The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (3 page)

That arrow hit home. Instead of condemning
her unfeeling relatives, though—or even resorting to the already
used ploy of tears produced-to-order—Lady Emily gave out with a
delicious giggle. “Oh, you are so very quick! Aren’t I beastly to
have used poor Godfrey so shabbily?” she bubbled merrily.

“Utterly criminal I’d say,” concurred Tansy.
“But then, had I your face, title and money, I daresay I should be
an even worse termagant than you could ever aspire to be. I have a
decided talent for mischief, or so my poor harassed Papa used to
say. It is such fun to be the center of all attention, is it
not?”

“Oh, dear, it is a very good thing for me you
are not my aunt. If Aunt Ce-Ce thought as you, I should never have
any diversions.”

“My dear Lady Emily, personal gratification
aside, do you not think the time has passed for schoolroom pranks?
You must be all of eighteen, and ready for your come-out. There
comes a time, sadly, when we must put away childish quirks and at
least outwardly behave as Society dictates. Though we can certainly
still think what we wish and occasionally—just to lend an air of
intrigue to our countenance—indulge in the odd devilment.”

By now the portmanteau was safely in the back
of the gig and Tansy had retaken her seat.

The younger girl’s eyes fairly danced. “I am
to be popped off, as Grandmama so vulgarly says, this Season. It is
ever so exciting to think of, but all I have been doing for weeks
on end, ever since I came to town, is standing for hours and hours
being fitted for the ugliest gowns imaginable. It is all so very
fatiguing, and I just had to do something or go mad. Aunt Ce-Ce has
charge of my wardrobe, you see—Grandmama being too frail for such
exertions—and Ce-Ce has the vilest taste. The modiste she favors is
so hungry for our favors she agrees to every horrid ruffle, and
spouts ecstasies about the absolute tons of lace Ce-Ce thinks must
smother everything I wear. And Ashley, the wretch, refuses to
listen to my complaints at all!”

Lady Emily paused for breath, her emotions on
this so-near-to-her-heart subject having brought a becoming flush
to her cheeks.

“So when I met Godfrey at the library,” she
resumed, explaining a brand of logic that smacked of a mind that
readily made five of two and two, “and again several times in the
mornings at the park, I decided to, well, to use him to remind
Ashley of my existence. He does sometimes forget me for months on
end, what with his clubs and hunting boxes, speeches in Parliament,
and the managing of all the estates, and—oh!—and any other excuse
he can find,” she wailed, thus condemning the unimpeachable
lifestyle of the Duke to the ranks of the pointlessly silly.
“Ashley is my brother,” she added somewhat unnecessarily.

Tansy was busy trying to get the gig moving
again. “I don’t think I follow you.”

“Ashley—he’s my brother,” repeated Lady
Emily.

“That, my dear nodcock, I comprehend,” her
new confidant replied dryly. “What I cannot fathom is why you have
so little to say as to your style of dress, if we may pass over
your brother’s failings for the moment and fall back to the subject
of flounces and smothering lace. The tedium of fittings, and the
lack of social affairs for one who is not yet Out, I also
understand—for I have worked for part of a Season for a Miss Buxley
during her come-out.” A small smile appeared as she recalled her
sudden departure from that particular position. “Please enlighten
me as I try to raise Lazarus here from the dead so we can push off
for the Squire’s.”

At that she yanked the dozing Dobbin—or
Horace—to a semblance of attention and the old cob, his hooves
fairly dragging with each step, set off at an even slower pace than
before.

“The fact is,” Lady Emily willingly
explained, “my gowns are much the same as any now in the mode, I
suppose. There is just something, I cannot quite put my finger on
it, but Something rather Overpowering about them. I feel quite
dwarfed. There just seems to be so Much Gown and so Little Me! The
only things I’ve liked at all are this outfit and one other, my
riding habit. Grandmama picked both of them before informing Ashley
that one more trip to Bond Street with ‘that young
prattlebox’—that’s me,” she admitted artlessly, “and she would
surely be carried off by an apoplexy.”

Tansy gave a chuckle and inwardly agreed with
the old lady’s opinion that young Lady Emily’s roundabout method of
speaking for five minutes to say what could have been said in less
than half the time—and with less than a quarter the drama—could be
a bit wearing.

The turn to the right was in sight now,
finally, and Tansy tried with little success to coax Dobbin from
his straight and narrow path. Perhaps showing up on the Squire’s
doorstep with the sister of a Duke in tow would soften any censure
on her late arrival, she thought with little hope.

Just then the thundering sounds of an
approaching rider reached her ears and she turned on the plank seat
for a view of what would probably be a prime bit of blood and bone.
The turn forced yet another sharp bit of the seat through her thin
gown and into her already tender posterior. “Damn,” she swore
soundly.

“Oh, drat, you are absolutely right,” agreed
Lady Emily, who had also swiveled about for a better look. “However
did you know that is Ashley approaching?” she asked
ingenuously.

“I didn’t. I have just been impaled upon a
splinter half the size of Cornwall, as nothing else as unpleasant
comes to mind except the home of my last unlamented place of
employment. As for your brother, we don’t stand a prayer of
outrunning him with old Fleetfoot in the shafts. If you were of a
mind to bolt for cover, that might be a means of escape, although I
think it would have gone easier for you to face him for the first
time with the Squire to act as a restraint on his undoubtedly
sorely-tried temper.”

Lady Emily at once burst into noisy sobs
(this time they were genuine) as her brother was riding like a man
possessed, for once uncaring of his horseflesh. If she could have
swooned without tumbling ignominiously into the road, she would
have.

A confrontation with Ashley in these
surroundings was sadly lacking the romance of standing out of
harm’s way while her brother vented his anger by loosening a few of
Godfrey’s front teeth. Nothing seemed to come right for poor Emily
lately, nothing at all. She sniffled loudly and hiccupped.

“There, there, don’t go blubbering,” consoled
her no-longer-so-capable-looking champion. “All will come right
soon enough. Just let the poor man rant and rave until he’s spent,
then flash him those soulful blue eyes while you tearfully promise
to be a pattern card of virtue forevermore. And don’t let him see
you crossing your fingers behind your back!”

Tansy gave out with an unnecessary “Whoa,
boy,” for the horse had already decided on a halt after spying some
interesting-looking long grass left untouched through the winter,
forcing the pursuing brother to control a plunging, dancing
stallion reluctant to discontinue a fine gallop.

After easily controlling his horse, the rider
cast his eyes coldly over the ill-assorted pair and their
antiquated vehicle. After a cursory examination of his sister he
riveted his cold stare on Tansy, noting the drab brownness of her
garb, hair, and eyes. In his anger he overlooked the fine bone
structure of her pleasantly arranged face. Tansy in her turn
returned his gaze, noting the Duke’s large, well-muscled frame, his
dark-brown curls (now well-tumbled by his long ride), and the
startling blue eyes that stood out so well in his sun-darkened
face. “Emily,” he fairly purred in his deep voice when at last—his
eyes still on Tansy—he broke the tense silence. “I perceive I have
found you unharmed. I can only hope I also find you unwed and, this
I hope most fervently, unbed!”

Lady Emily blushed to advantage and did so
now, although her companion never batted an eye at such plain
speech. “Oh, yes, Ashley,” the repentant sister assured him. “But
I’ve had the most dreadful—ouch!” A well-placed elbow jabbed
directly into the tender area below her ribs made Lady Emily break
off with a gasp that turned discreetly into a cough and then, most
intelligently, into silence. Her friend was right, for complaints
from a captured truant could not fail to blacken to pitch the
already dark scowl Ashley was aiming at his baby sister.

“Madam,” the Duke—not failing to notice that
less than discreet nudge—remarked, still with a velvety smoothness
that went so ill with his dire expression, “I do not understand
your presence at the scene any more than I can explain the absence
of that young villain Harlow, but I do believe I have to thank
you.”

“You certainly do,” came the equally velvet
reply.

The Duke was surprised. He even allowed one
well-defined brow to arch. “I beg your pardon?” he questioned, with
the tone used by one just addressed by a drawing room chair.

“I merely agreed with you, your grace,” was
Tansy’s direct reply. “You do have me to thank for your sister’s
rescue. However, you have only yourself to thank for her near ruin
at the hands of a rake-hell fortune-hunter who, luckily for you,
possessed all the foresight of a grasshopper. If Mr. Harlow were
not a wet-behind-the-ears looby, your sister would be well and
truly ruined by now.”

“I am to blame, madam? I do not quite see
your logic, or remember any invitation for commenting on my
guardianship of my sister.” The velvet now dripped icicles.

Another woman would have been sent searching
in her reticule for her vinaigrette. But this definitely was a
different sort of female. “My logic is simple,” Tansy explained, as
though speaking to a particularly backward child. “If you paid more
attention to what is going on around you, you would know your
sister to be bored to flinders and a lonely child into the
bargain—not to mention green as grass and easy prey for any pretty
face or agile tongue. I dare because, between your sister and
yourself, the pair of you have delayed my arrival at my new post,
erased any hope for the supper I had optimistically hoped to find
there, and denied me the snug cot my bones ache for. I also dare
because my eyes tell me that—although you doubtless think you cut a
right dashing figure on horseback pelting pell-mell in the pursuit
of an eloping sister—you neglected to provide transportation for
said sister once you had performed your splendid feat of
derring-do. I do not wish to push the point, but I daresay you made
an error in judgment when you decided to opt for speed over common
sense. A curricle or coach would have been more the thing. Now,”
she told him with a pained sigh, “it is left to poor Dobbin—or
Horace, I doubt my lapse insults the beast—and me to transport your
sister to the nearest posting inn. That is why I dare.”

This sizzling set-down was wondrously
admired, if prudently not applauded, by the incredulous Lady Emily,
who belatedly cringed at the thought of her brother’s
soon-to-be-expressed displeasure. What was obvious was that the
brown lady in the gig was decidedly warm, “madam” was.

In fact, it was not exaggerating to say Tansy
was nearly overcome with righteous anger. How dare this high and
mighty Duke condescend to her! Look down his nose at her!

Just a minute! Tansy halted herself in
mid-tantrum. She looked more closely at the Duke. That nose. No. It
couldn’t be. “Are you by chance the Duke of Avanoll?” she asked
suddenly—apropos, so thought the Duke, of nothing—and just as he
was ready to deliver one of his famous scolds.

“I am,” the Duke replied, surprised into
answering this unwarranted question. It is true then, he observed
to himself, what the old lady my grandmother says: breeding will
out. Here I sit, calmly being railed at like a schoolboy remiss at
his sums, when I should like nothing better than to take that
obnoxious hellion over my knee and give her the thrashing her
parents so obviously declined to dispense. Such forbearance on my
part reflects quite noble breeding. Almost kinglike, he
complimented himself. And why, putting all that aside, is this
creature looking at me as if I have suddenly grown another head?
“Is something amiss, madam, or have you come belatedly to your
senses and in turn been struck dumb with shame over your outrageous
behavior?”

Tansy waved this last statement aside with a
slight motion of her hand. The hand then continued upward until it
reached her forehead, where it rubbed wearily back and forth as she
spoke once more. “Nathaniel has cocked up his toes then?” she said
quietly, as if to herself.

But not quietly enough. “I beg your pardon?”
The velvet ice became a howling blizzard.

“Oh, forgive me, I merely spoke my thoughts
aloud,” Tansy apologized. “Has he been dead long—the late Duke,
that is?”

The Duke was still a bit nonplused and
answered almost automatically. “A little over ten years.” Then he
had an idea that shook him to his socks. “But what, if I may be so
bold, is that to the matter at hand?” He spoke more softly, almost
gently. The creature was quite possibly deranged, an escapee from
Bedlam.

He would have to report the woman at the next
town. Why, at any moment the sick woman could turn violent and do
bodily injury to his sister.

Tansy’s head rose once more to look the Duke
straight in the face. “I apologize for my outburst, your grace. My
only excuse is that I am extremely fatigued. I have been traveling
for two days and nights, and the last of my funds disappeared at
last night’s inn on a meager dinner of bread and cheese. That must
be why I did not recognize it at once.”

“Recognize what, my dear young woman?” the
Duke crooned warily. Now he was sure the woman was deranged. He
made sly eye-shiftings and head-jerks in his vacantly smiling
sister’s direction, willing her to climb down from the gig. Lady
Emily winked happily back at him, thinking herself part of some
fine joke, and her sins all forgiven. The Duke sighed. Emily was a
pretty chit, he granted, but there wasn’t a problem of overcrowding
in her upper rooms.