Regency Buck Read Free Page A

answer.”
    “Go and find your curricle,” said Judith, between amusement and exasperation.
    He needed no further encouragement; he was gone in a trice, nor did he return until after five o’clock. He came in then, highly elated, full of his good fortune. There was no coming by a curricle—no gentleman’s carriage to be had at all, but he had heard of a gig owned by some farmer, a shabby affair, scarce an inch of paint on it, but it would serve—and been off immediately to drive the bargain. The long and short of it was he had driven the gig back, and was ready now to do all that a brother should for his sister’s entertainment in taking her out to see ruins, or whatever else she chose. Dinner? Oh, he had eaten a tight little beefsteak in the coffee-room, and was entirely at her disposal.
    Miss Taverner could not but feel that with the town seething with sporting company, it was hardly the moment for an expedition, but she was heartily sick of her own room, and agreed to the scheme.
    The gig was found upon inspection to be not quite so bad as Peregrine described, but still, a shabby affair. Miss Taverner grimaced at it. “My dear Perry, I had rather walk!”
    “Walk? Oh, lord, I have had enough of that, I can tell you! I must have tramped a good mile already. Don’t be so nice, Jul. It ain’t what I’d choose, but no one knows us here.”
    “You had better let me drive,” she remarked.
    But that, of course, would not do. If she thought she could drive better than he, she much mistook the matter. The brute was hard-mouthed, not a sweet-goer by any means, no case for a lady.
    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 tomorrow—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 curricle 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