Page 58
“I’m certain this is all a misunderstanding,” Ella assured him.
Once inside, she informed her uncle, who laughed loud enough to be heard over the creaking of the coach. “That shows what idiots you are in the practice of hiring! As if a royal crest could be mistaken for a ducal one. The Regent’s crest has a crown. Crowned lion on one side, unicorn on the other, crown on top.”
“The Duke of Westminster’s crest has two dogs and a crown on top,” Ella pointed out.
“The coachman’s a gossiping fool. I should turn him away.”
“Then how would I move the viscountess to the country?” Ella inquired. “What of the furniture and china, by the way? I shall need to hire men with carts.”
Her uncle shrugged. “Worthless rubbish, most of it. Perhaps Clod will pay for the furnishings.”
Ella swallowed hard at the thought of her father’s and mother’s furniture, sold for whatever a gambler would pay for them.
Her uncle eyed her, his lips pinched sourly together. “When I have my next good run, I’ll think about buying it back.”
He paused. “No, I won’t.”
They didn’t speak after that.
No matter how much Ella despised her uncle, Fulvia was only sixteen. Ella didn’t want her cousin to be a mistress, a kept woman, even if to royalty.
Just the thought of the “fashionable impure,” as Lady Regina had termed the ladies thronging the Regent’s box, made Ella shudder.
“Almost there,” the viscount said. He patted his hair and tweaked his neck cloth.
“Your leg pad has slipped,” Ella told him unsympathetically. That was Unkind Thought #8, and the day had barely begun.
She might have to resign herself to being a churlish person.
Mean as an earthworm, her mother would have said.
The memory made her swallow hard. Thinking of her parents made her chest hurt. Even worse to think of Fiennes marrying Fulvia.
She gave herself a mental shake. She wasn’t alone in the world. Her aunt, her poor aunt, needed her.
Lord St. Trevelyon was bent over, tugging at his calf pad while muttering curses about “ungrateful, good-for-nothing relatives,” when Mr. Snagsby cut the horses sharply to the right, perhaps avoiding another vehicle.
A crunching noise followed, and the coach tipped to one side. The viscount lost his balance and fell at Ella’s feet, letting out a shrill cry. She landed on top of him just as the coach tipped back to the other side.
A steady stream of vicious curses punched into Ella’s ears as the viscount caught his balance against the wall of the coach. The vehicle swung over again, tipping in its original direction. “Keep away from me!” her uncle bellowed.
He kicked out and whether he meant to or not, his boot caught Ella’s gown and flung her into the air. She slammed against the opposite wall, then dropped on top of him yet again as the carriage toppled over completely with a crack of splintering wood and the terrible scream of a horse.
“You blithering idiot!” the viscount snarled, throwing her off.
When the door—now in place of the roof—was opened, he shoved her to the side and clutched Mr. Snagsby’s hands.
Ella watched his flailing legs being hauled up and out of the door as she carefully felt her right side. Her ribs felt bruised but didn’t seem to be broken.
She looked down and realized that her gown had been damaged by the viscount’s boot. A rip extended from the hem up to the middle of her thigh.
Mr. Snagsby’s face appeared in the open door, blue sky behind him.
“I don’t think I can leap to your hands,” Ella confessed.
“One minute, Miss. Bill will lift you.”
Their groom hopped down into the carriage, picked her up by the waist, and hoisted her up to the coachman, who brought her to the ground and carefully placed her on her feet.
