The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (25 page)

Digby thought for a minute, chewing on his
bottom lip to aid his concentration, then supplied, “Can’t say as I
am that comfortable in town as yet, except with my own fellows.
Once away from them it seems I’m forever landing in the basket
because I’m still rather green. Just last week,” he went on in
explanation, “my Club, a dandy place, was closed down for repairs.
One of our parties had got a bit out of hand, and what with the
broken windows in the dining room and the smoke and dirt from the
fire one of the fellows decided to light in the middle of the card
room floor—he had complained of a chill, you see—the rooms had to
be vacated for a space. Anyway, as I understand is the custom, we
were invited to use the facilities at another Club farther along on
St. James’s. Now you must understand, ladies, at my Club it is all
very informal. If someone wishes to gain another’s attention he has
only to aim a bit of roll or something at his head.”

He paused a moment to allow Tansy to chuckle
a bit, then went on with his story.

“Well let me tell you, this other
establishment was as far from my Club as chalk from cheese. None of
the members could have been less than three score and ten, and a
duller set of dogs you’ll never find. One old boy propped up in a
wing chair near the fire appeared dead, but I didn’t venture close
enough to find out. Instead I sat in a rather uncomfortable chair
near the door—or at least I did until a member of the Club advised
me that it was reserved for another member and I was trespassing,
so to speak. As nicely as I could I told the man I would be more
than pleased to remove myself when the man in question wished to
seat himself. That’s when, stiff and seemingly highly insulted, the
member told me that the reserved chair was for a member who had
been dead and put to bed with a shovel some five years past. Well,
I sprung up quickly then, you can be sure, and bolted from the Club
as fast as might be, promising myself to never go there again, no
matter what the inducement.”

“Now that was a highly amusing tale, Digby,”
Tansy informed him. “If you could but relate the thing half so
amusingly to Emily, she would be forced to realize you have the
makings of a tolerable wit. As for feeling uncomfortable with the
elder, more staid of our Society, you are not alone in your
feelings. No, I would say our main concern is to somehow show
yourself to a better advantage where Emily is concerned. The
question remains, though, as to how.”

Silence reigned for a while, and then Aunt
Lucinda’s voice started out low, only to gain volume and confidence
as it went on. “‘I know the disposition of women: when you will,
they won’t, when you won’t, they set their hearts upon you of their
own inclination.’ Terence.”

“Aunt!” Tansy said, a look of astonishment
and dawning knowledge on her face. “Are you suggesting we
deliberately set out to trick Emily into seeing Digby in a
different light?”

With a grin that could only be termed
malicious, Aunt Lucinda replied almost defiantly, “‘I know, indeed,
the evil of that I purpose; but my inclination gets the better of
my judgment.’ Euripides.”

Digby was totally at sea and admitted it, so
Tansy explained patiently, “What my aunt has so cleverly suggested
is that you drop your pursuit of Emily, turning to her a cold
shoulder even, and instead pursue some other female. If Emily
harbors any feelings for you at all, she will become mightily
chagrined and discover where her heart truly stands in the
matter.”

“Isn’t that a bit underhanded?” the upright
young gentleman asked in a quavering voice.

‘“Crime is honest for a good cause.’ Syrus,”
Aunt Lucinda shot back incontrovertibly.

Tansy pooh-poohed any further objections and
turned to her aunt. “That leaves us with but one problem,” she
pointed out.

Her aunt nodded sagely. “‘Who is to bell the
cat? It is easy to propose impossible remedies.’ Aesop!”

“Huh?” Digby mumbled.

“Yes, most assuredly, Aunt,’ Tansy agreed.
“Who? Who can we enlist to play the recipient of swain Digby’s
romantic overtures?”

At last the light dawned on Digby and he
understood the ladies’ scheme. “Oh, I really don’t believe such a
plan possible...” he began timidly, only to be cut off by Aunt
Lucinda’s sharp, “‘Though a man be wise it is no shame for him to
live and learn.’ Sophocles.”

“I agree with my aunt, Digby. After all, we
have nothing to lose by such an experiment, do we? And I, I have
decided, am the best person to be the new object of your
affections. Living in the same house, cheek-by-jowl so to speak
with Emily, has its advantages—added to the elimination of the sad
complication of any young miss chosen at random being heartbroken
when you withdraw your attentions.”

After a few more feeble protests from Digby,
the matter was considered settled. Tansy’s new suitor was given a
detailed list of the duties required of him, and sent off in a
slightly bewildered state to ponder the bizarre direction his life
had taken.

Aunt Lucinda retired to her rooms, highly
satisfied with the morning’s events. After all, she had suffered
much from Emily’s selfishness in the past and could be excused if
she was hoping to get back a little of her own.

If Tansy had any second thoughts or
misgivings about her role of love interest to an immature, naïve
swain, she kept them to herself. And if there were apt to be any
undesirable repercussions, these too she chose to disregard as
risks necessary to the success of the plan. After all, she had
already decided to let the dowager in on the scheme, and Emily—the
object of the whole charade—could only benefit from a bit of
comeuppance.

But Tansy neglected to consider the possible
incorrect conclusions that could be arrived at by another member of
the household, the usually astute Duke, and the fine muddle these
conclusions could create.

I
t all began simply
enough. Tansy and Aunt Lucinda let the dowager in on their little
plan, gaining her full approval and not a few eminently helpful
suggestions aimed at teaching “that tiresome chit” a well-deserved
lesson.

Digby stopped by in the mornings to escort
Tansy on her errands around town. More often than not he was then
invited to luncheon at Avanoll House, and most afternoons either
rode with Tansy in the Park or could be seen up beside her in the
high-perch phaeton, a seat of honor envied by more than a few. In
the evenings it was invariably Digby Eagleton who squired the
Avanoll ladies to the amusement of their choice.

By the end of the first week, Digby’s
near-constant presence in Grosvenor Square was beginning to grate
mightily on Lady Emily’s nerves. Not only was the nodcock always
underfoot like a scrap of tarred paper stuck to her dainty slipper,
but he had consistently made the object of his presence in the
house more than sufficiently clear.

At first she had assumed—quite naturally,
considering Digby’s past track record of faithful adoration—that
she was the target of his concerted assault. But slowly it dawned
on her that Tansy, her long-in-the-tooth and penniless cousin, was
the bait around which Digby was dangling.

A reasonable person would have been thankful
her unwanted suitor had taken the hint and cried off, but Emily was
never known for her reasonableness. Instead, she reacted in typical
Emily fashion.

At first she treated the entire situation as
one huge joke. “How too, too embarrassing for you, dear cousin, to
have that die-away Digby Eagleton always about, haunting the house
and harassing you with his love-sick stares,” she commiserated
companionably. “It really is too bad of him, but then I did warn
you he was a bit of a leech. You are kind to have become a martyr
in my cause, diverting his schoolboy romantic attentions upon
yourself, but I am so sorry he is so thick he does not take the
hint and just go away.”

“My dear child,” Tansy replied, with—she
hoped—an incredulous intake of breath, “whatever can you mean? Dear
Digby only visits with my permission. I find him of all things
agreeable, and a pleasant, intelligent, and quite amusing
companion.”

This answer, so contrary to what she had
expected, took Emily aback a moment, but she rallied by offering
with a touch of hauteur. “To each his own, I imagine. Very well,
cousin, I offered him to you once before and fair’s fair. You may
have him.”

Tansy looked at Emily very levelly and
answered with maddening calm, “Why, thank you, cousin, but I was
not aware he was yours to give.”

With her smile frozen on her slightly white
face, Emily stood like a vision chiseled in marble while Tansy
swept past her and went off to inform her co-conspirators of the
first bit of reaction to come from their “Digby Plan.”

“‘Pride, when puffed up, vainly, with many
things unseasonable unfitting; mounts the wall, only to hurry to
that fatal fall.’ Sophocles,” Aunt Lucinda quoted passionately.

“We have set the pigeon amongst the hawks for
sure,” the dowager laughed in high good humor. “If there’s anything
bound to nudge Emily into making a direct set at poor Digby, it is
the idea that he and not she put an end to their little romance—one
sided though it may have been.”

That same night Digby was to escort the
ladies to a ball at Lady Sefton’s, and upon his arrival at Avanoll
House he presented Tansy with a small bouquet of flowers in a gold
filigree bouquetière and only vaguely inquired as to Lady Emily’s
health before turning his attention back to Tansy, thereby rudely
cutting off Emily’s flustered reply in mid-sentence.

The following afternoon Tansy and Digby were
closeted in the small salon (with Aunt Lucinda’s softly snoring
form ensconced in a far-away cushioned chair in order to observe
the conventions), enjoying a lively discussion of Mrs. Godwin’s
pamphlet, “Vindication of the Rights of Women,” that lasted through
tea-time. Tansy was much relieved to find that Digby had a good
mind and was more than just a pretty face.

Emily, however, was noticeably annoyed by
this further impolite snubbing of her company; and the Duke,
painfully aware of Digby’s constant presence under his roof and
more than a little agitated at the conclusions he had drawn from
it, was more than half willing to join forces with his sister that
evening when the subject of a certain young man’s irritating
invasion of their home was broached by her at the dinner table.

“Last night at Lady Sefton’s I was asked,
quite maliciously I assure you, if I was aware of a Situation
between my chaperon and Digby Eagleton,” Emily began baldly. “It
quite set my teeth on edge, let me tell you, and when it was
suggested Tansy had taken the inner track on a fine young man with
nice expectations and how did I feel now that my cousin had stolen
Digby from me, I knew for certain that this ridiculous circumstance
could not be allowed to continue without my becoming a common
laughingstock—not that my affections were ever engaged in the first
place. It is simply the principle of the thing, you know,” she
ended lamely.

“I never thought I should see the day when I
was forced to agree with m’sister, but I concur. This Digby fellow
constantly haunting the house has set some tongues to wagging in my
ear also. And I don’t much care for the remarks I am forced to
endure.”

The dowager tried lamely to pooh-pooh the
gossip as the vulgar tattling of a bunch of mischief-making old
tabbies, and too piddling to acknowledge, but her grandson was
having none of it. He informed her that he had no stomach to face
the gossips and their mindless conjectures on the goings-on in
Grosvenor Square.

One acquaintance even had the audacity to
ask, he told his assembled family (and Dunstan, so that it might be
safely said the entire household knew the whole of it within the
hour), whether Emily and Tansy had thrown dice with the winner
getting all rights to Digby. Again, he warned, he refused to be so
unjustly beleaguered by such nonsense.

Aunt Lucinda took advantage of a slight pause
in the conversation caused by Dunstan’s faultlessly executed
removal of the soup dishes to declare, “‘Guilty consciences always
make people cowards.’ Pilpay,” a pronouncement that nearly caused
Emily’s half-eaten consommé to be dumped down her exposed back by
the astonished butler. Imagine the effrontery, all but calling the
Duke a white-feather to his face!

Tansy stepped bravely into the breach before
the vilified Duke could mouth a crushing set-down and disclaimed,
“But this is all such a big to-do about nothing. Digby,” and she
winced a bit at Avanoll’s piercing look when she spoke of the young
Mr. Eagleton so familiarly, “is merely a very good friend. I find
his company much to my liking, as I think he finds mine, but to say
we are harboring some grand passion is ludicrous.”

The dowager, after giving Aunt Lucinda a
meaningful look, suggested, “Perhaps young Digby is nursing a—as
you said, my dear—grand passion for you, just as, if memory serves,
he once believed himself in love with my silly granddaughter here.
Emily’s protests earlier lead me to believe she is not wholly
overjoyed by his defection, and perhaps your friendship with the
young man should be discouraged so that two innocent people,” here
she bestowed a rare indulgent smile on her granddaughter, “should
not be harmed.”

Aunt Lucinda picked up her cue admirably and
scolded Tansy by waving a fork—with which she had just speared a
small boiled potato—at her and cited, “‘Never thrust your own
sickle into another’s corn.’ Syrus.”

Things were not going along quite the way
Emily had predicted. She did not want Digby back because Tansy had
retired from the field, she wanted him to come begging forgiveness
for his treasonable change of loyalty after he had dropped her
usurping cousin flat. “I never said I wanted Digby back!” she cried
hotly. “I just think it is wrong for Tansy to have him.”