The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (9 page)

The dowager informed him that they were, as
any ninny could see, polishing the silver. “I know that,” his grace
said, “but why aren’t the servants doing it?”

“You can’t trust servants to take care of
such good things,” Tansy told him.

“Why not? I always have before.”

“Perhaps that explains all the dented silver
we found pushed into the back of the server,” Tansy suggested.

Lucinda held up a small tureen with a very
obvious dent in one side. ‘“This dim-seen track-mark of an ancient
crime.’ Sophocles,” she intoned solemnly.

Dunstan, taking pity on his master, who after
all wasn’t a bad sort, suggested he set up a place for him in the
morning room, to which Tansy replied, “Don’t be silly! Luncheon is
in little more than an hour; the Duke wont wish to disturb Cook
unduly. Besides, I doubt soft eggs and kippers would be good for
his constitution right now.”

“I can speak for myself,” Avanoll said with
some heat.

“So, speak,” said Tansy, whereupon his grace
reconsidered looking down on a plate of kippers and muttered that
he’d wait for luncheon.

Just then Farnley, who had been noticeable
only by his absence, appeared in the doorway holding a large glass
filled with a most revolting-looking concoction. “I got all the
things you asked for, Miss Tansy, and mixed them up just the way
you said.”

Farnley, although no fan of Tansy’s, was
reluctant to cross her in any way, and his absence from his
master’s side that morning was explained as necessary so that he
could go to the apothecary and gather the ingredients for a posset.
It was one that had worked like a charm every time when her Papa
was suffering the aftereffects of too much wine.

“Are you certain you have everything in
there? “ Tansy asked with a malicious grin.

“Yes, ma’am,” Farnley assured her. “Two owl’s
eggs, a clove of garlic, a half-glass of onion juice, a tablespoon
of eel’s blood, one day-old fish head, and some crushed parsley for
color.”

There was a loud moan from the opposite
doorway, and the Duke bolted toward the stairs with one hand to his
mouth. Lucinda turned to Emily and pointed out: “‘Learn to see in
another’s calamity the ill which you should ignore.’ Syrus.”

“That’s strange,” Tansy observed mildly, “it
always had the same effect on Papa, but he at least had to sniff it
first. It’s not meant to drink, you know. I imagine it would
probably kill an ox.”

A little less than an hour later—just as they
were about finished with the silver—the Duke, now fully dressed,
rejoined the company. “That posset of yours seems to have turned
the trick, cousin. My head is still a bit more tender than I’d
like, but my stomach is much improved.”

The dowager pointed out that his head
wouldn’t be so tender if he had not behaved like a spoiled baby.
“It wasn’t my idea,” her grandson excused himself. “I was driven to
drink by circumstance. Normally, I am most moderate in everything I
do.”

“Circumstance my great Aunt Alice,” the
dowager sniffed. “Bull-headed-ness is more like it, if you ask me.
Here you were with your housekeeper cheating you all hollow and you
too stubborn to see that no housekeeper at all is better than a
thieving housekeeper. No, instead of being grateful—”

“Grateful!” Avanoll broke in. “I am without a
housekeeper, my valet abandons me on orders from my cousin”—this
last said with a sneer—“my servants punish me for my rightful
display of anger by leaving me alone in my bedchamber to freeze or
starve or both, and all this for a few shillings I’d never have
missed anyway.”

Tansy objected to this statement. “Those few
shillings, from my best reckoning, add up to over three hundred
pounds in the last two years. Wellington could have fed his troops
on less than Mrs. Green was skimming off the household budget.”

Avanoll looked skeptical, but as Dunstan
nodded his head in agreement his skepticism turned to reluctant
belief. Perhaps if his head were not buzzing as if there were a
thousand bees building a nest between his ears, he might even have
found it in himself to be grateful. But it was, and he wasn’t.

Instead, he climbed upon his hobby horse and
started in to ride.

“Three hundred pounds, a thousand pounds—it
don’t make a pennysworth of difference to me as long as I can feed
my belly at my table in my house at my convenience. What good is
three hundred pounds if I’m to be made to suffer the country
bumpkin housekeeping methods my cousin believes proper—even when
applied to the establishment of a Duke?”

He knew his last thrust had hit home as Tansy
visibly flinched at the words “country bumpkin.” If but only for
the sake of his pride (and his buzzing head), he would have gone
on, had not the dowager come to her feet with an excruciatingly
loud screech of her scraped-back chair.

“Grandson, I have listened to all the
childish tantrums I intend to hear from you this morning,” she
announced sternly, reducing him with one sentence to the rank of
naughty toddler. “Of all the selfish-minded, poor-spirited, rude,
crude, and ungrateful wretches I have ever met, you, my buck, carry
off the palm. Now, can I be assured of an end to this nonsense or
must I first box your ears?”

Lucinda’s fragile nerves were becoming
terribly overset by all this shouting and she rose to retire from
the fray, leaving behind her some typical words of wisdom (indeed,
everyone would have felt sadly deprived if she hadn’t). “‘Of all
animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.’ Plato.”

Once Lucinda’s exit had broken some of the
tension, and since he was secretly grateful the light-fingered Mrs.
Green had been rousted, and because he had great respect for (and
not a little justified fear of) his formidable grandparent, and in
view of the hurt look in Tansy’s eyes which was causing him a
slight unfamiliar tender stirring in his chest, the Duke at once
bowed to his cousin and uttered an apology. He then walked over and
kissed the dowager on her overheated forehead and apologized once
again.

Emily, who throughout the past few minutes
had been twisting her head back and forth between the speakers with
an expression of unholy glee upon her pretty face, felt her
top-lofty brother may have been set down a peg or two—but not quite
enough.

“Ashley,” she said artlessly, “do you not
think a more fitting apology would be to take Cousin Tansy out for
an airing in the Park this very afternoon? I know she has been
simply pining to try out your new chestnuts. Why not hitch them to
your phaeton—you know, the one that is so dreadfully high that it
makes me quite faint with dizziness—and let Tansy take the
reins?”

She turned from one startled face to the
other and smiled an innocent cherubic smile. “Don’t you think that
would be a more fitting apology?”

Tansy never blushed in embarrassment; she
only flushed in anger. She was flushing now. The dowager, however,
seeing a chance to give Cupid a hand, quickly and quite firmly
endorsed the plan. Mentally she made a note to scold her
granddaughter later for her incidentally helpful but definitely
maliciously meant suggestion.

Avanoll, not trusting his voice, grated his
teeth together audibly (sending up a thundering racket in his
head), mutely agreed, and then quit the room. The dowager Duchess,
well satisfied with her morning’s work, went off to closet herself
away with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Lady Emily, having polished one half of a
saltcellar in all this time, laid down her polishing cloth and
retired posthaste to the safety of her chamber—out of reach of her
vengeful brother.

Dunstan, who had been busily trying to appear
invisible while soaking up every word of this juicy family
squabble, muttered something about securing more polish from the
kitchens and scurried away to give a line-by-line report of the
contretemps (complete with proper inflections and gestures) to his
good friend Leo, the Duke’s groom.

Farnley rushed out of the kitchen as soon as
Dunstan appeared, quick to seek out his master and try to get back
into his good graces—although he could not resist reminding his
grace of his prior dire predictions of this being only the
beginning of a most dreadful period in Avanoll history.

Tansy was left alone in the dining room,
deciding whether to hold the Duke to such blatant blackmail as
Emily forced on him or to be sweet and understanding and let him
off the hook. After all, the poor man had enough on his plate
without having to squire his “country bumpkin” beanpole of a cousin
through the Park at five o’clock with all the
ton
looking
on.

But then again, as she thought on it a bit
more, he really had been insufferable. She pictured his face as it
looked when the dowager was ringing that mighty peal over his head
and laughed aloud in the quiet room. Served him right, the pompous
ass! How dare he react so boorishly when her intentions were so
honorable? Besides, she really was itching to get her hands on
those horses of his!

She rose slowly and carelessly pushed an
errant brown curl back from her forehead—leaving behind a grey
smudge of polish that neatly balanced out the ones on her chin,
nose, and cheek—and went off to make sure her driving ensemble was
not in need of pressing. She’d show him a thing or two about
driving, or her name wasn’t Tansy Tamerlane!

A
t a quarter to the
hour of five, a dashing young lady in a deep gold pelisse and
matching bonnet was perched expectantly on a gilt chair in the
foyer of Avanoll House. Her entire attitude—from her stubbornly
uptilted chin to a single visible, stylishly-shod foot, at the
moment tapping a rapid tattoo against the tiled floor—bespoke an
impatience to be up and gone. Her strategic positioning declared
she was not to be out-maneuvered by a cowardly Duke bent on escape
from his promise.

“Blast” she heard from the top of the stairs.
She turned her head sharply, tilting her precariously perched
bonnet even further over one eye, to observe the Duke—looking
dashing in his three-caped drab-green driving coat, in the act of
putting one gleaming Hessian boot on the top stair.

“Afraid I’d renege, cousin?” he asked acidly
as he descended to the foyer and took his gloves and curly-brimmed
beaver from Dunstan’s outstretched hands. “Never let it be said I
was a white feather man who ran from battle, eh, Dunny? Ah,” he
breathed as if he had not erred on purpose, “I mean Dunstan, don’t
I? So sorry, old man, force of habit you know, since it was you, so
you tell me, who used to be fond of bouncing me on your knee when I
was but a babe. But, then, perhaps old ties were made to be broken
and old friendships forgot. Tut, tut!” He held up one large hand to
cut off the apology Dunstan had shown no intention of making.
“Though you have cut me to the quick by deserting me to go over
to,” he shot a quick look at Tansy, “the enemy, I am determined to
hide my pain and carry on with the National stiff upper lip. It is
expected, you know.”

“Oh, give over, Ashley. Can’t you see you are
not impressing Dunny one mite? Besides, your sorrow is all a hum so
you can delay our outing, and as I hear the horses now I suggest
you do not leave them standing in the breeze any longer.” Tansy
then dismissed the Duke with a slight smile and turned to the
butler. “Dunny, please remind Cook that dinner is for eight of the
clock, and that although I approved the menu it was with the
understanding the third remove be deleted.”

As Tansy turned for the door the Duke’s voice
rang out in devilish glee, “Oh, Dunstan, I am afraid I had a short
lapse of memory, it seems I have invited four guests to dine with
us—gentlemen I met at White’s this afternoon who were lamenting the
lack of a dinner engagement. As I could not bear to think my
friends at loose ends, I—foolishly forgetting I have no housekeeper
now that Miss Tamerlane has seen fit to dispose of the woman I had
employed—begged them to take their mutton with me tonight.”

His grace, suddenly feeling better than he
had all day, turned for the door and encountered Tansy’s wickedly
dancing eyes.

“Dunny,” she trilled, “have two places
removed from the table, if you would please. It seems I have
overestimated his grace’s circle of friends. He has only four
willing to play cat’s paw for him, it seems.” Tansy cocked her head
toward the door. “Your grace—the horses are waiting. Shall we
go?”

The Duke stormed angrily through the doorway
and down the steps ahead of his cousin, determined to leave her
standing in his dust as he sprung his pair away from her. But by
the time he reached the phaeton his sense of humor took over.
Infuriating wretch, he thought. Meddling, bothersome, clever,
intelligent minx! Tansy saw his shoulders start to shake and then
heard the clear baritone melody of his laugh.

He about-faced and held out his hand, saying,
“Cousin, you have bested me on all suits, but never let it be said
a Benedict was a poor loser. Allow me to help you up and, if you
don’t mind, as the horses are fresh I will hold the reins until we
are in the Park. Then I shall turn them over to you to see if you
handle them as prettily as you just handled me.”

Looking back at the door and catching the
smile on Dunstan’s face, he pressed his luck even further. “Dunny,”
he called, “please tell Farnley to lay out my blue for this
evening. I wish to look my best at my cousin’s table.”

“Yes, your grace,” Dunstan replied, forgiving
the once bounced and tickled baby with relief. “At once, sir!”

Avanoll had little trouble handling the fresh
horses in the afternoon traffic, and in a few minutes they were
turning into the Park. There they joined the press of curricles,
phaetons, landaus, barouches, and tilburys—and their
modishly-dressed occupants—all busy seeing and being seen by the
rest of the
ton
as they bowed and nodded and occasionally
condescended to stop and pass a few moments in conversation
(successfully jamming all traffic in both directions and
guaranteeing them the notice of their fellow promenaders—at least
the ones not busy trying to keep their showy, temperamental cattle
in check).