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‘How well you drive!’ remarked Miss Trent, with a sort of impulsive candour, as engaging as it was naïve.
A slight smile touched his lips. ‘Thank you!’
‘I do trust we shall reach Newbury,’ confided Miss Trent. ‘For one thing, I must have poor Sarah attended to, and for another, I must get to Bath!?
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‘I collect that it is of importance to you to reach Bath immediately?’
‘Of vital importance!’ asserted Miss Trent.
‘You might be able to hire a chaise,’ he suggested. ‘I fear there will be no stage-coaches running for some days.’
‘That,’ said Miss Trent bitterly, ‘is what my cousin means to do! He can afford it, and he knows very well I cannot, and he won’t take me along with him. He is an odious man!’
‘He sounds quite abominable,’ agreed the gentleman gravely. ‘Is he one of the unfortunates we were obliged to leave by the wayside?’
‘Oh, no! He rode off with the guard to Woolhampton. Trying to steal a march on me, of course!’ She added, on an explanatory note: ‘He has eyes like a pig’s, and his name is Joseph.’
‘How shocking! One scarcely knows whether to feel pity or disgust.’
Miss Trent knew no such uncertainty. ‘He is a hateful wretch!’ she declared.
‘In that case it is unthinkable that he should be permitted to steal a march on you. May I know your name? Mine is Arden.’
‘Yes, of course! I should have told you before,’ she said. ‘I am Sophia Trent. Do you live near here? I have come all the way from Norfolk!’
Never before had Sir Julian Arden announced his identity with so little effect! Indeed, it was seldom that he was put to the trouble of announcing it at all. Not only was he the acknowledged leader of fashion, a crack shot, and a nonpareil amongst whips: he was quite the most eligible bachelor in Society as well. He had been toadied all his life; every eccentricity was forgiven him; every door flew open at his approach. Mothers of likely daughters had laid siege to him for the past ten years; while the efforts of damsels of marriageable age to engage his interest were as ingenious as they were unavailing. He was so bored that nothing kept his interest alive for more than a fleeting moment. Very little, indeed, had the power to rouse his interest at all. But Miss Trent had achieved this feat quite unconsciously. His name meant nothing to her.
He permitted himself one swift glance down at her before resuming his steady scrutiny of the road ahead. There was not a shadow of guile in the big eyes, which met his in a friendly smile. Miss Trent was merely awaiting an answer. He said: ‘No, I live for the most part in London.’
‘But you did not come from London today, in this weather!’
‘You see,’ he said apologetically, ‘someone laid me odds I would not venture on it.’
‘And you set out, in an open carriage, for such a reason as that! I beg your pardon, but it seems quite nonsensical!’
He appeared to be much struck by this view of the matter. ‘Do you know, ma’am, I believe you are right?’
‘I think,’ said Miss Trent severely, ‘that you are quizzing me. Is your destination Newbury?’
‘My present destination, yes. We shall forget my original one. I daresay I should have been very much bored there.’
‘But your friends will wonder what has become of you!’
‘It need not concern us, however.’
This indifferent answer made her blink, but she forbore to press the matter, and chatted away on a number of unexceptionable topics. She held Sarah in one arm, and appeared to be more concerned for the maid’s comfort than her own, assuring Sir Julian that she thought the whole episode a famous adventure.
‘You see, my home is quite in the country,’ she explained, ‘and nothing exciting ever seems to happen, except when Bertram broke his leg, and Ned was thrown over the donkey’s head into the horse-pond. Thieves did once steal three of my stepfather’s best hens, but we knew nothing about it until the next day, so it was not precisely exciting.’
Entranced by this artless confidence, Sir Julian at once enquired into the identities of Bertram and Ned. He discovered that they were two of Miss Trent’s three half-brothers, and that her stepfather was the incumbent of a parish in Norfolk. She had two young half-sisters as well, and very little prompting was needed to induce her to expatiate on their many engaging qualities. In this way the journey to Newbury was largely beguiled, and when Sir Julian turned his horses in under the archway of the great Pelican Inn, a mile short of the town, Miss Trent exclaimed that she had not thought it possible they could have arrived so soon.
A number of ostlers and waiters came hurrying to serve the newcomer, and in a very short while Sarah had been carried up to a bedchamber, a groom sent off to summon the nearest surgeon to her aid, and a private parlour bespoken for Miss Trent.
She came down to it presently, and found her protector warming himself before a leaping fire. He had shed his hat, and his many-caped greatcoat, and Miss Trent, who had already formed a very good opinion of his person, now perceived that he was decidedly handsome. He was dressed in a coat of blue superfine, which more experienced eyes than Miss Trent’s would have recognized as coming from the hands of a master; his buckskins were of impeccable cut; and his cravat was tied in the intricate style that had long baffled all imitators.
Sir Julian was also pleased with what he saw. Now that she had removed her bonnet, and he beheld her in the full candlelight, he perceived that Miss Trent’s hair grew in profuse ringlets, and that her eyes were even bigger than he had supposed them to be. He liked the frank way they lifted to his, and found it refreshing, to say the least of it, to encounter a lady who was neither arch nor simpering, and who had obviously not the smallest notion of enslaving him.
