Read Online The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer - Free Book Online Page B

intrigued, Pen demanded a translation of these strange terms. Sir Richard, having pondered and discarded the notion of commanding her to exchange places with him, lay back and listened with lazy enjoyment to her initiation into the mysteries of thieves' cant.
    A party of young gentlemen, who had been spectators of a cock-fight held in the district, had been taken up at Chippenham, and had crowded on to the roof. From the sounds preceding thence, it seemed certain that they had been refreshing themselves liberally. There was a good deal of shouting, some singing, and much drumming with heels upon the roof. The motherly woman and the thin spinster began to look alarmed, and the lawyer's clerk said that the behaviour of modern young men was disgraceful. Pen was too deeply engaged in conversation with Jimmy Yarde to pay much heed to the commotion, but when, after the coach had rumbled on for another five miles, the pace was suddenly accelerated, and the top-heavy vehicle bounced over ruts and pot-holes, and swung perilously first to one side and then to the other, she broke off her enthralling discourse, and looked enquiringly at Sir Richard.
    A violent lurch flung her into his arms. He restored her to her own seat, saying dryly: 'More adventure for you. I hope you are enjoying it?'
    'But what is happening?'
    'I apprehend that one of the would-be sprigs of fashion above has taken it into his head to tool the coach,' he replied.
    'Lord ha' mercy!' exclaimed the motherly woman. 'Do you mean that one of they pesky, drunken lads is a-driving of us, sir?'
    'So I should suppose, ma'am.'
    The spinster uttered a faint shriek. 'Good God, what will become of us?'
    'We shall end, I imagine, in the ditch,' said Sir Richard, with unruffled calm.
    Babel at once broke forth, the spinster demanding to be let out at once, the motherly woman trying to attract the coachman's notice by hammering against the roof with her sunshade, the farmer sticking his head out of the window to shout threats and abuse, Jimmy Yarde laughing, and the lawyer's clerk angrily demanding of Sir Richard why he did not do something?
    'What would you wish me to do?' asked Sir Richard, steadying Pen with a comfortingly strong arm.
    'Stop the coach! Oh, sir, pray stop it!' begged the motherly woman.
    'Bless your heart, ma'am, it'll stop of its own this gait!' grinned Jimmy Yarde.
    Hardly had he spoken than a particularly sharp bend in the road proved to be too much for the amateur coachman's skill. He took the corner too wide, the near-hind wheels mounted a slight bank, and skidded down the farther side into a deep ditch, and everyone inside the vehicle was flung rudely over. There were screams from the women, oaths from the farmer, the cracking noise of split wood, and the shatter of broken glass. The coach lay at a crazy angle with sprigs of thorn-hedge thrusting in through the broken windows.
    Pen, whose face was smothered in the many capes of Sir Richard's drab driving-coat, gasped, and struggled to free herself from a hold which had suddenly clamped her to Sir Richard's side. He relaxed it, saying: 'Hurt, Pen?'
    'No, not in the least! Thank you so very much for holding me! Are you hurt?'
    A splinter of glass had cut his cheek slightly, but since he had been holding on to the leather arm-rest hanging in the corner of the coach, he had not been thrown, like everyone else, off his seat. 'No, only annoyed,' he replied. 'My good woman, this is neither the time nor the place for indulging in a fit of the vapours!'
    This acid rider was addressed to the spinster, who, finding herself pitch-forked on top of the lawyer's clerk, had gone off into strong hysterics.
    'Here, let me get my dabblers on to that there door!' said Jimmy Yarde, hoisting himself up by seizing the opposite arm-rest. 'Dang me if next time I travel in a rattler I don't ride on the roof, flash-culls or no!'
    The coach not having collapsed quite on to its side, but being supported by the bank and the hedge