Chapter Two
Tansy walked back to the gig, her head shaking back and forth slightly and a chuckle escaping her lips. “A fine one you are,” exclaimed Lady Emily with a definite pout. “It would almost seem as if I were the guilty party and Godfrey an innocent lamb. I was used, I tell you, sadly used!”
“Fiddlesticks,” countered her companion without rancor. “You got just what you set out for—excitement—and a bit more than you bargained for, I’ll wager. You never intended to wed that young scapegrace. Confess! You left an enlightening note, right where your unfortunate brother would see it and come charging posthaste to the rescue,” Tansy concluded. And then, in a gentler voice, she inquired, “What’s wrong, my dear? Are you sadly neglected by this brother of yours? Not in a material way, obviously, but does he sometimes need to be reminded you are no longer hidden in the nursery with your governess?”
That arrow hit home. Instead of condemning her unfeeling relatives, though—or even resorting to the already used ploy of tears produced-to-order—Lady Emily gave out with a delicious giggle. “Oh, you are so very quick! Aren’t I beastly to have used poor Godfrey so shabbily?” she bubbled merrily.
“Utterly criminal I’d say,” concurred Tansy. “But then, had I your face, title and money, I daresay I should be an even worse termagant than you could ever aspire to be. I have a decided talent for mischief, or so my poor harassed Papa used to say. It is such fun to be the center of all attention, is it not?”
“Oh, dear, it is a very good thing for me you are not my aunt. If Aunt Ce-Ce thought as you, I should never have any diversions.”
“My dear Lady Emily, personal gratification aside, do you not think the time has passed for schoolroom pranks? You must be all of eighteen, and ready for your come-out. There comes a time, sadly, when we must put away childish quirks and at least outwardly behave as Society dictates. Though we can certainly still think what we wish and occasionally—just to lend an air of intrigue to our countenance—indulge in the odd devilment.”
By now the portmanteau was safely in the back of the gig and Tansy had retaken her seat.
The younger girl’s eyes fairly danced. “I am to be popped off, as Grandmama so vulgarly says, this Season. It is ever so exciting to think of, but all I have been doing for weeks on end, ever since I came to town, is standing for hours and hours being fitted for the ugliest gowns imaginable. It is all so very fatiguing, and I just had to do something or go mad. Aunt Ce-Ce has charge of my wardrobe, you see—Grandmama being too frail for such exertions—and Ce-Ce has the vilest taste. The modiste she favors is so hungry for our favors she agrees to every horrid ruffle, and spouts ecstasies about the absolute tons of lace Ce-Ce thinks must smother everything I wear. And Ashley, the wretch, refuses to listen to my complaints at all!”
Lady Emily paused for breath, her emotions on this so-near-to-her-heart subject having brought a becoming flush to her cheeks.
“So when I met Godfrey at the library,” she resumed, explaining a brand of logic that smacked of a mind that readily made five of two and two, “and again several times in the mornings at the park, I decided to, well, to use him to remind Ashley of my existence. He does sometimes forget me for months on end, what with his clubs and hunting boxes, speeches in Parliament, and the managing of all the estates, and—oh!—and any other excuse he can find,” she wailed, thus condemning the unimpeachable lifestyle of the Duke to the ranks of the pointlessly silly. “Ashley is my brother,” she added somewhat unnecessarily.
Tansy was busy trying to get the gig moving again. “I don’t think I follow you.”
“Ashley—he’s my brother,” repeated Lady Emily.
“That, my dear nodcock, I comprehend,” her new confidant replied dryly. “What I cannot fathom is why you have so little to say as to your style of dress, if we may pass over your brother’s failings for the moment and fall back to the subject of flounces and smothering lace. The tedium of fittings, and the lack of social affairs for one who is not yet Out, I also understand—for I have worked for part of a Season for a Miss Buxley during her come-out.” A small smile appeared as she recalled her sudden departure from that particular position. “Please enlighten me as I try to raise Lazarus here from the dead so we can push off for the Squire’s.”
At that she yanked the dozing Dobbin—or Horace—to a semblance of attention and the old cob, his hooves fairly dragging with each step, set off at an even slower pace than before.
“The fact is,” Lady Emily willingly explained, “my gowns are much the same as any now in the mode, I suppose. There is just something, I cannot quite put my finger on it, but Something rather Overpowering about them. I feel quite dwarfed. There just seems to be so Much Gown and so Little Me! The only things I’ve liked at all are this outfit and one other, my riding habit. Grandmama picked both of them before informing Ashley that one more trip to Bond Street with ‘that young prattlebox’—that’s me,” she admitted artlessly, “and she would surely be carried off by an apoplexy.”
Tansy gave a chuckle and inwardly agreed with the old lady’s opinion that young Lady Emily’s roundabout method of speaking for five minutes to say what could have been said in less than half the time—and with less than a quarter the drama—could be a bit wearing.
The turn to the right was in sight now, finally, and Tansy tried with little success to coax Dobbin from his straight and narrow path. Perhaps showing up on the Squire’s doorstep with the sister of a Duke in tow would soften any censure on her late arrival, she thought with little hope.
Just then the thundering sounds of an approaching rider reached her ears and she turned on the plank seat for a view of what would probably be a prime bit of blood and bone. The turn forced yet another sharp bit of the seat through her thin gown and into her already tender posterior. “Damn,” she swore soundly.
“Oh, drat, you are absolutely right,” agreed Lady Emily, who had also swiveled about for a better look. “However did you know that is Ashley approaching?” she asked ingenuously.
“I didn’t. I have just been impaled upon a splinter half the size of Cornwall, as nothing else as unpleasant comes to mind except the home of my last unlamented place of employment. As for your brother, we don’t stand a prayer of outrunning him with old Fleetfoot in the shafts. If you were of a mind to bolt for cover, that might be a means of escape, although I think it would have gone easier for you to face him for the first time with the Squire to act as a restraint on his undoubtedly sorely-tried temper.”
Lady Emily at once burst into noisy sobs (this time they were genuine) as her brother was riding like a man possessed, for once uncaring of his horseflesh. If she could have swooned without tumbling ignominiously into the road, she would have.
A confrontation with Ashley in these surroundings was sadly lacking the romance of standing out of harm’s way while her brother vented his anger by loosening a few of Godfrey’s front teeth. Nothing seemed to come right for poor Emily lately, nothing at all. She sniffled loudly and hiccupped.
“There, there, don’t go blubbering,” consoled her no-longer-so-capable-looking champion. “All will come right soon enough. Just let the poor man rant and rave until he’s spent, then flash him those soulful blue eyes while you tearfully promise to be a pattern card of virtue forevermore. And don’t let him see you crossing your fingers behind your back!”
Tansy gave out with an unnecessary “Whoa, boy,” for the horse had already decided on a halt after spying some interesting-looking long grass left untouched through the winter, forcing the pursuing brother to control a plunging, dancing stallion reluctant to discontinue a fine gallop.
After easily controlling his horse, the rider cast his eyes coldly over the ill-assorted pair and their antiquated vehicle. After a cursory examination of his sister he riveted his cold stare on Tansy, noting the drab brownness of her garb, hair, and eyes. In his anger he overlooked the fine bone structure of her pleasantly arranged face. Tansy in her turn returned his gaze, noting th
e Duke’s large, well-muscled frame, his dark-brown curls (now well-tumbled by his long ride), and the startling blue eyes that stood out so well in his sun-darkened face. “Emily,” he fairly purred in his deep voice when at last—his eyes still on Tansy—he broke the tense silence. “I perceive I have found you unharmed. I can only hope I also find you unwed and, this I hope most fervently, unbed!”
Lady Emily blushed to advantage and did so now, although her companion never batted an eye at such plain speech. “Oh, yes, Ashley,” the repentant sister assured him. “But I’ve had the most dreadful—ouch!” A well-placed elbow jabbed directly into the tender area below her ribs made Lady Emily break off with a gasp that turned discreetly into a cough and then, most intelligently, into silence. Her friend was right, for complaints from a captured truant could not fail to blacken to pitch the already dark scowl Ashley was aiming at his baby sister.
“Madam,” the Duke—not failing to notice that less than discreet nudge—remarked, still with a velvety smoothness that went so ill with his dire expression, “I do not understand your presence at the scene any more than I can explain the absence of that young villain Harlow, but I do believe I have to thank you.”
“You certainly do,” came the equally velvet reply.
The Duke was surprised. He even allowed one well-defined brow to arch. “I beg your pardon?” he questioned, with the tone used by one just addressed by a drawing room chair.
“I merely agreed with you, your grace,” was Tansy’s direct reply. “You do have me to thank for your sister’s rescue. However, you have only yourself to thank for her near ruin at the hands of a rake-hell fortune-hunter who, luckily for you, possessed all the foresight of a grasshopper. If Mr. Harlow were not a wet-behind-the-ears looby, your sister would be well and truly ruined by now.”
“I am to blame, madam? I do not quite see your logic, or remember any invitation for commenting on my guardianship of my sister.” The velvet now dripped icicles.
Another woman would have been sent searching in her reticule for her vinaigrette. But this definitely was a different sort of female. “My logic is simple,” Tansy explained, as though speaking to a particularly backward child. “If you paid more attention to what is going on around you, you would know your sister to be bored to flinders and a lonely child into the bargain—not to mention green as grass and easy prey for any pretty face or agile tongue. I dare because, between your sister and yourself, the pair of you have delayed my arrival at my new post, erased any hope for the supper I had optimistically hoped to find there, and denied me the snug cot my bones ache for. I also dare because my eyes tell me that—although you doubtless think you cut a right dashing figure on horseback pelting pell-mell in the pursuit of an eloping sister—you neglected to provide transportation for said sister once you had performed your splendid feat of derring-do. I do not wish to push the point, but I daresay you made an error in judgment when you decided to opt for speed over common sense. A curricle or coach would have been more the thing. Now,” she told him with a pained sigh, “it is left to poor Dobbin—or Horace, I doubt my lapse insults the beast—and me to transport your sister to the nearest posting inn. That is why I dare.”
This sizzling set-down was wondrously admired, if prudently not applauded, by the incredulous Lady Emily, who belatedly cringed at the thought of her brother’s soon-to-be-expressed displeasure. What was obvious was that the brown lady in the gig was decidedly warm, “madam” was.
In fact, it was not exaggerating to say Tansy was nearly overcome with righteous anger. How dare this high and mighty Duke condescend to her! Look down his nose at her!
Just a minute! Tansy halted herself in mid-tantrum. She looked more closely at the Duke. That nose. No. It couldn’t be. “Are you by chance the Duke of Avanoll?” she asked suddenly—apropos, so thought the Duke, of nothing—and just as he was ready to deliver one of his famous scolds.
“I am,” the Duke replied, surprised into answering this unwarranted question. It is true then, he observed to himself, what the old lady my grandmother says: breeding will out. Here I sit, calmly being railed at like a schoolboy remiss at his sums, when I should like nothing better than to take that obnoxious hellion over my knee and give her the thrashing her parents so obviously declined to dispense. Such forbearance on my part reflects quite noble breeding. Almost kinglike, he complimented himself. And why, putting all that aside, is this creature looking at me as if I have suddenly grown another head? “Is something amiss, madam, or have you come belatedly to your senses and in turn been struck dumb with shame over your outrageous behavior?”
Tansy waved this last statement aside with a slight motion of her hand. The hand then continued upward until it reached her forehead, where it rubbed wearily back and forth as she spoke once more. “Nathaniel has cocked up his toes then?” she said quietly, as if to herself.
But not quietly enough. “I beg your pardon?” The velvet ice became a howling blizzard.
“Oh, forgive me, I merely spoke my thoughts aloud,” Tansy apologized. “Has he been dead long—the late Duke, that is?”
The Duke was still a bit nonplused and answered almost automatically. “A little over ten years.” Then he had an idea that shook him to his socks. “But what, if I may be so bold, is that to the matter at hand?” He spoke more softly, almost gently. The creature was quite possibly deranged, an escapee from Bedlam.
He would have to report the woman at the next town. Why, at any moment the sick woman could turn violent and do bodily injury to his sister.
Tansy’s head rose once more to look the Duke straight in the face. “I apologize for my outburst, your grace. My only excuse is that I am extremely fatigued. I have been traveling for two days and nights, and the last of my funds disappeared at last night’s inn on a meager dinner of bread and cheese. That must be why I did not recognize it at once.”
“Recognize what, my dear young woman?” the Duke crooned warily. Now he was sure the woman was deranged. He made sly eye-shiftings and head-jerks in his vacantly smiling sister’s direction, willing her to climb down from the gig. Lady Emily winked happily back at him, thinking herself part of some fine joke, and her sins all forgiven. The Duke sighed. Emily was a pretty chit, he granted, but there wasn’t a problem of overcrowding in her upper rooms.
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.