Chapter Nine
When Tansy reached the banks of the Serpentine, an innocuous-looking target for such violent attack, she stopped and began berating an innocent-appearing servant who was so cowed by her tirade that he seemed to shrink closer to the ground with every word.
As he neared the mismatched pair (it was rather like Gentleman Jackson taking on a chimney sweep), the Duke was muttering under his breath, “Reward the girl, they said. Take her for a ride in the Park they said. Reward her? Ha! I’ll wring her troublesome neck first!” He raised his eyes to heaven and implored, “Oh, please, Lord. Get us out of this coil and I’ll make it up to You. I’ll,” and here he did display the greatest English stiff-upper-lip imaginable, “I’ll forego brandy and, yes—cigars, for a fortnight. No, an entire month. I swear it.”
This last was said a bit louder, possibly because of the great emotion the proposed sacrifice brought to bear. But whatever the reason, his audience—rapidly approaching a multitude—was to be forever grateful.
Tansy too heard the Duke’s promises, but her heart was not moved. “Fustian, Ashley,” she declared baldly. “Quickly now, hold onto this rascal’s ear so he can’t lope off while I rescue the poor thing. Not that the fellow will probably move in any event, for if ever I saw such a slowtop I cannot remember it.” She took one step and then added, more kindly, “Perhaps he is a mute?”
Then, as the astounded Duke stood impatiently by, unable to do more than hold onto the servant’s sleeve—he looked like a groom by his livery—and stare bug-eyed as his cousin and her brand-new clothing from Madame Bertin, no less, plunged feet-first into the lake.
There were gasps, then giggles from the ladies present, snickers, and a few hearty guffaws from the gentlemen. Tansy quickly waded out into the lake until the water lapped gently against her hips and then, with a cry of “Huzzah,” she reached one hand out to snare a burlap sack just sinking beneath the surface.
She quickly raised the sack above her head, where it danced and wiggled and poured down a copious waterfall that darkened Tansy’s upstretched sleeve, cascaded over her upraised face, and made a limp rat’s tail of the once-proud peacock feather in her bonnet.
“I say,” came a cultured drawl from over Avanoll’s shoulder, “rather, er, unique, ain’t she? Don’t you own a tub, Avanoll?”
Avanoll was formulating some sort of reply for the Beau but was saved—a move first blessed, then thoroughly damned—by Tansy’s plea to wade in and get her out because her “blasted skirts” were tangling her legs and one jean half-boot was sunk in some sort of hole.
“Beau,” the Duke asked urbanely, figuring he may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, “be a sport and hold onto this fellow for me while I assist my cousin.”
Beau raised his glass, assessed Tansy’s predicament without the fluttering of an eyelash, and turned to the servant. “Be a good fellow and play a little game for me. Pretend I am Lord Elgin and you are a statue. There’s a good man. Don’t move now, your arms might topple off, you know.” Turning his head to Avanoll he said, “Ashley, old man, you may go do the pretty now. I have all in train here. By the by though, sport, were your ancestors prone to inbreeding?”
“What?” Avanoll asked before realizing what Beau was inferring. “We have our share of eccentrics, sir, but I cannot blame Tansy on any first-cousin marriage. My conclusion is that she was dropped on her head as an infant,” he told him. “Repeatedly.”
“Either that, friend, or she’s the only sane one and we’re all Bedlamites. Whatever is she about?”
Ashley shrugged, turned to meet his fate, and at the same time consigned his twice-worn Hessians to a watery grave. Shortly, two figures stood on the grassy bank, surrounded by an audience gathered with bated breath to witness the grande finale.
Lady Stanley—front and center as usual when there was any gossip to be found, violet plumes vibrating wildly as she nodded her head vigorously—was busily informing all and sundry of the identity of the outlandish chit with the burlap bag clutched tightly to her bosom. Oh, she would dine out for a month on this story!
Tansy, oblivious to all the commotion she had caused, or just not giving two pins what anyone thought of her, dropped to her knees and tugged on the twine securing the top of the sack. “Ashley,” she ordered as her hands encountered yet another wet knot, “Give me your penknife.”
His grace knelt on the grass beside her, putting paid to what was left of his buckskins deftly sliced through the knotted twine, then reached inside the sack. When he brought forth his hands they were filled with a wet, reddish-brown tangle of fur that yipped once, then turned a small head and thanked his rescuer by biting down firmly on the Duke’s thumb.
Avanoll yelped and dropped the dog—at least he supposed it was a dog—whereupon Tansy grabbed it up. The dog, for that is what it was, immediately began licking Tansy’s face, beating his water-logged tail back and forth in a frenzied expression of ecstasy that effectively wetted any part of the Duke that had managed up to this point to remain dry.
Throughout it all the Beau, who had not been so diverted since roasting Alvanley when his lordship blissfully asked his blessing on a puce and yellow striped waistcoat, remained mute. But he felt it was time he took center stage for a bit. The action, he chuckled to himself, had become a bit “drippy.”
Brummell addressed his speech to the petrified servant. “Now then, fellow, you obviously have done, or tried to do, this dastardly deed on orders from your master. Who, we horrified animal loving Christians desire to know, just who is the scoundrel who would countenance—nay, instigate—such a dastardly deed?”
“Yes, indeed,” piped up Tansy as she pushed the pup’s nose away from her ear. “Even in his present state I can see this is a superior animal, perhaps a setter.”
“Yes, yes, make him tell us,” came several cries from the audience.
“I can answer that,” came yet another voice from the group. “That’s Jillson’s livery the fellow sports.”
The groom, frightened nearly witless as the formerly amused onlookers showed signs of turning into an extremely hostile group, and with all of them directing their fury at him, quickly blurted out that the pup was the only one of a litter still surviving—a litter born when by chance one of his master’s prize setters mated with a stray. Jillson wished the animal destroyed because he wanted no reminder of the bitch’s consort with the lower orders. Since the groom was cutting through the Park on his way to see his sweetheart, who worked in the kitchens of a certain peer near the Stanhope Gate, he felt the Serpentine a fitting repository for the little beast.
Naturally the groom was not so articulate in his rendering of the events, but his laborious and muddled rendition was translated for the crowd by Brummell.
Mutterings were heard throughout the crowd, words like “cad” and “villain” being a few of the most oft-repeated.
Avanoll was too stunned by the events of the day to give himself over to much profound thinking, but this much was clear. By clever questioning and frowns and head-shakes denoting grim distaste and displeasure, the Beau had made Jillson the goat. Indeed, the Duke himself was definitely feeling quite uncharitable toward the fellow just now, and with any luck at all Tansy could emerge—unbelievable as it might seem—the heroine in the piece.
Mentally banishing his after-dinner enjoyments for a character-building month (thank goodness April had but thirty days), the Duke rose to his not inconsiderable height and announced, “I believe we here present, indeed all England, owe this brave young lady a debt of gratitude for the heroic and humane service she has performed here today.”
The Beau, always quixotic (and in debt to the tune of many hundreds of pounds to the Duke after one particularly plaguey run of luck at White’s which the Duke had kindly overlooked these past six weeks and more), sensed the crowd could go either way concerning the chit and decided to have a little fun. The herd would follow him, as it always did—mindless animals that they were, he thought—for hi
s opinion of his fellows’ brain power was not high.
“What’s your cousin’s name, Avanoll?” the Beau asked quietly, just as the Duke was really getting the bit between his teeth. After Avanoll answered, he thanked him and told him to hold his tongue and watch a master work.
“I concur with his grace,” he began in a loud, clear voice. “With no concern for her safety, with strong presence of mind and purity of purpose, Miss Tamerlane here, er, plunged into the fray and rescued one of God’s sinless creatures.” He puffed out his chest, postured himself elegantly with one hand on his heart, and then boomed, “And a dog, no less! Man’s best friend. Today, however, today man chose to callously destroy this innocent creature of nature. It took a young woman, a lady I place on a par with Boadicea, to see her duty and snatch this wretched animal from the watery jaws of death while the gentlemen among us did nothing.”
He stopped for breath and passed his eyes over the crowd. Women wept openly into fine cambric handkerchiefs, and even a smattering of the gentlemen present appeared a trifle misty.
The Beau walked stage-left to where Tansy sat gazing up at her extoller with a bemused look on her damp face. The peacock feather drooped across her nose and she blew it upwards, only to have it hit the Beau in the eye as he bowed low before her.
Undaunted, he raised Tansy to her feet and turned to face his awe-struck audience. “Ladies and gentlemen. May I present to you all Miss Tansy Tamerlane, daughter of Sir Andrew Tamerlane and cousin of the Duke of Avanoll, whose distinguished guest she is to be for the Season.” He lifted her hand above her head, much like the victor in a fistfight and exclaimed, “Let us hear three cheers for our heroine of the lake, our very own tenacious Miss Tamerlane!”
“Hear, hear!” rang out the crowd. “Good show. Hip, hip, hooray!” And then, “Speech, speech!”
The Duke’s slightly lightened heart plummeted to his soggy toes as his cousin made every sign of complying with this last request. She bent down and scooped the shivering puppy into her arms and held him above her head, where he yipped merrily and lolled his pink tongue from side to side. “A cheer for Horatio, who has scored a stunning victory at sea!” she shouted in a very Boadicea-like way, endearing herself forever in the hearts of her audience. Even Lady Stanley condescended to applaud softly, knowing it the height of folly to buck the tide on this particular issue.
And to the Duke’s amazement, the cheers rang out again. Before they could die down and more notice be taken of their heroine’s hoydenish appearance, Avanoll sidled up to the Beau. “You have my everlasting gratitude, sir. Consider all debts paid in full,” he said earnestly.
Without losing his handsome smile the Beau returned, “We’re lucky to be away with our skins intact, but then the hoi-polloi (included in this sweeping classification were, to the Duke’s quick deduction, three earls, a viscount and a marquess) is so lamentably gullible. Even gulling them becomes a bore. I would advise you to beat a hasty retreat now, however, and please, as soon as your clothes dry sufficiently, burn them. You and the little rescuer, I must make bold to say, smell dreadfully like a swamp. I myself already am reconciled to destroying every stitch now upon my person and sitting in a bath for at least three hours. Never before have I felt so entirely grubby. I shall be late to Carlton House, but there is no help for it. I do hope you appreciate the effort, Ashley. I could have destroyed that girl, you know.”
“I know, Beau,” Avanoll allowed, passing over the blatant lie of a dinner invitation to Carlton House when Beau and Prinney hadn’t been on speaking terms for over a year, “and I repeat my thanks. Add a new rig-out to your wardrobe and send the bills to me.”
“Yes, yes, of course, dear fellow,” the Beau said as he raised a scented handkerchief to his delicate nostrils, so urgent his need to be shed of the Duke that he overlooked his immaculate attire being called a rig-out, of all things. “Be off with you now.” As Avanoll turned to go the Beau ventured, “I wonder, Avanoll. Do we cut Jillson next time we meet, just to lend credence to our little drama?”
The Duke gave a short laugh “I doubt the need. By tea time today the story will be all over the city, only it will be three dogs, all prime specimens, and Jillson will have been discovered skulking near the scene of the crime with at least one pitiable carcass at his feet and blood on his hands. No, I wager he will find it convenient to rusticate for a few weeks. Although I have no doubt Society will bear up well in his absence, as he always was a bit of a queer touch anyway. You and I both know it won’t be long until another scandal will be found to dull the memory of his infamous deed.”
“Would you care to wager another suit of clothes your dear cousin is involved in the next scandal, too?” the Beau teased.
The smile vanished from Avanoll’s face. “I never bet on sure things,” he bit out, and strode purposefully over to Tansy—and made to pull her unceremoniously away from four or five young bloods vying for her attention, to the extent of dirtying their lily-white hands applying affectionate pats on Horatio’s toad-eating head.
Once Tansy was again seated beside him the Duke yanked the reins from Leo’s hands, causing the man’s broadly grinning face to rearrange itself into a suitably solemn, commiserating expression.
Tansy, however, was heady with her success and totally oblivious to the fact that the man riding next to her was ready to do murder. She chattered on about how terribly natural and unaffected Society people were, and how she had been so silly to have reservations about her eventual acceptance into their circle. She may even have been allowed to cling to this bit of naiveté, as the Duke was too overset to push a single sound past his lips, if not for Horatio.
It seems the animal had taken umbrage at the Duke’s presence once he espied it, and immediately became quite vocal in his anxiety to have the offending person take himself off.
“Isn’t that cute, cousin?” Tansy laughed delightedly. “Horatio recognizes you and associates you with his dunk in the lake. I really believe the poor misguided darling would nip you if I were but to loosen my grip a bit.”
That tore it. His grace was cold, wet, humiliated, his thumb was throbbing, and he was probably in the early stages of pneumonia. Suddenly the words came quite easily, if they were only a touch difficult to understand—a pardonable offense when one is speaking through clenched jaws.
“Well, isn’t Horatio darling just too, too amusing, Miss Tamerlane? But I must caution you not to loose your grip as I have already lost mine—on my sanity. I see no other reason I can sit here and listen to you babbling inanely on about your social coup, as if it were not the second worst disaster in history. You were only saved from stares, insults, and possibly even your very own straight waistcoat for your ride to Bedlam, by my quick thinking.”
Tansy was finally forced to take the time to look at her cousin, and herself, and was prone to admit they did make a rather odd pair—driving through London in sopping wet, uncomfortable, and slightly offensive-to-the-nose clothing—the duke appearing disheveled, but still very much the gentleman, and herself, looking as if she had been dunked in a well and then dragged through a hedge backwards. The sodden Horatio added nothing to their consequence.
The day’s heroine was slightly deflated but unrepentant. “We saved a poor animal from an undeserved, cruel death. I think we were justified. Besides, Mr. Brummell liked it, and you yourself say he is the last word on what is proper. At least I think he liked it,” she ended lamely as a vein in the side of the Duke’s neck began to throb wildly.
“That’s precisely the problem, madam, you don’t think. You act. Eons later, perhaps, if the Gods are kind, you think. And there is no ‘we’ about it, madam,” Avanoll pointed out. “I freely give you all praise—and all blame. It never entered your head, I suppose, to apprise me of what you had seen and let me order Leo to effect the rescue? Oh, no,” he sneered, “rational thought comes no more easily to you than to any other female.”
He turned to glare at her, nearly letting go of the reins, so intens
e was his anger. “Dash it, woman, if it weren’t for my timely intervention with that faradiddle about Englishmen and dumb animals, Beau’s equally quick perception of what I was about, and a mellow crowd, you may as well have strutted stark naked down Bond Street for all the blasted fool you made of yourself today. As it is now your name will be a byword in every club from White’s to the Daffy, an occurrence not exactly sought after by well-bred young ladies, might I point out. But then... oh, forget it.”
“But, then, I am not a well-bred young lady. That was what you were going to say, wasn’t it?” Tansy dared him.
Leo made a sound in his throat and endeavored to make himself invisible as the glaring duo in front of him appeared about to come to cuffs.
Luckily, Avanoll House was just ahead, and further arguments were pushed aside in the pair’s haste to get inside and rid themselves of their sodden clothes.
The Duke hopped lightly down from his seat, and whether or not he would have assisted his cousin was not to be guessed at for she had climbed down by herself—and was already standing rock-still on the flagway, waiting for him to enter the house before her.
Dunstan never blinked at the odd sight that greeted him as he made his way to the foyer, although his private thoughts would have proved interesting. His grace was already stripping off his mud-stained driving gloves, the ones with the hole in the left thumb, while Miss Tamerlane stood to one side, an ominous puddle forming about her feet and a smelly lump of fur in her arms.
“Dunstan,” imparted his grace in awful tones, “I will not be dining at home this evening after all. I feel it, er, safer for all concerned to remove my person from the bosom of my family for a space, until the combination of an orderly, well-run establishment and the company of emotionally stable companions such as I may find at my Club convince me the whole world has not run mad.”
Having delivered himself of this crushing set-down he turned on his heel, planning to ascend to his rooms, but he was forestalled by Dunstan’s placid reminder that he had invited guests to dine at Avanoll this same evening.
The Duke dismissed this bit of news with a wave of his hand, some faint bit of humor entering his cold eyes. “Oh, that was all a hum, Dunny. I only said it to give our new housekeeper a showcase for her talent, a chance to strut out her expertise and instruct us all in the proper way to handle a domestic crisis, so to speak.”
This blatant insult was enough to rouse Tansy from her brown study, the sarcastic remarks touching off a chord of memory. “One moment, please, before you slosh off, your grace. Just what, sir—if I, a mere employee, may make so bold as to ask you to enlarge upon just one of the many pearls of wisdom that dribbled off your tongue a bit earlier—is the premier disaster in The History of the World According to Avanoll?”
She then stuck out her chin, her haughty demeanor slightly undone by the issuance of a violent sneeze—a sneeze that prompted the belabored peacock feather to give up the ghost and waft drunkenly down to become the object of a farcical burial at sea in the puddle at Tansy’s feet.
The Duke halted his progress on the third step, turned, raised a muddy quizzing glass to his eye, and regarded Tansy through it as if she were a particularly vile clump of refuse.
“That, my good woman, should be obvious even to you. The day you came into my life beats both the Great Fire and the Black Death by a far piece. You, madam, are in fact a walking disaster,” he sneered, dropping his glass and exposing the resulting imprint of mud that etched a perfect circle around his eye and totally destroyed the few remaining shreds of his dignity.
Tansy was too upset to find any comfort in Avanoll’s bizarre appearance, and could only watch silently as he disappeared toward his rooms—where Farnley was undoubtedly ready to greet him with a hot tub and a long string of “I told you so’s.”
But the little drama was not yet done. In the foyer Dunstan approached Tansy, a look of pity apparent on his kindly face. She averted her eyes, not quite hiding the tears that threatened to fall, and asked him if he would be so kind as to have someone in the kitchens bathe and feed Horatio while she repaired upstairs to “clean up this mess I have become.”
So overcome by her heroic display of composure was Dunstan that he himself deigned to transport the damp puppy belowstairs—at arm’s length, of course. As Tansy reached the same stair his grace had employed as a dais from which to utter his cutting remarks, she turned and appealed meekly to Dunstan. “I know I am impulsive and don’t take time to think things through, but am I really the monster his grace believes me to be?” she implored.
Dunstan halted in his tracks and strove to appear dignified while Horatio licked at his ear. “Indeed, no, Miss Tansy. You are a capital person, and so say all of us belowstairs.”
This loyalty buoyed Tansy’s spirits so much that she summoned up a brief smile and replied, “That is kind of all of you, Dunny. But I know I can be a bit of a trial sometimes. Even Papa, who loved me dearly whenever he could recollect my existence, admitted I was capable of getting tangled up in the most dreadful coils. I do not set out to get into trouble, Dunny, honestly I don’t; things just seem to have a way of happening when I’m around. But his grace thinks—well, his grace is just the rudest, most arrogant, top-lofty beast in nature! I am thoroughly out of patience with him. He casts me as a Jonah, a jinx. Let me tell you, he has been no ray of sunbeams in my life either.”
Tansy’s voice grew stronger and her posture more erect as she spoke, until now she just possibly did resemble a Boadicea, albeit a soggy one. She gave a defiant toss of her head, her natural high spirits finding solace in a bout of unladylike ferocity, and began a militant march up the steps.
Tossing over her shoulder one last burst of defiance, she announced, “I hope Ashley takes a cold and his nose runs and turns red and he has to hide himself away in his rooms for a fortnight. Then I shall send up nothing but invalid gruel and weak broth until he begs me to accept his apology. And what will I do, eh, Dunny? I shall snap my fingers in his face, that’s what I shall do!”
And with her ego well satisfied, she went looking for Pansy and a hot tub.