Chapter Eight
At a quarter to the hour of five, a dashing young lady in a deep gold pelisse and matching bonnet was perched expectantly on a gilt chair in the foyer of Avanoll House. Her entire attitude—from her stubbornly uptilted chin to a single visible, stylishly-shod foot, at the moment tapping a rapid tattoo against the tiled floor—bespoke an impatience to be up and gone. Her strategic positioning declared she was not to be out-maneuvered by a cowardly Duke bent on escape from his promise.
“Blast” she heard from the top of the stairs. She turned her head sharply, tilting her precariously perched bonnet even further over one eye, to observe the Duke—looking dashing in his three-caped drab-green driving coat, in the act of putting one gleaming Hessian boot on the top stair.
“Afraid I’d renege, cousin?” he asked acidly as he descended to the foyer and took his gloves and curly-brimmed beaver from Dunstan’s outstretched hands. “Never let it be said I was a white feather man who ran from battle, eh, Dunny? Ah,” he breathed as if he had not erred on purpose, “I mean Dunstan, don’t I? So sorry, old man, force of habit you know, since it was you, so you tell me, who used to be fond of bouncing me on your knee when I was but a babe. But, then, perhaps old ties were made to be broken and old friendships forgot. Tut, tut!” He held up one large hand to cut off the apology Dunstan had shown no intention of making. “Though you have cut me to the quick by deserting me to go over to,” he shot a quick look at Tansy, “the enemy, I am determined to hide my pain and carry on with the National stiff upper lip. It is expected, you know.”
“Oh, give over, Ashley. Can’t you see you are not impressing Dunny one mite? Besides, your sorrow is all a hum so you can delay our outing, and as I hear the horses now I suggest you do not leave them standing in the breeze any longer.” Tansy then dismissed the Duke with a slight smile and turned to the butler. “Dunny, please remind Cook that dinner is for eight of the clock, and that although I approved the menu it was with the understanding the third remove be deleted.”
As Tansy turned for the door the Duke’s voice rang out in devilish glee, “Oh, Dunstan, I am afraid I had a short lapse of memory, it seems I have invited four guests to dine with us—gentlemen I met at White’s this afternoon who were lamenting the lack of a dinner engagement. As I could not bear to think my friends at loose ends, I—foolishly forgetting I have no housekeeper now that Miss Tamerlane has seen fit to dispose of the woman I had employed—begged them to take their mutton with me tonight.”
His grace, suddenly feeling better than he had all day, turned for the door and encountered Tansy’s wickedly dancing eyes.
“Dunny,” she trilled, “have two places removed from the table, if you would please. It seems I have overestimated his grace’s circle of friends. He has only four willing to play cat’s paw for him, it seems.” Tansy cocked her head toward the door. “Your grace—the horses are waiting. Shall we go?”
The Duke stormed angrily through the doorway and down the steps ahead of his cousin, determined to leave her standing in his dust as he sprung his pair away from her. But by the time he reached the phaeton his sense of humor took over. Infuriating wretch, he thought. Meddling, bothersome, clever, intelligent minx! Tansy saw his shoulders start to shake and then heard the clear baritone melody of his laugh.
He about-faced and held out his hand, saying, “Cousin, you have bested me on all suits, but never let it be said a Benedict was a poor loser. Allow me to help you up and, if you don’t mind, as the horses are fresh I will hold the reins until we are in the Park. Then I shall turn them over to you to see if you handle them as prettily as you just handled me.”
Looking back at the door and catching the smile on Dunstan’s face, he pressed his luck even further. “Dunny,” he called, “please tell Farnley to lay out my blue for this evening. I wish to look my best at my cousin’s table.”
“Yes, your grace,” Dunstan replied, forgiving the once bounced and tickled baby with relief. “At once, sir!”
Avanoll had little trouble handling the fresh horses in the afternoon traffic, and in a few minutes they were turning into the Park. There they joined the press of curricles, phaetons, landaus, barouches, and tilburys—and their modishly-dressed occupants—all busy seeing and being seen by the rest of the ton as they bowed and nodded and occasionally condescended to stop and pass a few moments in conversation (successfully jamming all traffic in both directions and guaranteeing them the notice of their fellow promenaders—at least the ones not busy trying to keep their showy, temperamental cattle in check).
The social politics of all this head-jerking and hand-waving was totally lost on Tansy. She knew only that her skill in handling the ribbons would be limited to not allowing the horses to fall asleep in the shafts as they waited for a ridiculous old creature in orchid to stop waggling her bonnet’s ostrich feathers all over the aging roué who was nearly tumbling from his mount into her more than ample lap in an effort to decipher her long and garbled attempt at girlish flirtation.
Avanoll could feel Tansy’s tenseness across the short distance between them and almost—but not quite—wished to hear her sure-to-be pithy remarks on the orchid lady. Wordlessly he slipped the reins into her hands and she took them quite naturally, with no trace of nervousness. Just impatience.
Suddenly the air was split by three resounding sneezes as the ostrich plumes and the roué’s nose collided one too many times. Tansy’s clear laugh rang out, to his grace’s way of thinking, twice as piercingly as a Highlander’s battle cry. The orchid lady looked pointedly toward the phaeton with murder in her eyes—but quickly adjusted her features to resemble indulgent understanding of the youthful high spirits so prevalent these days when she saw the miscreant’s companion.
Without a backward look to her companion whose face was now buried in a voluminous handkerchief, she motioned her driver forward, then stopped him when abreast of juicier quarry.
“Why, your grace, at first I thought I beheld an apparition. It is simply an age since last you graced us with your presence so early in the Season. Indeed, the Season is not yet officially here, is it, although one couldn’t tell that by the turnout today, could one? I declare, half the two thousand, at least, must be in the park today.”
Throughout the delivery of this speech the lady’s watery-pale orchid eyes (an answer to the unasked question of why an aging female of little beauty and a rather muddy complexion would deck herself head to toe in pale orchid) darted back and forth between his grace and Tansy. Doubtless she was mentally trotting out and discarding reasons why this unspectacular looking and, if not on the shelf, definitely at her last prayers female should be the first of her sex to be seen handling an Avanoll pair since the dowager Duchess retired her whip twenty years before.
Since the Duke seemed ready to give her only a small smile and a nod before rudely dismissing his dear departed Mama’s oldest and dearest friend—well, perhaps that was stretching a point, but they did have their come-outs the same Season, and her with her youngest still to get off her hands after three unfruitful Seasons, drat the chit—the lady blithely discarded the niceties and asked the name of the charming miss who had the pleasure of his grace’s company.
“How remiss of me. Lady Stanley. It seems in my absence from town my manners have gone a-begging,” he replied without any hint of gentlemanly remorse. Then he very quickly effected introductions and nudged Tansy’s foot with the toe of his boot in an effort to get her moving.
Tansy was only too happy to oblige and raised her hands, only to be stopped by Lady Stanley’s incredulous, “Your cousin? Why the only Tamerlane I know of was Sir Andrew Tamerlane, and that man couldn’t possibly be related to you.”
“Why ever not. Lady Stanley?” purred Tansy in a tone Avanoll already knew only too well.
But before his grace could wade in and smooth the waters. Lady Stanley sealed her fate by blurting out, “Why, really, my dear child, you must know Sir Andrew was a worthless ninny-brain who gambled and dran
k himself underground two years or so back—ending a singularly worthless and unproductive life. His wife, bless her soul, a sweet young thing several years my junior, died of a broken heart, I heard—thanks to that wretch of a man.”
Avanoll looked wildly about him for a hole in which to hide before the rockets started exploding around his head. As Tansy drew herself up to a commanding height—no mean feat, considering she was seated—his grace thought: here we go, cant expressions, stable language and all. Why didn’t he leave well enough alone and let Emily elope with that young dandy? How easily he could have avoided all this mess!
But when Tansy spoke it was quietly and with great dignity. “My mother, Lady Stanley, expired from a putrid cold the summer I was eight. Her only regret in dying was that she must leave her beloved husband Sir Andrew Tamerlane, my father. His sorrow may have led him to indulge quite earnestly in vices only dabbled at during his grasstime, and it may have hastened his blessed release from an unhappy life to a reunion in heaven with his beloved wife.”
Avanoll was impressed. This was a crushing set-down, delivered with the expertise of a seasoned London matron. But his mouth dropped to half cock as Tansy finished her speech thusly:
“And my father’s life was not, as you say, worthless, for he taught me many things. For one, he always impressed upon me never to behave so commonly as to malign needlessly the dead or attack those, living or dead, unable to defend themselves. Which is much the same case in this instance, don’t you agree?”
As Lady Stanley’s face took on an unbecoming shade of puce that clashed badly with her plumes, Tansy delivered the coup de grace. “And Mama, thinking of my future no doubt, told me on her deathbed—with all the veracity of any deathbed utterance—never, ever to wear any color that would make my rather brown complexion look like dirty ditch-water after the mail coach has passed through it.” The tenacious chin thrust out triumphantly as she added, “Looking at you, Lady Stanley, I can at last understand her concern. Good day.”
Tansy whipped up her horses and neatly slid by Lady Stanley’s landau, which could not move until her driver recovered from his fit of silent laughter. She had gone only a few paces when a voice called out, “Ashley, you sly dog, stop at once.”
The Duke heard the voice and felt his stomach shatter into a million pieces before settling somewhere near his toes. “Brummell!” he whispered hoarsely. “We’re in the basket now.”
George Brummell, best known as the Beau, approached the phaeton, his grinning face making it obvious he had heard every word of Tansy’s impassioned speech.
Ashley whispered quickly to his cousin, “Keep your mouth shut and we may get out of this yet. So far you have amused Beau—God only knows why—but one wrong word and you may as well try to spin gold from straw than present your face in public again.” Much louder he said, “Good afternoon to you. Beau. You are a pleasant surprise.”
In the middle of answering the Beau’s question as to the identity of his companion, Avanoll suddenly felt himself pitchforked into a bizarre play—or farce, as he later termed it.
His cousin was sitting sedately beside him, basking in the afterglow of her triumph over Lady Stanley, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes scanning the horizon almost as if the presence of the one man in England who had the power to make or break her socially was at the least a person of little interest or at the worst a crushing bore. For this his grace was almost thankful. Indeed, nothing could be more fatal than for Tansy to act the tongue-tied miss—or worse, open her mouth and let out another cant expression. The Beau might consider a slip in the heat of anger amusing, but two slips would brand her common or brazen.
One moment the Duke was counting his chickens, the next he sat with figurative egg all over his face. For Tansy’s idle glance had suddenly locked onto something in the near distance that made her entire body stiffen. Before the Duke could do anything to check her, she had turned and executed a neat vault from her lofty perch to the gravel path. It was a graceful descent, all things considered, and showed both a strength of limb and degree of courage most misses would take pains to conceal. But it was not, alas, a completely clean jump.
Tansy’s underslip, a frothy confection of snowy muslin and lace—and one of her favorite possessions, considering the rough quality of her undergarments these past few years—had somehow caught itself on the hub of the right wheel, raising the entirety of her skirts to an alarming height.
With a pang of regret, but not a moment’s hesitation, she gave a violent tug on her skirts and was rewarded by a resounding r-r-i-i-p, not to mention immediate freedom.
Needless to state, the Duke’s phaeton instantly became a traveling show for those of the ton who seemed mysteriously congregated in this one particular area of the Park. As her first speech upon jumping center stage, Tansy shouted loud and clear, “Don’t just sit there staring like a dolt with your jaw at half-mast, Ashley. Follow me!”
Avanoll, with some memory of his army days and blind obedience and all that sort of thing coming to the fore, reacted almost against his will. He threw the reins to his groom, Leo, then hopped down from his seat and took off at a fast trot after Tansy’s retreating figure. He paused for a second, however, taking time for a second look at those previously revealed and very shapely ankles that—with her skirts lifted for less encumbered movement—Tansy was again parading before all the bucks who also chased after her, quizzing glasses firmly stuck to their eyes.