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Hazelwood shifted his gaze back to Jane. She stood with her companions, intent on the drama below. Then the lifted hats obscured Hazelwood’s view. As he tried for a better angle of vision, a man in a coachman’s greatcoat rolled from under the carriage and scrambled to his feet. As the man trotted off, the carriage lurched down the slope to bump against the horses’ hindquarters. Clive and Jane wobbled on their feet, and Jane grabbed for the side panel. Allegra tumbled backward onto the rear seat with sharp cry. Clive twisted and threw a leg up over the front seat, attempting to crawl forward onto the coachman’s box. Hazelwood swore and sprang forward.

As he ran, a loud roar erupted from the crowd on the ice. The startled horses, with no one at their heads and a heavy vehicle pressing against their hindquarters, sidled and lunged farther down the hill. One of Allegra’s suitors, the one who’d been speaking with Jane, was knocked off his feet by the swinging carriage door. He pushed himself up and stood looking after the moving carriage.

Hazelwood hurtled downhill, sliding on the slick grass, straining to close the distance. He couldn’t see how the coach had been disabled, but the horses with the wagon bumping against their hindquarters, veered sharply to the right, and the vehicle swayed on the uneven ground, its uphill wheels losing contact with the slope. Allegra screamed as the tilt of the vehicle threatened to dump the passengers onto the slope where they might be crushed by the carriage body. Clive clung to the sloping box, unable to loose his hold to grab the reins. Hazelwood sprinted the last few yards and flung himself for the rear of the carriage. He caught the curved iron footman’s handhold, and clung, hanging low, using his boot heels to plow into the frozen grass. His hat tumbled from his head. Over the rim of the rear seat he looked up into Jane’s startled face.

“Hold on,” he advised through clenched teeth. He wanted to make a joke, but none came to mind. When her gaze met his, she stared at him as if she were seeing him, really seeing him, with all his disguises stripped away.

The floundering carriage swung right across the hill, and the wheels hit grass again. The jarring impact rattled his teeth, made his knees bend, and bounced Jane loose. She was airborne, and he felt everything slow down, even his heart as if the pause between beats would go on indefinitely. She landed on the forward seat and righted herself. The seams of his new jacket gave way at the shoulder, but he held on.

He leaned his head around the body of the carriage and saw a clump of bare elms straight ahead and a pair of coachmen running for the horses’ heads. Before the runaways reached the elms, they plunged into a patch of old snow, and the coach came to a shuddering stop. The impact shook Hazelwood loose. He picked himself up and backed away with the exaggerated care of a man in his cups. He would rather his knees did not buckle just now.

The Walhouse coachman checked his horses. Another driver held up the left trace, which had become disconnected from the front axle. Allegra’s admirers converged on the carriage. Allegra sat sobbing under her hat with Clive’s arm around her heaving shoulders. Jane Fawkener sprang up unnoticed in the throng of concerned gentlemen and looked around methodically, as if her surroundings could offer some explanation of what had happened. It was what he should be doing, but the fellow who’d rolled from under her carriage was long gone, merged in the great crowd of Londoners. Hazelwood stepped behind another vehicle and stood for a moment catching his breath.

He watched Malikov step forward from the crowd and extend a hand up to Jane. “Make room for the ladies to descend, gentlemen,” he said.

Hazelwood took a step forward before he recollected himself. There was no direct link between Malikov and the runaway coach. There was no law that said a man got to keep a fair maiden he’d rescued. He’d learned that as a boy, and Goldsworthy had reminded him of it the previous spring. Thudding footfalls behind him made him turn.

“Sir, are you hurt?” Nate Wilde came to a panting stop at his side. “Sorry, I didn’t move faster.”

Hazelwood shook his head. “Knocked about is all.”

“And muddied, sir.” Wilde grinned. “What happened?”

Hazelwood looked at his ruined boots. “Someone tampered with the carriage.”

Below he could see the huge blacking van roll up the opposite bank of the Serpentine, and Hunt engulfed by the cheering crowd in a hero’s welcome.

Every Husband Hunter must acknowledge that she has rivals. If a gentleman is handsome and possessed of a reasonable estate, or if he is extraordinarily rich and possessed of even modest personal attractions, he will draw his share of female admirers, and more to the point, mothers of daughters will know to a precise degree how to rate his worth as a potential marital partner. The less scrupulous of Husband Hunters and their mothers may stoop to calculations and tactics, which the Husband Hunter disdains to employ. In refusing to use such ploys, the Husband Hunter may fear that she is ceding the advantage to one or more of her rivals. She may, indeed, see a partner for whom she has an inclination, whisked down the set by an enterprising young lady who, seeing him approach, threw herself in the man’s way. She may, at another time, observe her chosen one, ensnared by a bosom, amply displayed.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter Nineteen

Nate knew Miranda was itching to box his ears or comb his hair with a rake, but he quelled her with a sharp glance. He would give her a chance to pitch into him later. His job was to help Lord Hazelwood solve cases, and he knew better than she did what the viscount needed at the moment.

In the club foyer under the scaffolding, Nate helped Hazelwood shed his muddied greatcoat and boots.

“Oh, Lord Hazelwood, your poor jacket!” Miranda cried.

Hazelwood managed a wan smile. “Will your father be very angry that I’ve ruined his handiwork again?”

Miranda shook her head. She reached up like a seasoned valet to help him. Hazelwood winced at the movement required to shed the jacket. Miranda folded it over her arms. “We’ll have you looking fine again in no time. The mud will brush right out, and if it doesn’t, we’ll see that you have a new coat,” she said.

“Thanks, Miranda.” Hazelwood cast a look up the stairs and then started to climb them with less than his usual jauntiness. Nate followed behind. He knew Hazelwood’s bruises and scrapes would be making themselves known, and Nate wanted to get the viscount some coffee and a hot bath away from Miranda. A hovering sympathetic woman was not what Hazelwood wanted.

In the coffee room, Hazelwood lowered himself gingerly onto his favorite couch. He didn’t stretch out as he usually did, rather he stared unseeing at the table where he’d been studying their copy of the little guidebook. Nate went right to work to produce a steaming cup of coffee and put it in the viscount’s hands.

“What are you thinking, sir?” Nate asked.

“Why didn’t they try to snatch her? Why try to kill her and anyone who happened to be in the way? Unless they meant to attack the Walhouses, too.”

“Looks more accidental that way, sir.”

“True, but it’s definitely an escalation, isn’t it? We have to get her back before they kill somebody.”

“We will, sir.”

“Do you have a plan, Wilde?”