The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (23 page)

In the midst of ushering his charges out
ahead of him, he turned once more to the thwarted despoiler of
young womanhood and issued a warning very thinly dressed up as
friendly advice. “I would not brute about the events of this
evening, Whitstone, or we will both find ourselves become a
laughingstock among the tattlemongers. If you will but promise to
keep mum and take yourself out of my sight until at least the end
of the Season, I shall deign to consider us quits. If you do not,
however,” he intoned with an awful smile, “I shall be forced to
return and give you the drubbing you deserve.”

Whitstone made one last arrogant (and
ill-judged) remark, suggesting insolently, “You know, Avanoll, you
were just lucky to have arrived in time to save your beloved
sister. Another few moments and I’d have had her convinced I merely
wished to anticipate our honeymoon by a few hours. If ever I saw a
wench bent on a tumble it is she, and,” he added with a smirk, “if
Boodle’s Betting Book doesn’t soon sport a wager on the day and
time she is found flat on her back with her skirts above her head
in some hostess’ back garden, I vow it won’t be because the lady
refuses to yield. She may be Lady Emily in name, but in nature
she’s no better than the little opera-dancer I keep in Kensington.
Yes, indeed, your chaste little innocent has all the makings of a
first class wh—”

That’s all the further Sir Rollin got (and it
was only due to the distractions of finding the fainting Emily a
chair and holding back a cousin bent on physical violence that the
inevitable was for so long delayed) before Avanoll’s large fist put
an end to the flow of verbal filth by the simple expedient of
crashing into the speaker’s jaw with all the force—and much of the
finesse—of the great Gentleman Jackson himself.

Tansy’s “Well done, Ashley, give him
another!” accompanied by some enthusiastic shadow-punching of her
own, went unheeded by the Duke as he stood, fists at the ready,
watching Sir Rollin stagger for a moment before launching a
retaliation.

His punch was thrown wild and missed, but
Avanoll’s wicked uppercut connected solidly, propelling his
opponent backwards across the floor to bang against the Shearer
fire-screen and slide down against it before coming to rest with
his legs sprawled on the bare floor. The screen, a rather lovely
piece of work, was equipped with a convenient fold-down writing
table that the impact of Whitstone’s body served to release. The
tabletop, while not designed for such abuse, was sturdily made of
solid oak, and it descended to land with some force on Whitstone’s
skull—thump-thumping his Brutus Crop-adorned noggin a total of
three punishing times before coming to rest. All but the first bump
were not felt, more’s the pity, for Sir Rollin was already “fast
asleep.”

Tansy was elated and made no bones about it.
“That was a neat bit of cross and jostle work, Ashley, and that
muzzler surely put a crimp in Whitstone’s style. If his bone-box
isn’t broken it’s bruised enough to have him on milk gruel for a
sen’night or more.” She patted her cousin on the back amicably and
pretended to pout. “And you said I kept secrets from you, while all
along you were a talented amateur of the Fancy—as I could see by
your form—and the possessor of as fine a pair of fives as Maddox or
The Black or even Belcher, I wager. I cannot begin to tell you how
proud I am of you, Ashley,” she ended, beaming up at him.

Avanoll covered the hand Tansy had in her
excitement put on his arm with one of his “pair of fives” and
smiled down at her to observe, “You do have the most charming way
of expressing yourself, my dear, although I shudder to think where
you gained such firsthand knowledge of fisticuffs.”

“Papa—” she began, only to have the Duke
admonish her by using a bit of cant language himself.

“Put a muzzle on it, Tansy,” he admonished
kindly, and then—overcome by the pleasure of feeling such great
affinity with the outrageous female who dared convention to protect
her charge (and himself, he had a slight suspicion)—he threw all
caution to the winds, hauled her into a tight embrace, and kissed
her quite ruthlessly.

A groan from Emily, slowly rousing from her
swoon, caused the pair to separate hurriedly, placing several feet
of floor space between them before Emily could fully open her eyes
and Farnley could re-enter the house to inform his master that his
carriage, which had been stationed discreetly around the corner,
was out front and awaiting their convenience.

“What about Sir Rollin?” Emily quailed as she
was led to the street. “If he speaks, I am forever destroyed.”

Her brother informed her of his assurance
that Whitstone had learned a valuable lesson in discretion and
could not be of any further concern to them—unable to restrain
himself from adding a few choice words about her part in the mess
and warning of further elaboration on her expected conduct in the
future on the morrow.

“I have been dreadfully silly, haven’t I,
Ashley?”

“Let’s just say, brat, that if the wits
beneath your golden hair were any dimmer you would be not a female,
but a dandelion,” her brother told her ruthlessly.

“You’ve been an inconsiderate, impulsive,
selfish and none-too-bright little minx who needs a hiding,” Tansy
added, in a last burst of temper before relenting a bit and
allowing Emily to hide her tear-swollen face against her shoulder
until the carriage arrived in Grosvenor Square.

Dunstan swung the door open before they had
mounted the portico, while upstairs a curtain moved as Aunt Lucinda
peered out into the Square. “‘Throw fear to the wind.’
Aristophanes,” she heralded, just as footsteps were heard on the
stairs.

A few seconds later the returning adventurers
straggled wearily into Avanoll’s salon, to be greeted by the sight
of their aunt swaying slightly on her feet in the middle of the
room and holding a nearly depleted brandy snifter in her raised
hand. “‘Veni, vide, vici.’ Plutarch,” she slurred in salute.

Tansy, seeing Emily’s bewildered expression,
translated: “It is Latin for, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’”

“Oh,” Emily whispered vaguely.

“Precisely,” Avanoll replied, frowning, his
eyes scanning his cherished domain to see the furniture awash with
bits of feminine draperies, one empty brandy decanter on the silver
tray with another already at half mast, a wet, spreading stain and
an overturned snifter on the rug beside his favorite chair, and a
fine porcelain bowl (that had lately resided on a side table) now
somehow come into the possession of that usurping mongrel—who was
avidly lapping at its contents, which looked suspiciously like yet
more of his choicest brandy.

“Far be it from me to intrude on your little
party, Grandmama,” he said, bowing toward the elderly woman who at
that moment was trying to present a posture of dignity in a chair
so cavernous it did not even allow her feet to touch the floor,
while attempting to close her gaping dressing robe and straighten
her tilted nightcap—all with little or no success. “But it may
interest you to know that all is well, and that no scandal should
arise from this night’s adventures.”

The dowager opened her mouth to make some
congratulatory remark, found her tongue to be quite dry, and
availed herself of a sip of brandy. It was a rather large sip that
burned her throat and set off a fit of coughing.

‘“To blow and swallow at the same time is not
easy.’ Plautus,” Aunt Lucinda advised, wagging her finger at the
sputtering woman.

Tansy whispered to Avanoll, “It would appear
our elders chose to blunt the edge of their concern with a bit of
your private stock, cousin.”

“That, cousin, is an understatement,” he
returned.

Emily picked that moment to scamper across
the room and drop to her knees beside her grandmother: “Forgive me,
Grandmama, please do, for I am prodigiously sorry!” she cajoled in
her most theatrical accents.

Aunt Lucinda, using obvious concentration to
wend a reasonably straight line to her niece’s side, poked Emily
sharply in the middle of her back and warred, ‘“You have put your
head inside a wolfs mouth and taken it out again in safety. That
ought to be reward enough for you.’ Aesop.”

“Oh, Lucinda, my dear, that was so
intelligent of you. I could not have said it better myself,” the
dowager complimented the woman.

“The Duchess actually commending your aunt
for one of her quotes? Oh, Ashley, I fear you are right, the pair
of them are absolutely bosky!” Tansy giggled.

The dowager heard this and protested.
“Slightly up in the world, perhaps, maybe even a trifle disguised,
but never bosky. Tansy. Gentlewomen cannot be bosky.”

“‘I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.’
Menander,” Aunt Lucinda said, admitting at least her castaway
condition before tottering to a chair and dropping into it heavily
(with no sign of caring that she now lay sprawled like a rag doll
dropped by a careless child), and recited sing-song, “‘O to be a
frog, my lads, and live aloof from care.’ Theocritus.”

The dowager roused herself to ask fuzzily,
“Theocritus? Is that the Greek fellow who used to stuff his mouth
with stones and try to outshout the ocean waves?”

She was destined not to be answered, due to
Horatio’s deduction that it was time all good puppies were abed,
and all eyes—at least all the ones not yet seeing double—watched in
astonishment as the animal traced a meandering course in the
general direction of the hall, his four appendages somehow suddenly
supplied with an overabundance of joints so that his legs bent and
bowed most alarmingly and refused to move in any semblance of
simple coordination.

Within mere yards of his goal, these
uncooperative limbs collapsed entirely and Horatio rolled onto his
side, flung his head upon the carpet, closed his glassy eyes (but
was unable to retract his lolling tongue or shut his slack jaw),
and, after his tail had given a final spasmodic jerk, commenced
sleeping off a prime snootful of brandy.

“He’ll have a rare bruiser of a hangover in
the morning,” the Duke observed dispassionately, ignoring Tansy and
Emily and their oohs and aahs of compassion. As the dowager emitted
a sad moan he added imperturbably, “And so, too, my so-proper
grandparent and genteel aunt.”

“They were better off indulging in a little
relaxing brandy than pacing the floor in a turmoil all the while we
were gone,” Tansy pointed out. By now the two thoroughly relaxed
ladies were endeavoring to rouse themselves sufficiently to retire
to their own chambers, and Emily was already long gone—deciding the
less she was seen the less reminders of her indiscretion would
strike her relatives, resulting in more tiresome lectures. (Now
that she was home safe and dry, Emily’s recollections of any fear
for her virtue or her narrow escape from a “fate worse than death”
were rapidly being reduced to a mild scrape soon righted and, once
in her bed, sleep came quickly and untroubled by nasty dreams.)

Avanoll believed it pointless to attempt
rousing the drunkenly snoring Horatio, and merely stepped over him
to call Farnley to help in putting the ladies to bed.

Aunt Lucinda had partially submerged herself
in a hazy fog of contentment and was loath to be disturbed. ‘“Shut,
shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said: Tie up the knocker! say
I’m sick, I’m dead.” Pope,” she implored Farnley, as he poked
tentatively at her shoulder.

“The name is Farnley, ma’am,” he corrected
with little hope of being understood, before leading the woman to
the stairway. Halfway up the flight Aunt Lucinda turned to utter
her exit line with a sweep of her arm. ‘“So ends the bloody
business of the day.’ Homer,” she decreed, hiccupped, and
disappeared from sight.

Avanoll and Tansy personally escorted the
dowager to her chamber, assuring her that Emily’s honor was indeed
still intact, and promising a full report in the morning—with which
she had to be satisfied since her dratted eyelids refused to remain
open any longer.

The Duke walked with his cousin along the
hall to Tansy’s door where they stopped, faced each other for a
long moment, and then dissolved into paroxysms of hilarity that
left them wiping their eyes and clutching their sides. “You know,
of course, that only persons of a very odd sense of humor could
find anything amusing in the debacle we just survived,” Avanoll
imparted with a grin—if a Duke can be described so frivolously—that
bordered on the impish.

Tansy could only smile and nod, so complete
was their accord that she wished to do nothing to shatter the mood.
Avanoll stood looking benignly at his cousin a moment longer
before—just as if he, too, felt their rapport, and was disconcerted
by it—his expression became shuttered and he abruptly moved off
toward his own chamber.

“And a good-night to you too, your grace,”
Tansy murmured beneath her breath, opened her door, and hugging her
arms about herself (the better to retain the lovely warm glow that
still radiated through her body), she drifted across her room to
the window. She stood there gazing out at the stars, weaving
fantasies that had little to do with the probable future of one
very ordinary, very vulnerable, Miss Tansy Tamerlane.

T
he next morning
Tansy found herself alone at the breakfast table, the Duke having
left the house at an unfashionably early hour without breaking his
fast, and the rest of the ladies either hiding (Lady Emily) or
recuperating (the dowager and Aunt Lucinda) in their chambers.

It wasn’t until she returned from a fruitless
expedition to Bond Street, in an attempt to secure ribbon to match
a gown of a particularly odd shade of yellow, with a red-eyed and
still-sniffling Pansy in tow, that voices coming from the first
floor sitting room (which the dowager had commandeered as her own)
alerted Tansy that at least two of the ladies were up and
about.