The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (29 page)

“What idiocy is this?” Avanoll bellowed in
confused rage.

In answer his aunt stuck a piece of folded
foolscap in his face, nearly taking the tip off his Benedict nose.
“‘I have found it!’ Archimedes,” she pronounced in tones of high
drama.

Avanoll grabbed at the paper, more in
self-defense than anything else, warning dryly, “Don’t carry on so,
Aunt, you’ll do yourself an injury.” He then retired to the window,
where the light was better, and unfolded the crumpled note—for he
could tell it was a note—and began to read. Seeing at once that it
was addressed to him, he shot his aunt a quick look, knowing full
well she had already read it.

Dear Ashley
, the note began quite
simply, and then went on to thank him, in the most formal of terms,
for his gracious extension of aid when she (by now he was sure the
note was from Tansy) was sorely in need of it.

She asked only that he look kindly on a match
between Emily and Digby and put himself out to be nice to the
servants, pointing out that it would be only polite to learn their
names as a start. In the same paragraph she begged that, since it
would be impossible to take him along, could Horatio remain under
Avanoll’s roof (“he adores marrow-bones, but insists upon burying
them under your Grandmama’s bed, so please try to discourage him”).
The note ended with her assurances that she would soon find a
suitable post, along with denials of any need for any of them to
worry a jot about her in the future. This last bit of heroic
sacrifice fell short of the mark, however, when the Duke detected
what looked suspiciously like dried tearstains on the paper.

“Hell and damnation!” he shouted, crumpling
the note into an untidy ball and flinging it in the general
direction of the fire. Hair still uncombed and untied cravat
flying, he set off down the hall for the dowager’s room, with Aunt
Lucinda in hot pursuit.

Farnley headed in the opposite direction,
quickly ascertained that his beloved Pansy was also among the
missing, and boldly joined his master in the Duchess’s chambers
just in time to hear Aunt Lucinda say sulkily, “‘There are some who
bear a grudge even to those that do them good.’ Pilpay.”

“Do me good? Oh, that fairly ties it, doesn’t
it? You, Aunt, and you, me dear old grandmother, have between the
two of you with your machinations bungled my entire life,” he said,
glaring at them both with venom and—at last, at least
verbally—showing some resemblance to his sister Emily.

Obviously the story of the plot was “out,”
and just as clearly Avanoll did not like being moved about by his
female relatives like a pawn in a perverted chess game. He turned
to his aunt in astonishment.

“Only a complete ninnyhammer such as you
could believe for one moment that my current position has even a
mote of ‘goodness’ about it.”

The dowager, whose day so far had been one
simply crammed full of joyous plotting and scheming, took a moment
to inform her grandson that they—she and his aunt—had between
themselves succeeded in bringing to a head a situation that he,
being a lowly and somewhat slow mere male, would have allowed to
drag on for heaven only knew how long.

“Within the span of a few weeks we have
settled Emily and forced you to admit to a feeling for Tansy that
is more than cousinly. I have no doubt you all will soon be quite
comfortably leg-shackled, and I will be free to retire to my estate
to wait in peace for the arrival of my first great-grandchildren,”
she observed smugly.

Avanoll ran his hand through his already
disheveled crop of curls and said tightly, “Emily and her moonling
calf may be all right and tight, I grant you, but with Tansy gone
to ground, God only knows where, and me about to go to the gallows
for the cold-blooded murder of my aunt and grandmother, I fail to
see why you should look so pleased with yourselves.”

“I knew it would come to this,” wailed a
distraught Farnley.

“‘I would rather be ignorant than wise in the
foreboding of evil.’ Aeschylus,” Aunt Lucinda gritted.

“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but I can only
calls ’em as I sees ’em, so they say,” Farnley retorted, quite
overset by the defection of his lady-love. “Besides,” he added,
with commendable if self-serving foresight, “I’m just trying to
serve my master, poor demon-ridden soul that he is.”

‘“There is also a sure reward for faithful
silence.’ Horace,” his tormentor quipped acidly, and the valet
retired from the field in defeat.

There was silence in the room for a few
moments while the Duke paced, the servant moped, the aunt preened
herself, and the dowager sat back and enjoyed the show. Finally she
broke the uneasy peace by asking if Avanoll knew why Tansy had
taken flight so precipitously.

He hung his head. “I believe it was something
I said, but for the life of me I didn’t know the thought of
marriage to me was so repugnant she would rather run away than face
it.”

The dowager smiled. It was a wickedly
satisfied smile that lit her eyes and curled the corners of her
mouth with unholy glee. “It was not the marriage Tansy flew from,
but the proposal. If memory serves, and I must admit understanding
little of Tansy’s hysterical mouthings this morning, I believe your
declaration lacked for something in romance, Ashley.”

The Duke flushed an angry red and retorted,
“Well, what would you have me do, Grandmama? Say I love her and
take the chance she would turn me down anyway? I would have
confessed more than a companionable affection immediately if she
had only given me some sign she returned my feelings.”

‘“The cat would eat fish, and would not wet
her feet.’ Heywood,” his aunt purred archly.

The Duke ignored this remark and zeroed in on
his grandparent’s hints. “Tansy came to you? Ah-ha! Then you know
where she has gone.” He loped over to leer down at the old woman
and warned, “Tell me her direction you crafty old crone, or I’ll
cut off your sugarplums for a month.”

The dowager stalled for time, arranging her
shawl about her thin shoulders before saying, “She and that ninny
Pansy are in my closed coach, heading north to Olivia Rockingham’s.
You know where she is situated, don’t you? I sent them off with
some farradiddle about companioning Olivia, who needs a keeper far
more than she needs a dogsbody, secure in the knowledge that you
would have the pair of them back safe in Avanoll House before the
day is out. That is, if you don’t bungle it again, grandson.”

“And you think that simply by saying I love
you, Tansy will fall on my neck and agree to become my wife?”
Ashley asked doubtfully.

‘“Love conquers all.’ Virgil,” his aunt
suggested.

The Duke of Avanoll, that mature man about
town, that notable whip, excellent sportsman, and admired
statesman, stood like a gawking schoolboy and blushed to the roots
of his hair.

His aunt sighed. “‘I loved thee, Atthis,
once—long, long ago; long, long ago—the memory still is clear.’
Sappho.”

Enough was enough, and too much was
definitely too much. Avanoll quit the room, with Farnley close
behind saying he would ready his grace’s traveling clothes and
order the racing curricle. Left behind in the dowager’s chamber,
two old ladies clung to each other and chortled with a depth of
humor denied them for many a long day, until tears of joy ran down
their cheeks.

While the Duke was springing nimbly up behind
his spirited team of four (only a nonpareil such as he or a man
deeply in love would dare drive a curricle with four in hand), the
dowager’s coach—with a deliberately plodding Leo at the reins—was
rumbling along the North Road with its two dispirited
occupants.

Tansy’s mind was full of conflicting thoughts
as she remembered she had yet to see the Elgin Marbles, or take in
the theatre on a night when the great Kean was to trod the boards.
Oh, well, she could put paid to excursions like that now and
forevermore. Perhaps she had been hasty—may be even guilty of
looking a gift horse in the mouth—in turning down Avanoll’s cut and
dried offer. But, no. She could not endure a one-sided love any
more than she could a completely loveless marriage.

If only Pansy would cease her sobbing that
had only just moments ago finally diminished from a loud
caterwauling that had nearly driven Tansy to distraction for the
entire passage across Hampstead Heath.

In time the coach was pulled into a small
wayside inn—none too soon for Tansy, who was experiencing an almost
overpowering need to put some space between herself and her
watering-pot abigail. Since assurances that she would be returned
from Mrs. Rockingham’s with Leo had not stifled her tears, and
threats to box her ears had met with similar failure, physical
separation for a few temper-cooling minutes was the only avenue
left open.

While Pansy, sniffling and gulping, dragged
herself off behind Leo, who was giving orders to have the horses
seen to and a private parlor laid with luncheon, Tansy took off in
the opposite direction at a bracing pace that ended abruptly when
she turned a corner and literally barged into a well-dressed
gentleman just approaching from the side of the stables.

“Why, stap me if it ain’t Lady Emily’s
rescuer! “a voice cried out, and Tansy lifted her head to see the
grinning face of Godfrey Harlow looking down at her. Since he had
grasped her by both elbows to halt her possible spill to the
ground, Tansy was unable for the moment to do more than remain
still and return his greeting.

“I appreciate your saying you’re happy to see
me, miss, though I doubt I’m as welcome as the flowers in spring,
but I must admit I have thought of you more than once since that
fateful day in March. Thanks to you I took myself off to Ireland
and, would you believe it, I am now on my honeymoon with a grand,
grand girl. Rich as Golden Ball she is, and with no smell of the
shop,” he went on, still not relinquishing his hold.

Tansy looked him up and down, taking note of
his rather foppish finery, and summoned up a weak smile. “I am
happy one of us has come about so nicely.”

Another man would have realized his joy was
one-sided, but not Mr. Harlow. Carried along by the mood of the
moment he went on amicably, “And I owe all my present happiness to
you, dear lady!”

With that he swooped down to deliver an
exuberant smacking kiss right on Tansy’s startled lips, a kiss that
ended abruptly when a hand of iron pulled Mr. Harlow about before a
fist of similar strength caused his body to take up an acquaintance
with the dirt pathway.

Tansy put a hand to her head and leaned
weakly against the stable wall. “Oh, Ashley, you’ve done it again,”
she groaned.

“I say,” came a voice from the ground, “who
the devil are you?”

“Emily’s brother,” Tansy supplied gently.

“Oh,” Godfrey Harlow said hollowly. “Isn’t it
a bit late for revenge?”

At Avanoll’s quelling look, Godfrey prudently
skittered back a few feet on his haunches while Tansy, now quite
beside herself with rage, performed the introductions and explained
that Mr. Harlow was just thanking her for a service she had
performed for him some months past.

Just then a Junoesque creature with flaming
red hair came down upon them with a wrathful look on her freckled
face and demanded to know “jist what the divil is goin’ on
here?”

Avanoll tried to speak, but had trouble
locating his voice. This mattered little to the woman, who had
already single-handedly hoisted her slight husband to his feet and
was dusting him off with a vigorous hand and dusting him down with
an equally vigorous tongue.

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I
now, Godfrey, me love? Come off with Kathleen now and I’ll be
hearin’ the whole of it over a nice cup of tea.”

Harlow made a hasty bow and went off with the
love of his life, his arms flapping wildly as he endeavored to talk
himself back into her good graces.

Avanoll looked after the pair, well and truly
puzzled, while Tansy held on to the stable wall, convulsed as she
was with laughter. “Poor besotted fool, he’ll not have an easy life
with that one, I wager,” she chortled.

Seeing his quarry in good humor, the Duke
dismissed Harlow and his outrageous wife, and concentrated on
making it up with Tansy. He held out his hand—the same hand that
had milled down two innocent men in less than four and twenty
hours—and pleaded, “Please, dear, stop all this nonsense and come
home with me. I know you love me.”

So the dowager had betrayed her! “How dare
you!” Tansy shrieked, and bolted for the road. Avanoll caught up
with her just as she reached the roadway and stopped any further
recriminations with a sound kiss.

When he at last lifted his head Tansy opened
her mouth to tell him a thing or two, but he cut her off by
claiming her lips yet again, so gently and with such vast feeling
in his embrace that her arms had no choice but to curl up and
around his neck.

When he was sure he had at last robbed her of
the strength to spurn him he lifted his lips slightly and blazed a
path of kisses and gentle nips along her cheek to her ear. Once
there he whispered, “I love you, too, you know. Quite desperately,
in fact.”

Instead of answering in kind, Tansy dredged
up enough spirit to return a bit of his deviltry. “You took your
sweet time letting me in on the secret, your grace,” she suggested
insolently.

“Oh, and when did you know you cared for me?”
Avanoll retorted with a nasty grin.

Tansy blushed, then recovered and said with
complete candor, “From the time I sat behind a nag named Horace and
first looked up into those horrid, mocking eyes of yours peering
out at me from behind the Benedict nose. I was immediately resigned
to donning my caps and living the rest of my life as a female
ape-leader, my charges all agog at my secret sighs and silent
tears, knowing me an unlucky victim of unrequited love. It was very
romantic, but hardly practical.”