“Very well,” Vidal said, and shut the door on her.
One of the lackeys put up the steps; the postillions were already in their saddles, and grooms stood to the horses’ heads. Vidal pulled on his gloves, gathered the bay’s bridle in his left hand, and mounted. “Port Royal!” he said to the postillions, and reigned the bay in hard to let the chaise pass out of the courtyard.
At the first post-stage Miss Marling insisted on descending from the chaise. While the horses were changed she favoured the Marquis with a pungent criticism of his manners, and the springs of the chaise. She said that never had she been so shaken and battered. She wondered that any man should be so brutal as to subject a lady to such discomfort, and declared that she vastly regretted having come on the journey.
“I thought you would,” replied his lordship. “Perhaps it’ll teach you not to meddle in my affairs.”
“Your affairs?” gasped Miss Marling. “Do you imagine that I care a pin for your affairs? I’ve come on my own, Vidal!”
“Then don’t grumble,” he returned.
Miss Marling stalked back to the chaise in high dudgeon. At the next halt she did not even look out of the window, but at the end of another twelve miles, she alighted once more, with her cloak held tightly round her against the sharp evening wind.
It was dusk and the landscape was dim, with a grey mist rising off the ground. The lamps on the chaise had been lit, and a comfortable glow came from the windows of the small inn.
“Vidal, can we not stay here for the night?” asked Miss Marling in a fading voice.
His lordship was speaking to one of the ostlers. He finished what he had to say, and then came leisurely towards his cousin. He had put on his greatcoat, an affair of buff-coloured cloth, with three capes at the shoulders. “Tired?” he said.