the young nobleman said as he marched toward the overturned coach with such a fiercely determined look on his face, he hardly seemed like the same man.
The guard scowled but said no more as the viscount found the pistol which, like the blunderbuss, looked as if it had been made early in the previous century.
With the gun behind his back, murmuring something that sounded like an apology, the viscount approached the injured horse. Then, as the guard moved as far away as he could, the nobleman took his stance, aimed and shot the horse right between its big, brown, limpid eyes.
As the animal fell heavily to the ground, the viscount lowered his arm and bowed his head.
“Couldn’t be helped,” the driver muttered roughly. “Had to be done.”
Yes, it had to be done, Nell thought as she returned to dabbing the driver’s wound, but she felt sorry for the poor horse, as well as the man who had to shoot it.
The viscount tucked the pistol into the waist of his trousers before returning to Nell and the driver. Between the pistol, his sun-darkened skin, open shirt and disheveled hair, he looked like a very handsome, elegant pirate.
Pirate. The sea. A viscount who liked spiders who’d gone to sea…
Good heavens! He had to be Lord Bromwell, the naturalist whose book about his voyage around the world had made him the toast of London society and the subject of many articles in the popular press. Like so many others, Lady Sturmpole had bought his book and talked about his remarkable adventures, although she didn’t bother to actually read The Spider’s Web.
No wonder he could be calm in a crisis. Any man who’d survived a shipwreck and attacks by cannibals could surely take an overturned coach in stride. As for that kiss, he must often be the object of female attention and lust. He probably had women throwing themselves at him all the time and assumed she was another who was intrigued and infatuated by his looks and his fame.
And because he was famous, the press might take an even greater interest in a mail coach overturning, perhaps noting that Lord Bromwell had not been the only passenger and asking her name and her destination and why she was in the coach….
With a growing sense of impending doom, wishing she’d never caught the coach, never gone to London, never decided to go to Bath and, most of all, never met him, Nell watched as the handsome, renowned naturalist swung himself onto the back of one of the horses and galloped down the road.
Chapter Two
Fortunately, I have been blessed with a practical nature that allows me to take immediate action without the burden of emotion. Thus, I was quite calm as the ship was sinking and my concern was to help as many of my shipmates as possible. It was after the ship had gone down and the storm had abated, after we had managed to retrieve some items necessary to life and found ourselves on that tiny slip of sand seemingly lost in the vast ocean, that I laid my head on my knees, and wept.
—from The Spider’s Web, by Lord Bromwell
As Lord Bromwell—known as Buggy to his closest friends—had expected, the sight of a dishevelled, hatless, cloakless man mounted on a sweat-slicked coach horse charging into the yard of The Crown and Lion caused quite a stir.
A male servant carrying a bag of flour over his shoulder toward the kitchen stopped and stared, openmouthed. Two slovenly attired men lounging by the door straightened. The washerwoman, an enormous basket of wet linen in her arms, nearly dropped her burden, while a boy carrying boots paid no heed where he was going and nearly ran into one of the two idlers, earning the curious lad a cuff on the side of the head.
“There’s been an accident,” Bromwell called out to the hostler as the man ran out of the stables, followed by two grooms, a stable boy and a man in livery.
Bromwell slid off the exhausted horse and, after unwrapping the excess length of the reins from around his hands, gave them to the stable boy. Meanwhile, the grooms, liveried fellows, idlers, bootblack and washerwoman gathered around them. “The mail coach broke an axle about three miles back on the London road.”
“No!” the hostler cried, as if such a thing were completely impossible.
“Yes,” Bromwell replied as the inn’s proprietor, alerted by the hubbub, appeared in the door of the taproom. He wiped his hands on the soiled apron that covered his ample belly and hurried forward at a brisk trot that was impressive for a man of his girth.
“Gad, is that you, Lord Bromwell?” Jenkins exclaimed. “You’re not hurt, I hope!”
“I’m perfectly all right, Mr. Jenkins,” the viscount replied, slapping the worst of the mud from his trousers. “Unfortunately, others are not. We need a physician and a carriage, as well as a horse for me, for I fear we won’t all fit in one vehicle. Naturally I shall pay—”
“My lord!” Mr. Jenkins cried, his red face appalled, his hand to his heart as if mortally offended. “Never!”
Bromwell acknowledged the innkeeper’s generosity with a smile and a nod. He’d always liked Mr. Jenkins, which made his father’s disparaging treatment of him even more painful to witness.
“You there, Sam,” Jenkins called to the hostler, “get my carriage ready and saddle Brown Bessie for his lordship—the good saddle, mind.
“Johnny, leave those at the door and run and fetch the doctor,” he said to the bootblack. “Quick as you can, lad.”
The boy immediately did as he was told, while the hostler and grooms returned to the stable, taking the coach horse with them. Adjusting her heavy basket on her hip, the washerwoman started back toward the washhouse and the two idlers returned to their places, where they had a good view of incoming riders and vehicles.
“Come in and have a drink o’ something while they’re getting the horse and carriage ready,” Jenkins offered. “I expect you’ll want to wash, too.”
Bromwell reached up to touch his cheek and discovered he was rather muddy there, too. “Yes, indeed I would,” he replied, following the innkeeper toward the main building, a two-storied, half-timbered edifice, with a public taproom and dining room on the lower level and bedrooms above.
Although Bromwell had lost what vanity he’d possessed years ago, believing his looks nothing to boast of especially compared to those of his friends, as he walked behind Jenkins through the muddy, straw-strewn yard, he couldn’t help wondering what his female fellow passenger had made of his appearance.
More importantly, though, what the devil had possessed him to act like a degenerate cad? To be sure, she was pretty, with the most remarkable green eyes, and he’d noticed her trim figure clad in a plain gray pelisse when she’d briskly approached the coach before getting on in London. But he’d met pretty young women before. He’d even seen several completely naked during his sojourn in the South Seas. Indeed, while he’d found her pretty, he’d had no trouble at all pretending to be asleep to spare himself any conversation before he really had fallen asleep.
If he hadn’t, he might have started to wonder sooner why a woman who spoke with such a refined accent and had such a manner was travelling unaccompanied.
She could be a governess or upper servant, he supposed, going on a visit.
Whoever she was, he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for kissing
