Chapter Five
The main drawing room of Avanoll House was a huge chamber, its confines done in the classical manner—with festoons of draperies at each long window, light paneled walls embossed with wooden bouquets of flowers caught up with rams’ heads and raised bundles of husks banded about with knots of ribbon. Its ceiling was a Cipriani work of art, consisting as it did of small armies of nymphs, goddesses, and assorted amorini cavorting within their intricate arabesque borders.
The furnishings were for the most part compatible with their background, Hepplewhite’s work being most frequently represented. The only flaws to offend the discerning eye were to be found in the existence (in a far-off, shadowy corner) of two of Thomas Sheraton’s mistakes in judgment—which Aunt Lucinda foisted off on her relatives as being “sentimental treasures” left to her by her late husband and vowed never to be allowed far from her sight.
The “treasures”—or chairs, as they could loosely be termed—were sufficiently alike as to be considered a pair, yet dissimilar enough to inflict not one but two separate insults to anyone of any discernment.
The first (for although painful to describe, the effort to do so exhibits the magnanimity of the Duke’s indulgence) was composed of a griffin’s head, neck, and wings, united by a crosspiece of wood, on top of which was draped a length of fabric that was tossed over to the back and tacked down. The front was made up of a dog’s shaggy, maned head and legs, joined together with a reeded rail.
For the second creation, substitute two camel heads and two of their legs combined with two lions’ heads and two leonine forepaws, add the same draperies, and the picture is complete.
When asked his opinion of the chairs, Ashley termed them painful. Emily pronounced them vulgar. But the dowager, exercising the license that comes with age, did not mince words. “Anyone who would profess a liking for those monstrosities is either crazy or blind—or both. I’d as soon plant my rump on a cold stone floor than risk losing it entirely to one of those mangy beasts.”
So it was that the persons assembled were for the most part congregated in one end of the large room. Lady Emily fidgeting and complaining from her perch on the edge of a heart-backed japanned chair, his grace absently gazing at the dancing flames in the grate of the Adam fireplace, the mantel of which was serving for the moment to hold up his leaning body, and the dowager Duchess herself lounging against the back of a fan-backed sofa.
A good twenty feet downwind (as the dowager termed it), Aunt Lucinda hopped back and forth between the two Sheraton chairs, so as to not favor either one overmuch with her attentions.
Just as the Brachet clock (a Thomas Johnson creation hung all over with boughs, leaves, steeples, and even a vacant-faced owl balancing on one spikey, gold limb—the entirety perched on an ornate wall shelf sporting the tragedy-steeped phiz of some anonymous Greek sage) struck eleven, Dunstan pushed open the double doors from the foyer and announced, “Miss Tansy Tamerlane, your graces, my lady,” and Miss Tamerlane walked reluctantly into the room.
“Tansy,” his grace gasped. “My God, no wonder you dragged your feet in revealing that preposterous handle.”
And then he laughed. Miss Tamerlane, no faint-hearted baby, and with her green years far behind her, was not crushed by this blatant display of mirth at her expense. She drew herself up to her not inconsequential height, crossed the room with firm—if unfashionably lengthy—strides to stop not two feet away from her tormentor, and looked him up and down with an expression of mild distaste. “I agree, my name is not on a par with those appellations taken from Nature, the Bible, or some great literary work. But I fail to see the reason for such unbridled humor from a man who must carry the handle of Ashley. Personally, it puts me in mind of the messy, sooty pile found in the grate after a fire.”
The Duke’s laughter ceased abruptly and his face took on a fierce scowl. Lady Emily tittered behind the safety of a concealing hand. Aunt Lucinda missed the exchange entirely and decided her chairs would consider her time spent with them sufficient and hastened to a more advantageous seat.
The dowager, that formidable dragon who still, when the mood struck her, ruled her family with an iron hand, choked on the sherry she had been sipping and then exclaimed roundly, “Oh, I do like this gel! Tansy, my dear, come sit beside me and we shall begin to get acquainted. I understand the connection with the Benedicts is tenuous, but valid just the same. Indeed,” the thin, hatchet-faced woman observed as her keen eyes took a quick mental inventory of the rather dowdy young woman before her, “if I harbored any fears of an imposter trying to foist herself off on us they have been quickly laid to rest. You are, in build as well as manner, a pattern copy of your great-grandmother Benedict, whose likeness hangs in the long gallery in Avanoll Hall. Ashley, surely you see the likeness?”
Ashley probed his memory until he recollected the portrait his grandmother had in mind. “But. Grandmama, the girl in that painting was most handsome and, er, I mean, perhaps there is some slight resemblance. Both being tall and brown-haired,” he ended lamely.
Emily chose this time to make her presence known by pointing out her brother’s near faux-pas. “Shame on you brother, for speaking so thoughtlessly! How did you ever last in the Diplomatic Office during the war without raising the backs of at least a hundred dignitaries?”
Aunt Lucinda broke in before Avanoll could answer his sister. “‘Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue, to the end we should hear and see more than we speak.’ Socrates.”
“Whom are you admonishing with that little tidbit, Aunt—Emily or me?” Avanoll asked.
“‘Children and fooles cannot lye.’ Heywood,” his aunt returned doggedly.
“There is no question into which category you fall, Lucinda,” the dowager sniffed. “You are nothing but an educated parrot, mouthing words and never ideas. Do be quiet before I throw a shawl over your cage to shut you up.”
Miss Tamerlane, or Tansy as she had admitted to being named, was beginning to feel quite at home with both this odd little group and their assorted quirks.
Suddenly the dowager’s attention returned to the girl now sitting beside her. She asked Tansy for her full name, pointing out that perhaps it wouldn’t sound so much like the heroine in a Penny Dreadful.
“Tansy Marie Antoinette Tamerlane! Good God, were your parents foxed at the time?”
Tansy smiled and took the outburst in good form. “Mama had a failing for things French, though I doubt she would have so blessed me if she knew how tragically it all ended for that poor lady. Mama was very superstitious, you know. To her such a name would now mean I shall come to a sad end. Then again, as I think on it, perhaps she would not have been too unduly upset. I fear she never quite forgave me for coming along and disrupting her organized little life of tatting, tattling, and tittering with her neighbors. Rather like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, considering the never-ending coils my Papa was forever blundering into whenever left to his own devices.”
The dowager listened with interest and then observed that perhaps multiple names were not the answer. After all, look at poor Emmaline-Lucille Pratt. All a double name did for her was to give her one more word to stumble over. “She stammers, you know,” the Duchess told them. “Thank heavens I wasn’t cursed with palming that one off. Getting Emmaline-Lucille hitched-up would be the coup of the Season.”
The Duke was not at all interested in Emmaline-Lucille Pratt. To be honest, he wasn’t very much more interested in Tansy Tamerlane.
All he wanted to do this morning was to establish Tansy as Emily’s new keeper, bid a fond but not unpleased farewell to the dowager, and get on about more serious business.
“First things first, I think, cousin. If you would give me the direction of this Squire you spoke of I will write to him concerning your inability to assume your post. He will undoubtedly be concerned for your welfare.”
Tansy gave a short laugh. “I doubt he’ll be dragging the local river for my body in his anxiet
y, your grace. But I shall write him myself and save you the trouble.”
‘“It is better to learn late than never.’ Publilius Syrus,” Aunt Lucinda pointed out.
“Then there is hope for you yet, Lucinda,” the Duchess drawled, causing Lucinda’s brow to pucker as she tried and failed to understand the dowager’s subtlety.
“Enough,” the Duke interrupted. “After yesterday’s near disaster, I have found it prudent to entrust my sister’s care to our new cousin in an effort to keep Emily from single-handedly destroying the Benedict name in the coming months of the Season.”
His aunt, rather miffed at her displacement, quoted, “‘When the steede is stolne, shut the stable durre.’ Heywood.”
“Nonsense!” Tansy scoffed as Emily sputtered angrily, but luckily not completely comprehending the insult, “The little filly here was not stolen, or even lost. She was merely temporarily misplaced. Besides, no harm’s been done, and we can even hope Emily has learned something from the episode.” This last was said with a stern look in the truant’s direction.
“‘Pardon one offense and you encourage the commission of many.’ P. Syrus,” the suddenly strict ex-companion prophesied, causing Ashley to wonder where he had heard those words before.
All this was just too much for Lady Emily’s tender sensibilities, and she bolted out of her chair in protest. “I think you are all perfectly horrid! Why don’t you just lock me upstairs in my room and leave me to wither and die!” she shrieked, and ran sobbing from the room, her concerned aunt hard on her heels.
The remaining occupants were not so easily impressed. While Tansy smiled and shook her head and Avanoll uttered an exasperated oath, the dowager summed it all up nicely by wiping her hands on each other and saying, “Well, that routed them both quite nicely, don’t you think? Now we can get down to cases and plan out the chit’s season.”
“I beg your pardon, Grandmama?” Avanoll queried. “It was my impression your townhouse was in Holland covers and you were leaving shortly for Avanoll Hall. Surely you don’t wish to be detained by our problems with Emily, seeing as how she wears on you so.”
“Don’t throw my words back in my teeth, Ashley, if you don’t mind. That was before I met this girl here. Suddenly I feel quite rejuvenated, and I have decided to stay in Town. There is no need to fill more servant bellies at town prices if you are in residence here, so I shall stay here rather than my town house. Have my chamber prepared, Ashley,” she instructed imperiously, then added, “And take that vacant look off your face. If you just apply yourself a bit I’m sure you realize which chamber I require.”
“I do, madam,” his grace agreed, “but since that is now my chamber I believe the red suite will have to do, even if it is not exactly to your taste.”
“Hummph! Hardly, grandson, hardly. I cannot imagine what imp of perverseness induced your mother to rig out an entire room in red. Such a color is only fit for whores and wild Russians.”
“Madam!” the Duke protested, only to find he was being ignored. The dowager had asked Tansy’s assistance in rising from the sofa and was even now leaving the room on her arm, chattering nineteen to the dozen about morning gowns and rout parties and the “jolly times” they would all be having shortly.
Avanoll groaned and sank into a nearby chair. Not only had he not rid himself of the silly prattlings of his aunt, but he had been burdened even further by the addition of both an irascible dowager and an impossibly outre cousin.
Why, oh why hadn’t he had the good sense to be born an orphan?