Regency Buck

Chapter III

Miss Taverner spent a pleasant morning exploring the town. There was scarcely anyone about, and that circumstance, coupled with the fineness of the weather, tempted her to take another stroll after her luncheon of cakes and wine. There was nothing to do at the George beyond sit at her bedroom window and wait for Peregrine’s return, and this prospect did not commend itself to her. Walking about the town had not tired her, and she understood from the chambermaid that Great Ponton church, only three miles from Grantham, was generally held to be worth a visit. Miss Taverner decided to walk there, and set out a little before midday, declining the escort of her maid.

The walk was a pretty one, and a steep climb up the highroad into the tiny village of Great Ponton quite rewarded Miss Taverner for her energy. A fine burst of country met her eyes, and a few steps down a by-road brought her to the church, a very handsome example of later perpendicular work, with a battlemented tower, and a curious weathervane in the form of a fiddle upon one of its pinnacles. There was no one of whom she could inquire the history of this odd vane, so after exploring the church, and resting a little while on a bench outside, she set out to walk back to Grantham.

At the bottom of the hill leading out of the village a pebble became lodged in her right sandal and after a very little way began to make walking an uncomfortable business. Miss Taverner wriggled her toes in an effort to shift the stone, but it would not answer. Unless she wished to limp all the way to Grantham she must take off her shoe and shake the pebble out. She hesitated, for she was upon the highroad and had no wish to be discovered in her stockings by any chance wayfarer. One or two carriages had passed her already: she supposed them to be returning from Thistleton Gap: but at the moment there was nothing in sight. She sat down on the bank at the side of the road, and pulled up her frilled skirt an inch or two to come at the strings of her sandal. As ill-luck would have it these had worked themselves into a knot which took her some minutes to untie. She had just succeeded in doing this, and was shaking out the pebble, when a curricle-and-four came into sight, travelling at a brisk pace towards Grantham.

Miss Taverner thrust the sandal behind her and hurriedly let down her skirts, but not, she felt uneasily, before the owner of the curricle must have caught a glimpse of her shapely ankle. She picked up her parasol, which she had allowed to fall at the foot of the bank, and pretended to be interested in the contemplation of the opposite side of the road.

The curricle drew alongside, and checked. Miss Taverner cast a fleeting glance upwards at it, and stiffened. The curricle stopped. “Beauty in distress again?” inquired a familiar voice.

Miss Taverner would have given all she possessed in the world to have been able to rise up and walk away in the opposite direction. It was not in her power, however. She could only tuck her foot out of sight and affect to be quite deaf.

The curricle drew right in to the side of the road, and at a sign from its driver the tiger perched up behind jumped down and ran to the wheel-horses’ heads. Miss Taverner raged inwardly, and turned her head away.

The curricle’s owner descended in a leisurely fashion, and came up to her. “Why so diffident?” he asked. “You had plenty to say when I met you yesterday?”

Miss Taverner turned to look at him. Her cheeks had reddened, but she replied without the least sign of shyness: “Be pleased to drive on, sir. I have nothing to say to you, and my affairs are not your concern.”

“That—or something very like it—is what you said to me before,” he remarked. “Tell me, are you even prettier when you smile? I’ve no complaint to make, none at all: the whole effect is charming—and found at Grantham too, of all unlikely places!—but I should like to see you without the scowl.”

Miss Taverner’s eyes flashed.

“Magnificent!” said the gentleman. “Of course, blondes are not precisely the fashion, but you are something quite out of the way, you know.”

“You are insolent, sir!” said Miss Taverner.

He laughed. “On the contrary, I am being excessively polite.”

She looked him full in the eyes. “If my brother had been with me you would not have accosted me in this fashion,” she said.

“Certainly not,” he agreed, quite imperturbably. “He would have been very much in the way. What is your name?”

“Again, sir, that is no concern of yours.”

“A mystery,” he said. “I shall have to call you Clorinda. May I put on your shoe for you?”

She gave a start; her cheeks flamed. “No!” she said chokingly. “You may do nothing for me except drive on!”

“Why, that is easily done!” he replied, and bent, and before she had time to realize his purpose, lifted her up in his arms, and walked off with her to his curricle.

Miss Taverner ought to have screamed, or fainted. She was too much surprised to do either; but as soon as she had recovered from her astonishment at being picked up in that easy way (as though she had been a featherweight, which she knew she was not) she dealt her captor one resounding slap, with the full force of her arm behind it.

He winced a little, but his arms did not slacken their hold; rather they tightened slightly. “Never hit with an open palm, Clorinda,” he told her. “I will show you how in a minute. Up with you!”

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 snuffbox from one pocket, and held a pinch first to one nostril and then to the other.

Peregrine advanced upon him, and said stormily: “Sir, I shall ask you to explain yourself!”

“You forgot to tell him that I kissed you, Clorinda,” murmured the gentleman.

“What?” shouted Peregrine.

“For heaven’s sake be quiet!” snapped his sister.

Peregrine ignored her. “You will meet me for this, sir! I hoped I might come upon you again, and I have. And now to find that you have dared to insult my sister. You shall hear from me!”

A look of amusement crossed the gentleman’s face. “Are you proposing to fight a duel with me?” he inquired.

“Where and when you like!” said Peregrine.

The gentleman raised his brows. “My good boy, that is very heroic, but do you really think that I cross swords with every country nobody who chooses to be offended with me?”

“Now, Julian, Julian, what are you about?” demanded a voice from the doorway into the coffee-room. “Oh, I beg pardon, ma’am! I beg pardon!” Lord Worcester came into the hall with a glass in his hand, and paused, irresolute.

Peregrine, beyond throwing him a fleeting glance, paid no heed to him. He was searching in his pocket for a card, and this he presently thrust at the gentleman in the greatcoat. “That is my card, sir!”

The gentleman took it between finger and thumb, and raised an eyeglass on the end of a gold stick attached to a ribbon round his neck. “Taverner,” he said musingly. “Now where have I heard that name before?”

“I do not expect to be known to you, sir,” said Peregrine, trying to keep his voice steady. “Perhaps I am a nobody, but there is a gentleman who I think—I am sure—will be pleased to act for me: Mr. Henry Fitzjohn, of Cork Street!”

“Oh, Fitz!” nodded Lord Worcester. “So you know him, do you?”

“Taverner,” repeated the gentleman in the greatcoat, taking not the smallest notice of Peregrine’s speech. “It has something of a familiar ring, I think.”

“Admiral Taverner,” said Lord Worcester helpfully. “Meet him for ever at Fladong’s.”

“And if that is not enough, sir, to convince you that I am not unworthy of your sword, I must refer you to Lord Worth, whose ward I am!” announced Peregrine.

“Eh?” said Lord Worcester. “Did you say you were Worth’s ward?”

The gentleman in the greatcoat gave Peregrine back his card. “So you are my Lord Worth’s wards!” he said. “Dear me! And—er—are you at all acquainted with your guardian?”

“That, sir, has nothing to do with you! We are on our way to visit his lordship now.”

“Well,” said the gentleman softly, “you must present my compliments to him when you see him. Don’t forget.”

“This is not to the point!” exclaimed Peregrine. “I have challenged you to fight, sir!”

“I don’t think your guardian would advise you to press your challenge,” replied the gentleman with a slight smile.

Judith laid a hand on her brother’s arm, and said coldly: “You have not told us yet by what name we may describe you to Lord Worth.”

His smile lingered. “I think you will find that his lordship will know who I am,” he said, and took Lord Worcester’s arm, and strolled with him into the coffee-room.