Chapter Nineteen
Almack’s was no excursion into delight for Emily that night either when Digby—acting on orders but with his heart not in his work—barely nodded at her in passing and stood up for three dances with Tansy before retiring to the card room, only to reappear in time to accompany Tansy home.
Melancholy and more than a few glasses of burgundy had combined to sink Digby into the glooms, and he sulked in a corner of the coach all the way to Grosvenor Square, alternately sighing and moaning and hiccupping while elsewhere in an equally dark corner of her grandmother’s coach, Emily alternately sighed and sniffed and whimpered.
It required no great flight of the imagination to see that things were soon to come to a head when Emily lost control completely the next morning at breakfast and tearfully declared that she had been the greatest fool in creation for not recognizing sooner that Digby was the only man on earth “with the power to move my heart.”
After Comfort was summoned to lead a weeping Emily away to lie down in her chamber and have her temples patted with eau de cologne, the dowager happily declared the Digby Plan a resounding success.
“And I shall soon be free to get on with my life, unhampered by a certain histrionic debutante and her sweet but somewhat wearing on the nerves beloved,” Tansy pointed out, smiling bravely into the unknown future, her eyes deliberately directed slightly to the left and above her companions’ heads. Thus, although a certain emotion-sparked brilliance in her eyes was apparent to them, their conspiratorial winks at each other went unnoticed by this unsuspecting object of yet another minor intrigue the two ladies were plotting in their fertile minds.
Tansy repaired to the sun-lit morning room to compose a letter to Digby, telling him that Emily was ripe for the taking, but if he were smart he would stay completely away from the house for a full week, disappearing from sight socially as well. Meanwhile Tansy would drop hints that he had been mistaken in his feelings for her, and friendship was their only bond. Perhaps, she would suggest, he was ill, or depressed. By the time he made his triumphant arrival in Grosvenor Square a week hence, Emily would be too overcome to do more than fall on his neck with relief and joy that he was still willing to have her. Remember, Tansy cautioned him, he must not break down, he must remain strong until Emily was completely at his mercy. Then he should demand—repeat, demand—she marry him at once and put an end to this foolishness. He must be strong-willed, masterful even, and Emily would melt as surely as a snowflake in June.
Sighing in relief that all would soon be settled, Tansy made an error in judgment and entrusted Pansy with the task of giving the note to a footman for delivery. Pansy promptly turned the note over to Farnley, who beat a hurried path to his grace’s chambers and waved the envelope under Avanoll’s nose with an I-told-you-so flair that was almost nauseating in its smugness.
To the Duke the envelope showed all the signs of a billet-deux. So that was how the land laid, was it? he thought with the single-minded blindness of the emotionally involved. He ordered Farnley to make sure the message was delivered immediately, and just as immediately decided to accept his friends’ invitation to visit Newmarket for Race Week, leaving as soon as Farnley could pack bags for them both.
He tracked down Tansy, sitting alone in the now dusk-dimmed conservatory, where she was bravely trying to envision a future devoid of a certain arrogant Duke, but where he supposed she had escaped to weave dreams of her wedded life with that peach-fuzz faced infant Digby.
He crept up behind her stealthily, turned her about by the simple method of propelling her with his hands on her shoulders, and crushed her startled, half-open mouth beneath his own in a long, hard kiss that threatened to loosen her front teeth. After an endless time, with Tansy’s body all the while remaining ramrod stiff beneath his merciless grasp, Avanoll allowed the kiss to soften, his lips moving caressingly along hers until she began to respond. His fingers slackened in their grip as his arms lowered to encircle her back in an embrace she returned with a fervor she was too honest to conceal.
But as always, Tansy was to be suddenly thrust away while just on the brink, she was sure, of some earthshaking discovery.
“There!” Ashley crowed triumphantly as he grinned into Tansy’s bemused face. “Compare that with that halfling Digby’s idea of grand passion, if you dare.”
“Are you saying you are harboring a grand passion for me, your grace?” Tansy asked quietly.
“I’m saying, my dear woman, I don’t need you scurrying back here a year from now with a sniffling infant clinging to your skirts, disillusioned with a marriage between two people having about as much in common as Beau Brummell and a chimney sweep, and expecting me to take you in. The kiss was merely a reminder of one of the major differences between a mature man and a callow boy.”
Tansy began to see the Duke through a haze of angry red. “I see, your grace, and I thank you. I really do. Until now I had believed the major disparities to be those dealing with maturity, experience, and responsible behavior. Now I see my error. The only difference is in the accumulation of the monstrous quantities of insufferable arrogance and illusions of omnipotence a male begins to amass from the moment he is out of short coats. It is depressing to realize that Digby will one day, if your example serves as any guide, equal you in these regrettable acquisitions. Perhaps, if I can be by his side during these next important years, I can help avert this disintegration of decent behavior and modesty so apparent in your grace. In other words,” she ended firmly as the Duke’s complexion darkened to a dull crimson, “I’d rather be leg-shackled to a well-meaning, honest youth than bracketed to a devious, insufferably overbearing dictator like you.”
“That is fortunate, then,” the Duke sneered, his pride much affected, “for I wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole.”
“You didn’t seem so averse a few minutes ago, your grace,” Tansy retaliated, heedless of an inner voice that told her she was only making matters worse.
“That was a mistake,” Avanoll growled, “and one you can rest assured I will not make again.”
“On that head at least, dear cousin, I believe we are in agreement. And I must tell you I will consider any further advances by you upon my person that bring you to within a distance less than that of the length of two barge poles as provocation sufficient to warrant a retaliation directed at increasing the number of bumps on your high and mighty Benedict nose by at least one,” she ended threateningly.
The Duke was suddenly moved to recognize the absurdity of this conversation, and allowed a small smile to curve one side of his aristocratic face. “Am I to consider that as a threat or a challenge, dear cousin?” he queried silkily.
Tansy drew herself up to her full height, refusing to acknowledge Ashley’s exasperating talent for making her always to appear, at the least, in the wrong, or at the most, ludicrous, when it was invariably he who instigated their quarrels in the first place. She had no illusions in her realistic mind of sharing anything but the same impersonal roof with the Duke, with that small solace coming to an end with Emily’s marriage, and her heart was already more involved than she cared to admit. No, if a final break must come, and she was sure it would, it would be better to begin working toward that break now.
Therefore, the reluctant smile the Duke had been covertly searching for did not appear, and the haunting sight of a pair of deep brown eyes deliberately devoid of any expression and the sound of the bitten out words,” You are to consider it a promise, your grace,” traveled with him on his trip to Newmarket as surely as if Farnley had tucked them up in the luggage alongside his master’s clean shirts and changes of linen.
The only thoughts that surfaced more frequently were the memory of that last, impulsive kiss—and the gnawing fear that something rare and wonderful was inexorably slipping from his grasp, some nebulous stirring of his emotions that he had so far been unable to categorize or relate to any other experience in his lifetime.
After a fine if simple dinner of rabbit
smothered in onions, he tried to frame a mental listing of words describing his cousin: exasperating, infuriating, obstinate, strong-willed, stubborn (he made an imaginary erasure and substituted the word tenacious for that last adjective), nosy, independent, and unladylike came swiftly into his mind almost without conscious thought. These were followed swiftly by the words sympathetic, generous, loyal, courageous, inventive, intelligent, witty, versatile, and trustworthy.
But then, after he had cracked his second bottle in the solitude of his room in Newmarket, words like vulnerable, soft, graceful, alluring, sweet-smelling, lovely, and, at long last, lovable, wrote themselves at the top of his imaginary list. His glass of fine, aged burgundy became destined to remain in his suddenly stilled, half-raised hand, until he at long last remembered its existence and placed it carefully back on the table—untouched—before rising to cross to the window to stare unseeingly at the darkening countryside.
Superimposed over the scene before him came a clear-as-day picture of a radiant Tansy standing in the stately St. George Church in Hanover Square, her ivory satin gown and floor-length tulle veil combining to make her look almost ethereal. Her hand was resting on the Duke’s black-clad forearm, and as they proceeded slowly past the assembled throng of happy onlookers her face melted into a smile that proclaimed that this was a woman who was both loved and in love.
The Duke felt his heart begin to swell at the “rightness” of this obvious marriage ceremony, but that same heart suddenly plummeted to the tips of his leather encased toes when he realized that he and Tansy had not been walking out of the church as man and wife, but were moving up the aisle toward the altar and Tansy’s eagerly waiting bridegroom, Digby Eagleton.
Young Eagleton’s immaculately tailored wedding suit looked a bit odd, as it was spanned by juvenile leading-strings looped about his waist and topped with a lace-trimmed baby bonnet tied under his chin in a small bow.
“Damn!” the Duke shouted into the empty room, and the hideous vision before him exploded into a million jagged pieces and disappeared. “Damn, damn, and blast! The devil a bit if they think I’ll play stand-in for father of the bride—or foot the bill for the wedding and all the fripperies either. What a fool I have been. What a stupid, asinine, blind, dumb fool!” he berated himself, pounding his clenched fists against his forehead.
“I love her,” he enunciated aloud slowly, as if he had to hear the words before he could truly believe them. He threw his body into a cavernous wingchair near the small fire, in an attitude of utter despair usually shown only by volatile youths in the throes of their first calf-love.
“I love her,” he whispered softly this time, dropping his head onto his chest. “Just when I had resigned myself to a life unlikely to be blessed with love, I am presented with the one woman who holds the key to my heart. And jackass that I am, again and again I do my best to make her hate me. Now, she’s besotted with that knock-in-the-cradle Digby Eagleton, and I’ve lost my only chance at happiness. Grandmama is right: I am a hopeless case.”
Slowly, Avanoll’s hand reached out and grasped the fireside-warmed glass of burgundy, which he drained to the dregs in one long swallow before dashing one of his landlord’s finest crystal goblets to the hearth in an uncommon display of pique.
For the rest of that long night the Duke drank directly from the decanter, and as the sky began to lighten he staggered to his bed with a mind at last dulled to a degree sufficient to allowing him to fall into a fitful, dream-laden steep. If his Aunt Lucinda had somehow been able to observe her nephew these last few hours, no doubt she would have had an extensive retinue of applicable quotes with which to scold him and point out the errors of his ways. But it was probably a great kindness to the Duke—and a life-saving grace to his aunt—that she had not.
Meanwhile, back in Grosvenor Square, the servants were in a dither trying to manage a group of ladies who all seemed to be outdoing themselves in acting as queer as Dick’s hatband.
Lady Emily was prone to indulge in raucous bouts of weeping, interrupted only by high flights of good humor—when she would write copious lists of possible wedding-guests or make dozens of sketches of gowns she would need for her trousseau—before descending once more into the glooms while she vowed her heart was broken in a million pieces and she was the most wretched creature in the world.
Miss Tansy, on the other hand, was being so determinedly cheerful and full of energy that her devoted servants were becoming completely fagged with trying to keep up with her in endless rounds of housecleaning—for all the world as if she was getting the house in order for a new owner.
The old tabbies, as the dowager and Aunt Lucinda were known belowstairs, were carrying on like a pair of confirmed lunatics as they huddled for endless hours, whispering and giggling and generally disrupting the staff with their unorthodox behavior.
The servants could only thank their lucky stars the Duke (who had been growling about the house these weeks past as if his skin didn’t fit) and Farnley (who would cast them all in the glooms with predictions of evil spirits and omens of bad luck suitable to each individual eccentric act of the masters) were not in residence.
Dunstan knew more than he was letting on, of course. He walked about nowadays with a slight, secret smile always lurking about his placid face, a smile that broadened to a grin the day he instructed Leo to ride posthaste to Newmarket with a note from the dowager that was to be placed in the Duke’s hands personally.
The missal read:
My dearest grandson,
You will be as pleased as I to hear that there is soon to be a notice in the Times concerning the imminent nuptials of a loved one close to all of us. Your presence in Grosvenor Square at this time would be appreciated if you could but tear yourself away from the diversions in Newmarket in time to participate in the happy announcement.
Yours in affection, Yr. Grandmother.
Farnley was very put out with the ridiculously short notice he was given to pack up and be ready to leave Newmarket for London. With three good days of racing still to go, and with Farnley’s extremely reliable tip about a sure winner in tomorrow’s second race cast to the winds, the Duke’s party started back to London at breakneck speed. Taking the shortcut that bypassed Cambridge entirely, they stopped only to rest the horses and take some quick refreshment at Bishop, Stortford, before heading out again, with Avanoll and Farnley in the curricle and Leo riding along on horseback.
Farnley’s death-grip on the brass bench-rail was by necessity reduced to a one-handed acrobatic maneuver as his right hand was almost constantly engaged in worrying an infuriating itching on the end of his pointed nose.
“I’m that worried, your grace,” he shouted to the Duke over the din of the galloping horses. “When a nose itches like mine it can only mean I will be kissed, cursed, vexed, run against a gate post, or I will shake hands with a fool. If you would please to slow down, I should fear less the idea of meeting up with a gate post.”
“There’s no need to slow the pace, Farnley, you gudgeon. Just shake my hand and your nose will cease its itching at once,” Avanoll shouted back.
The curricle, its occupants dust-stained and exhausted, turned into the mews behind Avanoll House just as abruptly as it had left just days earlier. Avanoll wearily dragged himself toward the small salon where Dunstan would soon provide him with a cold supper and a colder bottle, and opened the door slowly, fatigue seeping from every pore. He was met by the sight of his baby sister being thoroughly kissed by one Digby Eagleton.
“You despicable, two-timing ingrate!” he bellowed, every muscle coiling in his readiness to pounce. As Emily and Digby turned questioning eyes toward the disheveled figure in the doorway, their arms still around each other in total unselfconsciousness, Avanoll advanced on them with violence his clear intent. Emily stepped protectively in front of Digby and warned her brother to keep his distance, as things were not as they seemed.
The Duke lifted her out of his way without breaking stride, and a moment la
ter Digby was nursing a bloody nose from his prone position on the hearthrug.
“You stupid fool!” Emily accused her brother before dropping to her knees to croon to her fallen hero. Within seconds the room was crowded to bursting with servants. Tansy, the dowager, and her shadow Aunt Lucinda; Digby groaning all the while and Emily screaming invectives at her brother.
At that moment—when Avanoll froze as if poleaxed to stand mute in the midst of the chaos he had created—Farnley’s nose, which had been plaguing him near to distraction since Newmarket, miraculously ceased to itch.
The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane Page 19