The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane by Kasey Michaels Read Free Book Online Page A

some
night clothes.
    He was very surprised once there to meet a
sober Duke, with not a sign of the drink that had supposedly sent
him into a fit of the giggles while all alone in the drawing room.
Farnley raised his eyes to the heavens, apologized that his prayers
had been unnecessary, but thanked the gods anyway—just to keep them
happy in case he ever had further need of them.
    If that Miss Tamerlane Dunstan had told him
about caused his grace’s strange behavior, and if it was true she
was to be living with them all in London for the Season (such news
travels fast belowstairs), Farnley felt he would be making many
calls on the deities in the coming months.

Chapter Five
    T he 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