No Place For a Lady

Half an hour later she sat back, replete, and regarded her brother with fascinated awe as he dug into a large slice of apple pie.

‘This is your second dinner tonight. I think you must have hollow legs, else where can you be putting it?’

‘I’m a growing boy,’ Piers mumbled indistinctly through a mouthful of pastry. ‘Look, here comes Railton. I think he’s looking for us.’

‘What is it, Railton?’ The Yard Master was looking grim as he stopped by their table.

‘We’ll have to cancel the Bath coach, Miss Bree.’

‘What? The quarter to midnight? But it’s fully booked.’ Bree pushed back her empty plate and got to her feet. ‘Why?’

‘No driver. Todd was taking it out, but he’s slipped just now coming down the ladder out of the hayloft and I reckon his leg’s broke bad. Willis is taking the Northampton coach later, and all the rest of the men are spoken for too. There’s no one spare, not with you giving Hobbs the night off to be with his wife and new baby.’ His sniff made it abundantly clear what he thought of this indulgence.

‘Are you sure it is broken?’ Bree demanded, striding across the yard, Piers at her heels. ‘Have you sent for Dr Chapman?’

‘I have, not that I need him to tell me it’s a break when the bone’s sticking through the skin. You’ve no cause to go in there, Miss Bree. It’s not a nice sight and Bill’s seeing to him.’

Even so, one did not leave one’s employees in agony, however much of a fix they had left one in through their carelessness. Bree marched through the hay-store door and was profoundly grateful to see there was no sign of blood and Johnnie Todd was neither fainting nor shrieking in agony.

‘He’ll do.’ Bill Potter, one of the ostlers and the nearest they had to a farrier on the premises, got to his feet and walked her back firmly out of the door. ‘Doctor will fix him up, never you fret, Miss Bree.’

That was good, but it didn’t solve the problem of the Bath coach. ‘I’ll drive it.’ Piers bounded up. ‘Please?’

‘Certainly not! It’s one hundred and eight miles.’ Bree knew the mileages to their destinations, and all the stops along the way, without even having to think about it. ‘The most you’ve ever driven is twenty.’

‘Yes, but I don’t have to drive all the way, do I?’ Piers protested as they walked back to the office.

‘What?’ Bree broke off from wondering if she could possibly send round to one of the rival yards and borrow a driver. But that put one in debt…

‘Johnnie would only have driven fifty miles, wouldn’t he? Whoever the second half-driver is, he’ll be ready and waiting in Newbury.’ Piers banged through the door and started rummaging in the cupboard for his greatcoat.

‘Fifty miles is too far. I’ve driven thirty, and that was hard enough, and I wasn’t recovering from pneumonia.’ Thirty miles. Thirty miles with Papa up beside me, in broad daylight and with an empty coach coming back from the coach makers. Even so, can it be that much harder to do it with passengers up and at night? There’s a full moon.

‘I’ll drive,’ she said briskly, trampling down the wave of apprehension that hit her the minute she said it. ‘The Challenge Coach Company does not cancel coaches and we don’t go begging our rivals for help either. Shoo! I’m going to get changed.’

Chapter Two

Bree thrust the whip into the groom’s hands and used both hers on the reins. Behind her the passengers were screaming, the inner wheels were bucking along the rough rim of the ditch and branches were lashing both coach and horses.

Thank God she had never followed the practice of so many companies and used broken-down animals for the night runs, she thought fleetingly, as the leaders got their hocks under them and powered the heavy vehicle back on to the highway. The lurking menace of a milestone, glinting white in the moonlight, flashed past an inch from the wheels.

The coach rocked violently, throwing her off balance. Her right wrist struck the metal rail at the side of the box with a sickening thud. Bree bit down the gasp of pain and gathered the reins back into her left hand again, stuffing the throbbing right into the space between her greatcoat buttons.

Hell, hell and damnation. Ten miles gone, another forty to go. Her arms already felt as though she had been stretched on the rack, her back ached and now she had a badly bruised wrist. I must have been mad to start, but I’m going to do this if it kills me. It probably will.

The team steadied, then settled into a hard, steady rhythm. ‘Slow down, Miss Bree,’ Jem the groom gasped as she took the crown of the road again. ‘You can’t spring them here!’

‘I can and I will. I’m going to horsewhip that maniac the length of Hounslow High Street, and we’ve lost time as it is,’ she shouted, as the sound of another horn in the distance behind them had the groom staring back anxiously. ‘If they can catch us up before the inn, they can wait,’ Bree added grimly. And if they didn’t like it, they had one very angry coaching proprietor to deal with.

‘You won. Congratulations.’ Max fetched Nevill a hard buffet on his back as the young man climbed stiffly down from the box.

‘I…Max, I’m sorry. I nearly crashed it.’ He stumbled and Max caught him up, pushing him back against the coach wheel. The others would be here in a moment; he wasn’t having Nevill showing them anything but a confident face. ‘If you hadn’t told me when to go, shouted at me…I was going too fast on a blind bend. I’ll understand if you never let me drive your horses again.’

‘Are you ever going to do anything that stupid again?’ Max demanded, ignoring the bustle of ostlers running to unharness his team. ‘No?’ His cousin shook his head. ‘Well, then, lesson learned. I once had the York mail off the road, although I don’t choose to talk about it. I was about your age, and probably as green. Now, get the team put up and looked over and then get us a chamber. I’m going to save your bacon by doing my best with the coachman.’

‘But I should—’

‘Just do as I ask, Nevill, and pray I don’t look at the damage to my paintwork before I’ve had at least one glass of brandy.’

The average stagecoachman would have the boy’s guts for garters—their temper and their arrogance were legendary. Max heard the sound of the horn and the stage swept into the yard: at least he wasn’t going to have to organise its rescue from the ditch. He scanned the roof passengers as they clambered down, protesting loudly about their terrible experience. No young woman—he must have been dreaming. His heart sank and he grimaced wryly; he was acting like a heartsick youth after a glimpse of some beauty at a window.

The groom swung down beside the grumbling passengers. ‘Brandy on the company,’ he said, urging them towards the door of the Bell and the waiting landlord.

He swung round as Max strode up. ‘You driving that rig just now, guv’nor?’ he demanded belligerently.

‘No, my young cousin was, but I am responsible. Allow me to make our apologies to the driver, and to you, of course.’ He slipped a coin into the man’s hand and stepped to one side to confront the other who was slowly climbing down, his back to the yard. The groom shifted as though to protect his driver’s back. Max dodged—and found himself face to face with the smallest, strangest, and certainly most belligerent stagecoach driver he had ever met.

‘You oaf!’ It was his young woman. In the better light of the inn yard she was even more striking than he recalled from that startling glimpse, her looks heightened by shimmering fury. No classical beauty, although a low-crowned beaver jammed down almost to her eyebrows so that not a lock of hair showed, did not help. And goodness knows what her figure was like under the bulk of the caped greatcoat. But her face was a pure oval, her skin clear, her eyes deep blue and her mouth flooded his mind with explicit, arousing images

‘What are you staring at, sir?’ she demanded, giving him the opportunity to admire the way those lovely lips looked in motion, glimpsing a flash of white teeth. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a woman driving before?’ She grounded the butt of her whip with one hand and glowered at him. Tall, she’s tall for a woman, he thought irrelevantly as she tipped her head, just a little, to look at him.

‘Not one driving a stagecoach,’ he admitted. Somewhere behind him the increase in noise heralded the arrival of the two rival drags. Max moved instinctively to shield her from sight. ‘Madam, I must apologise for that incident. Naturally I will meet any damages to the coach, and you must allow me to pay for whatever drinks the passengers are taking in there.’

‘Certainly. Your card for the bill?’ That was businesslike with a vengeance. Max dug into the breast pocket of his coat and produced his card case. ‘Send me a round sum, I am not concerned with detail—it was our fault.’

‘It most certainly was, and I am concerned with detail. You will get a full accounting. Now, if you please, I must see to having my next team put to.’

‘Wait. You surely do not want to be seen by the other drivers.’ She did not appear in the least discommoded by being found, dressed as a man, in the midst of a group of boisterous gentlemen.

‘Really, Mr…’ She glanced at the card, tilting it to catch the lantern light and her eyebrows rose. ‘Lord Penrith, I am in a hurry.’ If it had been a young man with that accent and that attitude he would have assumed it was some young sprig of fashion out for a thrill. But women did not drive stages, and ladies most certainly did not drive anything on public highways outside the centre of town.

‘Damn it, Dysart, if it wasn’t for that damnable stagecoach I’d have had you in that last straight.’ Latymer.

Max swung round, the flaring skirts of his greatcoat effectively screening the willowy figure of the woman. ‘Go and argue the toss with Nevill,’ he suggested. ‘But I say you lost it on the pull past Syon House. How far behind was Lansdowne?’

‘One minute, but I still maintain—’

‘I’ll be with you inside in a moment. I’ve just got to argue this blockhead down from claiming half the cost of his damn coach,’ he added, low-voiced, taking Latymer by the arm and turning him away. ‘I told Nevill to get the brandy in.’

As he suspected, that was enough to turn the grumbling man back to the warmth of the inn parlour. As usual, whenever Latymer lost something, he would insist on a prolonged post mortem, the aim of which would be to prove he had failed for reasons entirely outside his control.

When he turned back, the young woman, far from taking advantage of his efforts to shield her, was engaged in spirited discussions with the head ostler about the team he was proposing to put to. ‘And not that black one either. It’s half-blind,’ she called after him as he stomped back to the stables to fetch another horse.

‘I will not run with those broken-down wrecks they try and fob one off with at night,’ she pronounced as he came up to her.

‘Madam—’

‘Miss Mallory. Bree Mallory.’