Pistols for Two by Georgette Heyer Page B

her neck than to try to overset the marriage!’
    He climbed into his seat again as he spoke, and took the reins from her. She relinquished them unheedingly. ‘If that is indeed so, I can’t deny that it is a great deal better than a flight to the Border, but a marriage performed in such circumstances must give rise to the most odious gossip! I cannot allow it!’
    ‘There’s no need to fly into high fidgets,’ said his lordship, possibly to soothe alarm, but with a sad lack of sensibility. ‘Caroline is a pretty ninnyhammer, but Windlesham is a man of excellent good sense, and can be depended on to put his foot down on such a scheme.’
    ‘Yes, but –’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake – !’ he exclaimed. ‘Can’t you think of anything but that addle-brained pair? For my part, they may go to the devil! I’m sick and tired of both, and have been thinking them a dead bore for the last three hours!’
    Jerked by this sudden violence from her preoccupation, she realized that the horses had been set in motion. ‘Pray, where are we off to?’ she demanded. ‘If Arthur has taken Lucy to his sister’s house we have no need to proceed farther north! How can you be so idiotish, Iver?’
    ‘I’m not idiotish,’ he replied, with an odd laugh. ‘We set out for Gretna Green, and to Gretna Green we’ll go! Our immediate destination, however, is Coltersworth. We shall spend the night at the Angel, and tomorrow, unless you should very much dislike it, we will resume our journey to the Border.’
    ‘I should dislike it excessively,’ said Miss Tresilian, after a little pause.
    He halted his team and turned, laying his hand on one of hers, and strongly grasping it. ‘Nell!’ he said, in quite another voice. ‘So many years wasted – so much bitterness – ! Nell, my dear love, don’t say it’s too late! You must marry me – you shall !’
    Her fingers clung to his, and there was the sparkle of tears in her smiling eyes, but she replied with great dignity: ‘I have every intention of marrying you, but not , I promise you, in such a clandestine fashion as that! Iver, for heaven’s sake – ! There’s an Accommodation coach coming towards us – George !’
    But as his lordship, with his usual top-lofty disregard of appearances, paid no heed whatsoever to this warning, and Miss Tresilian was powerless (even had she made the attempt) to free herself from his embrace, the roof passengers on the coach were afforded a shocking example of the decay of modern manners, one moralist going so far as to express his desire to see such shameless persons set in the stocks. ‘Kissing and hugging on the public highway!’ he said, craning his neck to obtain the last possible glimpse of the disgusting spectacle. ‘Calling themselves Quality, too!’
    But in this he was wrong. With her cheek against his lordship’s, Miss Tresilian said, on a choke of laughter: ‘What a vulgar couple we are, love!’
    ‘Well, who cares a rush for that?’ he demanded. ‘Oh, my darling, what fools we have been!’

Bath Miss
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    ‘Papa,’ said Miss Massingham, ‘is persuaded you would have not the least objection, or you may be sure I should not have ventured to ask you, dear Charles, for perhaps you might not quite wish to oblige him in this way.’
    She paused, and glanced doubtfully up at dear Charles. It could not have been said that his handsome countenance bore the expression of one delighted to oblige his Mama’s old friend, but he bowed politely. Miss Massingham reminded herself that this elegant gentleman, with his great shoulders setting off a coat of blue superfine, and his shapely leg encased in a skin-tight pantaloon and a Hessian boot of dazzling gloss, was the bouncing baby on whom, thirty years before, she had bestowed a coral rattle. She said archly: ‘You are grown so grand that I declare I stand quite in awe of you!’
    The expression of boredom on Sir Charles Wainfleet’s countenance became more pronounced.
    ‘I am sure, a