The Toll-Gate by Georgette Heyer Page A

trustees!"
    "But you should not be obliged to buy the ticket for my carriage!" she objected.
    "Oh, there was no obligation! I hoped to impress you by making such a handsome gesture," he said gravely.
    "Sporting the blunt!" she retaliated, casting a challenging look at him to see how he took this dashing phrase.
    "Exactly so!" he said.
    A gurgle of laughter escaped her. "How absurd you are! Are you never serious, Captain Staple?"
    "Why, yes, sometimes, Miss Stornaway!" She smiled, and drove on for a few moments without speaking. She was not, he thought, shy, but there was a little constraint in her manner, which had been absent from it on the previous day. After a pause, she said, as though she felt it incumbent upon her to make some remark: "I hope you do not dislike to be driven by a female, sir?"
    "Not when the female handles the ribbons as well as you do, ma'am," he replied.
    "Thank you! It needs no particular skill to drive Squirrel, but I was always accounted a good whip. I can drive a tandem," she added, with a touch of pride. "My grandfather taught me."
    "Didn't your grandfather win a curricle race against Sir John Lade once?"
    "Yes, indeed he did! But that was long ago." A tiny sigh accompanied the words, and as though to cover it, she said, in a rallying tone: "I had meant to pass you off as the stable-boy, you know, but you are so smart today I see it will not do!"
    He was wearing his riding-coat and top-boots, and his neck-cloth was arranged with military neatness. There was nothing of the dandy in his appearance, but his coat was well-cut, and, in striking contrast to Henry Stornaway's buckish friend, he looked very much the gentleman.
    He stretched out one leg, and grimaced at it. "I did my best," he admitted, "but, lord, how right my man was about these leathers of mine! He gave me to understand no one could clean them but himself. I don't know how that may be, but I certainly can't! My boots are a disgrace to me, too, but that might be the fault of Brean's blacking."
    She laughed. "Nonsense! I only wish Rose might see you! You have met Rose, so you will not be surprised to learn that she cannot approve of a gentleman's being seen on the highway in his shirt."
    "Torn, too, but she has promised to mend it for me. I am very much obliged to her, and not only for that cause. She came to see whether I was a fit and proper person to be permitted to go with you to Tideswell, and she decided that I was."
    "Yes, she did. I beg your pardon! but she was used to be my nurse, you know, and nothing will persuade her that I am twenty-six years of age, and very well able to take care of myself. She is the dearest creature, but she is for ever preaching propriety to me."
    "I should think she has some pretty strong notions of propriety," he agreed.
    "Alas, poor Rose, she has indeed, and they have all been overset!"
    He was watching her profile, thinking how delightfully she smiled, and how surely her expressive countenance reflected her changing moods. "Have they? How did that come about?" he said.
    She looked mischievous, chuckling deep in her throat. "She is in love with a highwayman!"
    "What? Oh, no, impossible!"
    "I assure you! She won't admit it—never speaks of it!—but it's quite true. I know nothing, of course! If I dare to question her I get nothing for my pains but a tremendous scold, and when I was saucy enough to ask her if he does not come secretly to Kellands to see her she would have boxed my ears, could she but have reached them! But I am very sure he does. And the ridiculous thing is that she is the most respectable creature alive, and very nearly forty years old! I daresay no one could be more shocked than she is herself, but make up her mind never to see him again she cannot! Mind, not a word of this to her!"
    "Good God, I should not dare! But how came it about?"
    "Oh, he held us up, rather more than a year ago! It was the most farcical adventure imaginable. She had gone with me to Tinsley, which is beyond