The Viscount's Kiss Page 9

  —from The Spider’s Web, by Lord Bromwell

  Nell stared in complete fascination, marvelling at the lithe ease and grace with which Lord Bromwell moved, the undulations of his body, the deep bends and the way he moved his knees back and forth like the wings of a butterfly. She had never seen anything like it, and likely never would again.

  He turned, so that he was facing away from her, and she spotted something on his back, slightly visible above the waistband of his trousers. It was a dark mark, like a large birthmark…or a tattoo?

  It had to be, she thought as she inched her way forward. What was it supposed to depict? She was too far away to tell and too much of it was covered by his trousers to guess what it was with any accuracy—and she really shouldn’t linger here. Surely he would be mortified if he found her there, as she would be to have him know that she’d been watching him.

  Nevertheless, she hesitated, then decided it was worth the risk to listen to his chant and watch him dance like some sort of warrior from long ago calling on his gods.

  Until a dog bayed nearby. Loudly.

  Lord Bromwell instantly stopped dancing while, with a gasp, Nell began a hasty retreat.

  A huge black dog burst through the bushes nearby, growling and baring its teeth as if it was about to attack.

  Nell stopped dead, too panicked to scream. The dog stood where it was and began to bark as if to summon an army.

  “Quiet, Brutus! Sit!”

  Relief flooded through Nell as the dog did as Lord Bromwell commanded, abruptly settling on its haunches, silent and panting, as Lord Bromwell appeared from the trees. He had hastily donned a white shirt that was still half undone and open nearly to his navel, as well as a blue frock coat.

  “I’m sorry if he frightened you,” he said, walking up to the huge, slavering dog and patting its head. “The gamekeeper must be nearby. I suspect Brutus thought you were a poacher, but even so, he’s all bark, which is why he’s an excellent guard dog.”

  She sidled closer to the animal and put out a hand to pat him. The dog’s tail began to thump as he looked up at her with mild brown eyes.

  “See? Now he’s a friend for life,” Lord Bromwell assured her, while she tried not to glance at the opening in his shirt and that expanse of sun-browned naked chest. “What brings you this far from the house, and so early?”

  Before she could answer, an elderly man in leather gaiters and a heavy black coat, with a felt hat pulled low on his forehead, stepped out of the trees. His face was nearly as brown as his hat, much wrinkled, and he had the widest mouth she’d ever seen. He also had a shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm.

  Although he bobbed his head in greeting, his eyes, shaded by the hat, narrowed when he saw her.

  “This is Billings, the gamekeeper, my lady,” Lord Bromwell said before turning to address him. “I’m afraid poor Brutus gave Lady Eleanor quite a scare.”

  “He was only doin’ his job, my lady,” the gamekeeper said gruffly.

  “He has a very loud bark.”

  “Aye, like his father—and a good thing Castor were loud, or his lordship here would be nothing but bones.”

  “There are some caves nearby and when I was about ten, I decided to go exploring,” Lord Bromwell explained with a rueful grin, reminding her that he was not as old as his fame and accomplishments might lead one to believe. “I got stuck trying to squeeze into an opening and couldn’t get out. Brutus’s sire found me and the rescue party was able to follow the sound of his barking to get me out.

  “It was not,” Lord Bromwell added self-deprecatingly, “my finest hour.”

  “Oh, now, I dunno,” Billings replied, tipping back his hat and revealing sparse gray hair. “Come out of it laughing, he did, like it was all just a lark to him.”

  “Because I had every faith you’d find me.”

  Billings shook his head. “After hours alone trapped in the dark? Enough to give grown men the willies.”

  “It wasn’t dark the whole time,” Lord Bromwell corrected, leaning his weight on one leg and speaking as if they were at a dinner party. “My candle lasted for most of it and there was a Meta menardi to keep me company.”

  “That’d be some kind of spider, I suppose,” Billings said.

  “The common name is the orb-weaving cave spider,” Lord Bromwell replied.

  Billings shook his head as if perturbed, but there was a glint of pride in his dark eyes and the hint of a smile at the corner of his wide mouth. “Most boys go for puppies or ponies. The viscount here goes for spiders. Has he shown you where he keeps ’em? It’s not far.”

  Nell glanced at Lord Bromwell, who was swiftly buttoning up his shirt as if he’d suddenly realized he’d been exposing a rather vast amount of skin. “I don’t think she’d be interested in my specimens, Billings.”

  “Oh? Scared of spiders, are you?”

  “Not unless they’re very close to me,” she replied.

  “They’re all dead,” Billings assured her.

  “Except for the harmless sort who usually inhabit such buildings,” Lord Bromwell amended.

  “Not that we let folks know that,” the gamekeeper said with a wink. “Haven’t had a poacher on the place since his lordship come back because they think he might have brought some poisonous ones back with him and let ’em loose.”

  “I’d very much like to see Lord Bromwell’s collection,” Nell said honestly. After all, they would be dead.

  “Well, then, since I’ve already seen ’em, Brutus and me’ll be off,” Billings said.

  He slapped his hand against his thigh, and the dog rose and trotted toward him. Then, giving the viscount a nod of farewell, and Nell a grin, the gamekeeper disappeared back into the trees with his dog.

  “Do you really want to see my collection?” Lord Bromwell asked shyly when they were alone. “I won’t be offended if you’d rather not.”

  Suddenly, the risk of being alone with him seemed far less important than learning about the subject that interested him so much that he would take such risks to collect specimens and bring them home. “Yes, I do.”

  He smiled with delight and the warmth of it seemed to heat her down to her toes before he turned and pointed at a brown stone building a little way in the distance. She hadn’t seen it before because it was half-hidden by shrubs and ferns and surrounded by thick trees, and she had been too busy watching him dance.

  “Billings started that rumor about poisonous spiders himself, to keep poachers away,” the viscount said as he led the way. “He thought it would be more effective than laying traps.”

  “Apparently it works.”

  “Apparently,” Lord Bromwell said, sliding her another boyish grin, and her heartbeat seemed to skip.

  Reaching the small stone structure, he leaned forward and pushed down on the latch, then shoved open the rough wooden door before stepping back to let her enter ahead of him. “Welcome to my idea of heaven, Lady Eleanor.”

  She moved past Lord Bromwell into the dim building that was about twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. The only illumination came from two wide, square windows that were half-shuttered and a small fire in the hearth at the other end of the room. There were shelves to her right bearing several glass jars with objects floating in them and a large, cluttered table of scarred oak in the center. On the table were the remains of a candle in a simple pewter holder in addition to an oil lamp, as well as some papers and what might be a box of pencils of the sort artists used. Beside the rough stone fireplace was a wooden cabinet with wide, narrow drawers. Shelves above it held a few books. There was also an assortment of what looked like cooking utensils, a kettle, plates, cups and cutlery, along with some other things she couldn’t begin to name, on an ancient sideboard on the other side of the hearth. A cabriole sofa with a sagging seat was along the wall to her left, with a pillow and rumpled blanket at one end.

  Lord Bromwell squeezed past her and went to fold the blanket. “Forgive the disarray. Normally nobody comes here except m
e. The servants won’t set foot in the place. Sometimes I sleep here when I’m working on a paper, as I was last night.”

  The blanket folded, he hurried to the hearth and took a brimstone match from a container on the unfinished wooden mantel. He put it into the fire, then used it to light the oil lamp. As it glowed into life, she could see what floated in the jars.

  Spiders. Large ones, small ones and several sizes in between. Some were dark, some colourful, one or two were completely black.

  No wonder the servants wouldn’t come here, she thought as she wrapped her arms around herself. “I didn’t realize they could get so big,” she murmured, staring at one particularly enormous specimen.

  “Oh, they can,” Lord Bromwell replied. “I have other specimens, too, in the drawers.”

  He nodded at the cabinet. “It pains me to have to kill them, but there is no other way to bring them home for further study.”

  He reached for one of the bottles. “This fellow is the same kind that gave you such a turn in the coach, Tegenaria parietina, also known as the cardinal spider because Cardinal Wolsey apparently shared your reaction to them.”

  “It’s a common reaction to spiders, of course,” he continued as he regarded his collection. “Even the daughter of one of the first men to write well of them seemed to have had a similar response. Her name was Patience.”

  He slid Nell a sidelong glance. “Perhaps you’ve heard of her? Her father was Dr. Thomas Moufet.”

  “Little Miss Muffet?” Nell cried. “She was a real person?”

  “So it seems,” he said, grinning, “although I don’t know who came up with the rhyme.”

  He moved further down the shelf and pointed at another specimen. “And this beauty is a tarantula from Italy. Its poisonous bite is supposedly cured by music and wild dancing.”

  She thought of his wild dancing, the memory so vivid and exhilarating she doubted she would ever forget it. “You don’t believe that?” she asked, for his expression was decidedly amused.

  How would he look if he’d known she’d seen him when he thought he was alone?

  “No,” he replied with a shake of his head, “although it’s an interesting notion. Inhabitants of the same regions where this spider dwells used to hold rites dedicated to Bacchus. I suspect the bite of the tarantula is merely an excuse to continue similar unbridled excess and all manner of…”

  He cleared his throat and immediately went to the next species. “This is a spider that I found near Kealakekua Bay, in Hawaii, where Captain Cook was killed.”

  As he continued describing his collection, he became more enthused and entertaining, and less the serious scholar.

  She’d never met a man so keen on his profession, so thrilled by his work, so excited by his studies. So handsome and charming, so modest and yet so heroic. So lean and yet so muscular….

  “Am I boring you? I can get quite carried away, I know,” Lord Bromwell asked, obviously misinterpreting the far-off look in her eyes.

  “Not at all,” she answered. What would he think or do if she confessed she’d just been imagining him without any clothes on?

  “Would you like some tea? I have some, and there’s water in the kettle. Unfortunately, I don’t have any milk or sugar.”

  “A cup of tea would be lovely,” she said, “if you think we can spare the time.”

  He stepped briskly toward the fireplace. “My mother never comes down to breakfast and my father’s never been an early riser.”

  “Then please, let’s have some tea.”

  Nodding, he hung the kettle from a pot crane and moved it over the flame. He fed more wood into the fire and got two cups and spoons and a tin from the sideboard. “I’m aware spiders aren’t as attractive as butterflies or flowers, but they’re still worthy of study. For instance, their webs are amazingly strong for their size and weight. Just think what we could do if we could figure out how to imitate the properties of spiders’ silk! Unfortunately, not many share my opinion. Mostly they, like my father, consider my devotion to the study of spiders a waste of time.”

  “Which makes your dedication that much more impressive.”

  “Do you really think so?” he asked eagerly, turning so quickly toward her that the stray lock of hair fell over his forehead again.

  “I do,” she confirmed, moving closer to the table and leafing through some sketches there. They were very good, proving that Lord Bromwell was a man of many talents.

  “My father has never understood me at all,” Lord Bromwell said with a sigh. “I was a great disappointment to him as a child. I wasn’t a particularly robust boy, and I preferred reading to riding and hunting.

  “I became interested in spiders when I was recovering from scarlet fever. A cardinal spider inhabited a corner of my room across from my bed and when I had no new books to read, I would watch it.

  “The maids kept destroying its web, but the spider always returned and built another. I was fascinated by both the web, and the creature’s persistence.”

  She imagined him as a lonely little boy with only a spider for company. And yet…“Thompkins said you’re an expert horseman.”

  “Practice, over many years, aided by the instruction of my friends who all ride better than I,” Lord Bromwell replied.

  “You seem to have outgrown any tendency to sickliness,” she noted as she studied a particularly fine drawing of a plant she’d never seen before.

  “Not completely,” he said, coming closer as she picked up another picture, this one of a hairy-legged spider. “I became very ill during my last voyage. Measles, of all things. Fortunately, I didn’t lose my eyesight.”

  “Or the world would have lost a talented artist as well as naturalist.”

  “I’m competent enough to draw from life, but I’m hardly an artist,” he demurred.

  Acutely aware of his proximity, she tried to focus her attention on the sketches of insects and plants. “These are very realistic.”

  She was nearly at the bottom of the pile when a very different picture caught her eye. She drew it out and found a charcoal sketch of herself, looking pensive and plaintively out of the window of the coach.

  It was startling to see herself so accurately rendered with a few strokes of charcoal. “I thought you were asleep for most of the journey,” she murmured. “The next time I share a coach with someone I think is sleeping, I might have to kick him to make sure.”

  His lips curved up in a rueful smile. “If I had known how much I would enjoy your company, I would have stayed awake.”

  The kettle began to whistle and she let out her breath as he went to make the tea, trying to calm her rushing heartbeat. “I don’t blame you for preferring to spend time here, but it must get a little lonely sometimes, just you and the spiders.”

  “Billings and Brutus join me sometimes, and bring a rabbit to stew. Then we have quite a little party,” he said, pouring boiling water through the tea strainer into a pot. “I did miss Granshire when I was at sea, more than I thought I would. I even missed Father, although there was a certain chieftain in Tahiti who reminded me of him a great deal. Obuamarea had a daughter he was particularly keen I marry. Of course I had to refuse.”

  “Was she pretty?” Nell asked.

  “Very, once one got used to the tattoos.”

  She remembered the black mark on his back and wondered again what it depicted.

  He handed her the cup, which she rested on her knees. “I probably shouldn’t have gotten one myself, but I was curious about the process. I do wish, however, that I’d kept that particular experience out of my book.”

  She wrapped her hands around the warm cup. “Is there really a bet about it at White’s?”

  “Sadly, yes, there is. My friend Brix—the Honorable Brixton Smythe-Medway—made it. He called the wager repayment for a certain bet some friends and I made that caused him some grief—but if you knew Brix, you’d believe as I do that he would have done it anyway, just to make mischief.”

  “He
doesn’t sound like the sort of friend I’d like.”

  “Oh, he’s really a fine fellow,” Lord Bromwell said as he leaned back against the sideboard, holding a chipped teacup. “He’s a bit of a comedian, that’s all. We met at school and he was the first boy to speak to me. That’s how I met Edmond and Charlie and Drury, and we’ve been friends ever since, although they can’t quite understand my interest in spiders, either.

  “But I could never be an attorney like Drury, or write poetry and novels like Edmond. Brix is helping to improve his father’s estate and Charlie’s in the navy, so I suppose I have the most in common with him.” He gave her another rueful smile. “But listen to me going on about myself! Tell me about your interests, my lady.”

  “I—I don’t have any,” she admitted, feeling woefully ignorant and boring.

  “Surely there must be something?” he prompted. “You can rest assured I shall be open-minded.”

  She truly believed he would be, even if she expressed an interest in something scandalous, like a career upon the stage.

  There was one thing she wanted, one dream she’d always harboured that seemed safe enough to mention. “I’ve always wanted to have children.”

  And a home, and plenty of money, but she didn’t add those things.

  “So have I,” he said as he put his empty teacup on the sideboard. “Someday, when I’m no longer able to go on expeditions, I hope to be so blessed. But until then, I won’t ask a woman to marry me only to make her wait for me to return, always wondering if I’m safe or if the ship’s gone down.”

  As his mother waited. As she would wait now, for word of him. “You could take her with you, couldn’t you?”

  “I would never subject a wife to the crowded conditions and deprivations of such a voyage.”

  “What if a woman were willing to wait for you?”

  He spoke firmly and unequivocally. “I would tell her not to.”

  “Whoever you choose to marry, whenever you choose her, she will be a very lucky woman,” Nell said as she got to her feet.