Free The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane by Kasey Michaels Page B

budget.”
    Avanoll looked skeptical, but as Dunstan
nodded his head in agreement his skepticism turned to reluctant
belief. Perhaps if his head were not buzzing as if there were a
thousand bees building a nest between his ears, he might even have
found it in himself to be grateful. But it was, and he wasn’t.
    Instead, he climbed upon his hobby horse and
started in to ride.
    “Three hundred pounds, a thousand pounds—it
don’t make a pennysworth of difference to me as long as I can feed
my belly at my table in my house at my convenience. What good is
three hundred pounds if I’m to be made to suffer the country
bumpkin housekeeping methods my cousin believes proper—even when
applied to the establishment of a Duke?”
    He knew his last thrust had hit home as Tansy
visibly flinched at the words “country bumpkin.” If but only for
the sake of his pride (and his buzzing head), he would have gone
on, had not the dowager come to her feet with an excruciatingly
loud screech of her scraped-back chair.
    “Grandson, I have listened to all the
childish tantrums I intend to hear from you this morning,” she
announced sternly, reducing him with one sentence to the rank of
naughty toddler. “Of all the selfish-minded, poor-spirited, rude,
crude, and ungrateful wretches I have ever met, you, my buck, carry
off the palm. Now, can I be assured of an end to this nonsense or
must I first box your ears?”
    Lucinda’s fragile nerves were becoming
terribly overset by all this shouting and she rose to retire from
the fray, leaving behind her some typical words of wisdom (indeed,
everyone would have felt sadly deprived if she hadn’t). “‘Of all
animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.’ Plato.”
    Once Lucinda’s exit had broken some of the
tension, and since he was secretly grateful the light-fingered Mrs.
Green had been rousted, and because he had great respect for (and
not a little justified fear of) his formidable grandparent, and in
view of the hurt look in Tansy’s eyes which was causing him a
slight unfamiliar tender stirring in his chest, the Duke at once
bowed to his cousin and uttered an apology. He then walked over and
kissed the dowager on her overheated forehead and apologized once
again.
    Emily, who throughout the past few minutes
had been twisting her head back and forth between the speakers with
an expression of unholy glee upon her pretty face, felt her
top-lofty brother may have been set down a peg or two—but not quite
enough.
    “Ashley,” she said artlessly, “do you not
think a more fitting apology would be to take Cousin Tansy out for
an airing in the Park this very afternoon? I know she has been
simply pining to try out your new chestnuts. Why not hitch them to
your phaeton—you know, the one that is so dreadfully high that it
makes me quite faint with dizziness—and let Tansy take the
reins?”
    She turned from one startled face to the
other and smiled an innocent cherubic smile. “Don’t you think that
would be a more fitting apology?”
    Tansy never blushed in embarrassment; she
only flushed in anger. She was flushing now. The dowager, however,
seeing a chance to give Cupid a hand, quickly and quite firmly
endorsed the plan. Mentally she made a note to scold her
granddaughter later for her incidentally helpful but definitely
maliciously meant suggestion.
    Avanoll, not trusting his voice, grated his
teeth together audibly (sending up a thundering racket in his
head), mutely agreed, and then quit the room. The dowager Duchess,
well satisfied with her morning’s work, went off to closet herself
away with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
    Lady Emily, having polished one half of a
saltcellar in all this time, laid down her polishing cloth and
retired posthaste to the safety of her chamber—out of reach of her
vengeful brother.
    Dunstan, who had been busily trying to appear
invisible while soaking up every word of this juicy family
squabble, muttered something about securing more polish from