Scandal in the Regency Ballroom. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ was a craze amongst young bucks to bribe a coachman to let them take the ribbons. More often than not, the entire rig ended up in a ditch.

      ‘Let them go!’ He turned his head and grinned at her as the wheelers took the strain and began to move. ‘Now I am wounded. You think I’m the sort of fellow who gets drunk and overturns stages for kicks? No, I drive a drag and my own horses when I want a four in hand. This lot aren’t too bad.’

      ‘Stick to ten miles an hour,’ Bree cautioned. ‘No springing them.’

      ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said meekly as they got back on to the road and the leaders settled into their collars. ‘There’s a clean handkerchief in my left-hand pocket if you want to tie up your wrist.’

      Gingerly Bree fished in the pocket and pulled out the square of white linen. She wrapped the makeshift bandage round her wrist, then tucked her hand back into the front of her coat. Just the knowledge that she did not have to drive another forty miles was bliss. Surreptitiously she rolled her aching shoulders.

      ‘Thank you, my lord.’

      ‘Max,’ he said absently, his eyes on the road ahead. ‘What sort of name is Bree?’

      ‘My sort. It was my father’s mother’s name.’

      There was a flash of white as he grinned. ‘Tell me, Miss Mallory, how does a lady, who speaks with an accent that would not be out of place administering set-downs in Almack’s, come to be driving a stagecoach?’

      ‘I had an excellent education.’ Bother. She had been so shaken she had let her guard down. Both she and Piers were perfectly capable of switching their accents to suit their company, whether it was disputing the price of oats with the corn chandler or holding a stilted conversation with their half-brother. If she had been thinking, she would have let a strong overtone of London City creep into her vowels.

      It was entirely possible that this man knew James, and if he discovered she was driving on the open road, and in men’s clothes, then the fat really would be in the fire. One more of James’s ponderous and endless lectures on propriety and she would probably say something entirely regrettable and cause a permanent family rift.

      She shot an anxious glance over her shoulder, but the roof passengers were huddled up, scarves and mufflers round their ears, hunched in the misery of open-air, night-time travel. She could confess to robbing the Bank of England and they would not hear.

      ‘My parents were perfectly well to do. Just because we’re in trade does not mean elocution was neglected,’ she added starchily.

      ‘So how is it that you are driving?’ he persisted.

      ‘Because the driver broke his leg and there was no one else to send out, and the Challenge—’

      ‘Coach Company does not cancel coaches,’ he parroted. ‘Yes, I know. Do you drive often?’

      ‘I haven’t driven a stage for three years,’ Bree admitted. ‘And I’ve never driven one in service or at night. But Piers—my younger brother—is recovering from pneumonia. I couldn’t let him drive. It’s his company, his and my uncle’s. And I drive four in hand all the time.’ She didn’t add that she liked to drive the hay wagon up from the family farm near Aylesbury, or that she’d driven the dung cart before now when the need arose. Let him think she bowled round Hyde Park in a phaeton.

      ‘Your driving is superb. I don’t know how you held the stage out of the ditch when we overtook,’ he said.

      Neither do I! Terror and desperation, probably. The compliment from such a master warmed her. ‘Why, thank you, my lord.’

      ‘Max.’

      ‘Max. It was sheer necessity. I doubt I could do it again. I was using both hands by that point, and I had abandoned my whip,’ Bree confessed. ‘The old coachmen in our yard would be shocked to the core.’

      There was a chuckle from her companion, then he fell silent, intent on navigating the moonlit road.

      It was curiously companionable, riding through the chilly darkness on the jolting, hard box beside this stranger. The team were trotting out strongly, then gathering themselves to canter when Max gave them the office on the better stretches. Her wrist throbbed painfully and her shoulders ached, but Bree realised she was enjoying herself. The man was a superlative whip.

      ‘You had better blow for the gate,’ Max remarked, jerking her out of her reverie. ‘The next toll bar’s coming up.’

      ‘I can’t. I’ve tried and tried to master the horn, but I can’t do it.’

      ‘Fine guard you are,’ Max grumbled. ‘Here, take the reins.’

      He held his left hand towards her and she slid her own into it, fingers slipping down his wrist and over his palm until the ribbons lay between the correct fingers and he could pull his own free. The team pecked a little at the strange position, then settled.

      Max lifted the horn and blew, the long notes echoing through the clear night. ‘Just in time,’ Bree said as the toll gate keeper stumbled out in his nightgown to drag open the wide gate.

      ‘We’re going to have to do this for every gate, you realise,’ Max commented, his big hand sliding into hers as he took back the reins. It brought them close together again and the fleeting memory of his arms around her in the inn yard made Bree catch her breath.

      ‘We could stop a moment and pass the horn back to Jem,’ Bree suggested reluctantly. It was the sensible thing to do, of course, but that had been rather fun.

      ‘And lose more time?’ Max flicked the whip close to the ear of the offside wheeler that seemed to have decided it didn’t want to share the work. ‘I’m sure the Challenge Coach Company is always punctual. Hmm, not enough cs. I shall have to think of a slogan.’ Bree chuckled. ‘Besides,’ he added, echoing her own thoughts, ‘it was rather fun.’

      ‘In what way, exactly?’ she enquired repressively. It might be very stimulating to be sitting here enjoying a master class in four-in-hand driving, but one had to recall that she was also alone, unchaperoned, with a man she was certain James would stigmatise as a rake. On the other hand, if James would disapprove, it made it all much more pleasurable.

      ‘It’s a form of trick driving in its way. And, of course, there’s the opportunity to hold hands with a pretty girl. Now, what have I said to make you snort?’

      ‘I do not snort. And if you find any female dressed as I am pretty, my lord, there is something wrong with you.’

      ‘I have exceptionally good eyesight.’

      ‘And a vivid imagination,’ she muttered. He probably was a rake, and flirting with anything female under the age of ninety was doubtless a prerequisite.

      Max smiled, but all he said was, ‘We shall see.’

      By the time they reached the last toll gate before Newbury Bree thought she had never been so stiff, nor so exhilarated, in her life. She seemed to have passed through some barrier of exhaustion and now, at almost four in the morning, she felt wide awake.

      Probably because my bottom-bones are bruised black and blue, she concluded ruefully. The old coachman’s СКАЧАТЬ