The Pirate Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

the wreckage. A few coachmen stood on the boxes of their fine carriages and cursed the delay. An army officer in brilliant infantry red hurried toward the accident. A blond, bespectacled gentleman in a subdued, curate-like suit climbed down from his phaeton, tossed his reins to a boy, and rushed to help.
    The viscount emerged from his house and waded into the mess. “Cut the harnesses!” he shouted. “Get them loose.”
    His daughter scurried out behind him. Nimble in her boy’s clothes, she climbed to the top of the overturned carriage and began assisting the coach’s shaken footman to pry open the carriage door.
    Alexandra turned from the window and snatched up a Turkish shawl from the divan. “People will be hurt.”
    She hurried from the room, bumping into Jeffrey on the way out. He flailed back, bleated an apology, then dashed to open the door for her.
    Grosvenor Street was a busy thoroughfare. Not onlydid elegant Mayfair carriages and phaetons trundle up and down it, but delivery wagons, builders’ carts, peddlers, men on horseback, and pedestrians used the street as a main route between Bond Street and Grosvenor Square. The congestion made an excellent opportunity for accidents, but Alexandra had not seen one this ugly in a long while. The last had occurred just after her husband’s death. On that occasion, she’d had to replace her window, her draperies, and a Hepplewhite console table when a broken timber from a struck cart had sailed into her reception room. No one had been hurt, although Jeffrey had refused to enter the reception room for about six months. But from the frightened sobbing she heard through the now-open carriage door, she feared the worst.
    The footman, white to the lips, reached down and lifted out a woman, young and pale-haired, into the sunlight. She had a cut on her forehead and looked about with a dazed expression. Maggie put an arm around her shoulders and helped her sit on the edge of the carriage so that the carter could lift her down.
    Alexandra hurried forward and draped the expensive shawl over the poor woman’s shoulders. The woman turned to her, unseeing, then pressed a trembling hand to her abdomen. Alexandra recognized the gesture and the slight protrusion in her belly for what it was. The lady was increasing.
    She led her away from the wreckage. The carriage blocked the way to Alexandra’s front door; they’d have to find some way around it. She surmised the wild-eyed young man Maggie was guiding to the edge of the carriage was the husband. He dropped to the ground and rushed to his wife.
    “I knew that coachman was mad,” he jabbered. “Weshould never had hired him. I knew he’d bring us to grief.”
    The lady only stared at him, too dazed to respond. Alexandra put her arm around the woman’s shoulder and chafed her wrists. She crooned a few words of comfort, but she knew that the lady did not hear her. Doubtless her fears were turned inward, to the child she so precariously carried.
    Alexandra certainly knew that fear. A pang touched her as she remembered the weeks and weeks of feeling the growing life inside her, the great protectiveness she’d nurtured for the little being she carried. She had sung to him when she thought no one could hear. When she’d finally borne him, several weeks too early, the pain had been nearly unbearable. The doctors and midwife had watched her somberly, certain both mother and child would die. But Alexandra had lived, forcing herself to survive for the sake of her child. Her little boy had only managed to hold on for one day, then died.
    She held the lady’s hand a little tighter, wishing she could ensure that the child inside her would never come to harm.
    Lady Seton, Alexandra’s far neighbor, ran from her front door toward them. “Oh, you poor dears. Come inside. I will give you some tea. And brandy.”
    Alexandra was about to protest that the pair could certainly come to her house, but she realized this was not the time to fight