Elisabeth Fairchild (4 page)

She hit the ground before him unevenly, tipped forward on her toes into the ready prop of his chest, quite crushing the nosegay that cheerily decorated his lapel.

Ignoring the loss of flowers, Beau steadied her. For one strangely irrational moment, with the heat of her pressed into his breathless chest, and the softness of her arm beneath the palm of his hand, he fought a disinclination to let her go.

She was taller than the average. The dusty crown of her head was just above the level of his chin. If he leaned forward he could press his lips to her forehead.   

“Thank you, Mr. Ferd,” she said, before he could act on the impulse. He took a half-step backward. The forehead he had considered bussing, wrinkled with concern. Her brown eyes lifted to his, full of contrition.

“Your flowers. I’ve mashed them.”

Before he could tell her she might happily mash his flowers any time, she stepped away, to shake out her rumpled cloak and skirts. Beau could not take his eyes off of her as she performed the simple task.

She sensed he stood staring, and turned her head to regard him, a shy, wise, observant quality in the look. The new Duke of Heste felt as if Miss Fanella Quinby found something both engaging and bothersome in his continued regard.

Charley Tyrrwhit observed that those who meant to catch the mail should make haste to do so in his carriage, while he saw to driving Mr. Deets safely home. Little Catherine Quinby offered to show him the way in the dogcart.

“You would do so much for the fool?” Beau asked Charley.

“I do so for you, fool." Charley nodded in Nell Quinby’s direction. “Unless I mistake the looks the two of you exchanged, you must not miss that coach!” He threw a contemptuous glance Deets’s direction. “With any luck, this obnoxious sot will tumble out on his way home.” His eyes narrowed. “If he does, I shall leave him under a hedgerow to sleep it off.”

Beau grinned. “No more than he deserves.”

“Right then.” Charley took up the reins. “I shall see to it that your trunk comes down with me, but I’ve no idea where your dog has gotten himself off to, and no intention of worrying my head over him.”

Beau grinned and whistled up his dog as he took pleasure in handing both Miss Nell Quinby and her Aunt Ursula up the steps of Charley’s smart, new, four-horse equipage.

Gaze concentrated on the course she must navigate in order to obtain the heights of the coach bench, Miss Quinby firmly grasped his hand and made her way up with agile grace. Her eyes strayed for a flickering instant, to look back at him when he whistled piercingly for his dog. When she discovered that waited for just such a glance, her eyes sparkled with naive curiosity.

The warm promise of Nell’s swift look was frozen by a chilling look of hauteur from Ursula Dunn’s severely compressed lips, as she too accepted assistance in gaining her seat. The thinning mouth reminded him that he was merely a coachman, and therefore quite impertinent to be exchanging glances with a young lady.

“I understand we have you to thank for seeing to it that there was no damage to our lives or property?” Nell’s aunt spoke with more severity than such a remark would seem to engender.

Eyebrows raised, Beau nodded.

“Well, I thank you, Mr. Ferd.” She regally extended her hand. “But I must insist that you desist in making that piercing noise. I suffer from the headache.”

Before he could correct the continued abuse of his name, she rattled on magnanimously, firmly putting him in his place, “If you should ever find yourself in need of a coaching position, and you are not a man prone to drinking, smoking, gambling or whistling overmuch, you must apply to my husband, Mr. Bartholomew Dunn of Ipswich, or myself, Mrs. Ursula Dunn of both Ipswich and Brighton, where I go to take the sea water cure at the recommendation of my physician.”

With a polite nod, Beau settled himself on the driver’s bench, and with a gesture to Gates, who stood at the horse’s heads and would jump up behind, shook out the reins. The chestnuts threw themselves willingly into the harness, and yet they had no more than begun to move when a sound reached them. An unmistakable sound, it brought up all heads, and Ursula Dunn uttered, in the tone of one who has just heard her own death knell, “The mail!”

It was indeed the mail, or to be more precise, the yard of tin horn that every postboy carried as a means of announcing the coach’s approach at each toll booth, so that the turnpike gate might be open and waiting for them to sweep through unheeded.

The duke gave the chestnuts a touch of thehip. Meeting or missing the mail, it was going to be a close call.

Chapter Two

“We shall never make it in time!” Ursula fretted.

“I have every confidence in Mr. Ferd,” Nell contradicted her calmly.

Aunt Ursula was not relieved of her concerns. “Where shall we obtain a bonnet to shade your complexion in the wilds of Surrey?” she moaned. “The changes are too quick to allow time for shopping, and no more than villages until we reach Lewes, which is useless, for it is half an hour out of Brighton itself.”

“It does not matter, Auntie. We have booked inside passage,” Nell said blithely, well knowing what havoc the sun would wreak upon her slightly olive complexion, should she go an entire day exposed. She would, as her mother always complained, ruin all chance of finding herself a husband if she insisted on ruining her complexion. And yet, today, it did not seem to matter, for today Nell had seen herself reflected in the pale blue eyes of a young man who found her beautiful.

She felt transformed-- as if, as long as Mr. Ferd beheld her, she were become as attractive as her sister Aurora, and Aurora was a beauty who turned heads wherever she went. Nell had seen this appreciative look before in gentleman’s eyes, but never for herself. It had never occurred to her that someone might one day regard her in such a way, for while she was not at all homely, she had not the divine, pink-cheeked, golden fairness that Aurora possessed, and when the two sisters were seen side by side, as they had so often been throughout their young lives, it was to Aurora that all eyes were immediately drawn.

Nell knew now why Aurora fussed so much with the color and cut of her dresses, and the selection of reticules and ribbons and bonnets. It was most pleasant to be admired. The look she encountered in Mr. Ferd’s eyes, left her feeling their owner regarded a work of art to be studied with interest whenever opportunity allowed. It mattered not to her that he was naught but a coachman who could not speak without stuttering. He found her fascinating. That mattered.

Nell forced herself to stop thinking in this nonsensical manner, and turned in the seat to wave farewell to Catherine, who had the pony, with its now empty dogcart, rattling along at a smart trot in their wake. Cat grinned and rolled her eyes, but she did not take her attention from her driving. The responsibility of leading a member of the Whip Club through the country lane appeared to weigh heavy on her mind.

Before Nell faced front again, the black and white dog she had seen earlier at Mr. Ferd’s heels, shot out of the trees along the road beside the dogcart. In a sudden, bounding burst of speed, the dog passed through the dust that the pony raised, and charged straight for them, barking, as if it meant to grapple with the very wheels of the phaeton.

“Mr. Ferd,” she said. “Your dog!”

The coachman threw a look over his shoulder and reined in the chestnuts ever so slightly, as he shouted, “Up, Bandit!”

Aunt Ursula covered her ears. “Drive on man, drive on. We shall never meet the mail if we stop.”

Mr. Ferd directed an amused look her way.

It proved unnecessary to stop. Even as they slowed, a ball of black and white fur vaulted into the carriage, and as if accustomed to such gymnastic behavior, Mr. Ferd immediately urged the team on aain.

Aunt Ursula let out a little exclamation of fearful surprise.

The dog, grinning as only a thoroughly happy dog can, ignored her screech, and snaked beneath the bench upon which she perched, to plant himself, panting furiously, between his master’s knees. He was, Nell thought, a slightly ragged specimen. Not at all a gentleman’s dog. He was of a breed that was preferred by shepherds for their intelligence and good working habits. His eyes were bright, coat thick and attractively marked, but dulled with road dust. One ear was missing a notch, as if it had been bitten through.

“Does he bite?” Ursula regarded the beast with approbation. “Bite?” The coachman’s pale blue eyes twinkled. "Not unless you want him to, ma’am.”

“Is he called Bandit then, for his black eye patches?” Nell asked, in an effort to interrupt what she was sure would be her aunt’s insistence that they put the dog down off the coach again, regardless of delay. She was pleased to see the sign for the White Hart Inn through the trees ahead. They might just catch up to the mail after all.

“He is called Bandit because he is in the habit of holding up my coach.” The coachman said without trace of his stutter, which surprised Nell, for as he spoke, they were trundling through the Elizabethan gate to the White Hart, at a speed that took her breath away, for fear they should catch a wheel in one of the gateposts.

The mail stood waiting, in shining red and black glory. In a flurry of movement around the back boot, bags of mail were loaded and unloaded as the team were led out of their traces. A fresh team stood waiting. Passengers leaned down from the roof and out of the coach windows, as baskets and trays, loaded with bread and cheese were distributed, along with flasks of ale and jugs of water.

“See to the horses,” Beau Ferd addressed the servant, Gates, as he jumped down to help Nell and her aunt to alight.

He held onto Nell’s hand a moment longer than was strictly necessary when she stood firmly upon the ground. “We have had an a-a-adventure this morning, have we not?”

Nell felt as if she fell for a moment into the laughing depths of his pale blue eyes. “We have that,” she breathed, and disengaged her hand from the heat of his.

As it turned out, the morning’s adventure was not yet finished. Beau found his seat readily enough. He had but to call out to the man who sat the foremost coach bench. “I’m Beauford. You’re expecting me."

“Oiy! If you be Charley’s friend,” the coachman agreed. “Figured it had to be you, when I saw the gingers set to through the gatepost there,” he laughed. “Jump up beside me lad. We’ll see the prads down to Brighton at a spanking pace.”

“I shall just see the ladies comfortably seated,” Beau politely tipped his second-hand hat.

The coachman nodded. “Be quick about it. I’ll not delay the mail for no man.”

Nell Quinby and her aunt were booked for inside passage, where comfort was generally assured, for no more than four were allowed. But, when the coach door was opened it became quite clear that no more than three would ever manage to squeeze themselves into this particular mail coach.

The enormous, bombazine draped woman who took up all of one seat, was asleep, her expensive velvet hat tilted down over her eyes, so that two of the feathers that graced its magnificent crown fluttered back and forth with the regularity of a pendulum in rhythm with the light snores that whistled through her nose.

The woman who occupied the second seat, while still wearing the weighthat came with the bearing of the new baby that rested in a basket on the seat beside her, looked quite small by comparison. Her eyes rounded with growing concern when it was made clear to her that two additional women had booked inside passage, and stood waiting to crowd in.

Beau could not resist a smile, when he heard the peal of laughter that escaped Nell Quinby’s lips, but he did not stand about waiting to see where the argument would lead when Nell’s aunt insisted, “This is no laughing matter. Where in the world are we to squeeze ourselves? I shall be quite ill before we’ve gone a mile if I am forced to ride upstairs. And you’ve no hat, Fanella, so I cannot ask you to sit outside . . .”

Beau knew he could be of more assistance than in trying to make room where there was none to be had. Directing an encouraging smile Nell’s way, he ducked under the low beam of the door that led to the taproom of the White Hart Inn.

“I shall ride up top,” he heard Nell offer sensibly, as his eyes adjusted to the dim interior.

He called in an authoritative manner for the innkeeper’s wife. A short, heavy-set woman came running.

“Have you a-a-a Sunday b-b-bonnet?” he asked breathlessly.

Her eyes popped and she looked him up and down with disbelief, as if she faced a madman. A bright-eyed lass, who looked to be the woman’s daughter, seemed to take in the meaning of his urgent request in an instant. “Has a lady passenger lost hers then, sir?”

He rewarded her understanding with the flash of a coin, and a gracious smile that had her beaming back at him. “A pound for the best hat you have to offer.”

She took the coin. “I’ve no bonnets worth a quid, sir, but half a minute, and I shall fetch my best.”

Beau could see through the low doorway that the postboy, resplendent in his scarlet coat and tall hat, had taken up his yard of tin to sound out their leaving. He called after the girl, “Toss it from the window. The coach would leave without me, otherwise.”