The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (16 page)

“How could they do such a tiling to that
great man?” Tansy cried in horror.

“They could not help themselves, I suppose,”
Ashley explained caustically. “It seems an unwritten law that at
least once in every ten year span our so-fair, so-loyal English
Society feels itself obligated to unite in a sordid conspiracy to
pull down their one-time idols from the pedestals to which they
themselves had previously raised them. I am ashamed to be a part of
such a Society.”

“Is there nothing you can do, Ashley?” Tansy
spoke into the now ominously silent room.

He shook his head sadly. “There isn’t a
single thing anyone can do, my dear. There is nothing for it but
for George to leave the country. My friends tell me he plans to
take ship to the continent before the month is out, and that he
swears he will never set foot on these shores again. I can’t say as
I blame him, but England, through her own fickleness, has lost a
great talent. Perhaps the finest poet she will ever have.”

“Well, I certainly wish I could do something
to help. But if you cannot aid him, nobody can,” Tansy sighed
sadly.

As the room grew heavy with silence once
more. Tansy rose from her chair and put it back in its place
against the wall, then poured a goodly amount of burgundy into a
crystal goblet before returning to her cousin’s bedside to extend
the drink as the only solace she could offer. Avanoll looked up as
if suddenly becoming aware of Tansy’s continued presence, and
removed the goblet to place it on his bedside table. With his other
hand he took hold of Tansy’s wrist and pulled her down to sit
beside him on the bed.

“If you cannot help our poor tarnished bard
you might wish to give aid where you can,” Ashley whispered
huskily. “Come closer to me, sweetings, and comfort me with a
healing kiss.”

The impropriety of her position—alone in a
man’s bedchamber, and indeed, sitting on that man’s very bed—did
not occur to Tansy. Slowly, as if in a dream, she lowered her lips
to brush across Ashley’s with a gossamer softness that his hand,
now tangled in the loose tendrils curling at the nape of her neck,
increased to a much more solid contact with just a slight downward
exertion of pressure.

When the Duke’s other hand encircled her
waist. Tansy was propelled forward so that her entire upper body
now rested against his broad chest. Somehow, she didn’t exactly
know how, her own arms crept around Ashley’s neck to cradle his
head in an unschooled but surprisingly pleasing manner.

She could feel the Duke’s muscles rippling
against her softness as his kiss deepened, and demanded and
received an answering quiver of enjoyment from her own body. The
embrace caused her to tremble in his arms like a butterfly he had
once captured had beat its fragile wings against his cupped
palms.

A long time later, slowly and most
reluctantly, Avanoll called a halt to a situation only he knew was
rapidly progressing beyond a point where he was still able to
control his actions. Tansy was gently, but firmly, returned to her
former sitting position.

“Ashley, I—” Tansy began at the same time
Avanoll was saying, “Tansy, I—”

Whatever thoughts might have been uttered
were lost forever as an abrupt knock was followed by the opening of
the door, followed by Dunstan and his reproving harrumph.

“Pardon me, your grace,” said Dunstan, “but
this note was just delivered to the servant’s entrance, and as
there is no name on it I felt it should be brought directly to
you.”

Avanoll took one last, long, frustrated look
at Tansy’s moist and inviting lips, then sighed deeply and held out
his hand for the note.

Tansy discreetly, if somewhat belatedly,
removed herself to stand at the large window, studiously gazing out
onto the Square, totally oblivious to the colors and noise
below.

The Duke had a difficult time deciphering the
contents of the note, which seemed to be a hastily scribbled
missive setting up a meeting the following morning in Green Park to
“bring together two star-crossed lovers whose desires are surely
destined to be fulfilled,” if only they could have speech with one
another.

In total, it was a silly piece of romantic
drivel only a green babe could swallow as being anything but a
shabby trick meant to lure the reader into waters well above her
head—yet the words “as we have discussed” were also very easy to
discern.

Whoever this “Red Rose” was who signed the
note, he was sure he would be met, and the message was only a
confirmation of a meeting already planned.

The Duke dismissed Dunstan with a curt nod,
and his face slowly took on a dark expression as he read again the
first line of the note which began, “To my faithful Tansy.”

Tansy, unaware of this new development and
its effect on her cousin’s disposition, breathed a sigh of relief
at Dunstan’s departure and hurried back to Ashley’s bedside—hands
outstretched and sure to be drawn down into his embrace once
again.

She was brought up short when the stranger
sitting in Ashley’s bed (wearing a face that would turn the cream)
pronounced coldly, “I have no further need of your company, Miss
Tamerlane. You may go now.” Thus dismissing her, he lay back and
turned his head to the wall.

Now, Tansy was no weak-spirited miss who
retreated at the first sign of trouble, her usual reaction to a
problem being to take the bull by the horns and demand an
explanation. But this was a new Tansy, a vulnerable Tansy, a girl
horribly out of her depth and experiencing a pain so terrible it
could have been the result of an actual physical blow.

Her hands dropped to her sides and, head
bowed in utter disgrace, she walked as composedly as she could to
the door before racing blindly down the corridor to bolt herself in
her room and indulge herself in a good long cry.

At the same time, elsewhere in the great
mansion in Grosvenor Square, Lady Emily squirmed nervously as
Comfort—resigned to obeying Tansy’s strictures and finding another
way to raise the blunt needed for that cottage in the country than
by taking bribes from her mistress’s suitors—tried for the third
time to adjust her ladyship’s golden curls in an intricate new
style.

Little did Comfort know that Emily’s case of
the fidgets stemmed from exasperation at Pansy, “that-ignorant
chit,” and her whimpering explanation that the note Sir Harry
Leadham had promised to send via Pansy had not yet arrived.

Pansy, with a P. Tansy, with a T. What a
pity, and what a sad waste, that Avanoll had so slim a knowledge of
his own servants! And what typical masculine folly, to allow his
stiff-necked pride to overrule the promptings of his heretofore
untouched heart.

Tansy was once again in his grace’s bad
books, this time for a reason she could not fathom one little
bit.

Once again the Duke reverted to a snarling,
growling beast, terrorizing all who dared come within roaring
distance of his “cage.” The servants added to his exasperation by
becoming—overnight, or so it seemed to him—a pack of brainless
ninnies who couldn’t pass on one single message correctly, follow
any given order through to its logical conclusion, or, in general,
tend to his needs with any more competence than a cockroach.

When the Duke was at long last allowed up
three days later, sighs of profound relief could be heard from all
corners of the mansion as he departed, leaning heavily on a malacca
cane, for his Club. In fact, if the truth be known, one particular
member of the household (who had been concentrating on devising a
perfect way to deliver to the man a crushing set-down without
causing herself and her poor puppy to be thrown out into the
streets) was even then hiding behind her curtains as the Duke
crossed the square. Her face was contorted by a series of grimaces,
scowls, and—just once—by the poking out of her pointed, pink tongue
in the general direction of his grace’s departing back.

T
he final two hectic
weeks leading up to Emily’s Come-Out Ball were so filled with
activity that Tansy had little difficulty in avoiding Avanoll and
his nasty moods. The dowager had the girl’s head in a whirl, trying
to teach her the endless intricacies of that nebulous thing called
good
ton
—from the proper way to curtsy to a marquis to
warnings about allowing any of her admirers to become too
demonstrative in their affections. According to her grace, anything
more intimate than a polite smile constituted a proposal of
marriage.

Horatio had been on his best behavior, his
only lapses being the soup bone Farnley found in his grace’s
favorite slippers and a nervous accident on Aunt Luanda’s satin
bedspread when that lady had been so misguided as to waken the
hound from his post-luncheon nap by aiming a hairbrush at his
head.

Avanoll’s bad temper had eased somewhat in
this interim, but had not totally disappeared. Tansy was still all
at sea as to the cause of his sudden withdrawal of friendship (her
heart refused to give their association any other name).

And so it was that, on the night of the ball,
four fashionably-bedecked ladies found themselves lined up like
well-trained servants at the foot of the stairs in the foyer,
waiting for the Duke to inspect their attire and pronounce them fit
for the exalted company due in less than two hours.

Three of the ladies waited with bated breath
and fluttering pulses, for even the dowager—who outwardly shunned
such feminine vanities—looked forward to hearing her grandson’s
confirmation of her ensemble. The fourth lady, standing slightly in
the shadows cast by the huge chandelier, was also waiting for the
Duke, but she was not on the hunt for flowery speeches. Her chin
was raised in an attitude that dared her cousin to say anything at
all.

Finally the Duke descended the staircase to
the tile floor, stopped, and ran his eyes up and down each of them,
until he at last gave a one-sided smile before executing an
elaborate bow. “My compliments, ladies. I shall be the envy of
every man present tonight for my lovely family.”

Four deeply-held breaths released in three
gratified (and one exasperated) sighs. If the Duke believed he was
to get off this easily, though, he was sadly mistaken. Almost
before he had completed his bow, Emily raced to his side to appeal
to her brother to be allowed to wear the Benedict emeralds—brooch,
bracelets, ear-drops, ring, and tiara—instead of the simple strand
of pearls now gracing her swan-like neck. “Too babyish, by half,”
she pouted prettily.

“‘You need not hang up the ivy-branch over
the wine that will sell.’ Syrus,” Aunt Lucinda pointed out, while
rearranging the tiers of pink, patterned-lace flounces that wrapped
round her plump frame from chin to toe before coming to rest upon
the tiles some three feet behind her. She looked as if someone had
rolled her up within a huge bolt of tulle and she was just now
fighting her way out.

“Aunt is quite right, my pet,” Tansy inserted
before Emily’s frown could ruin her previously angelic expression.
“There is no need to paint the lily, as it were. You are ‘slap up
to the mark,’ as my Papa used to say.”

Aunt Lucinda nodded vigorously, nearly
dislodging one of the half-dozen small ostrich plumes riding
precariously upon her curls. “‘Of surpassing beauty and in the
bloom of youth.’ Terence.”

The dowager chose this moment to draw her
grandson’s attention to her own attire. “Youth may manage very well
unadorned, but what of this old lady? Will I suit?”

Avanoll ran his eyes once again over his
majestically regal grandparent as she stood before him in full
battle-dress, with a swatch of purple draperies wrapped round her,
a king’s ransom in diamonds sparkling about her neck, wrists and
fingers, and her coronet sitting proudly upon her iron-grey
head.

“You do me proud, madam,” he returned. “But
heed me,” he unwisely added, “be careful not to overdo this
evening. Do not be ashamed to retire early if you tire.”

“I ain’t in my dotage yet,” the dowager
replied heatedly, prepared to do battle.

“You were last month,” her granddaughter
ventured from a safe distance. “I remember quite distinctly your
saying you were too old and frail to endure another Season.”

“That was last month, you impertinent minx.
All I really needed was some new blood around here,” her grace shot
back. “And what a prime sight she looks tonight, I must say. You’ll
have to barricade the windows tomorrow, Ashley, to keep away the
beaux our girls will have tumbling over themselves as they come to
pay their addresses.”

Tansy, who had kept to the background as much
as possible until now, moved forward to contradict her benefactor.
“It won’t be my hand the bucks will be battling over, your grace,
thank you anyway. I am a far shot from a debutante if you remember,
and as
dame de compagnie
do not entertain thoughts of
romance—except as they pertain to Lady Emily.”

“Oh, pooh,” the dowager returned with a wink.
“Ashley, tell the gel how the gentlemen pump you about your
cousin.”

Tansy’s russet-brown eyes turned in
astonishment when Avanoll concurred. “It is true, cousin. I can go
nowhere without being harassed with inquiries about the fair
Boadicea. It’s enough to send a fellow to the dogs directly, if
you’ll pardon my weak humor,” he ended with a reluctant grin.

In the two weeks since the accident to his
ankle, Tansy and Horatio had behaved with almost saintly
respectability, and he had unbent enough to begin to forgive—if not
to forget—his cousin’s lamentable lapses from grace. Tansy,
nonplused by this piece of news, silently led the way in to
supper.

During the quiet family meal that was taken
in the smaller dining room, the Duke took time to subject his
cousin to a covert, but most thorough, inspection. Her gown of soft
green was neither plain nor overpowering, and it set off previously
unnoticed auburn highlights in her long, brown hair, which had been
brushed on the curling stick earlier and was now caught in a
topknot from which a few tendrils had escaped in order to curl
about her nape. Her unusual height, he had already noted, did not
make her appear awkward, and she moved with a fluid grace that made
her skirts whisper about her feet like sea-foam. She had learned
her lessons well.