Scandal in the Regency Ballroom. Louise Allen
for reasons entirely outside his control.
When he turned back, the young woman, far from taking advantage of his efforts to shield her, was engaged in spirited discussions with the head ostler about the team he was proposing to put to. ‘And not that black one either. It’s half-blind,’ she called after him as he stomped back to the stables to fetch another horse.
‘I will not run with those broken-down wrecks they try and fob one off with at night,’ she pronounced as he came up to her.
‘Madam—’
‘Miss Mallory. Bree Mallory.’
‘Miss Mallory, you cannot be intending to continue driving?’
‘As far as Newbury.’ She turned an impatient shoulder on him, watching the team being put to. It would take only a few minutes, now the horses had been agreed. ‘Jem, get the passengers.’
‘But wait, you’ve had a nasty shock.’ Max put out his hand and caught her by the right wrist, then dropped it as she went white and gasped in pain.
For a sickening moment the yard spun and Bree found herself caught up hard against Lord Penrith’s chest.
‘Let me go!’ The effect of being held by a strange man—no, by this strange man—was making her as dizzy as the pain. Reluctantly, it seemed, he opened his arms.
‘You are hurt. Let me see.’ What a nice voice he has, she thought irrelevantly. Deep, and gentle and compelling. She had no intention of doing as he asked, and yet, somehow, her hand was in his again and he was peeling back the cuff of the gauntlet to examine her wrist. ‘Has that just happened?’ She nodded. ‘Can you move your fingers?’
‘Yes. It isn’t broken,’ she added impatiently. His concern was weakening her; she had to tell herself it was nothing, that she could drive despite it.
‘Well, you aren’t driving a stage with that. You had best go inside and get it bound up.’
‘Yes, I am driving! I cannot abandon a coach full of passengers here, let alone the parcels we’re carrying. The Challenge Coach Company does not cancel coaches.’
‘There are entirely too many cs in that sentence,’ Lord Penrith remarked, ‘but it does at least prove that you haven’t been drinking if you can declaim it. The coach won’t be cancelled. I’ll drive it. Wait here.’
‘You … I … you’ll do no such thing!’ She found herself talking to his retreating back. He was already striding off towards the inn door to where the youth who had been driving the drag was waiting. There was a short conversation—more an issuing of orders, she decided, going by her short experience of his lordship’s manner, then he was coming back.
‘Right. Is there room for you inside, Miss Mallory?’
‘Certainly not. I am staying on the box.’ Bother the man, now he had tricked her into accepting that he was going to drive! ‘Are you any good, my lord?’
She knew who he was, of course—one glance at his card, and the cut of his own drag and team, told her that. But she was not going to give Max Dysart, Earl of Penrith, the satisfaction of acknowledging that he was one of the finest whips in the land. Piers would be mad with jealousy when he found out with whom she had virtually collided.
He turned, pausing in the act of climbing on to the box, one hand still resting on the wheel. ‘Any good? At driving?’ One eyebrow arched.
‘Yes, at driving,’ she snapped. If only he didn’t keep looking at me like that. As though he knew me, as though he owned me …
‘Certainly. Much better than my young cousin, I assure you, Miss Mallory. Then … I am quite good at most things.’
Furious at what she suspected was an innuendo that she didn’t understand, Bree marched round and got Jem to help her up on the other side of the box. She could have made it on her own, she told herself resentfully, but she wasn’t such an idiot as to strain her hurt wrist just to prove a point. Without thinking about it she flicked the tails of her coat into a makeshift cushion under her, and settled back. Jem swung up behind.
Lord Penrith already had the reins in hand. He certainly looked the part. ‘Have you ever driven a stage before?’ she demanded. It would not be surprising if he had—it 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.’