Chapter Twelve
As it turned out, Avanoll’s ankle was not broken, but merely sprained, a painful nuisance that his doctor warned him could eventually turn into a chronic weakness if he dared put any weight on the foot for at least a week.
His guilt-ridden cousin made sure Mrs. Birdwell, the new housekeeper, did not stint on the trays of tempting dishes that seemed to be traveling in an almost constant parade up the back staircase to the Duke’s chambers. Tansy herself carefully cut a wide path around those same chambers, especially after Horatio somehow gained admittance to the bedroom and promptly leapt upon the Duke’s bed (perhaps to offer a woofed apology) and landed squarely on Avanoll’s swollen and sore ankle. A loud howl from the sadly abused man brought Aunt Lucinda on the run, and she entered the chamber just as Horatio—slightly upset by the incident, but not so much so as to not notice and claim for his own a succulent pork chop that was to be a part of the Duke’s dinner—flashed past her and into the hall, his pilfered treasure protruding from his larcenous phiz.
“‘The dog, to gain some private ends, went mad, and bit the man. The man recovered of the bite—the dog it was that died.’ Goldsmith,” she offered by way of comfort.
It wanted only this, the Duke thought, feeling himself sadly used. “He didn’t bite me this time out, Aunt, though more’s the pity if I could hold out the hope your fellow Goldsmith had a grain of truth in his little ditty. The cursed hound merely did his canine imitation of a whirling dervish on my injured ankle and then, low-life that he is, absconded with my supper,” the Duke told her testily.
Aunt Lucinda tut-tutted and intoned severely, “‘Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit.’ Sir Waller Scott.”
Avanoll laughed ruefully. “And there you have your answer, my oh-so-wise aunt. Disabuse yourself of the notion that the Almighty had anything whatsoever to do with that particular gift. No, his creator comes from a much warmer clime, I am sure.”
His aunt looked puzzled for a moment. Then an affronted flush rose in her cheeks before she gathered up her heavily-ruffled, lime-green skirts and stalked from the room, her sensibilities highly insulted by her nephew’s effrontery in speaking of heathens in her hearing. She was further boosted on her way by the sound of the hearty laughter brought on by the Duke’s first real amusement in days.
On Monday afternoon two of the Duke’s cronies passed a few hours with him, but instead of raising his sullen spirits, he seemed even more tense and restless after they had gone. Farnley, thinking his master to be still in pain, offered to send for his cousin Betty’s second-born son Tom, who had been a footling (born feet-first), so that worthy could press his feet against the Duke’s “affected part,” thereby drawing off the “evil humors” within.
When that suggestion was met by a rather blank stare and the information that the prospect of touching toes with the estimable Tom left his grace totally unmoved, he dared give voice to his second slightly less documented cure: wrapping the ankle round with the body of an eel (he did not specify the condition of this eel as either dead or alive). Although Farnley could swear to the powers of eels for curing warts and drunkenness, he had never been given the opportunity to use one in this sort of case—as Tom had always been more than kind in lending his gifted appendages to any sprain to occur in the family these two decades past.
“Eels, eels, eels!” the Duke bellowed. “One more word about eels and I’ll loop one of the slimy things around your scrawny neck and tie it in a bow under your chin! Get yourself gone, Farnley, I warn you, as I am experiencing an almost uncontrollable desire to murder you. Save yourself, man, and flee while you can!”
After Farnley made his hasty departure, the Duke was left alone to swear long and terribly under his breath.
Emily was much too delicate to enter the sickroom (and too apt to say something stupid and so irritate the patient even more), and the dowager seemed to consider her grandson’s outbursts in the nature of juvenile bids for attention, flatly refusing to pander to his whims. And since the household had run out of servants willing to be verbally abused (or even physically pelted with assorted cooked vegetables), it at last was left to Tansy to try to beard the growling tiger in his den.
This she did, quite simply, by refusing to rise to the bait of his sarcastic taunts or dire threats of physical violence to her person once he was quit of—and this last he said with great dramatic pathos—“this rack of pain.”
Tansy did unbend then enough to express her regret once more for Horatio’s part in his recent accident, although she couldn’t resist qualifying her apology by reminding him that, had he not been too busy acting the departing Romeo to take heed of her warning, he could have avoided the whole mess.
“You do have a charming way of expressing remorse, cousin. But if your presence here is meant to be by way of making amends, let me tell you that the prospect of you cast in role of personal attendant, frankly, terrifies me.”
Tansy lifted one fine, dark eyebrow and returned flatly, “Ashley, I fear you must fortify your mind to the likelihood that you and I will be in rather constant company for the duration of your recuperation, the servants all having lively senses of self-preservation and a bit reluctant to expose themselves to your temper. Besides, I feel I owe you some recompense, considering myself—if I am to be honest—just a teeny bit responsible for your fall.”
Avanoll said in pretended amazement, “By Jupiter! Can it really be concern I see on your face? Concern, and—mayhap—even a smidgen of guilt? Heavens above, I do think if I had suffered some permanent injury in my fall you would have been plunged into complete despair.”
“It would seem to me, cousin, that your allies are lying too thin on the ground for you to consider alienating one of the few remaining persons willing to take an interest in your welfare. Rather than getting your back up over events over and past, I would suggest you behave yourself—because I, for one, do not feel obliged to take any sauce from you. Frankly, I would just as lief spoon-feed a baited-bear as listen to any more of your childish tantrums. And I may just take it into my head to leave you with only your own nasty distemper for company.”
Tansy didn’t know it, but the sight of her in a temper—russet eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed prettily, and her uncommonly fine figure made even more appealing by the rapid rise and fall of her nicely-rounded bosom—had caused the Duke to discover that his cousin had been somehow transformed into an extremely handsome woman. So struck by her looks was the Duke that he surrendered without further argument. “I have been behaving like a bacon-brained idiot. Please accept my deepest apologies. Tansy.”
Tansy nodded her agreement and quickly went about the business of straightening his rumpled bedcovers, picking up the newspapers and sporting magazines strewn all over the floor, and ended by draping his supper tray across his knees with the bribe that—on the condition he cleared his plate like a good little soldier—she would agree to provide him with the opportunity to brush up on the art of displaying good sportsmanship while she firmly trounced him in a few games of chess.
The challenge was just what the Duke needed. He proceeded to do justice to one of Cook’s more tempting creations before demanding Tansy draw up the table nearby, with its inlaid chess board, and place out the chess pieces. Give him a chess lesson, would she? A temporary truce was one thing, but if she thought he was going to become her tame pet she had another thought coming!
The ensuing silence was broken only by the ticking of the mantel clock and the occasional settling of a log slipping in the grate, as Avanoll found himself hard put to hold his own with his resourceful cousin. While he fretted and pondered over his moves—and more than once had to wipe at his sweat-beaded brow with his handkerchief—Tansy passed the time reading the dowager’s copy of Mrs. Radcliffe’s An Italian Romance. When it was her turn to make a move she would lay her book down across her lap, congratulate the
Duke on his clever strategy, and seconds later move her piece—usually collecting one of his pieces along the way—and then return to her novel.
By all that is right, Tansy should have lost every game. As it happened, however, of the five games they played she won four, two of them with ridiculous ease. Her cousin demanded a chance at revenge the following day, but Tansy demurred. “Chess has never really been my best game. It moves so slowly I find myself almost bored at times. Instead,” she relented, “I will agree to a few rubbers of whist, or any other card game you might choose. I believe I am quite good at cards, actually,” she added with naive honesty, and perhaps a bit of pride.
“You’re on!” cried Avanoll, smiling quite evilly for a man who was supposed to be an honorable peer of the realm. “Only tomorrow, to add a bit of spice to the games, I suggest we play for money.”
Tansy frowned. “I have less than five pounds to my name, Ashley. I doubt you will think such a paltry sum worth the bother.”
The Duke waved her protest away with one generous sweep of his arm. “I shall stake you to fifty pounds. If you are lucky, you may pay me back from your winnings. And if you lose, well, the fifty pounds was mine anyway, wasn’t it?”
Tansy wasn’t too sure of the ins and outs of that last statement, but one look at Ashley’s face and its smug, superior smirk, and she fell in with his suggestion at once.
Next morning at ten, the two players faced each other across the cleared chess table that again stood between the bed and a pulled-up chair. Each had a stack of pound chips in front of them (Ashley’s chips outnumbering Tansy’s at a rate of six to one).
Luncheon for two was delivered to the room only to be returned to the kitchens hours later, cold and untouched. Just afternoon tea for the lady—and a goodly supply of burgundy for the gentleman—were received with any favor, as the day wound down into dusk and Farnley went about the room lighting candles to keep away the darkness.
The encounter ended much as it had begun, with the two adversaries still facing each other across the chess table. Only now the piles of brightly-colored chips were all sitting in front of only one player. And that lucky gamester was none other than Miss Tansy Tamerlane.
“Your trick, madam, and yet again, your game,” Avanoll declared wondrously. “I’m all to pieces, unless you will accept my vouchers.”
His opponent declined politely, stating that she did know it was rather unsporting to quit while ahead and deny him a chance to recoup his losses. She was quite done in, however, and could only agree to another match in the morning—this time naming piquet as another game of which she was particularly fond.
Avanoll nodded his agreement to this plan, but advised her to take all but one hundred pounds (fifty as a stake and his original advance) and invest it with the four percents as security. “As I recall, your father was quite a gamester,” he then commented, “but I am equally certain he did not have your ungodly good luck with the cards.”
“The word is skill, Ashley, not luck, and yes, you are unfortunately correct about my father. Poor Papa could never get the right of such games, and I can’t recall losing to him after I was ten years old. I often wondered if the majority of our fortune found its way into the hands of others simply through Papa’s never-ending search for a player more inept than himself. I really felt very sorry for him at times, but if I deliberately tried to let him win he’d become exceedingly put out, more enraged at being cosseted than he ever was at being bested by a mere female.”
“Yes, well, that ‘mere female’ has just relieved me of approximately three hundred pounds, and I am known as an extremely competent player. It seems you have missed your calling, cousin. You should have set up your own discreet gaming rooms on the fringe of Mayfair just as soon as you found yourself without support. By now you’d own half of London.”
The two parted that night on good terms, promising to meet at the same hour the next morning. But Avanoll’s two friends were already closeted with him by the time Tansy arrived, so she retreated in order to give him time for a masculine gossip session. When she joined him after luncheon he expressed a wish to postpone their game, as he was feeling a bit depressed and was “no fit company” for anyone.
“That makes two visits from your so-called friends, and two descents into the sulks immediately on the heels of their departure. Next time they call I’ll show them to the right-about straightaway if they are so unthinking as to upset you in your condition,” Tansy stated with some heat.
“No, no. Tansy, my dear,” Avanoll put in quickly, as “my dear” Tansy’s heart did a sudden disconcerting flip in her breast at both his words and his tender tone. “My friends would not purposely, or even thoughtlessly, distress me. I asked them to report to me. Sit down, my dear”—ah, another “my dear”— “and I shall give you a lesson today, a lesson in the perfidy of those creatures we so laughingly call the human race.”
Tansy obediently took up her place at the side of Avanoll’s bed, this time with no chess table to impede her proximity to the Duke’s bedside, and he told her of the latest news his friends had brought.
“Have you ever read anything written by George Gordon Byron, or Baron Byron, if I were to use his title? Good. And did you enjoy his works?” At Tansy’s fervent nod he smiled in agreement with her sentiments. “When George wrote his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812, he awoke suddenly to find himself the most famous and praised literary lion of this young century. Society flung open its doors and this shy, lame, but oh-so-very-beautiful—for he could only be described as beautiful—young man was courted by everyone from the man in the street to the man who will someday wear the crown of England. Surely, even in your secluded village, his romantic exploits and his dangerous association with that titled jade, Caro Lamb, filtered down to your ears.”
Tansy nodded again, afraid to speak and perhaps put an end to her cousin’s confidences, and Avanoll went on.
“Finally, last year, Lady Melbourne talked poor George into marrying her niece, Annabella Milbanke, and a more mismatched pair you cannot imagine. A child, Augusta, came of the union before Annabella left George. But instead of returning him to the personal peace he craved, she set out to do her best to slander George’s name. Rumors that he was having an incestuous affair with his half-sister, also named Augusta—and now I see I shock you, my dear—began to be whispered about. Even George’s poems were dissected by his detractors and purported to contain horrible double meanings of the most scandalous, scurrilous nature.”
“It’s as you’ve warned me, I suppose. Society can be cruel. Please, go on.”
“George tried his best to carry on, but as I said, he is a shy person at heart, perhaps even a timid or even weak one. The pressure caused him to take on some rather bizarre affectations. He took to dosing himself heavily with laudanum, and he could not sleep in any but a lighted room with his pistols always close beside him.”
Tansy made a sympathetic noise and Avanoll brought his gaze back from some spot in the middle distance to look at her.
“Oh, yes, Tansy. George is a bit of a queer fish. Even we who consider ourselves his friends cannot deny that. But, then, aren’t such great talents allowed eccentricities and insights—sometimes sublime, sometimes terrifying—we ‘normal people’ are spared by our lesser gifts?”
Avanoll laughed at a sudden memory. “While we were at Cambridge, George took exception to the rule disallowing pet dogs or cats. So he bought a trained bear. Lord only knows where, and kept him in his room. He said the rule did not specifically outlaw pet bears, but only dogs and cats. Anyway,” he went on, sober once again, “George has slowly found himself on the fringes of Society, with only a pitiful few still willing to stand his friend. For a time we believed he might weather the storm, but then Claire Clairmont—some silly chit Percy Shelley dragged back here from abroad—loudly proclaimed that George seduced her and made her pregnant. My friends and I knew then it was all over for George in England, but we could not dissuade a few of hi
s women friends from attempting a large party at Almack’s last night with both George and his half-sister, Augusta, as guests. The other honored guests ignored Augusta most rudely. And then, when George arrived on the scene, the miserable bastards—excuse me, Tansy—fled from the room like rats deserting a sinking ship.”
“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.