The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (6 page)

The unlikely goddess gave a slight curtsy and
replied, “Not a goddess, I am sure, and I am at the moment anything
but wrathful, but thank you for the compliment, dear lady.”

“Yes, well,” his grace interposed before this
show of mutual admiration got out of hand, with questions still
mainly unanswered. “Briefly, Aunt, briefly, succinctly, and to the
point if you please, tell me if your mission tonight ended in
success or failure. In short, is my sister’s reputation
intact?”

His aunt bristled slightly but condescended
to reiterate: “‘When I’m not thank’d enough, I’ve done my duty, and
I’ve done no more.’ Fielding.”

As Tansy hid an appreciative smile at this
sharp-as-a-saber-thrust retort, Avanoll strove for more
clarification. “You kept it simple, I hope. And I will not have to
explain away Emily’s amazing recovery from, say, cholera, in the
next few days?”

The insulted lady sprang up from her
comfortable chair, tipped back her becurled head the better to see
this Doubting Thomas who refused to take her words (or a selection
of other people’s words) as the truth. “‘It is not every question
that deserves an answer.’ Publilius Syrus.” With that, she picked
up her voluminous skirts with the delicate repugnance often shown
when forced to step around a slimy puddle, and made to quit the
room.

“If you would but wait a moment, dear Aunt, I
would like to express my thanks for your kind action this evening,”
the Duke cajoled.

The lady sniffed. ‘“In fine, nothing is said
now that has not been said before.” Terence.”

“But you will forgive me before you rush
off?”

By this time his aunt had reached the
doorway. “‘Pardon one offense and you encourage the commission of
more.’ Syrus,” she said. Her stern visage and pudgy, waggling
finger presented a grand imitation of a Prophet of Doom,
forecasting dire consequences if she were to soften her
attitude.

Avanoll bit out a short, pithy epithet before
the peal of his cousin’s unleashed mirth brought him back to an
awareness of his surroundings. “Aunt,” he called out, taking a step
toward the door. “You have not been introduced to—oh, damn and
blast, why do I bother?” he ended as the last row of flounce
disappeared up the staircase.

He approached his cousin and opened his mouth
for, unbelievably, yet another apology, but Tansy forestalled him
by saying, “If it is of any consolation, your grace, you have my
deepest sympathy. I’m astonished you haven’t forsworn your title
and flown off to the wilds of India in search of some peace.
However,” she continued, pausing to stifle yet another yawn, “if
there are no more of our eccentric relations yet to climb out of
the woodwork tonight, I would appreciate being shown to my
bed.”

At that moment Dunstan, the Benedicts’
long-standing (and long-suffering) butler, knocked and entered at
the Duke’s call. “The young lady’s chamber is ready, sir, and a
small repast already by the fire.” Dunstan then bowed and left the
room, Tansy in his wake.

“Wait, Miss Tamerlane. If you are to remain
here there are some rules of common courtesy that must be adhered
to, even if my theatrically inclined aunt chose to ignore them in
order to enact a dramatic exit. I cannot countenance another such
as she without slipping my wits entirely.” Avanoll locked his hands
behind his back and paced importantly about the carpet, his
cousin’s eyes boring into the back of his jacket. “As it is never
too early or too late to learn, we shall now have lesson number
one. I am a Duke, but you are not a Duchess. You do not dismiss me
or leave a room I am inhabiting without first gaining my
permission. You beg my pardon to retire.”

“Oh, bother,” his cousin groaned. “Wasn’t
once enough? All right,” she decided after swallowing down hard on
her rising temper, and dropped into a curtsy that would have been
tolerable had she not caught her hem in her jean boot,
necessitating the putting out of one hand to steady herself against
a footstool. She rose awkwardly and began in a monotone. “I am
mightily fatigued, your grace, and humbly beg your kind permission
to...”

“Damme, Miss Tamerlane, don’t be impertinent
or...”

“... retire to my bedchamber where I
shall...” she persisted, singsong.

“Enough!”

“... immediately ring for hot water in which
to soak my tired, aching feet. Standing on ceremony, I find, gives
me a royal pain!” she finished doggedly before allowing a
self-satisfied smirk—no amount of indulgence could term it a
smile—and quitting the room.

The Duke sank into his chair, dumbfounded.
Did he still harbor enough vitality to rant and rave, or should he
take the coward’s route out and allow himself to be amused? He
decided on the latter. Between smiles and frowns he thought back
over the events since his acquaintance with his new cousin and
their bizarre conversations. He chuckled and unwittingly repeated a
few of her statements aloud. The chuckles grew into a halfhearted
laugh, and the laugh into a near fit of hilarity which he would
later attribute to his exhausted state.

A housemaid passing by overheard Avanoll’s
laughter, peeked in to see her master the sole occupant of the
room, and scurried off to the kitchens to wonder aloud that it was
a rare treat to see his grace half-foxed and all silly-willy like
plain folks.

Dunstan heard, sighed deeply, and ordered
another decanter of port for the drawing room, sure to find the one
he put there earlier sadly depleted, before coldly reminding the
housemaid it was not her place to make sport of her betters.

The Duke’s valet, Farnley, who had sneaked
down to the kitchens in the hopes of begging some bonemeal for a
charm he was making to ward off warts, shrugged his shoulders and
offered a silent plea he would not be called upon to undress his
grace—a very huge man—in an unconscious state. Offering a further
entreaty skyward that his grace would not slop wine on his
waistcoat, he repaired to his master’s chambers to lay out some
night clothes.

He was very surprised once there to meet a
sober Duke, with not a sign of the drink that had supposedly sent
him into a fit of the giggles while all alone in the drawing room.
Farnley raised his eyes to the heavens, apologized that his prayers
had been unnecessary, but thanked the gods anyway—just to keep them
happy in case he ever had further need of them.

If that Miss Tamerlane Dunstan had told him
about caused his grace’s strange behavior, and if it was true she
was to be living with them all in London for the Season (such news
travels fast belowstairs), Farnley felt he would be making many
calls on the deities in the coming months.

T
he main drawing
room of Avanoll House was a huge chamber, its confines done in the
classical manner—with festoons of draperies at each long window,
light paneled walls embossed with wooden bouquets of flowers caught
up with rams’ heads and raised bundles of husks banded about with
knots of ribbon. Its ceiling was a Cipriani work of art, consisting
as it did of small armies of nymphs, goddesses, and assorted
amorini cavorting within their intricate arabesque borders.

The furnishings were for the most part
compatible with their background, Hepplewhite’s work being most
frequently represented. The only flaws to offend the discerning eye
were to be found in the existence (in a far-off, shadowy corner) of
two of Thomas Sheraton’s mistakes in judgment—which Aunt Lucinda
foisted off on her relatives as being “sentimental treasures” left
to her by her late husband and vowed never to be allowed far from
her sight.

The “treasures”—or chairs, as they could
loosely be termed—were sufficiently alike as to be considered a
pair, yet dissimilar enough to inflict not one but two separate
insults to anyone of any discernment.

The first (for although painful to describe,
the effort to do so exhibits the magnanimity of the Duke’s
indulgence) was composed of a griffin’s head, neck, and wings,
united by a crosspiece of wood, on top of which was draped a length
of fabric that was tossed over to the back and tacked down. The
front was made up of a dog’s shaggy, maned head and legs, joined
together with a reeded rail.

For the second creation, substitute two camel
heads and two of their legs combined with two lions’ heads and two
leonine forepaws, add the same draperies, and the picture is
complete.

When asked his opinion of the chairs, Ashley
termed them painful. Emily pronounced them vulgar. But the dowager,
exercising the license that comes with age, did not mince words.
“Anyone who would profess a liking for those monstrosities is
either crazy or blind—or both. I’d as soon plant my rump on a cold
stone floor than risk losing it entirely to one of those mangy
beasts.”

So it was that the persons assembled were for
the most part congregated in one end of the large room. Lady Emily
fidgeting and complaining from her perch on the edge of a
heart-backed japanned chair, his grace absently gazing at the
dancing flames in the grate of the Adam fireplace, the mantel of
which was serving for the moment to hold up his leaning body, and
the dowager Duchess herself lounging against the back of a
fan-backed sofa.

A good twenty feet downwind (as the dowager
termed it), Aunt Lucinda hopped back and forth between the two
Sheraton chairs, so as to not favor either one overmuch with her
attentions.

Just as the Brachet clock (a Thomas Johnson
creation hung all over with boughs, leaves, steeples, and even a
vacant-faced owl balancing on one spikey, gold limb—the entirety
perched on an ornate wall shelf sporting the tragedy-steeped phiz
of some anonymous Greek sage) struck eleven, Dunstan pushed open
the double doors from the foyer and announced, “Miss Tansy
Tamerlane, your graces, my lady,” and Miss Tamerlane walked
reluctantly into the room.

“Tansy,” his grace gasped. “My God, no wonder
you dragged your feet in revealing that preposterous handle.”

And then he laughed. Miss Tamerlane, no
faint-hearted baby, and with her green years far behind her, was
not crushed by this blatant display of mirth at her expense. She
drew herself up to her not inconsequential height, crossed the room
with firm—if unfashionably lengthy—strides to stop not two feet
away from her tormentor, and looked him up and down with an
expression of mild distaste. “I agree, my name is not on a par with
those appellations taken from Nature, the Bible, or some great
literary work. But I fail to see the reason for such unbridled
humor from a man who must carry the handle of Ashley. Personally,
it puts me in mind of the messy, sooty pile found in the grate
after a fire.”

The Duke’s laughter ceased abruptly and his
face took on a fierce scowl. Lady Emily tittered behind the safety
of a concealing hand. Aunt Lucinda missed the exchange entirely and
decided her chairs would consider her time spent with them
sufficient and hastened to a more advantageous seat.

The dowager, that formidable dragon who
still, when the mood struck her, ruled her family with an iron
hand, choked on the sherry she had been sipping and then exclaimed
roundly, “Oh, I do like this gel! Tansy, my dear, come sit beside
me and we shall begin to get acquainted. I understand the
connection with the Benedicts is tenuous, but valid just the same.
Indeed,” the thin, hatchet-faced woman observed as her keen eyes
took a quick mental inventory of the rather dowdy young woman
before her, “if I harbored any fears of an imposter trying to foist
herself off on us they have been quickly laid to rest. You are, in
build as well as manner, a pattern copy of your great-grandmother
Benedict, whose likeness hangs in the long gallery in Avanoll Hall.
Ashley, surely you see the likeness?”

Ashley probed his memory until he recollected
the portrait his grandmother had in mind. “But. Grandmama, the girl
in that painting was most handsome and, er, I mean, perhaps there
is some slight resemblance. Both being tall and brown-haired,” he
ended lamely.

Emily chose this time to make her presence
known by pointing out her brother’s near faux-pas. “Shame on you
brother, for speaking so thoughtlessly! How did you ever last in
the Diplomatic Office during the war without raising the backs of
at least a hundred dignitaries?”

Aunt Lucinda broke in before Avanoll could
answer his sister. “‘Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and
but one tongue, to the end we should hear and see more than we
speak.’ Socrates.”

“Whom are you admonishing with that little
tidbit, Aunt—Emily or me?” Avanoll asked.

“‘Children and fooles cannot lye.’ Heywood,”
his aunt returned doggedly.

“There is no question into which category you
fall, Lucinda,” the dowager sniffed. “You are nothing but an
educated parrot, mouthing words and never ideas. Do be quiet before
I throw a shawl over your cage to shut you up.”

Miss Tamerlane, or Tansy as she had admitted
to being named, was beginning to feel quite at home with both this
odd little group and their assorted quirks.

Suddenly the dowager’s attention returned to
the girl now sitting beside her. She asked Tansy for her full name,
pointing out that perhaps it wouldn’t sound so much like the
heroine in a Penny Dreadful.

“Tansy Marie Antoinette Tamerlane! Good God,
were your parents foxed at the time?”

Tansy smiled and took the outburst in good
form. “Mama had a failing for things French, though I doubt she
would have so blessed me if she knew how tragically it all ended
for that poor lady. Mama was very superstitious, you know. To her
such a name would now mean I shall come to a sad end. Then again,
as I think on it, perhaps she would not have been too unduly upset.
I fear she never quite forgave me for coming along and disrupting
her organized little life of tatting, tattling, and tittering with
her neighbors. Rather like Nero fiddling while Rome burned,
considering the never-ending coils my Papa was forever blundering
into whenever left to his own devices.”