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

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