Regency Buck (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 3)

Miss Taverner was tossed up into the curricle, and collapsed on to the seat in some disorder. The gentleman in the caped greatcoat picked up her parasol and gave it to her, took the sandal from her resistless grasp, and calmly held it ready to fit on to her foot.

To struggle for possession of it would be an undignified business; to climb down from the curricle was impossible. Miss Taverner, quivering with temper, put out her stockinged foot.

He slipped the sandal on, and tied the string.

‘Thank you!’ said Miss Taverner with awful civility. ‘Now if you will give me your hand out of your carriage I may resume my walk.’

‘But I am not going to give you my hand,’ he said. ‘I am going to drive you back to Grantham.’

His tone provoked her to reply disdainfully: ‘You may think that a great honour, sir, but –’

‘It is a great honour,’ he said. ‘I never drive females.’

‘No,’ said his tiger suddenly. ‘Else I wouldn’t be here. Not a minute I wouldn’t.’

‘Henry, you see, is a misogynist,’ explained the gentleman, apparently not in the least annoyed by this unceremonious interruption.

‘I am not interested in you or in your servant!’ snapped Miss Taverner.

‘That is what I like in you,’ he agreed, and sprang lightly up into the curricle, and stepped across her to the box-seat. ‘Now let me show you how to hit me.’

Miss Taverner resisted, but he possessed himself of her gloved hand and doubled it into a fist. ‘Keep your thumb down so, and hit like that. Not at my chin, I think. Aim for the eye, or the nose, if you prefer.’

Miss Taverner sat rigid.

‘I won’t retaliate,’ he promised. Then, as she still made no movement, he said: ‘I see I shall have to offer you provocation,’ and swiftly kissed her.

Miss Taverner’s hands clenched into two admirable fists, but she controlled an unladylike impulse, and kept them in her lap. She was both shaken and enraged by the kiss, and hardly knew where to look. No other man than her father or Peregrine had ever dared to kiss her. At a guess she supposed the gentleman to have written her down as some country tradesman’s daughter from a Queen’s Square boarding school. Her old-fashioned dress was to blame, and no doubt that abominable gig. She wished she did not blush so hotly, and said with as much scorn as she could throw into her voice: ‘Even a dandy might remember the civility due to a gentlewoman. I shall not hit you.’

‘I am disappointed,’ he said. ‘There is nothing for it but to go in search of your brother. Stand away, Henry.’

The tiger sprang back, and ran to scramble up on to his perch again. The curricle moved forward, and in another minute was bowling rapidly along the road towards Grantham.

‘You may set me down at the George, sir,’ said Miss Taverner coldly. ‘No doubt if my brother is come back from the fight he will oblige you in the way, I, alas, am not able to do.’

He laughed. ‘Hit me, do you mean? All things are possible, Clorinda, though some are – unlikely, let us say.’

She folded her lips, and for a while did not speak. Her companion maintained a flow of languid conversation until she interrupted him, impelled by curiosity to ask him the question in her mind. ‘Why did you wish to drive me into Grantham?’

He glanced down at her rather mockingly. ‘Just to annoy you, Clorinda. The impulse was irresistible, believe me.’

She took refuge in silence again, for she could find no adequate words with which to answer him. She had never been spoken to so in her life; she was more than a little inclined to think him mad.

Grantham came into sight; in a few minutes the curricle drew up outside the George, and the first thing Miss Taverner saw was her brother’s face above the blind in one of the lower windows.

The gentleman descended from the curricle, and held up his hand for her to take. ‘Do smile!’ he said.

Miss Taverner allowed him to help her down, but preserved an icy front. She swept into the inn ahead of him, and nearly collided with Peregrine, hurrying out to meet her. ‘Judith! What the devil?’ exclaimed Peregrine. ‘Has there been an accident?’

‘Judith,’ repeated the gentleman of the curricle pensively. ‘I prefer Clorinda.’

‘No,’ said Judith. ‘Nothing of the sort. This – gentleman – constrained me to ride in his carriage, that is all.’

‘Constrained you!’ Peregrine took a hasty step forward.

She was sorry to have said so much, and added at once: ‘Do not let us be standing here talking about it! I think he is mad.’

The gentleman gave his low laugh, and produced a snuff-box from one pocket, and held a pinch first to one nostril and then to the other.