“That is what I like in you,” he agreed, and sprang lightly up into the curricle, and stepped across her to the box-seat. “Now let me show you how to hit me.”
Miss Taverner resisted, but he possessed himself of her gloved hand and doubled it into a fist. “Keep your thumb down so, and hit like that. Not at my chin, I think. Aim for the eye, or the nose, if you prefer.”
Miss Taverner sat rigid.
“I won’t retaliate,” he promised. Then, as she still made no movement, he said: “I see I shall have to offer you provocation,” and swiftly kissed her.
Miss Taverner’s hands clenched into two admirable fists, but she controlled an unladylike impulse, and kept them in her lap. She was both shaken and enraged by the kiss, and hardly knew where to look. No other man than her father or Peregrine had ever dared to kiss her. At a guess she supposed the gentleman to have written her down as some country tradesman’s daughter from a Queen’s Square boarding school. Her old-fashioned dress was to blame, and no doubt that abominable gig. She wished she did not blush so hotly, and said with as much scorn as she could throw into her voice: “Even a dandy might remember the civility due to a gentlewoman. I shall not hit you.”
“I am disappointed,” he said. “There is nothing for it but to go in search of your brother. Stand away, Henry.”
The tiger sprang back, and ran to scramble up on to his perch again. The curricle moved forward, and in another minute was bowling rapidly along the road towards Grantham.
“You may set me down at the George, sir,” said Miss Taverner coldly. “No doubt if my brother is come back from the fight he will oblige you in the way, I, alas, am not able to do.”
He laughed. “Hit me, do you mean? All things are possible, Clorinda, though some are—unlikely, let us say.”
She folded her lips, and for a while did not speak. Her companion maintained a flow of languid conversation until she interrupted him, impelled by curiosity to ask him the question in her mind. “Why did you wish to drive me into Grantham?”