Free Pistols for Two by Georgette Heyer

teaching cant phrases to schoolgirls he may do tolerably well.’
    ‘I can see that it is an expression I should not have used,’ said Nan knowledgeably. ‘Must I not call you a Nonpareil either, sir?’
    He laughed. ‘If you wish! But why should you talk about me at all? Tell me about yourself!’
    She was doubtful whether so limited a subject could interest him, but since she was of a confiding nature it was not long before she was chatting happily to him. When the horses were changed, there was very little about Miss Massingham that he did not know; and since he found her curious mixture of innocence and worldly wisdom something quite out of the common way he was not sorry that she spurned a suggestion that she should continue the journey in the chaise. She was not, she said, at all chilly; she had been wondering, on the contrary, whether she might perhaps be allowed to take the ribbons.
    ‘Certainly not!’ said Sir Charles.
    ‘You are such a famous whip yourself, sir, that you could very easily teach me to drive,’ argued Miss Massingham, in persuasive accents.
    ‘No doubt I could, but I shall not. I dislike being driven.’
    ‘Oh!’ said Miss Massingham, damped. ‘I don’t mean to tease you, only it would be such a thing to boast of!’
    He could not help laughing. ‘Absurd brat! Well – for half an hour, then, but no longer!’
    ‘ Thank you!’ said Miss Massingham, her air of gentle melancholy vanishing.
    When she was at last induced to give the reins back to her instructor, the Beckhampton Inn had been passed, and the chaise had long been out of sight. Sir Charles put his pair along at a spanking pace, and would no doubt have overtaken the chaise had his companion not announced suddenly that she was hungry. A glance at his watch showed him that it was past one o’clock. He said ruefully: ‘I should have stopped to give you a nuncheon rather than have let you take the ribbons.’
    ‘We could stop now, could we not, sir?’ said Miss Massingham hopefully.
    ‘If we do it must only be for a few minutes,’ he warned her.
    She agreed readily to this; and as they were approaching Marlborough he drove to the Castle Inn, and commanded the waiter to bring some cold meat and fruit as speedily as possible. Miss Massingham and her puppy, whom she had christened Duke, in doubtful compliment to his Grace of Wellington, both made hearty meals, after which Miss Massingham, while Sir Charles settled the reckoning, took her pet for a run on the end of a blind-cord, which she abstracted from the coffee-room, and for which Sir Charles was called upon to pay. She said that she would walk along the broad village street, and that he might pick her up in the curricle. Ten minutes later he ran her to earth outside a bird-fancier’s shop, the centre of a small crowd of partisans and critics. Upon demand, he learned that Miss Massingham, discovering a number of songbirds cooped inside small wicker-cages, which were piled up outside the shop, had not only released the wretched prisoners, but had hotly harangued the fancier on the cruelty of his trade. It cost Sir Charles a sum grossly in excess of the birds’ worth, and the exercise of his prestige as an obvious member of the Quality, to extricate his charge from this imbroglio, and she was not in the least grateful to him for having done it. She censured his conduct in having given the man money instead of knocking him down. ‘Which I am persuaded you might have done, because Priscilla’s brother told us that you are a Pink of the Fancy,’ she said severely.
    ‘I shall be obliged to you,’ said Sir Charles, with asperity, ‘if you will refrain from repeating the extremely improper remarks made to you by Priscilla’s cub of a brother!’
    ‘Now you are vexed with me!’ said Nan.
    ‘Yes, for your conduct is disgraceful!’ said Sir Charles sternly.
    ‘I did not mean to do what you would not like,’ said Miss Massingham, in a small voice.
    Sir Charles preserved an