The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (27 page)

“I’m saying, my dear woman, I don’t need you
scurrying back here a year from now with a sniffling infant
clinging to your skirts, disillusioned with a marriage between two
people having about as much in common as Beau Brummell and a
chimney sweep, and expecting me to take you in. The kiss was merely
a reminder of one of the major differences between a mature man and
a callow boy.”

Tansy began to see the Duke through a haze of
angry red. “I see, your grace, and I thank you. I really do. Until
now I had believed the major disparities to be those dealing with
maturity, experience, and responsible behavior. Now I see my error.
The only difference is in the accumulation of the monstrous
quantities of insufferable arrogance and illusions of omnipotence a
male begins to amass from the moment he is out of short coats. It
is depressing to realize that Digby will one day, if your example
serves as any guide, equal you in these regrettable acquisitions.
Perhaps, if I can be by his side during these next important years,
I can help avert this disintegration of decent behavior and modesty
so apparent in your grace. In other words,” she ended firmly as the
Duke’s complexion darkened to a dull crimson, “I’d rather be
leg-shackled to a well-meaning, honest youth than bracketed to a
devious, insufferably overbearing dictator like you.”

“That is fortunate, then,” the Duke sneered,
his pride much affected, “for I wouldn’t touch you with a barge
pole.”

“You didn’t seem so averse a few minutes ago,
your grace,” Tansy retaliated, heedless of an inner voice that told
her she was only making matters worse.

“That was a mistake,” Avanoll growled, “and
one you can rest assured I will not make again.”

“On that head at least, dear cousin, I
believe we are in agreement. And I must tell you I will consider
any further advances by you upon my person that bring you to within
a distance less than that of the length of two barge poles as
provocation sufficient to warrant a retaliation directed at
increasing the number of bumps on your high and mighty Benedict
nose by at least one,” she ended threateningly.

The Duke was suddenly moved to recognize the
absurdity of this conversation, and allowed a small smile to curve
one side of his aristocratic face. “Am I to consider that as a
threat or a challenge, dear cousin?” he queried silkily.

Tansy drew herself up to her full height,
refusing to acknowledge Ashley’s exasperating talent for making her
always to appear, at the least, in the wrong, or at the most,
ludicrous, when it was invariably he who instigated their quarrels
in the first place. She had no illusions in her realistic mind of
sharing anything but the same impersonal roof with the Duke, with
that small solace coming to an end with Emily’s marriage, and her
heart was already more involved than she cared to admit. No, if a
final break must come, and she was sure it would, it would be
better to begin working toward that break now.

Therefore, the reluctant smile the Duke had
been covertly searching for did not appear, and the haunting sight
of a pair of deep brown eyes deliberately devoid of any expression
and the sound of the bitten out words,” You are to consider it a
promise, your grace,” traveled with him on his trip to Newmarket as
surely as if Farnley had tucked them up in the luggage alongside
his master’s clean shirts and changes of linen.

The only thoughts that surfaced more
frequently were the memory of that last, impulsive kiss—and the
gnawing fear that something rare and wonderful was inexorably
slipping from his grasp, some nebulous stirring of his emotions
that he had so far been unable to categorize or relate to any other
experience in his lifetime.

After a fine if simple dinner of rabbit
smothered in onions, he tried to frame a mental listing of words
describing his cousin: exasperating, infuriating, obstinate,
strong-willed, stubborn (he made an imaginary erasure and
substituted the word tenacious for that last adjective), nosy,
independent, and unladylike came swiftly into his mind almost
without conscious thought. These were followed swiftly by the words
sympathetic, generous, loyal, courageous, inventive, intelligent,
witty, versatile, and trustworthy.

But then, after he had cracked his second
bottle in the solitude of his room in Newmarket, words like
vulnerable, soft, graceful, alluring, sweet-smelling, lovely, and,
at long last, lovable, wrote themselves at the top of his imaginary
list. His glass of fine, aged burgundy became destined to remain in
his suddenly stilled, half-raised hand, until he at long last
remembered its existence and placed it carefully back on the
table—untouched—before rising to cross to the window to stare
unseeingly at the darkening countryside.

Superimposed over the scene before him came a
clear-as-day picture of a radiant Tansy standing in the stately St.
George Church in Hanover Square, her ivory satin gown and
floor-length tulle veil combining to make her look almost ethereal.
Her hand was resting on the Duke’s black-clad forearm, and as they
proceeded slowly past the assembled throng of happy onlookers her
face melted into a smile that proclaimed that this was a woman who
was both loved and in love.

The Duke felt his heart begin to swell at the
“rightness” of this obvious marriage ceremony, but that same heart
suddenly plummeted to the tips of his leather encased toes when he
realized that he and Tansy had not been walking out of the church
as man and wife, but were moving up the aisle toward the altar and
Tansy’s eagerly waiting bridegroom, Digby Eagleton.

Young Eagleton’s immaculately tailored
wedding suit looked a bit odd, as it was spanned by juvenile
leading-strings looped about his waist and topped with a
lace-trimmed baby bonnet tied under his chin in a small bow.

“Damn!” the Duke shouted into the empty room,
and the hideous vision before him exploded into a million jagged
pieces and disappeared. “Damn, damn, and blast! The devil a bit if
they think I’ll play stand-in for father of the bride—or foot the
bill for the wedding and all the fripperies either. What a fool I
have been. What a stupid, asinine, blind, dumb fool!” he berated
himself, pounding his clenched fists against his forehead.

“I love her,” he enunciated aloud slowly, as
if he had to hear the words before he could truly believe them. He
threw his body into a cavernous wingchair near the small fire, in
an attitude of utter despair usually shown only by volatile youths
in the throes of their first calf-love.

“I love her,” he whispered softly this time,
dropping his head onto his chest. “Just when I had resigned myself
to a life unlikely to be blessed with love, I am presented with the
one woman who holds the key to my heart. And jackass that I am,
again and again I do my best to make her hate me. Now, she’s
besotted with that knock-in-the-cradle Digby Eagleton, and I’ve
lost my only chance at happiness. Grandmama is right: I am a
hopeless case.”

Slowly, Avanoll’s hand reached out and
grasped the fireside-warmed glass of burgundy, which he drained to
the dregs in one long swallow before dashing one of his landlord’s
finest crystal goblets to the hearth in an uncommon display of
pique.

For the rest of that long night the Duke
drank directly from the decanter, and as the sky began to lighten
he staggered to his bed with a mind at last dulled to a degree
sufficient to allowing him to fall into a fitful, dream-laden
steep. If his Aunt Lucinda had somehow been able to observe her
nephew these last few hours, no doubt she would have had an
extensive retinue of applicable quotes with which to scold him and
point out the errors of his ways. But it was probably a great
kindness to the Duke—and a life-saving grace to his aunt—that she
had not.

Meanwhile, back in Grosvenor Square, the
servants were in a dither trying to manage a group of ladies who
all seemed to be outdoing themselves in acting as queer as Dick’s
hatband.

Lady Emily was prone to indulge in raucous
bouts of weeping, interrupted only by high flights of good
humor—when she would write copious lists of possible wedding-guests
or make dozens of sketches of gowns she would need for her
trousseau—before descending once more into the glooms while she
vowed her heart was broken in a million pieces and she was the most
wretched creature in the world.

Miss Tansy, on the other hand, was being so
determinedly cheerful and full of energy that her devoted servants
were becoming completely fagged with trying to keep up with her in
endless rounds of housecleaning—for all the world as if she was
getting the house in order for a new owner.

The old tabbies, as the dowager and Aunt
Lucinda were known belowstairs, were carrying on like a pair of
confirmed lunatics as they huddled for endless hours, whispering
and giggling and generally disrupting the staff with their
unorthodox behavior.

The servants could only thank their lucky
stars the Duke (who had been growling about the house these weeks
past as if his skin didn’t fit) and Farnley (who would cast them
all in the glooms with predictions of evil spirits and omens of bad
luck suitable to each individual eccentric act of the masters) were
not in residence.

Dunstan knew more than he was letting on, of
course. He walked about nowadays with a slight, secret smile always
lurking about his placid face, a smile that broadened to a grin the
day he instructed Leo to ride posthaste to Newmarket with a note
from the dowager that was to be placed in the Duke’s hands
personally.

The missal read:

My dearest grandson,

You will be as pleased as I to hear that
there is soon to be a notice in the Times concerning the imminent
nuptials of a loved one close to all of us. Your presence in
Grosvenor Square at this time would be appreciated if you could but
tear yourself away from the diversions in Newmarket in time to
participate in the happy announcement.

Yours in affection, Yr. Grandmother.

Farnley was very put out with the
ridiculously short notice he was given to pack up and be ready to
leave Newmarket for London. With three good days of racing still to
go, and with Farnley’s extremely reliable tip about a sure winner
in tomorrow’s second race cast to the winds, the Duke’s party
started back to London at breakneck speed. Taking the shortcut that
bypassed Cambridge entirely, they stopped only to rest the horses
and take some quick refreshment at Bishop, Stortford, before
heading out again, with Avanoll and Farnley in the curricle and Leo
riding along on horseback.

Farnley’s death-grip on the brass bench-rail
was by necessity reduced to a one-handed acrobatic maneuver as his
right hand was almost constantly engaged in worrying an infuriating
itching on the end of his pointed nose.

“I’m that worried, your grace,” he shouted to
the Duke over the din of the galloping horses. “When a nose itches
like mine it can only mean I will be kissed, cursed, vexed, run
against a gate post, or I will shake hands with a fool. If you
would please to slow down, I should fear less the idea of meeting
up with a gate post.”

“There’s no need to slow the pace, Farnley,
you gudgeon. Just shake my hand and your nose will cease its
itching at once,” Avanoll shouted back.

The curricle, its occupants dust-stained and
exhausted, turned into the mews behind Avanoll House just as
abruptly as it had left just days earlier. Avanoll wearily dragged
himself toward the small salon where Dunstan would soon provide him
with a cold supper and a colder bottle, and opened the door slowly,
fatigue seeping from every pore. He was met by the sight of his
baby sister being thoroughly kissed by one Digby Eagleton.

“You despicable, two-timing ingrate!” he
bellowed, every muscle coiling in his readiness to pounce. As Emily
and Digby turned questioning eyes toward the disheveled figure in
the doorway, their arms still around each other in total
unselfconsciousness, Avanoll advanced on them with violence his
clear intent. Emily stepped protectively in front of Digby and
warned her brother to keep his distance, as things were not as they
seemed.

The Duke lifted her out of his way without
breaking stride, and a moment later Digby was nursing a bloody nose
from his prone position on the hearthrug.

“You stupid fool!” Emily accused her brother
before dropping to her knees to croon to her fallen hero. Within
seconds the room was crowded to bursting with servants. Tansy, the
dowager, and her shadow Aunt Lucinda; Digby groaning all the while
and Emily screaming invectives at her brother.

At that moment—when Avanoll froze as if
poleaxed to stand mute in the midst of the chaos he had
created—Farnley’s nose, which had been plaguing him near to
distraction since Newmarket, miraculously ceased to itch.

“W
hat in the name of
all that’s wonderful is going on here?” the dowager shouted above
the din that showed no signs of abating, especially since Horatio
had joined their number, and thinking all the hub-bub to be a great
new game, was now capering about the room on his hind legs and
howling for all he was worth.

“Anyone would think there has just been a
murder in the house,” she added in a lower voice once order was
raggedly restored and the many speakers clamoring to be heard at
last “put a mummer on it,” as Tansy was harried enough to have
demanded in a clear voice.

Aunt Lucinda took advantage of this lull in
the storm to totter to a nearby chair and proclaim in the tones of
a true tragedy-queen, “‘The very hair on my head stands up for
dread.’ Sophocles.”

“And so it should,” Emily, Avanoll House’s
other aspirant to the ranks of such immortal actresses as Sarah
Siddons pronounced in awful tones from her position on the floor,
the figure of outraged innocence as she cradled Digby’s head on her
lap. “To think that my own brother, blood of my blood, would stoop
to brute animal force and bludgeon my poor innocent darling Digby
down without a shred of warning, attacking my dear beloved like a
wild thing, with murder in his eyes.”