The Society Catch. Louise Allen
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half an hour his curricle, with the matched greys in the shafts and his groom left behind, faintly complaining, swung out on to the Great North Road heading towards Stevenage. Joanna had a full day’s start on him and he could not risk simply assuming she was going to Peterborough; he was going to have to check at every stopping place on the list. But then, there were French colonels—some of them still alive to remember it—who had had similar starts on Giles Gregory and who had still found themselves tracked down, outmanoeuvred and defeated. One chit of a girl was not going to elude him now.
Joanna parted with some reluctance from the comforts of the White Hart the next morning. She was anxious to be on her way and to reach Georgy, but the inn and its motherly landlady, Mrs Handley, had seemed safe; although she would never have admitted it, Joanna was feeling lonely and not a little frightened.
Still, she was taken up by the stage without any problem and Mrs Handley had come out herself to see her off and to remind her which inn in Peterborough to get off at in order to pick up the Lynn stage, which would drop her in Wisbech.
She eyed her new travelling companions from under the brim of her modest bonnet and was reassured by the sight of a stout farmer’s wife with a basket, a thin young man who promptly fell asleep and a middle-aged gentleman in clerical collar and bands who politely raised his hat to her as she got on.
‘I trust I do not intrude,’ he ventured after a few moments, ‘but I heard the good landlady directing you to the Crown and Anchor and I wonder if I might be of assistance? My name is Thoroughgood, Reverend Thaddeus Thoroughgood, and I am changing at that point myself as I do very frequently. I would be most happy to point out the stage office and so forth when we arrive.’
Joanna thanked him politely, somewhat nervous that he might want to continue talking to her, for conversation with a strange man, even a most respectable-looking clergyman, on a public stage was not what she had been brought up to regard as ladylike behaviour. However, the good reverend did not say any more and she thanked him and leaned back, feeling happier now she knew she had a guide should she need one.
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