Regency Buck Read Online Free Page B

Peregrine’s start had made him tighten the reins involuntarily, and the farmer’s horse began to back. Peregrine stopped him in a moment, but not in time to prevent his right mudguard just grazing the curricle’s left one. He could have sworn aloud from annoyance.
    The gentleman in the curricle turned, brows lifted in pained astonishment. “My very good sir,” he began, and then stopped. The astonishment gave place to an expression of resignation. “I might have known,” he said. “After all, you did promise yourself this meeting, did you not?”
    It was said quite quietly, but Peregrine, hot with chagrin, felt that it must have drawn all eyes upon himself. Certainly the gentleman in the high collar was leaning forward to look at him across the intervening curricle. He blurted out: “I hardly touched your carriage! I could not help it if I did!”
    “No, that is what I complain of,” sighed his tormentor. “I’m sure you could not.”
    Very red in the face, Peregrine said: “You needn’t be afraid, sir! This place will no longer do for me, I assure you!”
    “But what is the matter? What are you saying, Julian?” demanded Lord Worcester curiously. “Who is it?”
    “An acquaintance of mine,” replied the gentleman in the curricle. “Unsought, but damnably recurrent.”
    Peregrine gathered up his reins in hands that were by no means steady; he might not find another place, but stay wherehe was he would not. He said: “I shall relieve you of my presence, sir!”
    “Thank you,” murmured the other, faintly smiling.
    The gig drew out of the line without mishap and was driven off with unusual care through the press of people. There was by this time no gap in the first row of carriages into which a gig might squeeze its way, and after driving down, the length of the long line Peregrine began to regret his hastiness. But just as he was about to turn up an avenue left in the ranks to get to the rear a young gentleman in a smart-looking whisky hailed him good-naturedly, and offered to pull in a little closer to the coach on his right, and so contrive a space for the gig.
    Peregrine accepted this offer thankfully, and after a little manoeuvring and some protests from a party of men seated on the roof of the coach, room was made, and Peregrine could be comfortable again.
    The owner of the whisky seemed to be a friendly young man. He had a chubby, smiling countenance, with a somewhat roguish pair of eyes. He was dressed in a blue single-breasted coat with a long waist, a blue waistcoat with inch-wide yellow stripes, plush breeches, tied at the knee with strings and rosettes, short boots with very long tops, and an amazing cravat of white muslin spotted with black. Over all this he wore a driving-coat of white drab, hanging negligently open, with two tiers of pockets, a Belcher handkerchief, innumerable capes, and a large nosegay.
    Having satisfied himself that Peregrine, in spite of his gig and his old-fashioned dress, was not a mere Johnny Raw, he soon plunged into conversation; and in a very little while Peregrine learned that his name was Henry Fitzjohn, that he lived in Cork Street, was not long down from Oxford, and had come to Thistleton Gap in the expectation of joining a party of friends there. However, either because they had not yet arrived, or because the crowd was too dense to allow him to discover their position, he had missed them, and been forced to take up a place without them or lose his chance of seeing the fight. His dress was the insignia of the Four Horse Club, to which, as he naively informed Peregrine, he had been elected a member that very year.
    He had backed the Champion to win the day’s fight, and as soon as he discovered that Peregrine had never laid eyes on him—or, indeed, on any other of the notables present—he took it upon himself to point out every one of interest. That was Berkeley Craven, one of the stake-holders, standing by the ring now with Colonel Hervey Aston. Aston was