Chapter Twenty
“What in the name of all that’s wonderful is going on here?” the dowager shouted above the din that showed no signs of abating, especially since Horatio had joined their number, and thinking all the hub-bub to be a great new game, was now capering about the room on his hind legs and howling for all he was worth.
“Anyone would think there has just been a murder in the house,” she added in a lower voice once order was raggedly restored and the many speakers clamoring to be heard at last “put a mummer on it,” as Tansy was harried enough to have demanded in a clear voice.
Aunt Lucinda took advantage of this lull in the storm to totter to a nearby chair and proclaim in the tones of a true tragedy-queen, “‘The very hair on my head stands up for dread.’ Sophocles.”
“And so it should,” Emily, Avanoll House’s other aspirant to the ranks of such immortal actresses as Sarah Siddons pronounced in awful tones from her position on the floor, the figure of outraged innocence as she cradled Digby’s head on her lap. “To think that my own brother, blood of my blood, would stoop to brute animal force and bludgeon my poor innocent darling Digby down without a shred of warning, attacking my dear beloved like a wild thing, with murder in his eyes.”
“Oh, twaddle,” Tansy cut in just as Emily was catching her breath by striking a tragic pose with the back of one trembling hand pressed to her forehead. “If Ashley had truly wanted Digby’s liver and lights the young looby wouldn’t be lying in your lap right now with that ridiculously inane grin on his face and milking every drop of enjoyment from his comfortable, if outrageous, position that he can. Oh no, you gullible widgeon. He would be toes cocked up and stone cold by now sure as check if your brother’s intentions were any more than to throttle your swain and perhaps,” she paused a moment to look at the Duke who was still standing ramrod stiff in the center of the room, hands bundled into fists at his sides, “if I am correct, to right what he feels has been a wrong done, heaven bless us, to yours truly herself. Am I right, Ashley?” she asked directly.
“‘We have made you for a time out of marble,’ Virgil,” Aunt Lucinda said as she scrutinized the silent Duke from her vantage point.
At last Avanoll found his voice. “I will thank you, Aunt, to refrain from any more of your pithy observations as to my person. I received a note from my grandmother telling of a wedding announcement soon to be made from this household. This young cub,” he jerked his head toward the still recumbent Digby, “has been dangling after Tansy these weeks past, the two of them peacocking about in Society together, and I assumed, now I can see quite wrongly, that they had decided at last to make a match of it. So when I came upon Eagleton and m’sister close as two turtledoves in here, I acted as a man enraged at a cad of a perfidy so evil as to allow himself to become engaged to one member of my family while maintaining a clandestine romance with another. It is as simple as that,” he ended in a valiant try at bravado that fooled nobody. The Duke was in disgrace and everyone in the room, which even with most of the servants now gone, was a considerable number, knew it.
Aunt Lucinda fidgeted in her chair and then could resist no longer. “‘Look ere you leape,’ Heywood,” she muttered in a loud stage whisper that was heard by all.
“It is all my fault, your grace,” Digby gulped bravely as he strove to disentangle himself from Emily’s clutching arms and rise to face the man who must agree to give her to him in marriage. “You see, there was this idea...”
“‘Wise men say nothing in dangerous times,’ John Seldon,” Aunt Lucinda interjected hurriedly with a nod toward the unknowing Emily, and the dowager quickly stepped in front of the would be confessed conspirator and cajoled, “Now, now, poor Ashley has had more than enough confusion for one evening. Anyone can see he’s exhausted.”
She aimed her next words at her grandson, “You look like a death’s head on a mop-stick actually,” she observed not unkindly before addressing the whole room again. “I can see no need to setting him off again, so to speak, don’t you all agree?”
Since anyone with eyes in his head could see that Avanoll truly was looking more than a little fagged as well as sorely confused and miserably embarrassed, the room cleared most rapidly.
Aunt Lucinda went off to ponder the evening’s events. Tansy escaped to her room to sift through Ashley’s uncharacteristic volatile behavior and try to make some sense of it, the servants escaped to share this latest bit of domestic gossip with their less daring fellows who did not have the backbone to remain on the scene, and Emily, the wounded Digby leaning heavily on her arm, marched off with the remains of her righteous indignation slowly fading before the more pressing concerns of bathing up Digby’s bruised nose and praying Comfort knew how to get those horrid blood stains out of her favorite blue cambric gown.
That left the dowager with the task of informing Avanoll that Digby and Emily had at last agreed to acknowledge a mutual passion that could only end happily in a trip to St. George’s, Hanover Square before the ton removed to Bath the end of July. Tansy’s heart, she insisted, had not been in the least bruised as she considered Digby, an assertion she had already made to Avanoll, merely a very good friend. And that, no matter how hard her grandson questioned, was all she would say.
Much later, after washing away the grime of travel and filling his protesting stomach with some cold meat and cheese, the Duke sat slumped in his favorite chair in his private study and tried to make some sense of all that had happened.
Horatio, who just happened to be passing by the Duke’s opened door and who could be counted on only for his unpredictability, padded into the chamber, sat himself down in front of Avanoll’s chair and proceeded to attack an annoying itch on his shoulder with some energy.
The Duke directed a long, dispassionate stare at his uninvited guest and then said with remarkable sang-froid, “If you can recall George Brummell, Horatio, the man who assisted in your rescue, I would like to tell you that he is a man whose word is considered law as pertains to personal grooming. Beau advocates regular bathing, indeed, he is most adamant about it. You might do well to profit from his wisdom and at the same time rid your ungrateful hide of some of its more irritating inhabitants.”
Horatio chose not to be insulted, but merely cocked his head to one side and returned the Duke’s gaze with canine candor until once again itch came to scratch and he gave in to the impulse.
Avanoll sighed in exasperation. “You disturb my peace, you encroaching hound.”
Aunt Lucinda, who was just then returning down the corridor from a fruitless search for her needlework, heard this last exchange, and peeked in to coo, so Avanoll thought, quite sickeningly, “‘His faithful dog shall bear him company.’ Pope.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” the Duke retorted. “He is only here to gloat over my disgrace.” As Aunt Lucinda wisely retreated, Horatio yawned a wide doggie yawn, stretched himself out full length and rested his toad-eating head on his master’s slippered feet as if to proclaim he was both totally at his ease and prepared to spend the rest of his evening giving aid and comfort to his former adversary.
“Oh, good grief!” Avanoll exclaimed and reached for the brandy decanter.
It really was a pity the Duke could not have been left to enjoy his solitude and have sufficient time to ponder the events that had brought him so low as to have only a hound, and not even his own hound, for company. For in time, experience of the Duke’s ability to see himself in an honest light taken into account, he would have been able to laugh at himself.
But life was not being particularly kind to Avanoll that night, for it wasn’t too many minutes since his aunt’s departure (only enough time, in fact, for Horatio to have set up a raucous snore or two), before Tansy, in search for her missing pet, entered the study.
Avanoll looked up at his cousin who was dressed head to toe in an unflattering pea-green robe from her governess days with her bare feet sticking out from the skirt and her long brown hair done up in a single plait down her back,
and thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Tansy, on the other hand, was thoroughly dismayed at having been caught out in such shabby garments and would have given everything she owned (not all that much, but important to her) to have been swallowed up then and there by a large hole that came supplied with a lid for shutting over herself.
As she stuttered and mumbled something about Horatio, the Duke rose from his chair, tripped over the still dozing dog, and said curtly, “Wait, cousin. I had thought to put this off until the morning but there is no time like the present, I guess. Please come in for a moment, for there is something I wish to say to you.”
Here it comes, thought Tansy, I’m to be sacked. Fired, sent off without a reference. Her courage faltered for a moment but she stifled her impulse to flee and took refuge in cold civility. “Very well, your grace. As upon another occasion, you will insist on an interview when I am at a decided disadvantage. The first time I was cold, tired, and dowdy. Since tonight I am only tired and dowdy, I can see no reason to postpone what I am sure will be another uncomfortable interrogation.”
She crossed to the cavernous arm chair facing his and plunked herself down (unlike the dowager, Tansy’s bare feet did touch the floor and she quickly raised them to hide her toes under the hem of her gown on the cushioned seat). “Proceed, cousin,” she invited wearily.
“Er—perhaps you are right, my dear, the morning will suit just as well,” Avanoll relented, but at the sound of that so-loved “my dear” Tansy lost all desire to cut the interview short and begged him to go on.
And so, as if the gods had specially designed this day for disaster, Avanoll went on.
He had rehearsed his speech over and over on the mad dash from Newmarket, but the words deserted him now that he had need of them. Instead, he launched into a bracing pep talk on how Digby was too much of a green boy for her anyway and she should not be too overset by his defection.
“I never cared a rap for that child and you know it, Ashley. Do get to the point.” In retrospect, Tansy was beginning to believe her first impulse had been the right one and she should have fled while she could.
“Uh—um, er, yes. Yes. Of course your heart was not involved,” he corrected himself hastily before blurting, “Have you thought at all of your future now that Emily is to be taken so neatly off our hands?”
So it had come at last, the dismissal. Well, if she were to go down, she would go down fighting. “I am sorry to say I have been so busy settling your sister I have not really devoted much time to my own future. What do you suggest, cousin, should I try to bag a husband of my own in the short time left in this Season, or go directly back to governessing? As I have no dowry, I believe suitors for my hand will be rather thin on the ground, so I guess governessing it is.”
“Damn you, madame, you are not so sorely straitened!” the Duke rallied. He came over to her chair, leaned down to put one hand on each upholstered armrest and peered deeply into her eyes. “You’re bright, reasonably pretty, a good housekeeper, a tolerable hostess, and possess a clever, if outspoken, wit. Any man would be glad to have you.”
Tansy looked up at the Duke’s flushed face and an imp of perversion invaded her tongue. “Any man, your grace?” she teased with a twinkle in her eyes. “Even you, Ashley?”
Avanoll straightened abruptly. “Yes, dammit all, even me! Why not? Why not me? My nose bother you?” he asked, immediately on his high ropes.
Tansy giggled. “Indeed not, the Benedict nose is highly distinguishing. Clearly my father’s best feature. But you are not serious, Ashley, you couldn’t be.”
“I am deadly serious, Tansy. I’m only five and thirty, so I am not too old or too young for you, don’t you agree?”
“Certainly, sir,” Tansy answered, tongue still in cheek. “I would say, upon reflection, your age seems to be just right.”
Avanoll stopped his pacing and looked down at her from his great height. “Well, then? Just think of the advantages to such a match. You will no longer have to worry about your future, for one thing. There would be no need to concern yourself over your welcome into the family as you already have my entire relation at your knees and the servants of the house positively drooling over you. As for myself, I have grown rather used to having you about the house. We don’t fight above once or twice a fortnight, and you don’t hang on a man, spoil his life with demands for amusement and the like,” he argued reasonably.
The twinkle in Tansy’s eyes had all but disappeared. “Yes, I suppose we could rub along quite tolerably, your grace,” she agreed dully.
Then Avanoll supplied the coup de grace: “One final compensation we cannot overlook is the desirability of being called Tansy Benedict rather than Tansy Tamerlane. I should think you would be grateful to shed that sing-song handle.”
Tansy’s head jerked up at this last statement and Avanoll took the motion for assent. “Then it’s settled,” he sighed. Really, proposing wasn’t at all the mind-shaking, heart-stopping trial his cronies had talked it up to be. He relaxed visibly. “We’ll be married next week, before Emily can say we have thrown a damper on her moment of glory.”
“No.”
Now Avanoll’s head jerked. “What did you say?” he rasped incredulously.
“I said, no,” Tansy replied with some spirit, twin flags of color waving in the cheeks of her otherwise ashen face. “No. Negative. On the contrary. Out of the question. I decline,” she added sarcastically. “Cognizant of the great honor, your condescension, etcetera, but no!”
And while the Duke was still striving to raise his lower jaw from its half-mast position, she quit the room, Horatio hard on her heels.