Brighton Road by Carroll Susan

Author:Carroll, Susan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: comedy, brighton, romance historical, england 1800s
Publisher: Susan Carroll

Chapter Six

The castle walls, cold and bleak, closed about the Lady Emeraude like a well of doom. The stones themselves seemed wrought of evil, mortared with the blood of innocents, weathered by fingers plucking at them in despair.

"Miss Vickers! You are cutting off the flow of blood through my arm."

The baron's protest jarred Gwenda out of her imaginings. She realized how tightly she had been clutching him as they crossed the threshold of the Nonesuch.

"Sorry." She forced herself to release him, then nearly tripped over Bertie, who bounded in ahead of her. As his lordship slammed the door closed behind them, she thought she knew how her poor heroine Emeraude must have felt when thrust into the evil Armatello's lair. Gwenda resolved never again to treat her heroines so shabbily.

Not that the taproom before her resembled in the least the Gothic splendors of her villain's gloom-ridden castello except perhaps in its starkness. The inn's walls were unadorned but for some bits of cracking plaster; the taproom housed an oak bar counter and a few crude tables and rough benches. A feeble effort at a fire smoked and hissed upon the blackened stone hearth The logs had been recently kindled and were yet damp, Gwenda judged, from the way they crackled. The room was unoccupied, but along the far wall a door stood ajar.

"Hallo!" Ravenel called. "Is anyone within?" His inquiry was met with nothing but the rain lashing against the windows.

"No one is here," Gwenda whispered. She looked for some sign that Ravenel shared her uneasiness, but his lordship merely appeared annoyed that his summons had not been answered forthwith.

"Of course someone is here," he said. "That fire did not build itself."

What an unfortunate way of putting it, Gwenda thought. She envisioned a pair of disembodied hands stacking the wood. That was one of the dreadful things about having a lively imagination, she had long since discovered. At times, it could be most inconvenient. She could not restrain a shiver that had little to do with the wet gown clinging to her skin.

"Come over by the fire," Ravenel said. "You are soaked through."

"As if you are not!"

But he ignored her retort. Showing no concern for his own discomfort, the baron proceeded to remove his drenched coat from her shoulders. He undid the wet strings of her bonnet, then tugged it from her head, brushing aside the damp tendrils of hair from her forehead.

"There. Now perhaps you can start to dry out—" Ravenel broke off as Bertie shook out his coat, spraying them both with a shower of droplets.

"Blast that dog!" But there was more of exasperated tolerance in his lordship's voice than any real anger. Gwenda noted with astonishment that the irascible Lord Ravenel was accepting this latest disastrous turn of events with much better humor than either she or Bertie.

While her dog suspiciously snuffled one of the benches, Gwenda's eyes roved about the room, coming to rest on the mantel where a large, sinister spider was about to feast on the blood of a beetle caught in its webbing.

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