The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (15 page)

When that suggestion was met by a rather
blank stare and the information that the prospect of touching toes
with the estimable Tom left his grace totally unmoved, he dared
give voice to his second slightly less documented cure: wrapping
the ankle round with the body of an eel (he did not specify the
condition of this eel as either dead or alive). Although Farnley
could swear to the powers of eels for curing warts and drunkenness,
he had never been given the opportunity to use one in this sort of
case—as Tom had always been more than kind in lending his gifted
appendages to any sprain to occur in the family these two decades
past.

“Eels, eels, eels!” the Duke bellowed. “One
more word about eels and I’ll loop one of the slimy things around
your scrawny neck and tie it in a bow under your chin! Get yourself
gone, Farnley, I warn you, as I am experiencing an almost
uncontrollable desire to murder you. Save yourself, man, and flee
while you can!”

After Farnley made his hasty departure, the
Duke was left alone to swear long and terribly under his
breath.

Emily was much too delicate to enter the
sickroom (and too apt to say something stupid and so irritate the
patient even more), and the dowager seemed to consider her
grandson’s outbursts in the nature of juvenile bids for attention,
flatly refusing to pander to his whims. And since the household had
run out of servants willing to be verbally abused (or even
physically pelted with assorted cooked vegetables), it at last was
left to Tansy to try to beard the growling tiger in his den.

This she did, quite simply, by refusing to
rise to the bait of his sarcastic taunts or dire threats of
physical violence to her person once he was quit of—and this last
he said with great dramatic pathos—“this rack of pain.”

Tansy did unbend then enough to express her
regret once more for Horatio’s part in his recent accident,
although she couldn’t resist qualifying her apology by reminding
him that, had he not been too busy acting the departing Romeo to
take heed of her warning, he could have avoided the whole mess.

“You do have a charming way of expressing
remorse, cousin. But if your presence here is meant to be by way of
making amends, let me tell you that the prospect of you cast in
role of personal attendant, frankly, terrifies me.”

Tansy lifted one fine, dark eyebrow and
returned flatly, “Ashley, I fear you must fortify your mind to the
likelihood that you and I will be in rather constant company for
the duration of your recuperation, the servants all having lively
senses of self-preservation and a bit reluctant to expose
themselves to your temper. Besides, I feel I owe you some
recompense, considering myself—if I am to be honest—just a teeny
bit responsible for your fall.”

Avanoll said in pretended amazement, “By
Jupiter! Can it really be concern I see on your face? Concern,
and—mayhap—even a smidgen of guilt? Heavens above, I do think if I
had suffered some permanent injury in my fall you would have been
plunged into complete despair.”

“It would seem to me, cousin, that your
allies are lying too thin on the ground for you to consider
alienating one of the few remaining persons willing to take an
interest in your welfare. Rather than getting your back up over
events over and past, I would suggest you behave yourself—because
I, for one, do not feel obliged to take any sauce from you.
Frankly, I would just as lief spoon-feed a baited-bear as listen to
any more of your childish tantrums. And I may just take it into my
head to leave you with only your own nasty distemper for
company.”

Tansy didn’t know it, but the sight of her in
a temper—russet eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed prettily, and her
uncommonly fine figure made even more appealing by the rapid rise
and fall of her nicely-rounded bosom—had caused the Duke to
discover that his cousin had been somehow transformed into an
extremely handsome woman. So struck by her looks was the Duke that
he surrendered without further argument. “I have been behaving like
a bacon-brained idiot. Please accept my deepest apologies.
Tansy.”

Tansy nodded her agreement and quickly went
about the business of straightening his rumpled bedcovers, picking
up the newspapers and sporting magazines strewn all over the floor,
and ended by draping his supper tray across his knees with the
bribe that—on the condition he cleared his plate like a good little
soldier—she would agree to provide him with the opportunity to
brush up on the art of displaying good sportsmanship while she
firmly trounced him in a few games of chess.

The challenge was just what the Duke needed.
He proceeded to do justice to one of Cook’s more tempting creations
before demanding Tansy draw up the table nearby, with its inlaid
chess board, and place out the chess pieces. Give him a chess
lesson, would she? A temporary truce was one thing, but if she
thought he was going to become her tame pet she had another thought
coming!

The ensuing silence was broken only by the
ticking of the mantel clock and the occasional settling of a log
slipping in the grate, as Avanoll found himself hard put to hold
his own with his resourceful cousin. While he fretted and pondered
over his moves—and more than once had to wipe at his sweat-beaded
brow with his handkerchief—Tansy passed the time reading the
dowager’s copy of Mrs. Radcliffe’s An Italian Romance. When it was
her turn to make a move she would lay her book down across her lap,
congratulate the Duke on his clever strategy, and seconds later
move her piece—usually collecting one of his pieces along the
way—and then return to her novel.

By all that is right, Tansy should have lost
every game. As it happened, however, of the five games they played
she won four, two of them with ridiculous ease. Her cousin demanded
a chance at revenge the following day, but Tansy demurred. “Chess
has never really been my best game. It moves so slowly I find
myself almost bored at times. Instead,” she relented, “I will agree
to a few rubbers of whist, or any other card game you might choose.
I believe I am quite good at cards, actually,” she added with naive
honesty, and perhaps a bit of pride.

“You’re on!” cried Avanoll, smiling quite
evilly for a man who was supposed to be an honorable peer of the
realm. “Only tomorrow, to add a bit of spice to the games, I
suggest we play for money.”

Tansy frowned. “I have less than five pounds
to my name, Ashley. I doubt you will think such a paltry sum worth
the bother.”

The Duke waved her protest away with one
generous sweep of his arm. “I shall stake you to fifty pounds. If
you are lucky, you may pay me back from your winnings. And if you
lose, well, the fifty pounds was mine anyway, wasn’t it?”

Tansy wasn’t too sure of the ins and outs of
that last statement, but one look at Ashley’s face and its smug,
superior smirk, and she fell in with his suggestion at once.

Next morning at ten, the two players faced
each other across the cleared chess table that again stood between
the bed and a pulled-up chair. Each had a stack of pound chips in
front of them (Ashley’s chips outnumbering Tansy’s at a rate of six
to one).

Luncheon for two was delivered to the room
only to be returned to the kitchens hours later, cold and
untouched. Just afternoon tea for the lady—and a goodly supply of
burgundy for the gentleman—were received with any favor, as the day
wound down into dusk and Farnley went about the room lighting
candles to keep away the darkness.

The encounter ended much as it had begun,
with the two adversaries still facing each other across the chess
table. Only now the piles of brightly-colored chips were all
sitting in front of only one player. And that lucky gamester was
none other than Miss Tansy Tamerlane.

“Your trick, madam, and yet again, your
game,” Avanoll declared wondrously. “I’m all to pieces, unless you
will accept my vouchers.”

His opponent declined politely, stating that
she did know it was rather unsporting to quit while ahead and deny
him a chance to recoup his losses. She was quite done in, however,
and could only agree to another match in the morning—this time
naming piquet as another game of which she was particularly
fond.

Avanoll nodded his agreement to this plan,
but advised her to take all but one hundred pounds (fifty as a
stake and his original advance) and invest it with the four
percents as security. “As I recall, your father was quite a
gamester,” he then commented, “but I am equally certain he did not
have your ungodly good luck with the cards.”

“The word is skill, Ashley, not luck, and
yes, you are unfortunately correct about my father. Poor Papa could
never get the right of such games, and I can’t recall losing to him
after I was ten years old. I often wondered if the majority of our
fortune found its way into the hands of others simply through
Papa’s never-ending search for a player more inept than himself. I
really felt very sorry for him at times, but if I deliberately
tried to let him win he’d become exceedingly put out, more enraged
at being cosseted than he ever was at being bested by a mere
female.”

“Yes, well, that ‘mere female’ has just
relieved me of approximately three hundred pounds, and I am known
as an extremely competent player. It seems you have missed your
calling, cousin. You should have set up your own discreet gaming
rooms on the fringe of Mayfair just as soon as you found yourself
without support. By now you’d own half of London.”

The two parted that night on good terms,
promising to meet at the same hour the next morning. But Avanoll’s
two friends were already closeted with him by the time Tansy
arrived, so she retreated in order to give him time for a masculine
gossip session. When she joined him after luncheon he expressed a
wish to postpone their game, as he was feeling a bit depressed and
was “no fit company” for anyone.

“That makes two visits from your so-called
friends, and two descents into the sulks immediately on the heels
of their departure. Next time they call I’ll show them to the
right-about straightaway if they are so unthinking as to upset you
in your condition,” Tansy stated with some heat.

“No, no. Tansy, my dear,” Avanoll put in
quickly, as “my dear” Tansy’s heart did a sudden disconcerting flip
in her breast at both his words and his tender tone. “My friends
would not purposely, or even thoughtlessly, distress me. I asked
them to report to me. Sit down, my dear”—ah, another “my dear”—
“and I shall give you a lesson today, a lesson in the perfidy of
those creatures we so laughingly call the human race.”

Tansy obediently took up her place at the
side of Avanoll’s bed, this time with no chess table to impede her
proximity to the Duke’s bedside, and he told her of the latest news
his friends had brought.

“Have you ever read anything written by
George Gordon Byron, or Baron Byron, if I were to use his title?
Good. And did you enjoy his works?” At Tansy’s fervent nod he
smiled in agreement with her sentiments. “When George wrote his
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812, he awoke suddenly to find
himself the most famous and praised literary lion of this young
century. Society flung open its doors and this shy, lame, but
oh-so-very-beautiful—for he could only be described as
beautiful—young man was courted by everyone from the man in the
street to the man who will someday wear the crown of England.
Surely, even in your secluded village, his romantic exploits and
his dangerous association with that titled jade, Caro Lamb,
filtered down to your ears.”

Tansy nodded again, afraid to speak and
perhaps put an end to her cousin’s confidences, and Avanoll went
on.

“Finally, last year, Lady Melbourne talked
poor George into marrying her niece, Annabella Milbanke, and a more
mismatched pair you cannot imagine. A child, Augusta, came of the
union before Annabella left George. But instead of returning him to
the personal peace he craved, she set out to do her best to slander
George’s name. Rumors that he was having an incestuous affair with
his half-sister, also named Augusta—and now I see I shock you, my
dear—began to be whispered about. Even George’s poems were
dissected by his detractors and purported to contain horrible
double meanings of the most scandalous, scurrilous nature.”

“It’s as you’ve warned me, I suppose. Society
can be cruel. Please, go on.”

“George tried his best to carry on, but as I
said, he is a shy person at heart, perhaps even a timid or even
weak one. The pressure caused him to take on some rather bizarre
affectations. He took to dosing himself heavily with laudanum, and
he could not sleep in any but a lighted room with his pistols
always close beside him.”

Tansy made a sympathetic noise and Avanoll
brought his gaze back from some spot in the middle distance to look
at her.

“Oh, yes, Tansy. George is a bit of a queer
fish. Even we who consider ourselves his friends cannot deny that.
But, then, aren’t such great talents allowed eccentricities and
insights—sometimes sublime, sometimes terrifying—we ‘normal people’
are spared by our lesser gifts?”

Avanoll laughed at a sudden memory. “While we
were at Cambridge, George took exception to the rule disallowing
pet dogs or cats. So he bought a trained bear. Lord only knows
where, and kept him in his room. He said the rule did not
specifically outlaw pet bears, but only dogs and cats. Anyway,” he
went on, sober once again, “George has slowly found himself on the
fringes of Society, with only a pitiful few still willing to stand
his friend. For a time we believed he might weather the storm, but
then Claire Clairmont—some silly chit Percy Shelley dragged back
here from abroad—loudly proclaimed that George seduced her and made
her pregnant. My friends and I knew then it was all over for George
in England, but we could not dissuade a few of his women friends
from attempting a large party at Almack’s last night with both
George and his half-sister, Augusta, as guests. The other honored
guests ignored Augusta most rudely. And then, when George arrived
on the scene, the miserable bastards—excuse me, Tansy—fled from the
room like rats deserting a sinking ship.”