Elisabeth Fairchild Read Online Free Page A

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