Regency Buck (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 3)

They went down the main street at a sober pace, but once clear of the town Sir Peregrine let his hands drop, and they jolted away at a great rate, if not in the best style, bumping over every inequality in the road, and lurching round the corners.

‘Perry, this is insupportable,’ Judith said at last. ‘Every tooth rattles in my head! You will run into something. Do, I beg of you, remember that you are to take me to see the Roman castle! I am persuaded you are on the wrong road.’

‘Oh, I had forgot that curst castle!’ he said ruefully. ‘I was meaning to see which road I must take to-morrow – to Thistleton Gap, you know. Very well, very well, I’ll turn, and go back!’ He reined in the horse as he spoke, and began at once to turn, quite heedless of the narrowness of the road at this point, and the close proximity of a particularly sharp bend in it.

‘Good God, what will you do next?’ exclaimed Judith. ‘If anything were to come round the corner! I wish you would give me the reins!’

She spoke too late. He had the gig all across the road, and seemed in danger of running into the ditch if his attention were distracted. She heard the sound of horses travelling fast and made a snatch at the reins.

Round the corner swept a curricle-and-four at breakneck speed. It was upon them; it must crash into them; there could be no stopping it. Peregrine tried to wrench the horse round, cursing under his breath; Judith felt herself powerless to move. She had a nightmarish vision of four magnificent chestnuts thundering down on her, and of a straight figure in a caped overcoat driving them. It was over in a flash. The chestnuts were swung miraculously to the off; the curricle’s mudguard caught only the wheels of the gig, and the chestnuts came to a plunging standstill.

The shock of the impact, though it was hardly more than a glancing scrape, startled the farmer’s horse into an attempt to bolt, and in another moment one wheel of the gig was in the shallow ditch, and Miss Taverner was nearly thrown from her seat.

She righted herself, aware that her bonnet was crooked, and her temper in shreds, and found that the gentleman in the cur-ricle was sitting perfectly unmoved, easily holding his horses. As she turned to look at him he spoke, not to her, but over his shoulder to a diminutive tiger perched behind him. ‘Take it away, Henry, take it away,’ he said.

Wrath, reproach, even oaths Miss Taverner could have pardoned. The provocation was great; she herself longed to box Peregrine’s ears. But this calm indifference was beyond every thing. Her anger veered irrationally towards the stranger. His manner, his whole bearing, filled her with repugnance. From the first moment of setting eyes on him she knew that she disliked him. Now she had leisure to observe him more closely, and found that she disliked him no less.

He was the epitome of a man of fashion. His beaver hat was set over black locks carefully brushed into a semblance of disorder; his cravat of starched muslin supported his chin in a series of beautiful folds; his driving-coat of drab cloth bore no less than fifteen capes, and a double row of silver buttons. Miss Taverner had to own him a very handsome creature, but found no difficulty in detesting the whole cast of his countenance. He had a look of self-consequence; his eyes, ironically surveying her from under weary lids, were the hardest she had ever seen, and betrayed no emotion but boredom. His nose was too straight for her taste. His mouth was very well-formed, firm but thin-lipped. She thought it sneered.

Worse than all was his languor. He was uninterested, both in having dexterously averted an accident, and in the gig’s plight. His driving had been magnificent; there must be unsus

pected strength in those elegantly gloved hands holding the reins in such seeming carelessness, but in the name of God why must he put on an air of dandified affectation?

As the tiger jumped nimbly down on to the road Miss Taverner’s annoyance found expression in abrupt speech: ‘We don’t need your assistance! Be pleased to drive on, sir!’

The cold eyes swept over her. Their expression made her aware of the shabbiness of the gig, of her own country-made dress, of the appearance she and Peregrine must present. ‘I should be very pleased to drive on, my good girl,’ said the gentleman in the cur-ricle, ‘but that apparently unmanageable steed of yours is – you may have noticed – making my progress impossible.’

Miss Taverner was not used to such a form of address, and it did not improve her temper. The farmer’s horse, in its frightened attempts to drag the gig out of the ditch, was certainly plunging rather wildly across the narrow road, but if only Peregrine would go to its head instead of jobbing at it, all would be well. The tiger, a sharp-faced scrap of uncertain age, dressed in a smart blue and yellow livery, was preparing to take the guidance of matters into his own hands. Miss Taverner, unable to bear the indignity of it, said fiercely: ‘Sir, I have already informed you that we don’t need your help! Get down, Perry! Give the reins to me!’

‘I have not the slightest intention of offering you my help,’ said the exquisite gentleman, rather haughtily raising his brows. ‘You will find that Henry is quite able to clear the road for me.’

And, indeed, by this time the tiger had grasped the horse’s rein above the bit, and was engaged in soothing the poor creature. This was very soon done, and in another minute the gig was clear of the ditch, and drawn up at the very edge of the road.

‘You see, it was quite easy,’ said that maddening voice.

Peregrine, who had till now been too much occupied in trying to control his horse to take part in the discussion, said angrily: ‘I’m aware the fault was mine, sir! Well aware of it!’

‘We are all well aware of it,’ replied the stranger amicably. ‘Only a fool would have attempted to turn his carriage at this precise point. Do you mean to keep me waiting very much longer, Henry?’

‘I’ve said I admit the fault,’ said Peregrine, colouring hotly, ‘and I’m sorry for it! But I shall take leave to tell you, sir, that you were driving at a shocking pace!’

He was interrupted somewhat unexpectedly by the tiger, who lifted a face grown suddenly fierce, and said in shrill Cockney accents: ‘You shut your bone-box, imperence! He’s the very best whip in the country, ah, and I ain’t forgetting Sir John Lade neither! There ain’t none to beat him, and them’s blood-chestnuts we’ve got in hand, and if them wheelers ain’t sprained a tendon apiece it ain’t nowise your fault!’

The gentleman in the curricle laughed. ‘Very true, Henry, but you will have observed that I am still waiting.’

‘Well, lord love yer, guv’nor, ain’t I coming?’ protested the tiger, scrambling back on to his perch.

Peregrine, recovering from his astonishment at the tiger’s outburst, said through his teeth: ‘We shall meet again, sir, I promise you!’

‘Do you think so?’ said the gentleman in the curricle. ‘I hope you may be found to be wrong.’

The team seemed to leap forward; in another minute the cur-ricle was gone.

‘Insufferable!’ Judith said passionately. ‘Insufferable! ’

Two

TO ONE USED TO THE SILENCE OF A COUNTRY NIGHT SLEEP AT the George Inn, Grantham, on the eve of a great fight was almost an impossibility. Sounds of loud revelry floated up from the coffee-room to Miss Taverner’s bedchamber until an early hour of the morning; she dozed fitfully, time and again awakened by a burst of laughter below-stairs, voices in the street below her window, or a hurrying footstep outside her door. After two o’clock the noise abated gradually, and she was able at last to fall into a sleep which lasted until three long blasts on a horn rudely interrupted it at twenty-three minutes past seven.