The Viscount's Kiss Read Free Page A

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, neverdecided 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.
    â€”from The Spider’s Web , by Lord Bromwell
    A s 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.
    â€œThere’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.”
    â€œNo!” the hostler cried, as if such a thing were completely impossible.
    â€œYes,” 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.
    â€œGad, is that you, Lord Bromwell?” Jenkins exclaimed. “You’re not hurt, I hope!”
    â€œI’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.