The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (4 page)

Tansy spoke again. “Why, the nose, of course.
How could I, of all people, have failed to immediately recognize
the Benedict nose! It is my father’s to the life. Horrid beaky
thing, ain’t it? Oh, excuse me. Of course you cannot know. You must
think me daft—or worse. My name is Tamerlane. My great grandmother
was a Benedict. Her daughter married a Tamerlane, and they produced
my father who, in turn, produced me. Great grandmother Benedict was
first cousin to your great grandfather. We are cousins,” she ended
unnecessarily.

“A bit distant, I must say,” put in the Duke
quellingly, exchanging the label of Bedlamite for the milder one of
eccentric—but definitely quite reluctant to claim kinship with the
girl.

“Distant enough to be almost nonexistent,”
she agreed cheerfully, “which is why I did not contact you upon my
father’s death two years ago. Or rather, why I did not contact your
father. His was the last name entered in the family Bible. I did
not know of your existence.”

“Or I of yours, might I add,” commented the
Duke, still secretly feeling the niggling idea he was holding
converse in the middle of the North Road at twilight with a
madwoman. Well, perhaps not mad, but definitely ill-bred, he
mentally decided.

Emily, who had taken in as much as her brain
could without the benefit of constant repetition, added her bit to
the bizarre conversation while clapping her kid-encased hands, “Oh,
how famous! Ashley! Isn’t it wonderful? We have a Brand New Cousin.
Well, not brand new, precisely. I imagine you have been around for
some time.” She halted abruptly, put her hand to her mouth and
giggled. “Oh, that didn’t come out just right, did it? I just mean
you are new to us. And I have discovered you! Miss Tamerlane, you
must come home with us to Grosvenor Square for a nice long visit,
you Simply Must! I knew there was something special about you when
you so masterfully put that hateful Godfrey to the
right-about.”

She grasped one of Miss Tamerlane’s
none-too-clean hands between her own two immaculately-gloved ones
and turned rapturous china-blue eyes upon her brother. “I declare
Ashley, it is Fate. Please say we can keep her, dear, dear Ashley,”
she pleaded—for all the world as if she were a nursery tot begging
to keep a scruffy, smelly, stray dog she had dragged home.

T
he duke of Avanoll
was not ordinarily left at a loss for words. Indeed, many of his
cronies would have gladly plunked down a hefty sum to be privileged
to see this normally almost infuriatingly articulate man in his
present state. He was utterly without a rejoinder. His mind,
however, was tripping over itself in rapid thought—and not a single
one of those thoughts appealed.

The gel was a positive quiz. Even seated as
she was in the gig, he could see she would tower over every female
he knew, although she would fall far short of his own
greater-than-average height. Her clothes and hair were abominable,
her speech perhaps unexceptional in a man but totally untenable in
a lady of quality. She was rude, unmannered, and, in total,
unacceptable to the Duke’s mental picture of what any of his blood
kin should be.

“I believe, Emily, my pet, that Miss
Tamerlane said she was on her way to a new post,” the Duke finally
offered without any real hope he would be heeded.

“A position! Governess, no doubt. Ashley, how
can you allow a Benedict to hire herself out like any Common
Person?” Lady Emily fairly shrieked.

“If I may interject a moment?” Tansy began
coolly. “First, I am barely a Benedict. I did not even get the
nose—perhaps my one blessing. Secondly, I deeply resent being
talked around and across as if I were a piece of goods on a store
shelf. In my opinion—”

“Pish-tosh to your opinion, dear cousin,” cut
in Lady Emily. “You are like a lone ship in a storm-tossed sea, and
none but your family should even be contemplated as a safe nesting
place. Am I not correct, Ashley? We have A Duty, do we not?”

The duke opened his mouth, appeared about to
speak, and then folded his lips together in a thin line. He opened
them once more and admitted his defeat. “Dear sister,” he began,
“your metaphor is mixed but, rest assured, your point has been
made.” He turned, his eyes to Miss Tamerlane, manfully suppressing
a wince, and added, “Miss Tamerlane, my home is at your disposal.
It would give my sister and myself extreme, er, pleasure if you
were to avail yourself of our hospitality for,” he sighed, “as long
as you wish.”

“Your pleasure? Ha! In a cocked hat it is,”
Tansy returned with some heat. “You long for my presence the way
your chef yearns for the sight of roaches in his pantry. Thank you
for the gesture, all references to stormy seas and warm nests are
greatly appreciated, but Tamerlanes do not sink to charity nor fly
to nests lined with conscience-soothing featherdown reluctantly
offered by almsgiving hypocrites who would rather wish me at the
bottom of the ocean. One can drown so easily in the outpourings of
pity, you know—besides finding so little warmth in the molting
feathers that cloak all obligatory poor-relations.”

When the import of these words was realized
(at least in part) by Lady Emily, she started in again to snuffle.
The Duke, who by rights should have felt the heavy mantle of
familial obligation floating blissfully off his already burdened
shoulders, was amazed to find himself irrationally incensed by this
cavalier refusal of his largesse. Ignorant drab, he thought,
heedless of the trap he was setting himself. Does she know she has
just bailed out of one of the deepest gravy boats in all England?
And how dare she flippantly snap her fingers at me, the head of the
family and, worse yet, by her thoughtless cruelty reduce my poor
baby sister to tears?

Actually, poor Lady Emily, left to her own
devices, would probably forget the girl in less time than it took
to ride back to town. But who’s to say she wouldn’t take it into
her head to pout, even go into a minor decline? Females could be
touchy that way. Witness the dowager, for heaven’s sake!

“Fie, my good woman! Fie and foul!” the Duke
blustered, as he had always supposed a head of family was called to
do, for hadn’t his pater always gotten his way by merely railing
louder and longer than anyone else? “Look what you have done to my
dear little sister.” (Far be it from him to remark on any lowering
blow to his own mighty Benedict pride.) “I did not believe a member
of the gentle sex could be so cruel. To think you would so malign
your kinswoman as harboring such self-serving motives, when her
golden pure heart was—and is still even after being forced to hear
such calumnies—full of none but the milk of human kindness.”

“Oh, give over, your grace,” Tansy came back
with a barely suppressed smile. “I cannot abide another muddled
metaphor. You know as well as I that I regard this watering pot by
my side as no less than the greatest of Samaritans. It is you I
accuse of baser reasons for your half-hearted invitation to visit
your establishment.”

The Duke colored angrily. “If you think I
have designs on your virtue, my good woman,” and his voice was
frosty as a winter morning, “let me cast your fears upon the
winds.” That should squash her, he congratulated himself.

But Tansy only laughed, a clear, bell-like
tinkling laugh that set the Duke’s hackles even more on edge. “I
had hardly any fears of cousinly compromise, your grace,” she
retorted gaily. “My greatest fear is the belief you mean to make of
me an ape leader-cum-warden to this young puss here, and so free
yourself for your own selfish pursuits. Come now, cousin, make a
clean breast of it. You see in me a golden opportunity to unload
your frisky little filly into hands you think capable of holding
her.”

“Oh!” protested Lady Emily, much offended.
“She is as bad as you, Ashley. As if I am either a feline or a
horse! I have quite changed my mind. If Miss Tamerlane wants no
part of us I think it unseemly to embarrass her or ourselves by
begging.”

Lady Emily did not know it, but her statement
set the seal on the matter as far as his grace was concerned. Here
indeed was just the chaperon he needed for his witless sister.
Egad, that antidote would give even the most desperate
fortune-hunter pause. The Duke felt a conspiratorial smile pass
between himself and Miss Tamerlane. The lady obviously knew her own
worth. To his amazement the exchanged smiles widened into shared
grins, and the grins burst forth into laughter. Within moments the
two adversaries were chortling with unholy glee.

Lady Emily, her histrionics totally ignored,
lifted her face from her bone-dry handkerchief and looked from
Tansy to her brother, dissolved over a joke she could not
quite—thank heavens, or there would be the devil to pay—fathom. She
refused to be shut out from any gaiety, and so half-heartedly
chuckled along with them for a little while, until the effort of
her forced laughter was overcome by the numbing cold penetrating
her fashionable half-boots.

“Ashley,” she pouted. “Ashley!” she cried
again, whereupon the ridiculous laughter died raggedly away. “Are
we to sit here all the afternoon? I begin to feel the chill.”

His grace looked down at Miss Tamerlane,
testing the tenuous rapport that had been established, and cocked
one fine dark eyebrow. “Well, cousin?”

Tansy, finding herself the object of two sets
of penetrating blue eyes, shrugged her shabby brown shoulders and
surrendered to her—as Lady Emily termed it—Fate. She arched one
sable-brown eyebrow in mimicry of his grace and said, “Lead on,
Macduff. We shall follow you with all deliberate speed. Which is to
say we should make London by late December, I should think, if
noble Dobbin’s performance to date is to be used as a
yardstick.”

“We shall hire a vehicle in the village where
you borrowed that sad beast—and I recollect his name as Horace, I
believe. Perhaps you have insulted him. I have no wish to spend the
next nine months completing a journey that should take no more than
three hours. Turn his carcass if you can, cousin, and let us be
off.”

Tansy bowed to the inevitable. “Get going,
Horace,” she urged.

“Horace,” the Duke moaned as the aged
creature groaned himself into a laborious turn. “Why, in the name
of all that’s holy, would anyone—even a blacksmith—name a horse
Horace?”

“Oh, not the blacksmith. I think that worthy
dubbed our noble steed Dobbin,” Tansy corrected as they inched
their way back from whence they had come. “I renamed him Horace
after a childhood pet of mine that also refused to heed my
commands.”

“A singularly intelligent creature, I would
say. What was it? One of those repulsive little lap dogs with a
pushed in phiz?”

“You insult me, sir. I would rather forego a
pet than have one of those horrid little beasts about, forever
yapping and becoming nervous all over the drawing room rugs.
Perhaps owing to my own size, I prefer large dogs. Large, romping,
tongue-lolling, tail-wagging brutes who are invariably affectionate
to a turn. Besides, Horace was not a dog. He was a goldfish.” This
last was delivered with a solemn face that could not conceal the
twinkling of two russet-brown eyes.

His grace was not daunted. “And he did not
heel? Poor specimen, I dare say.”

Tansy agreed gravely. “Indeed, sir, you are
so right. In the end, I was forced to be content with the ordinary
tricks: fetching a stick, catching a ball between his jaws. You
know the sort, I’m sure.”

This was too much, even for his grace. “Were
you spanked often as a child. Miss Tamerlane?”

Speechless for a moment, Tansy merely shook
her head.

“A pity. If you were mine I would have
applied corporal punishment quite often, I believe.”

“But then I believe I should have run off at
a very young age if you were my parent,” she returned
triumphantly.

“And I would have had the housekeeper pack
your portmanteau, and myself supplied a map to the Orient—not to
mention enough of the ready to set you firmly on your way.”

Tansy opened her mouth to retort and found
she had for once been solidly trumped. “Touché,” she said gaily and
made a mock bow, sadly ungainly when done while sitting in a
gig.

Lady Emily interposed at this time, reminding
the foolishly giggling pair of idiots that she was chilled to the
bone. Tansy urged the horse into a bone-crunching trot, leaving
behind, and quite out of mind, the dining room of Squire Lindley’s
snug country house, where the Squire’s lady, still content in the
delusion that her four squalling brats were to be taken off her
hands by a penny-cheap governess, was at that moment gleefully
biting into a fluffy, cream pastry.

T
he journey to
Grosvenor Square was accomplished in four rather than three hours,
due to Tansy’s refusal to budge one inch from the posting inn until
her gnawing hunger was put at ease. But as the crier was just
calling out the hour of ten (“All’s well and it’s comin’ on ta
rain”) the weary party ascended the imposing flight of steps to
Avanoll’s mansion.

Tansy could do little more than catch a
glimpse of the imposing stucco exterior and delicate grille work
lining the upper storeys before being almost shoved indoors, where
her eyes were completely dazzled by the brilliant light emanating
from the hundred candles that burned welcomingly in an immense
crystal chandelier that seemed almost small in the huge foyer.

She roughly disengaged her elbow from the
Duke’s vice-like grip. “Unhand me, sir. If you are in such a pelter
about being discovered with so poor a specimen as I entering your
abode, I could have as easily trotted round to the tradesman’s
entrance. I have not been so roughly handled since the oldest son
of my last employer sought to play slap-and-tickle in the herb
garden.”