“First catch your hare——” she retaliated defiantly.
He regarded her tensely for a moment.
“I’ll take your advice,” he said briefly. Then he added: “Did you know that I’m driving you back in my cart this afternoon?”
Various cars and traps and saddle horses had brought the party together at the appointed rendezvous—a little village on the outskirts of the Moor, and Jean had driven up with Blaise in one of the Staple cars. She looked at Burke now, in astonishment.
“You certainly are not,” she replied quickly. “I shall go back as I came—in the car.”
“Quite impossible. It’s broken down. They rashly brought on the lunch hampers in it, across that God-forsaken bit of moor road—with disastrous consequences to the car’s internals. So that you and Tormarin have got to be sorted into other conveyances. And I’ve undertaken to get you home.”
Jean’s face fell a little. Throughout the drive up to the Moor Blaise had seemed less remote and more like his old self than at any time since their quarrel, and she could guess that this arrangement of Burke’s was hardly likely to conduce towards the continuance of the new peace.
“How will Blaise get home?” she asked.
“They can squeeze him into her car, Judy says. It’ll be a tight fit, but he can cling on by his eyelashes somehow.”
“I think it would be a better arrangement if you drove Blaise and I went back in the car with your sister,” suggested Jean.