The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (2 page)

According to the blacksmith’s scanty
directions, the turnoff for the Squire’s should be just around the
next bend of the road. After a day and a night on the Mail, the
tired traveler was anxious to arrive, no matter how thin her
welcome. She thanked her lucky stars (or at least the single one
she thought even she was allotted) that there was little traffic at
this dinner hour. Constant trips to the side of the road to let
other travelers by would have quite deflated her spirits, as well
as delayed her arrival to the wee hours of the morning.

Just as Tansy was buoying her flagging
spirits with this bit of uplifting thought, a sporting curricle
sprang up behind her as if conjured out of Merlin’s magic hat.

“Hey you, woman,” came the loud call. “Haul
that rig and that piece of offal pulling it to one side and let
your betters pass.” A swift look over her shoulder told Tansy she
was in immediate danger of overturning as a pair of showy grays
edged out from behind her, threatening to pass at the very
beginning of the bend.

Horace—or was it Dobbin?—either could not or
would not move his old bones to one side fast enough, no matter how
much (or because) he was insulted. His driver took the only
alternative and hauled mightily on the reins. The horse obediently
(and thankfully) came to a halt, allowing the other equipage to
pull in directly in front of the gig. This move also allowed the
curricle to narrowly avoid a collision with the Southbound Mail
that appeared round the bend, stretching its sixteen-mile-an-hour
steeds to their fullest on the suddenly overcrowded roadway.

The driver of the curricle sawed frantically
on the reins as his high-strung pair took rightful exception to
such cow-handed driving, and the off-wheel of the conveyance came
abruptly in contact with a deep scar on the side of the road. In a
twinkling the Mail was past, but the curricle was well and truly
stuck.

Tansy was neither hysterical nor vaporish.
“Good!” she stated simply. “If there is any justice in this world,
all his spokes will have cracked. I shall never get this ancient
beast moving again!” The nag, far from being hurt by the maligning
words, began nibbling happily at a nearby bush with his few
remaining teeth.

She took a moment to assess the occupants of
the curricle, quickly inspecting and categorizing the driver as a
ham-fisted young looby who was probably more used to squiring
pretty bits around the Park, as befitted his showy but out-of-place
curricle, and should leave any country driving to his coachman. She
dismissed his reasons for being on this road as none of her
business. Actually, Tansy didn’t give two hoots about anything but
moving on to her destination, on foot if necessary.

As the driver was fully occupied with his
horses, she studied him again. Dobbin—or Horace—wouldn’t move until
he finished his snack anyway, she reasoned, and gave herself up to
the contemplation of the driver, whose foppish dress and
unproductive maneuvers with the reins only confirmed her opinion of
his inability to either quiet his pair or extradite the curricle
from the ditch. Her Papa would have horse-whipped him for
mistreating his animals that way. So she would do also, but not
being a man had its drawbacks. Tansy wouldn’t even be on this
cursed road if she were a man. “No, I’d be in the Fleet for Papa’s
debts,” she chided herself before shouting, “Move your vehicle,
sir! You are blocking my way!”

She got back a strangled curse for her pains
as the man pulled viciously at his team’s mouths in an effort to
get them moving. Obviously not a Four Horse Club man she told
herself dryly. Equally obvious was the fact that to leave the
curricle where it stood on the curve of the road was courting
disaster. She shrugged her shoulders. So what? It wasn’t her
problem.

But then the other occupant of the curricle,
who had let out a single piercing scream (a screech, were it
uttered by one of the lower classes), recovered her composure
enough to ask baldly, “And now what, Godfrey? How do you propose to
get us to Gretna now? Ashley will overtake us and All Will Be Lost!
What a fine muddle this is! How could you be so stupid? I told you
to hire a coach and driver. But did you listen? On, no. You did
not. Why even a—”

“Oh, shut up,” came the ungentlemanly reply
that cut right into his companion’s speech, just as she was really
getting into the spirit of the thing.

“Shut Up, is it, Godfrey!” It seemed the girl
was not quite finished. “How dare you say such a thing to me, the
sister of a Duke?” The girl also seemed to speak solely in
exclamation points. “I begin to think our marriage is not such a
good idea. Whoever heard of a bridegroom telling his beloved to
shut up! No!” Her mind seemed made up. “Indeed, I will not marry
you! I insist you unstick our wheel and turn this equipage about! I
wish to return to London.” Her voice had taken on tones of great,
if somewhat high-pitched, dignity. “If you can manage to keep from
landing us in any more ditches, we can be back to Grosvenor Square
before dark.”

Her hauteur was short-lived, for her
betrothed was unimpressed. “Back to London is it, my
high-and-mighty Lady Emily? Not while there’s breath left in my
body. It’s marriage you wanted, and it’s marriage you’ll by damn
get.” The leer on Godfrey’s vacantly handsome face made him look
like a sneering cherub.

“Oh!” said Lady Emily. And once again, “Oh!”
Her pretty face crumpled for a moment, then brightened. Jumping
lightly down from the curricle before her tarnished swain could
pull her back, she ran up to the female sitting none too patiently
in the gig. “You heard?” asked the younger girl without
preamble.

Tansy nodded and took the opportunity to take
a good look at the girl-woman called Lady Emily. She was a beauty.
Her peaches-and-cream English complexion appeared all the more
delicate, set as it was against startling deep blue eyes, while
guinea-gold ringlets, looking soft as kitten fur, fuzzed closely
around a small heart-shaped face. Her soft, pink mouth was slightly
pouting, but distracted nothing from the whole. Add to that a
deep-blue traveling ensemble and matching bonnet trimmed in warm
sable fur that the female in the gig would have gladly traded her
right arm for, and the picture Lady Emily presented was one of
beauty, taste, and wealth.

And youth. Extreme youth.

Suddenly Tansy felt older, dowdier, and even
more sadly used than she had when her last employer informed her
she was a complete failure at ladylike pursuits and would be better
employed mucking out stables at a back country inn.

She felt one other emotion as she looked down
at the young girl standing so regally in the dirty road. She felt
protective—fiercely so. What harm is there in being kind, she
thought. Besides, to leave now would be like turning one’s back on
a lost infant. So convinced, she smiled gently at the girl. “I did
indeed hear, Lady Emily. As your swain seems, er, entrenched with
his own affairs at present, perhaps I can be of some assistance. If
you will but come up here and hold the reins—whatever for I vow I’m
not sure, for Dobbin won’t wander off—I shall go retrieve what I am
sure is your portmanteau from the back of the curricle. Perhaps
then the two of us can continue down the road to my ultimate
destination at Squire Lindley’s, and you can send a message off to
your, er, brother.”

A single, huge tear found its way caressingly
down one prettily flushed cheek as Lady Emily bobbed her head in
enthusiastic consent. Her unlikely savior saw it and her protective
feelings for Lady Emily mushroomed.

Lady Emily wiped away the evidence of her
prowess as a play actress and grinned impishly behind her hand as
the female stomped off toward the curricle, and—suppressing the
urge to clap her little hands in glee—contented herself with
rocking back and forth on her high-heeled kid boots.

“Oh, yes, miss, please,” cried Lady Emily
belatedly. “I should like that Above All Things!” As usual, she had
found herself a champion and come out of a possibly fatal scandal
with nary a scratch. Only an optimistic nature and a limited
mentality could think so, while standing stranded in the middle of
nowhere with an irate brother on her trail and night rapidly coming
down. But then, what other person would have gone off on such a
hey-go-mad start but a spoiled ninny-hammer like lovely Lady
Emily?

She had still one teeny niggle-jot of sense
in her largely vacant brain box that told her she had nearly done
it this time. She had almost sunk herself beyond reproach but, once
again, Fate had come to her aid—this time in the form of a tall,
shabbily-dressed quiz who looked more like a governess than a
knight in armor.

The female Galahad had, meanwhile, climbed
stiffly down from the gig, resisted an ungenteel urge to rub at her
stiff posterior, and advanced on the young man who was ruefully
surveying his broken right wheel.

“Good day to you,” Tansy began airily. “I am
happy to tell you that Lady Emily has agreed to ride along with me
to Squire Lindley’s, which is just down the road. If you will
please place her portmanteau in my gig, we shall be off. If you
wish, you may join her there later. The Lady Emily intends sending
a note to her brother, the Duke—directly she arrives at the
Squire’s, you understand. Or, if you wish, I could instead have a
message sent to the nearest posting inn to have a vehicle brought
to your aid, and you may continue to your destination.” She
finished off her small list of options with a devilish grin that
totally negated the picture of feminine innocence her words
painted.

This rambling speech first baffled the
gentleman, but one look at Tansy’s satisfied smirk changed
bafflement to anger. “She goes nowhere with you, my good woman,” he
retorted in crushing accents. “The lady is my affianced wife, and I
and I alone am responsible for her protection.”

“You are not!” came a shout from the gig. “I
wouldn’t cross the street with you, Mr. Harlow. So There!” Lady
Emily remembered her pose of betrayed innocence then and
refrained—just in time—from poking her little pink tongue out at
the so-recent great love of her life.

Mr. Harlow flushed deeply and bellowed back.
“Emily, get down from there before—”

“Oh, cut line, you young looby. Don’t you
know when to call it a day? You’ve lost this prize, and out of your
own mouth, no less. She’ll not have you now if you was served up to
her on a silver platter with an apple stuck in your jaws.”

Godfrey wheeled at hearing this outlandish
speech coming from a female mouth, and his own mouth dropped open
in amazement.

Tansy was taking a chance addressing a
gentleman so boldly while standing unprotected in the middle of an
abandoned highway near twilight, but she had little fear of the
masculine gender. Her native ability to quickly judge the character
of her adversary had added further ginger to her words.

She was not disappointed. Mention of Emily’s
brother, the Duke, gave Mr. Harlow pause, and a slight shiver
skipped down his spine like a stone skimmed across the calm waters
of a stream. The wretched woman was right, damn her. Without a
backward glance at Lady Emily, he alit from the curricle, unhitched
his greys and mounted—with more haste than style—the nearest one.
Only then did he turn in his seat and doff his curly-brimmed beaver
to the two ladies.

He seemed to have regained his poise, if not
his scruples—which could not have been very strong in the first
place considering he was an admitted abductor of heiresses.

“Ta-ta, Emily, love,” he called jauntily.
“Give my regards to your dear brother. And you madam,” he
continued, looking down at his ex-love’s champion, “I hear
Cheltenham is tolerably well sprinkled with plump-in-the-purse cits
who are at least one generation away from the smell of the shop. My
thanks, good lady. Upon reflection on the charms of sweet Emily, I
do believe you may have saved me from a sad end on the gallows. I
probably would have murdered the chit within the month, were we
really leg-shackled. Speaks like a Penny Dreadful, she does, and
unceasingly. Her pretty face was to be some compensation. But then,
it seems I remember that the most glorious of birds, the peacock,
likewise sends up an awful screech each time it opens its
beak.”

“Farewell, Mr. Harlow,” replied Tansy, who
relented and gave a genuine smile of amusement at this brash young
puppy. “Good luck to you. You are a very well set up young man,
just flying a bit too high for safety—absconding with the sister of
a Duke! Better set your sights on an only child next time—or better
still, an orphan. Goodbye, Mr. Harlow.”

The young man, down but far from out, blew an
irreverent kiss to the eccentrically appealing woman standing in
the middle of the North Road. Then he kicked at his horse’s flanks
and was off at once, bouncing down the road toward—he hoped and
Tansy secretly seconded—a brighter future.

T
ansy walked back to
the gig, her head shaking back and forth slightly and a chuckle
escaping her lips. “A fine one you are,” exclaimed Lady Emily with
a definite pout. “It would almost seem as if I were the guilty
party and Godfrey an innocent lamb. I was used, I tell you, sadly
used!”

“Fiddlesticks,” countered her companion
without rancor. “You got just what you set out for—excitement—and a
bit more than you bargained for, I’ll wager. You never intended to
wed that young scapegrace. Confess! You left an enlightening note,
right where your unfortunate brother would see it and come charging
posthaste to the rescue,” Tansy concluded. And then, in a gentler
voice, she inquired, “What’s wrong, my dear? Are you sadly
neglected by this brother of yours? Not in a material way,
obviously, but does he sometimes need to be reminded you are no
longer hidden in the nursery with your governess?”