The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (10 page)

The social politics of all this head-jerking
and hand-waving was totally lost on Tansy. She knew only that her
skill in handling the ribbons would be limited to not allowing the
horses to fall asleep in the shafts as they waited for a ridiculous
old creature in orchid to stop waggling her bonnet’s ostrich
feathers all over the aging roué who was nearly tumbling from his
mount into her more than ample lap in an effort to decipher her
long and garbled attempt at girlish flirtation.

Avanoll could feel Tansy’s tenseness across
the short distance between them and almost—but not quite—wished to
hear her sure-to-be pithy remarks on the orchid lady. Wordlessly he
slipped the reins into her hands and she took them quite naturally,
with no trace of nervousness. Just impatience.

Suddenly the air was split by three
resounding sneezes as the ostrich plumes and the roué’s nose
collided one too many times. Tansy’s clear laugh rang out, to his
grace’s way of thinking, twice as piercingly as a Highlander’s
battle cry. The orchid lady looked pointedly toward the phaeton
with murder in her eyes—but quickly adjusted her features to
resemble indulgent understanding of the youthful high spirits so
prevalent these days when she saw the miscreant’s companion.

Without a backward look to her companion
whose face was now buried in a voluminous handkerchief, she
motioned her driver forward, then stopped him when abreast of
juicier quarry.

“Why, your grace, at first I thought I beheld
an apparition. It is simply an age since last you graced us with
your presence so early in the Season. Indeed, the Season is not yet
officially here, is it, although one couldn’t tell that by the
turnout today, could one? I declare, half the two thousand, at
least, must be in the park today.”

Throughout the delivery of this speech the
lady’s watery-pale orchid eyes (an answer to the unasked question
of why an aging female of little beauty and a rather muddy
complexion would deck herself head to toe in pale orchid) darted
back and forth between his grace and Tansy. Doubtless she was
mentally trotting out and discarding reasons why this unspectacular
looking and, if not on the shelf, definitely at her last prayers
female should be the first of her sex to be seen handling an
Avanoll pair since the dowager Duchess retired her whip twenty
years before.

Since the Duke seemed ready to give her only
a small smile and a nod before rudely dismissing his dear departed
Mama’s oldest and dearest friend—well, perhaps that was stretching
a point, but they did have their come-outs the same Season, and her
with her youngest still to get off her hands after three unfruitful
Seasons, drat the chit—the lady blithely discarded the niceties and
asked the name of the charming miss who had the pleasure of his
grace’s company.

“How remiss of me. Lady Stanley. It seems in
my absence from town my manners have gone a-begging,” he replied
without any hint of gentlemanly remorse. Then he very quickly
effected introductions and nudged Tansy’s foot with the toe of his
boot in an effort to get her moving.

Tansy was only too happy to oblige and raised
her hands, only to be stopped by Lady Stanley’s incredulous, “Your
cousin? Why the only Tamerlane I know of was Sir Andrew Tamerlane,
and that man couldn’t possibly be related to you.”

“Why ever not. Lady Stanley?” purred Tansy in
a tone Avanoll already knew only too well.

But before his grace could wade in and smooth
the waters. Lady Stanley sealed her fate by blurting out, “Why,
really, my dear child, you must know Sir Andrew was a worthless
ninny-brain who gambled and drank himself underground two years or
so back—ending a singularly worthless and unproductive life. His
wife, bless her soul, a sweet young thing several years my junior,
died of a broken heart, I heard—thanks to that wretch of a
man.”

Avanoll looked wildly about him for a hole in
which to hide before the rockets started exploding around his head.
As Tansy drew herself up to a commanding height—no mean feat,
considering she was seated—his grace thought: here we go, cant
expressions, stable language and all. Why didn’t he leave well
enough alone and let Emily elope with that young dandy? How easily
he could have avoided all this mess!

But when Tansy spoke it was quietly and with
great dignity. “My mother, Lady Stanley, expired from a putrid cold
the summer I was eight. Her only regret in dying was that she must
leave her beloved husband Sir Andrew Tamerlane, my father. His
sorrow may have led him to indulge quite earnestly in vices only
dabbled at during his grasstime, and it may have hastened his
blessed release from an unhappy life to a reunion in heaven with
his beloved wife.”

Avanoll was impressed. This was a crushing
set-down, delivered with the expertise of a seasoned London matron.
But his mouth dropped to half cock as Tansy finished her speech
thusly:

“And my father’s life was not, as you say,
worthless, for he taught me many things. For one, he always
impressed upon me never to behave so commonly as to malign
needlessly the dead or attack those, living or dead, unable to
defend themselves. Which is much the same case in this instance,
don’t you agree?”

As Lady Stanley’s face took on an unbecoming
shade of puce that clashed badly with her plumes, Tansy delivered
the coup de grace. “And Mama, thinking of my future no doubt, told
me on her deathbed—with all the veracity of any deathbed
utterance—never, ever to wear any color that would make my rather
brown complexion look like dirty ditch-water after the mail coach
has passed through it.” The tenacious chin thrust out triumphantly
as she added, “Looking at you, Lady Stanley, I can at last
understand her concern. Good day.”

Tansy whipped up her horses and neatly slid
by Lady Stanley’s landau, which could not move until her driver
recovered from his fit of silent laughter. She had gone only a few
paces when a voice called out, “Ashley, you sly dog, stop at
once.”

The Duke heard the voice and felt his stomach
shatter into a million pieces before settling somewhere near his
toes. “Brummell!” he whispered hoarsely. “We’re in the basket
now.”

George Brummell, best known as the Beau,
approached the phaeton, his grinning face making it obvious he had
heard every word of Tansy’s impassioned speech.

Ashley whispered quickly to his cousin, “Keep
your mouth shut and we may get out of this yet. So far you have
amused Beau—God only knows why—but one wrong word and you may as
well try to spin gold from straw than present your face in public
again.” Much louder he said, “Good afternoon to you. Beau. You are
a pleasant surprise.”

In the middle of answering the Beau’s
question as to the identity of his companion, Avanoll suddenly felt
himself pitchforked into a bizarre play—or farce, as he later
termed it.

His cousin was sitting sedately beside him,
basking in the afterglow of her triumph over Lady Stanley, her
hands folded in her lap, her eyes scanning the horizon almost as if
the presence of the one man in England who had the power to make or
break her socially was at the least a person of little interest or
at the worst a crushing bore. For this his grace was almost
thankful. Indeed, nothing could be more fatal than for Tansy to act
the tongue-tied miss—or worse, open her mouth and let out another
cant expression. The Beau might consider a slip in the heat of
anger amusing, but two slips would brand her common or brazen.

One moment the Duke was counting his
chickens, the next he sat with figurative egg all over his face.
For Tansy’s idle glance had suddenly locked onto something in the
near distance that made her entire body stiffen. Before the Duke
could do anything to check her, she had turned and executed a neat
vault from her lofty perch to the gravel path. It was a graceful
descent, all things considered, and showed both a strength of limb
and degree of courage most misses would take pains to conceal. But
it was not, alas, a completely clean jump.

Tansy’s underslip, a frothy confection of
snowy muslin and lace—and one of her favorite possessions,
considering the rough quality of her undergarments these past few
years—had somehow caught itself on the hub of the right wheel,
raising the entirety of her skirts to an alarming height.

With a pang of regret, but not a moment’s
hesitation, she gave a violent tug on her skirts and was rewarded
by a resounding r-r-i-i-p, not to mention immediate freedom.

Needless to state, the Duke’s phaeton
instantly became a traveling show for those of the
ton
who
seemed mysteriously congregated in this one particular area of the
Park. As her first speech upon jumping center stage, Tansy shouted
loud and clear, “Don’t just sit there staring like a dolt with your
jaw at half-mast, Ashley. Follow me!”

Avanoll, with some memory of his army days
and blind obedience and all that sort of thing coming to the fore,
reacted almost against his will. He threw the reins to his groom,
Leo, then hopped down from his seat and took off at a fast trot
after Tansy’s retreating figure. He paused for a second, however,
taking time for a second look at those previously revealed and very
shapely ankles that—with her skirts lifted for less encumbered
movement—Tansy was again parading before all the bucks who also
chased after her, quizzing glasses firmly stuck to their eyes.

W
hen Tansy reached
the banks of the Serpentine, an innocuous-looking target for such
violent attack, she stopped and began berating an
innocent-appearing servant who was so cowed by her tirade that he
seemed to shrink closer to the ground with every word.

As he neared the mismatched pair (it was
rather like Gentleman Jackson taking on a chimney sweep), the Duke
was muttering under his breath, “Reward the girl, they said. Take
her for a ride in the Park they said. Reward her? Ha! I’ll wring
her troublesome neck first!” He raised his eyes to heaven and
implored, “Oh, please, Lord. Get us out of this coil and I’ll make
it up to You. I’ll,” and here he did display the greatest English
stiff-upper-lip imaginable, “I’ll forego brandy and, yes—cigars,
for a fortnight. No, an entire month. I swear it.”

This last was said a bit louder, possibly
because of the great emotion the proposed sacrifice brought to
bear. But whatever the reason, his audience—rapidly approaching a
multitude—was to be forever grateful.

Tansy too heard the Duke’s promises, but her
heart was not moved. “Fustian, Ashley,” she declared baldly.
“Quickly now, hold onto this rascal’s ear so he can’t lope off
while I rescue the poor thing. Not that the fellow will probably
move in any event, for if ever I saw such a slowtop I cannot
remember it.” She took one step and then added, more kindly,
“Perhaps he is a mute?”

Then, as the astounded Duke stood impatiently
by, unable to do more than hold onto the servant’s sleeve—he looked
like a groom by his livery—and stare bug-eyed as his cousin and her
brand-new clothing from Madame Bertin, no less, plunged feet-first
into the lake.

There were gasps, then giggles from the
ladies present, snickers, and a few hearty guffaws from the
gentlemen. Tansy quickly waded out into the lake until the water
lapped gently against her hips and then, with a cry of “Huzzah,”
she reached one hand out to snare a burlap sack just sinking
beneath the surface.

She quickly raised the sack above her head,
where it danced and wiggled and poured down a copious waterfall
that darkened Tansy’s upstretched sleeve, cascaded over her
upraised face, and made a limp rat’s tail of the once-proud peacock
feather in her bonnet.

“I say,” came a cultured drawl from over
Avanoll’s shoulder, “rather, er, unique, ain’t she? Don’t you own a
tub, Avanoll?”

Avanoll was formulating some sort of reply
for the Beau but was saved—a move first blessed, then thoroughly
damned—by Tansy’s plea to wade in and get her out because her
“blasted skirts” were tangling her legs and one jean half-boot was
sunk in some sort of hole.

“Beau,” the Duke asked urbanely, figuring he
may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, “be a sport and hold
onto this fellow for me while I assist my cousin.”

Beau raised his glass, assessed Tansy’s
predicament without the fluttering of an eyelash, and turned to the
servant. “Be a good fellow and play a little game for me. Pretend I
am Lord Elgin and you are a statue. There’s a good man. Don’t move
now, your arms might topple off, you know.” Turning his head to
Avanoll he said, “Ashley, old man, you may go do the pretty now. I
have all in train here. By the by though, sport, were your
ancestors prone to inbreeding?”

“What?” Avanoll asked before realizing what
Beau was inferring. “We have our share of eccentrics, sir, but I
cannot blame Tansy on any first-cousin marriage. My conclusion is
that she was dropped on her head as an infant,” he told him.
“Repeatedly.”

“Either that, friend, or she’s the only sane
one and we’re all Bedlamites. Whatever is she about?”

Ashley shrugged, turned to meet his fate, and
at the same time consigned his twice-worn Hessians to a watery
grave. Shortly, two figures stood on the grassy bank, surrounded by
an audience gathered with bated breath to witness the grande
finale.

Lady Stanley—front and center as usual when
there was any gossip to be found, violet plumes vibrating wildly as
she nodded her head vigorously—was busily informing all and sundry
of the identity of the outlandish chit with the burlap bag clutched
tightly to her bosom. Oh, she would dine out for a month on this
story!

Tansy, oblivious to all the commotion she had
caused, or just not giving two pins what anyone thought of her,
dropped to her knees and tugged on the twine securing the top of
the sack. “Ashley,” she ordered as her hands encountered yet
another wet knot, “Give me your penknife.”