are you thinking of throwing your
handkerchief in that direction?”

“I may be a bit raw around the edges, your
grace, but I stop at cradle-robbing. No, Mr. Eagleton is head over
ears in love with your cruel wretch of a granddaughter, and she
won’t give him so much as the time of day. I was just wondering if
the poor tyke is worth the time it would take me to give him a few
pointers on how best to handle the hard-hearted Emily.”

The dowager laughed and twisted in her seat
to give Tansy a broad wink. “You are a constant source of delight
to me, my dear. Ashley did me a good turn when he brought you home,
whether he will admit it or not.”

“I’ll admit to being Bonnie Prince Charlie if
only my cousin will rescue me from another hour of squiring more
uglies and wallflowers about the dance floor. The last one was so
huge it was like hefting about a pack of meal to get her to
move.”

The ladies looked up to catch the Duke in the
act of wiping at his heated brow with a fine lawn handkerchief.

“As it is your responsibility to, as you say,
squire all the uglies, I can only think you look upon me as part of
your duty, with my only attraction being that I will agree to
content myself with a sojourn to the refreshment table instead of
insisting you stand up with me in the next set,” Tansy returned
with feigned hauteur.

Her heart had begun thumping painfully
against her breast at the sound of his voice, but Tansy refused to
let Ashley see he had the power to discomfit her. “Do not be afraid
of plain speech, cousin, nor try to wrap up your words in clean
linen.”

“Clean linen, is it, cousin The Duke returned
with a deceptively bland smile. “It is you who are skirting the
real issue by deliberately misunderstanding me. If you do not wish
my company, then just go about the business as is your custom—say
something nasty and have an end to it. I have had enough pointless
chatter this night to last me out my days.”

Tansy capitulated with a smile. Surely
Avanoll wouldn’t have sought her out if he were feeling
uncomfortable about their interlude in the library. Obviously the
dowager was a bit behind the times and did not realize how much
freer society had become since the days when a single kiss was
enough to ruin a girl for life. Her cousin wouldn’t so compromise
her, she was certain, and she would just have to follow his lead
and learn to dismiss his occasional embraces as simply temporary
aberrations that meant little or nothing to him.