Pistols for Two by Georgette Heyer Page A

Holloway, and we live near Grantham! Well – well, we were joking each other about being a runaway couple when you blew up to pass us, and I shouted to the post-boys to put ’em along – just cutting a lark, you know! But, of course, I shouldn’t have done so!’ he added hastily. ‘And I didn’t mean to keep it up. Only – well, when you gave chase it was so exciting – and when I saw you were going to make the attempt – well, I do beg your pardon, sir, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything! You drove to an inch!’
    ‘I see,’ said his lordship. ‘Well, when next you try your hand at racing on the road, don’t do it in a post-chaise, and don’t take your sister with you! Tell me, have you come from London?’
    ‘Oh no! From Oxford, sir. One of the old tabbies at Bella’s school brought her up from Bath – Oh, I should have told you that I’m at Magdalen!’
    ‘Are you? Well, if you are to reach home before dark you’d best lose no more time. Up with you!’
    ‘ Thank you! ’ said Mr Holloway, greatly relieved. ‘I’m excessively obliged to you for not – Oh, you go first, sir!’
    ‘No, I should only hold you up: I’m not going to drive at your hell-for-leather pace!’
    Laughing heartily at this, Mr Holloway, after fervently shaking hands with his lordship, hoisted himself into the chaise, and it moved forward, Miss Tresilian having by this time drawn the curricle to the side of the road. His lordship, heavily frowning, walked back to it. He observed that Miss Tresilian had succumbed to her emotions, and regarded her balefully.
    ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that, Iver!’ she begged, wiping her streaming eyes. ‘If you could but have seen your own face – !’
    ‘Much help you were!’ he said, with a reluctant grin. ‘Yes, it’s all very well for you to laugh yourself into stitches, my girl, but where the devil are those pernicious brats?’
    ‘I said we had come on a wild goose chase! Have we all the time been pursuing that enchanting couple?’
    ‘Certainly not! Didn’t you hear the boy say they had come from Oxford? They can never have been on our road until they entered Stamford. I have not the smallest doubt that when we entered Stamford we were hard on the heels of our own pair.’
    That sobered her. She said, in dismay: ‘Do you mean that they are ahead of us still?’
    ‘No, I don’t,’ he said decidedly. ‘They haven’t passed any of the pikes. From Stamford we have been following the Holloways.’
    She was disturbed, but could not resist quizzing him. ‘Flying from a scent, Iver? You? ’
    He smiled, but absently, and remained for some moments in frowning silence. He said suddenly: ‘If the line was crossed in Stamford – Good God, why didn’t I think of that before? He has taken the girl to Grantley, of course!’ He saw that Miss Tresilian was bewildered, and added impatiently: ‘Windlesham’s place, beyond Market Deeping! You’ve met Arthur’s sister, haven’t you?’
    ‘Lady Windlesham! Yes, but what could he hope to achieve by that?’
    ‘Depend upon it, he has a special licence in his pocket, and means to be married under Caroline’s ægis.’
    ‘But she has no authority to sanction Lucy’s marriage!’
    ‘Much she would care for that! Arthur can bring her round his thumb any time he chooses to do it: she dotes on him! She’s of a romantic disposition, what’s more, and to judge by the impassioned entreaties she addressed to me on this subject has confused that precious pair with Romeo and Juliet.’
    ‘Iver, she could not be so unprincipled as to –’
    ‘Nothing of the sort!’ he interrupted. ‘She knows that Arthur is his own master, and if she doesn’t know already that you liked the connection well enough until you discovered that I was Arthur’s guardian, it wouldn’t, I assure you, take Arthur more than five minutes to convince her that if only the knot could be tied without your knowledge you would be more likely to fall on