Free The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane by Kasey Michaels

an
overweening feeling of superiority.
    “So,” he suggested as he walked over to stand
leering down at her, “you are well on the way to worming yourself
into convincing everyone that you are an indispensable part of this
household. I didn’t know you were so concerned with either my
domestic routine or my purse. Or is it that you are simply a nosey
busybody who delights in sticking her fingers into everyone else’s
pie?”
    Tansy’s brown eyes flashed fire. “That was a
sinister remark,” she responded boldly.
    “‘There are some who bear a grudge even to
those that do them good.’ Pilpay,” came an unmistakable, trilling
voice from across the room—a voice his grace ignored as best he
could while he asked his acting housekeeper the menu for the
evening.
    Tansy’s smile fairly dazzled him as she
informed him brightly, “Baked river eel in parsley sauce, if it
please your grace.”
    Once the figurines on the mantelpiece stopped
shaking (due to the vibrations caused by the angry slamming of the
front door), the ladies repaired to the dining room to partake of
an outstanding example of the heights of culinary excellence Cook
was capable once supplied with quality foodstuffs.
    In the wee hours of the morning, a trifle
worse for wear, the Duke stumbled into the foyer and dropped his
house key, the hag-stone attached to it making a terrible din in
the quiet house. The butler peeped his head around the corner to
see what was the matter, and his grace—putting one unsteady finger
to his lips—whispered loudly, “Shh, Dunny, it’s only your sweet
laddie-boy, home at last.”
    “The name is Dunstan, your grace,” the old
family retainer pronounced crushingly, before leaving his master to
negotiate the path to his bedchamber as best he could in his
castaway state.
    When the Duke could no longer shut out the
glare of the mid-morning sun that had crept relentlessly across his
bed the next morning until it sent skyrockets of pain into his eye
sockets, he pushed himself up on one elbow and cast his eyes about
his chamber. The mantel clock told him it was only ten o’clock—not
too late an hour, considering his activities of the night before.
Further investigation showed him what his shivering body already
had guessed: there was no fire in the grate, and, stranger yet, no
cup of chocolate stood on his bedside table, no fresh clothes hung
from the clothes-tree visible through the open dressing room door,
and Farnley was nowhere in sight. Odd, indeed.
    He leaned over, a move that sent cymbals
crashing through his head, and pulled the bell rope. Farnley did
not appear. When three more vicious tugs produced not one servant,
he opened his mouth and gave a mighty bellow. “Farnley!” he called
once, then clapped his hands to his head to still the bells that
had set up a discordant clanging between his ears.
    Finally, convinced help was not forthcoming,
he searched out his maroon brocade dressing gown and spied out his
slippers beneath the bed, but in the end he chose to forego the
slippers as bending over to retrieve them proved too painful a
project.
    Eventually he groped his way unsteadily to
the dining room—for by now his stomach was paying him up—following
the sounds of voices in hopes someone would take pity on him and
give him something to make his mouth taste less like a stable
floor.
    Once propped against the door frame he could
make out the figures of the dowager, Emily, his aunt, Dunstan, and
his accursed cousin, all seated around a dining table piled high
with what must have been every piece of silver in the house.
    His sister saw him first. “Oh, Ashley,” she
giggled, “you look Perfectly Awful!”
    “I don’t recall requesting your opinion,
puss, and I am not here to amuse you. Where is my breakfast?”
    “Oh,” Tansy said sweetly, “we didn’t expect
you down before noon. I’m afraid there is nothing to be had right
now.” She replaced the lid on a silver bowl with a slightly heavy
hand, and