The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (5 page)

“I’m surprised he had the nerve,” his grace
hissed. “And be still,” he added, painfully aware of Dunstan the
butler, three assorted footmen, and a housemaid—who had no business
using the front stairs—looking (and listening) with great interest
to every word that was being said. “It is not you but Emily I
wished out of the light of that veritable beacon in front of the
house. You would think the house was lighting the way for the
long-awaited return of the prodigal! Tongues wag often enough in
this snoop-nosed town without some dowager witnessing Emily, who is
not yet Out, stealing into the house after dusk.”

As Tansy opened her mouth to apologize—not an
easy thing for her—he shut her off quickly by saying, “Let me get
shed of these nosey-parkers, if I may, before we continue.”

She bowed to his wisdom, not meekly, but
merely acknowledging his request with a curt nod.

His grace dealt with the assembled servants
quickly. A quelling glance to the footmen sent them scattering on
suddenly-recalled errands belowstairs. The housemaid, praying
fervently for the anonymity of a servant most masters never
bothered to penetrate, had already fled of her own accord back the
way she had come, and was already tripping down the dark back
stairs.

Having satisfactorily disposed of the lower
staff, his grace turned to address his butler. “Dunny,” he
commanded the stately grey-haired man, who had somehow come into
the possession of three woolen capes—the last of which, being a
particularly undistinguished brown article of indeterminate years,
he held at arm’s-length and surveyed as if he were indeed clutching
a particularly vile species of vermin, “Lady Emily desires a cold
collation brought to her in her chambers. And have her maid sent to
her immediately.”

At this preemptory dismissal, Lady Emily
pouted and made as if to protest, but was struck down in mid-whine
by a look much like the one that had sent the footmen scurrying.
With a toss of her fair curls and a halfhearted stamp of one small
foot, she turned and began ascending the staircase. Midway she
turned for one last entreaty.

“Now, miss, if you please,” came a stern
female voice, not to be denied. Lady Emily blinked, blushed, and
knew herself bested by Tansy. She retired without another word.

“Well done,” congratulated his grace.

Tansy turned from the sight of a bit too much
maidenly ankle, exposed as Lady Emily flounced her way abovestairs,
and addressed his grace. “Thank you. I have always found it best to
begin as you plan to go on. Our roles are becoming established
nicely, don’t you think?”

“Quite,” returned Avanoll, happily amazed.
“But be warned; that was just the opening skirmish in what may well
prove an epic battle. My dear sibling may not be very astute, but
she is inventive, and mischief is her middle name. Shall we adjourn
to the drawing room and allow the footmen to resume their posts at
the door? My undependable aunt is assuredly still out and about,
regaling everyone she meets with the details of the debilitating
disease that will probably keep her niece abed and secluded for
several days.”

“Was that your brainchild or hers?”

“Mine, more’s the pity. She’ll probably lay
it on so thick and rare only a ninny will fail to scent a scandal.
But we—and if I haven’t thanked you I do so now—have shut the door
on any rumor by fetching our fledgling home safe and dry. I suppose
you think me cold-hearted or unbearably rude in not allowing you to
retire along with my sister?” suggested his grace, as he motioned
Tansy into a large room and directed her to a chair near the neat
fire blazing in the hearth.

“On the contrary, sir. I find it entirely in
character,” replied Tansy as she ignored the gesture to stand in
front of the fire, holding her chilled hands toward the heat. His
grace, having half-descended into a facing chair, hastily rose once
more so that he fairly bumped heads with his cousin.

He could see her discomfort and fatigue and
his conscience twinged as he remembered her protestations of hunger
and bone-deep weariness. But he felt deeply the need to get a few
things settled before his aunt, who headed the increasingly long
list of banes upon his suddenly blighted life, burst in on them and
opened her proverb-spouting, epigram-quoting mouth. Five minutes
with Aunt Lucinda would be sufficient to make even the redoubtable
Miss Tamerlane lope off to parts unknown.

So instead of dismissing his cousin—who was
making only a cursory effort to hide several wide yawns—he launched
into a detailed description of her duties as concerned his
sister.

As these duties seemed all directed toward
the same end. Tansy cut in rudely, “I believe you have made
yourself abundantly clear and can say no more without repeating
yourself. I am correct, I believe, in surmising from your words,
dressed up in fine linen as they are, that you merely mean I am to
keep Lady Emily on a stout and short leash while giving her the
impression she has been given her own head. I am to be an ape
leader without, thank goodness, having to teach sums,
globe-reading, water color sketching, or fine needlepoint. I
daresay it sounds no easy task you have set me, but it is head and
shoulders better than slaving over Squire Lindley’s brats.” She
rose as if to quit the room but hesitated as Avanoll spoke
again.

“You are correct as far as it goes, cousin,
but there is more to it than that. Emily must be chaperoned at all
times, and that means you must be fitted out with, er,” his eyes
flitted unflatteringly over her present attire, “what I mean to say
is that you will need a complete new wardrobe.” As Tansy started to
protest he cut into her objections with a stern voice. “Be
sensible, Miss Tamerlane. As our cousin it is only right we assist
you if the cost of the thing is what has put you on your high
ropes. Besides, to be frank, if that gown is any indication of your
wardrobe—any argument you make to appear in Society in more of the
same would be ludicrous.”

Two high spots of color appeared on his
cousin’s cheeks, but she swallowed hard and bowed to the
intelligence of his reasoning. Indeed, what she stood up in was
more than representative of her wardrobe, it was the best thing in
it. Her firm (some would say stubborn) chin came up and she asked
if she could now retire. Any minute her stomach would set up a loud
grumble and destroy her last shreds of dignity.

“I will detain you no longer than necessary,
but there are one or two more items—”

“Yes, yes, I know. Your sister is a very open
and confiding person.” She held out her right hand and ticked off
the items on her long, slim fingers as her cousin mentally added
fine bone structure to the plus side of his list on the girl—a side
heavily outweighed by the minus column. “One: your grandmother, the
dowager Duchess. An intelligent old lady from what I could glean,
who washed her hands of Lady Emily’s come-out after their first
foray to Bond Street. Two, and here I am not as clear: your aunt,
the woman responsible for your sister’s dislike of her wardrobe,
and whose laxity, laziness, or gullibility is no more a deterrent
to Emily’s high flights than a parlor table. Now may I please be
excused, your grace?”

“If you would cease to interrupt me every
time I open my mouth, we could bring this interview to an end in
short order. I too have had a trying day,” his grace pointed out
uncharitably. “My grandmother, who as you say is a highly
intelligent and rather sly old girl, resides for the moment in
town, but has decided to return to Yorkshire by the end of the
week. If you guard your manners and refrain from stable slang and
boxing cant, we should scrape by with her with no problem. It is
Aunt Lucinda, who I am forced to keep here for lack of any relative
to ship her off to—none of my kin being so desperate for a live-in
companion or so out of my favor as to have dear Lucinda foisted off
on them—who presents the most delicate problem. She will be quite
hipped to find herself replaced, you see.”

Tansy cocked one well-defined brow. “A real
clunker?”

The Duke allowed a small smile. “Widow of my
cousin, Jerome Benedict. Old Jerry turned up his toes some six
months ago, about a week after losing his last groat at the gaming
tables. It seemed logical at the time to have Lucinda companion
Emily for the Season. She has been under my roof for the eternity
of time that makes up the span since Jerry’s funeral. I should have
realized a simple loss of fortune wouldn’t be enough to make my
cousin cash it all in. Living with that widgeon, I’m surprised he
lasted so long, but in the end I’m positive it was the enforced
rustication with the woman that drove him to sticking his spoon in
the wall. You see, she has this, let’s see, how can I put this? You
see, Aunt Lucinda harbors a predilection to, er, that is, she,
um—”

Whatever the uncomfortable Duke was about to
say was forestalled by unmistakable sounds of arrival in the foyer,
and both pairs of eyes went at once to the doorway. Out of the
corner of her mouth Tansy suggested teasingly, “Drinks a bit, Aunt
Lucinda, does she?”

The corner of Avanoll’s mouth lifted as he
returned ruefully, “Would that she did. I’d keep her so well
supplied she’d have no time left to pest me into following Jerry to
my heavenly reward posthaste.”

Tansy’s visions of her cousin did not include
a halo, but the image of him with horns, tail, and pitchfork caused
her russet-brown eyes to dance in her head and a wicked grin to
light her fine face with mischief.

So it was that the first sight Aunt Lucinda
had of the young hoyden (or so was her first impression) she would
later learn was to usurp her position as guardian to the innocent
little lamb—just now regrettably misplaced—did not show the girl to
advantage.

For the moment, however, the lady was not to
be deterred from informing her honored relative and head of the
family of her success at Lady Jersey’s soiree—strange females in
the house or nay.

Watery blue eyes disengaged contact with
startled brown ones, and not by even so much as a nod did the
former recognize the necessity of being presented to the
disgustingly high female who was in the act of leaning down a bit
to get a better sight of the tiny woman in voluminous crepe
draperies.

The eyes slid to regard Avanoll, and when she
was sure she had his attention she raised one pudgy beringed hand
(half-covered by dripping lace) to her blonde, ringlet-festooned
brow, sighed deeply, and tottered—weary from fighting the good
fight—to the chair nearest the hearth (there were several closer to
the near-swooning female, but these were not nearly so well
padded).

Once comfortably seated, her three-tiered,
ruffled skirts arranged decorously about her ankles, she announced
in the tones of one badly used: “‘It is easy to tell a lie, hard to
tell but a lie.’ Thomas Fuller.”

Tansy sidled nearer the Duke and whispered,
“I cannot doubt Emily and your aunt are not bosom beaus. Two
tragedy queens in the same household? Insupportable! But tell me,
who is this Fuller person?”

“A divine, from the seventeenth century, I
believe,” Avanoll informed her absently, then added, “kindly hold
your tongue while I endeavor to sort this out.”

With the air of one about to begin an
oft-performed but never looked-for office, he approached his aunt,
who was now fanning herself with a wisp of lace hankie.

“I take it, Aunt, that you did set it about
tonight that Emily is unwell.” Although Avanoll was only bound to
Lucinda as a cousin, he called her “Aunt” as a form of
courtesy.

“‘A liar is a bravo towards God and a coward
towards men.’ Lord Bacon,” his aunt answered, nodding.

The Duke was heard to sigh. “You have my
bravos, too, for what they are worth, Aunt. I take it, I dearly
hope, that you have succeeded in convincing the harpies that Emily
is the victim of a temporary indisposition. I would hate to think a
plague notice will be nailed to our door in the morning in answer
to your fervor.”

Aunt Lucinda raised her eyes to the ceiling
and bobbed her head, as if confirming with her Maker her belief
that any blame to come out of this entire sordid affair would be
placed firmly at her door—everyone forgetting the great strain on
her nerves the Duke’s instructions to spread a falsehood abroad
would be to one of her sensibilities. “‘Who spits against heaven,’”
she warned the architect of the lie, “‘it falls in his face.’
Spanish Proverb.”

Throughout this interchange Tansy had
remained silent—though dumbfounded might have been a better
description. But this last was too much. That absurd little woman,
dressed like a wedding cake and reciting words of wisdom in her
high, childish voice on one hand, and the Duke of Avanoll,
overwhelmingly masculine in this dainty room and undeniably holding
his temper only by an impressive display of rigid self-control,
swam before her mirthfully tearing eyes. Imagine, the Duke spitting
up at heaven. Better still, imagine the inevitable result. Oh, her
sides ached from trying to restrain chortles of laughter.

It was no use. She could not resist. Rising
from her chair placed discreetly in the shadows she approached the
adversaries—one glaring, the other simpering—to add her bit to the
farce. She directed her words to the Duke: “‘Let not thine hand be
stretched out to receive and shut when thou shouldst repay.’
Ecclesiasticus.”

Aunt Lucinda’s abused look vanished in a
twinkling as she beamed up at her champion, who wasn’t after all,
that very tall. For if one was in need of a savior, she should be
of more impressive figure than anyone of just average height.

As Tansy candidly returned the funny little
woman’s scrutiny, the Duke tried to make amends for insulting his
aunt’s well-meant attempt at subterfuge only to be
interrupted—quite thankfully, if the truth be known, for he dearly
hated apologizing to anyone, least of all an irksome widgeon like
his aunt—when said widgeon pronounced in suitably awestruck tones:
“‘She appeared a true goddess in her wrath.’ Virgil.”