The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (11 page)

His grace knelt on the grass beside her,
putting paid to what was left of his buckskins deftly sliced
through the knotted twine, then reached inside the sack. When he
brought forth his hands they were filled with a wet, reddish-brown
tangle of fur that yipped once, then turned a small head and
thanked his rescuer by biting down firmly on the Duke’s thumb.

Avanoll yelped and dropped the dog—at least
he supposed it was a dog—whereupon Tansy grabbed it up. The dog,
for that is what it was, immediately began licking Tansy’s face,
beating his water-logged tail back and forth in a frenzied
expression of ecstasy that effectively wetted any part of the Duke
that had managed up to this point to remain dry.

Throughout it all the Beau, who had not been
so diverted since roasting Alvanley when his lordship blissfully
asked his blessing on a puce and yellow striped waistcoat, remained
mute. But he felt it was time he took center stage for a bit. The
action, he chuckled to himself, had become a bit “drippy.”

Brummell addressed his speech to the
petrified servant. “Now then, fellow, you obviously have done, or
tried to do, this dastardly deed on orders from your master. Who,
we horrified animal loving Christians desire to know, just who is
the scoundrel who would countenance—nay, instigate—such a dastardly
deed?”

“Yes, indeed,” piped up Tansy as she pushed
the pup’s nose away from her ear. “Even in his present state I can
see this is a superior animal, perhaps a setter.”

“Yes, yes, make him tell us,” came several
cries from the audience.

“I can answer that,” came yet another voice
from the group. “That’s Jillson’s livery the fellow sports.”

The groom, frightened nearly witless as the
formerly amused onlookers showed signs of turning into an extremely
hostile group, and with all of them directing their fury at him,
quickly blurted out that the pup was the only one of a litter still
surviving—a litter born when by chance one of his master’s prize
setters mated with a stray. Jillson wished the animal destroyed
because he wanted no reminder of the bitch’s consort with the lower
orders. Since the groom was cutting through the Park on his way to
see his sweetheart, who worked in the kitchens of a certain peer
near the Stanhope Gate, he felt the Serpentine a fitting repository
for the little beast.

Naturally the groom was not so articulate in
his rendering of the events, but his laborious and muddled
rendition was translated for the crowd by Brummell.

Mutterings were heard throughout the crowd,
words like “cad” and “villain” being a few of the most
oft-repeated.

Avanoll was too stunned by the events of the
day to give himself over to much profound thinking, but this much
was clear. By clever questioning and frowns and head-shakes
denoting grim distaste and displeasure, the Beau had made Jillson
the goat. Indeed, the Duke himself was definitely feeling quite
uncharitable toward the fellow just now, and with any luck at all
Tansy could emerge—unbelievable as it might seem—the heroine in the
piece.

Mentally banishing his after-dinner
enjoyments for a character-building month (thank goodness April had
but thirty days), the Duke rose to his not inconsiderable height
and announced, “I believe we here present, indeed all England, owe
this brave young lady a debt of gratitude for the heroic and humane
service she has performed here today.”

The Beau, always quixotic (and in debt to the
tune of many hundreds of pounds to the Duke after one particularly
plaguey run of luck at White’s which the Duke had kindly overlooked
these past six weeks and more), sensed the crowd could go either
way concerning the chit and decided to have a little fun. The herd
would follow him, as it always did—mindless animals that they were,
he thought—for his opinion of his fellows’ brain power was not
high.

“What’s your cousin’s name, Avanoll?” the
Beau asked quietly, just as the Duke was really getting the bit
between his teeth. After Avanoll answered, he thanked him and told
him to hold his tongue and watch a master work.

“I concur with his grace,” he began in a
loud, clear voice. “With no concern for her safety, with strong
presence of mind and purity of purpose, Miss Tamerlane here, er,
plunged into the fray and rescued one of God’s sinless creatures.”
He puffed out his chest, postured himself elegantly with one hand
on his heart, and then boomed, “And a dog, no less! Man’s best
friend. Today, however, today man chose to callously destroy this
innocent creature of nature. It took a young woman, a lady I place
on a par with Boadicea, to see her duty and snatch this wretched
animal from the watery jaws of death while the gentlemen among us
did nothing.”

He stopped for breath and passed his eyes
over the crowd. Women wept openly into fine cambric handkerchiefs,
and even a smattering of the gentlemen present appeared a trifle
misty.

The Beau walked stage-left to where Tansy sat
gazing up at her extoller with a bemused look on her damp face. The
peacock feather drooped across her nose and she blew it upwards,
only to have it hit the Beau in the eye as he bowed low before
her.

Undaunted, he raised Tansy to her feet and
turned to face his awe-struck audience. “Ladies and gentlemen. May
I present to you all Miss Tansy Tamerlane, daughter of Sir Andrew
Tamerlane and cousin of the Duke of Avanoll, whose distinguished
guest she is to be for the Season.” He lifted her hand above her
head, much like the victor in a fistfight and exclaimed, “Let us
hear three cheers for our heroine of the lake, our very own
tenacious Miss Tamerlane!”

“Hear, hear!” rang out the crowd. “Good show.
Hip, hip, hooray!” And then, “Speech, speech!”

The Duke’s slightly lightened heart plummeted
to his soggy toes as his cousin made every sign of complying with
this last request. She bent down and scooped the shivering puppy
into her arms and held him above her head, where he yipped merrily
and lolled his pink tongue from side to side. “A cheer for Horatio,
who has scored a stunning victory at sea!” she shouted in a very
Boadicea-like way, endearing herself forever in the hearts of her
audience. Even Lady Stanley condescended to applaud softly, knowing
it the height of folly to buck the tide on this particular
issue.

And to the Duke’s amazement, the cheers rang
out again. Before they could die down and more notice be taken of
their heroine’s hoydenish appearance, Avanoll sidled up to the
Beau. “You have my everlasting gratitude, sir. Consider all debts
paid in full,” he said earnestly.

Without losing his handsome smile the Beau
returned, “We’re lucky to be away with our skins intact, but then
the hoi-polloi (included in this sweeping classification were, to
the Duke’s quick deduction, three earls, a viscount and a marquess)
is so lamentably gullible. Even gulling them becomes a bore. I
would advise you to beat a hasty retreat now, however, and please,
as soon as your clothes dry sufficiently, burn them. You and the
little rescuer, I must make bold to say, smell dreadfully like a
swamp. I myself already am reconciled to destroying every stitch
now upon my person and sitting in a bath for at least three hours.
Never before have I felt so entirely grubby. I shall be late to
Carlton House, but there is no help for it. I do hope you
appreciate the effort, Ashley. I could have destroyed that girl,
you know.”

“I know, Beau,” Avanoll allowed, passing over
the blatant lie of a dinner invitation to Carlton House when Beau
and Prinney hadn’t been on speaking terms for over a year, “and I
repeat my thanks. Add a new rig-out to your wardrobe and send the
bills to me.”

“Yes, yes, of course, dear fellow,” the Beau
said as he raised a scented handkerchief to his delicate nostrils,
so urgent his need to be shed of the Duke that he overlooked his
immaculate attire being called a rig-out, of all things. “Be off
with you now.” As Avanoll turned to go the Beau ventured, “I
wonder, Avanoll. Do we cut Jillson next time we meet, just to lend
credence to our little drama?”

The Duke gave a short laugh “I doubt the
need. By tea time today the story will be all over the city, only
it will be three dogs, all prime specimens, and Jillson will have
been discovered skulking near the scene of the crime with at least
one pitiable carcass at his feet and blood on his hands. No, I
wager he will find it convenient to rusticate for a few weeks.
Although I have no doubt Society will bear up well in his absence,
as he always was a bit of a queer touch anyway. You and I both know
it won’t be long until another scandal will be found to dull the
memory of his infamous deed.”

“Would you care to wager another suit of
clothes your dear cousin is involved in the next scandal, too?” the
Beau teased.

The smile vanished from Avanoll’s face. “I
never bet on sure things,” he bit out, and strode purposefully over
to Tansy—and made to pull her unceremoniously away from four or
five young bloods vying for her attention, to the extent of
dirtying their lily-white hands applying affectionate pats on
Horatio’s toad-eating head.

Once Tansy was again seated beside him the
Duke yanked the reins from Leo’s hands, causing the man’s broadly
grinning face to rearrange itself into a suitably solemn,
commiserating expression.

Tansy, however, was heady with her success
and totally oblivious to the fact that the man riding next to her
was ready to do murder. She chattered on about how terribly natural
and unaffected Society people were, and how she had been so silly
to have reservations about her eventual acceptance into their
circle. She may even have been allowed to cling to this bit of
naiveté, as the Duke was too overset to push a single sound past
his lips, if not for Horatio.

It seems the animal had taken umbrage at the
Duke’s presence once he espied it, and immediately became quite
vocal in his anxiety to have the offending person take himself
off.

“Isn’t that cute, cousin?” Tansy laughed
delightedly. “Horatio recognizes you and associates you with his
dunk in the lake. I really believe the poor misguided darling would
nip you if I were but to loosen my grip a bit.”

That tore it. His grace was cold, wet,
humiliated, his thumb was throbbing, and he was probably in the
early stages of pneumonia. Suddenly the words came quite easily, if
they were only a touch difficult to understand—a pardonable offense
when one is speaking through clenched jaws.

“Well, isn’t Horatio darling just too, too
amusing, Miss Tamerlane? But I must caution you not to loose your
grip as I have already lost mine—on my sanity. I see no other
reason I can sit here and listen to you babbling inanely on about
your social coup, as if it were not the second worst disaster in
history. You were only saved from stares, insults, and possibly
even your very own straight waistcoat for your ride to Bedlam, by
my quick thinking.”

Tansy was finally forced to take the time to
look at her cousin, and herself, and was prone to admit they did
make a rather odd pair—driving through London in sopping wet,
uncomfortable, and slightly offensive-to-the-nose clothing—the duke
appearing disheveled, but still very much the gentleman, and
herself, looking as if she had been dunked in a well and then
dragged through a hedge backwards. The sodden Horatio added nothing
to their consequence.

The day’s heroine was slightly deflated but
unrepentant. “We saved a poor animal from an undeserved, cruel
death. I think we were justified. Besides, Mr. Brummell liked it,
and you yourself say he is the last word on what is proper. At
least I think he liked it,” she ended lamely as a vein in the side
of the Duke’s neck began to throb wildly.

“That’s precisely the problem, madam, you
don’t think. You act. Eons later, perhaps, if the Gods are kind,
you think. And there is no ‘we’ about it, madam,” Avanoll pointed
out. “I freely give you all praise—and all blame. It never entered
your head, I suppose, to apprise me of what you had seen and let me
order Leo to effect the rescue? Oh, no,” he sneered, “rational
thought comes no more easily to you than to any other female.”

He turned to glare at her, nearly letting go
of the reins, so intense was his anger. “Dash it, woman, if it
weren’t for my timely intervention with that faradiddle about
Englishmen and dumb animals, Beau’s equally quick perception of
what I was about, and a mellow crowd, you may as well have strutted
stark naked down Bond Street for all the blasted fool you made of
yourself today. As it is now your name will be a byword in every
club from White’s to the Daffy, an occurrence not exactly sought
after by well-bred young ladies, might I point out. But then... oh,
forget it.”

“But, then, I am not a well-bred young lady.
That was what you were going to say, wasn’t it?” Tansy dared
him.

Leo made a sound in his throat and endeavored
to make himself invisible as the glaring duo in front of him
appeared about to come to cuffs.

Luckily, Avanoll House was just ahead, and
further arguments were pushed aside in the pair’s haste to get
inside and rid themselves of their sodden clothes.

The Duke hopped lightly down from his seat,
and whether or not he would have assisted his cousin was not to be
guessed at for she had climbed down by herself—and was already
standing rock-still on the flagway, waiting for him to enter the
house before her.

Dunstan never blinked at the odd sight that
greeted him as he made his way to the foyer, although his private
thoughts would have proved interesting. His grace was already
stripping off his mud-stained driving gloves, the ones with the
hole in the left thumb, while Miss Tamerlane stood to one side, an
ominous puddle forming about her feet and a smelly lump of fur in
her arms.

“Dunstan,” imparted his grace in awful tones,
“I will not be dining at home this evening after all. I feel it,
er, safer for all concerned to remove my person from the bosom of
my family for a space, until the combination of an orderly,
well-run establishment and the company of emotionally stable
companions such as I may find at my Club convince me the whole
world has not run mad.”