Regency Buck (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 3)

‘You had much better go to Sir Harry Peyton,’ recommended Worth. ‘I will give you a note for him.’

The tiger turned a look of indignant reproach upon him. ‘Yes, and where would you be if I did?’ he demanded.

Miss Taverner gave her horses the office to start, and said imperatively: ‘Stand away from their heads! If you are afraid, await us here.’

The tiger let go the wheelers and made a dash for his perch. As he scrambled up into it he said with strong emotion: ‘I’ve sat behind you sober, guv’nor, and I’ve sat behind you foxed, and I’ve sat behind you when you raced Sir John to Brighton, and never made no complaint, but I ain’t never sat behind you mad afore!’ with which he folded his arms, nodded darkly, and relapsed into a disapproving silence.

On her mettle, Miss Taverner guided the team down the street at a brisk trot, driving them well up to their bits. She had fine light hands, knew how to point her leaders, and soon showed the Earl that she was sufficiently expert in the use of the whip. She flicked the leader, and caught the thong again with a slight turn of her wrist that sent it soundlessly up the stick. She drove his lordship into Hyde Park without the least mishap, and twice round it. Forgetting for the moment to be coldly formal, she said impulsively: ‘I was used to drive all my father’s horses, but I never handled a team so light-mouthed as these, sir.’

‘I am thought to be something of a judge of horse-flesh, Miss Taverner,’ said the Earl.

Strolling along the promenade with his arm in the Honourable Frederick Byng’s, Sir Harry Peyton gave a gasp, and exclaimed: ‘Good God, Poodle, look! Curricle Worth!’

‘So it is,’ agreed Mr Byng, continuing to ogle a party of young ladies.

‘But with a female driving his greys! And a devilish fine female too!’

Mr Byng was sufficiently struck by this to look after the

cur-ricle. ‘Very odd of him. Perhaps it is Miss Taverner – his ward, you know. I was hearing she is an excessively delightful girl. Eighty thousand pounds, I believe.’

Sir Harry was not paying much attention. ‘I would not have credited it! Worth must be mad or in love! Henry, too! I tell you what, Poodle: this means I shall get Henry at last!’

Mr Byng shook his head wisely. ‘Worth won’t let him go. You know how it is – Curricle Worth and his Henry: almost a byword. They tell me he was a chimney-sweep’s boy before Worth found him.’

‘He was. And if I know Henry he won’t stay with Worth any longer.’

He was wrong. When the curricle drew up again in Brook Street, Henry looked at Miss Taverner with something akin to respect in his sharp eyes. ‘It ain’t what I’m used to, nor yet what I approves of,’ he said, ‘but you handles ’em werry well, miss, werry well you handles ’em!’

The Earl assisted his ward down from the curricle. ‘You may have your perch-phaeton,’ he said. ‘But inform Peregrine that I will charge myself with the procuring of a suitable pair for you to drive.’

‘You are very good, sir, but Peregrine is quite able to choose my horses for me.’

‘I make every allowance for your natural partiality, Miss Taverner, but that is going too far,’ said the Earl.

The butler had opened the door before she could think of a crushing enough retort. She could not feel that it would be seemly to quarrel with her guardian in front of a servant, so she merely asked him whether he cared to come into the house.

He declined it, made his bow, and descended the steps again to his curricle.

Miss Taverner was torn between annoyance at his highhanded interference in her plans, and satisfaction at being perfectly sure now of acquiring just the horses she wanted.

A few days later the fashionable throng in Hyde Park was startled by the appearance of the rich Miss Taverner driving a splendid match pair of bays in a very smart sporting phaeton with double perches of swan-neck pattern. She was attended by a groom in livery, and bore herself (mindful of Mr Brummell’s advice) with an air of self-confidence nicely blended with a seeming indifference to the sensation she was creating. As good luck would have it Mr Brummell was walking in the Park with his friend Jack Lee. He was pleased to wave, and Miss Taverner pulled up to speak to him, saying with a twinkle: ‘I am amazed, sir, that you should be seen talking to so unfashionable a person as myself.’

‘My dear ma’am, pray do not mention it!’ returned Brummell earnestly. ‘There is no one near us.’

She laughed, allowed him to present Mr Lee, and after a little conversation drove on.

Within a week the rich Miss Taverner’s phaeton was one of the sights of town, and several aspiring ladies had attempted something in the same style. But since no one, with the exception of Lady Lade, who was so vulgar and low-born (having been before her marriage to Sir John the mistress of a highwayman known as Sixteen-String Jack) that she could not be thought to count, could drive one horse, let alone a pair, with anything approaching Miss Taverner’s skill, these attempts were soon abandoned. To be struggling with a refractory horse, or jogging soberly along behind a sluggish one, while Miss Taverner dashed by in her high phaeton could not add to any lady’s consequence. Miss Taverner was allowed to drive her pair unrivalled.

She did not always drive, however. Sometimes she rode, generally with her brother, and occasionally with Lord Anglesey’s lovely daughters, and very often with her cousin, Mr Bernard Taverner. She rode a very spirited black horse, and it was not long before Miss Taverner’s black was as well known as Lord Morton’s long-tailed grey. She had learned the trick of acquiring idiosyncrasies.

In a month the Taverners were so safely launched into Society that even Mrs Scattergood admitted that there did not seem any longer to be anything to fear. Peregrine had not only been made a member of White’s, but had contrived to get himself elected to Watier’s as well, its perpetual President, Mr Brummell, having been induced to choose a white instead of a black ball on the positive assurance of Lord Sefton that Peregrine would bring into the club not the faintest aroma either of the stables or of bad blacking – an aroma which, in Mr Brummell’s experience, far too often clung to country squires.

He went as Mr Fitzjohn’s guest to a meeting of the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks at the Lyceum, and had the felicity of seeing there that amazing figure, the Duke of Norfolk, who rolled in looking for all the world like a gross publican, and presided over the dinner in dirty linen and an old blue coat; ate more beefsteaks than anyone else; was very genial and good-humoured; and fell sound asleep long before the end of the meeting.

He took sparring lessons at Jackson’s Saloon; shot at Manton’s Galleries; fenced at Angelo’s; drank Blue Ruin in Cribb’s Parlour; drove to races in his own tilbury, and generally behaved very much as any other young gentleman of fortune did who fancied himself as a fashionable buck. His conversation became inter larded with cant expressions; he lost a great deal of money playing at macao, or laying bets with his cronies; drank rather too much; and began to cause his sister a good deal of alarm. When she expostulated with him he merely laughed, assured her he might be trusted to keep the line, went off to join a party of sporting gentlemen, and returned in the small hours con siderably intoxicated, or – as he himself phrased it – a trifle above par.

Judith turned to her cousin for advice. With the Admiral she could never be upon intimate terms, but Bernard Taverner had very soon become a close friend.