Chapter Four
The snow was not content to descend in picturesque flakes; it was coming down in battalions.
There would be no traveling any farther tonight.
Darcy stepped down from his carriage into the yard of a small country inn and turned up his collar against the cold that was biting clean through his greatcoat.
This was not the inn at which he had intended to stop, only the one closest to where the accident had taken place.
The swinging sign, an ambitious lion that had lost most of its gilding, creaked upon its iron bracket; the yard was a churn of snow, slush, and hoof-prints; two ill-trimmed lanterns hanging on either side of the front entrance guttered and smoked.
Nevertheless, the storm had rendered the roads treacherous, the daylight was long gone thanks to the delay, and Anders had said, as respectfully as possible, that any further miles would be foolishness.
Darcy was cold, hungry, and in no humour to argue.
The inn door opened upon a wash of heat and the cheerful confusion of a common room. The scent of roasted meat lingered in the air, and a fire sent a ruddy glow across the sanded floor. He stamped the snow from his boots, removed his hat, and approached the bar.
The innkeeper, a man whose high colour suggested a long and affectionate intimacy with his own merchandise, bustled out from behind a row of pewter tankards.
“Welcome, sir! Welcome! A night like this, we are all friends together. You are fortunate indeed to have reached the Lion before the drifts grew worse. The roads will not be passable by morning unless the Lord takes pity on us.”
“I require lodging for my men and a chamber for myself,” Darcy said, tugging at a damp glove-finger with icy hands, “and supper.”
The innkeeper’s smile broadened. “Lodging for the servants, of course sir. And a chamber, to be sure,” said the man, “though I must own it is not our best. We are nearly full, sir. Full to the rafters. We have a very distinguished guest in residence, and she has taken up the entire third floor, you see.”
Darcy repressed a sigh. “Any room will do. As for supper—"
“Ah! Supper.” Here the innkeeper’s face arranged itself into an expression of pained satisfaction, the look of a man who has received a great honour that has ruined him.
“Your timing is unfortunate, sir. Our distinguished guest and her attendants had the goodness to approve the cook’s efforts with such enthusiasm that there is little left to set before another gentleman.
There may be a bit of bread and some cheese, perhaps a little soup if the boy has not taken it to the upper parlour, and ale, certainly.
But as for joints, pies, or a proper dish, I must candidly confess—”
“You have nothing.”
“Nothing at all, sir. The princess”—he lowered his voice to a rolling whisper—“the princess’s companion and coachmen had quite an appetite.”
Darcy’s brows drew together. “The . . . whom, did you say?”
“The princess, sir. A real one, from foreign parts. A Thurnian princess.”
Darcy would have laughed aloud were he not so cold and hungry.
He and Fitzwilliam had befriended Prince Adrian of Thurnia while at Cambridge.
Darcy had frequently heard him lament that his country had princes enough to shoe the horses with them but not a single princess to speak of.
The notion that one of these mythical beings had now appeared, in disguise, at a country inn in the middle of a January snowstorm was beyond absurd.
A clever woman had discovered that English innkeepers were as susceptible as anyone to a royal title and was exploiting it with full effect: arriving under a cloud of mystery, letting the whisper spread, and then, of course, warning people that her identity was a secret while enjoying every last comfort that identity afforded.
Darcy could almost admire the neatness of the plan if it did not promise to inconvenience him.
“Indeed,” he said aloud, keeping his tone bland. “And does she travel with a train of courtiers as well?”
“Well, she has her companion, and her driver, and a few others. Foreign royalty, sir. They are travelling rather”—he leaned forward, sounding out the word by syllable as though it was new to him—“incognito, sir.”
“I see,” Darcy replied, though what he saw was a well-practised imposture, and a host taken in by it. “Be so good as to show me the chamber.”
The innkeeper took up a key and led the way up a narrow stair edged with a rope in place of a rail.
The house creaked comfortably about them; doors opened, voices rose and fell, a serving girl darted past with a tray of crockery.
The innkeeper halted at a door at the very end of a passage so narrow that a man Darcy’s size could scarcely pass without brushing his shoulders against the plaster.
He opened a door upon a small square room that had, Darcy thought acidly, just avoided being a cupboard.
There was a bed, very modest in its dimensions, certainly too short for his tall frame; a rickety chest of drawers; a washstand with a cracked jug; and a chair that would, Darcy feared, collapse utterly beneath any man who weighed more than a feather.
There was also a grate in which a little fire was doing its best to defend the room against the cold.
“This is your chamber, sir,” the innkeeper said with pride.
Darcy pressed experimentally at the mattress with one hand. The mattress responded with a slow, mournful sag. He drew out a handkerchief and dusted his hand with it. “I will require another mattress.”
The innkeeper coloured. “I apologise, sir, but that will not be possible. We provided the spare mattresses to the princess, sir.”
Mattresses? How many did one woman require? “Of course you did. Nothing less will do for royalty,” Darcy murmured. “What about blankets?”
The innkeeper opened one of the drawers in the chest and withdrew a few thin ones. “We sent the thickest to the princess, sir.”
“Pillows?”
“Likewise.”
“Hot water?”
“We can offer you hot water, sir, that much we can do.”
The lady might not be a princess, but she certainly knew how to behave like one. She had claimed all the supper, blankets, pillows, and mattresses that might otherwise have been shared.
He ordered what food could be had: a heel of bread, a wedge of cheese, and a weak ale.
Darcy carried his food to a quiet corner of the common room and was eating when Johnson and Anders came in from the stables.
Both men were flushed from the cold and still dusted with snow.
They had been out in the open, sitting atop the carriage box for miles, and before that, working to clear the road of barrels. Darcy had not forgotten.
He waved the innkeeper over. “Hot supper for these two, whatever you can contrive. And be sure there is enough to satisfy them.”
The man looked dubious. “We are—”
“Cleaned out, yes, I know. Have your cook make something from the kitchen stores. Bread and cheese will not do after their day’s work.” Darcy slid a coin across the table with a look that discouraged argument. “And a basin of hot water for them as well.”
Only when Johnson and Anders had washed, eaten, and warmed themselves by the fire did Darcy retire to the little room off the kitchen where the landlord had himself placed a second basin of hot water.
He washed as well as he was able, then returned to his own chamber.
The poky stairs and the narrow passage obliged him to duck his head and turn his shoulders.
Inside, the little fire in the grate still struggled, but the room was a little warmer.
He sat upon the edge of the too-short bed.
There was no pillow, only a limp square of ticking that might once have aspired to the name.
The mattress dipped into a sagging hollow, drawing him into its centre like a spider’s web.
He remained there just long enough to confirm that his feet would hang off the end no matter which way he turned.
Then he rose and pulled the thin blankets from the bed.
The mattress he tossed onto floor with a thump.
He spread one blanket beneath him, over the top of the mattress and drew the other over himself, so that he lay between them as though the thin wool might soften the indignities of the floor.
It was not warm, but at least it was level.
Each time the wind rattled the window, his mind obligingly supplied a vision of the so-called princess: swaddled in the warmest blankets while a fire blazed in the grate.
No doubt she was sipping tea rather than the weak coffee on offer below, while her devoted attendants fussed over the arrangement of her many pillows.
He had no proof of any of this, of course, but the images arrived unbidden, growing ever more elaborate with each restless turn.
By the third such waking, he had conjured a picture of her surrounded by maids keeping the draught from her door and a huge pile of wood stacked neatly by her hearth, where a healthy fire kept the room perfectly warm.
Darcy turned onto his side and thought grimly of Lord Matlock’s habit of claiming the best for himself while others endured worse.
By morning, he was no warmer, no better rested, and no less certain that the “royal visitor” upstairs was nothing more than a deft counterfeit.
There was no change in the weather when he finally rose, save that the snow lay deeper and the light was poorer.
Darcy dressed and descended to the common room, determined at least to enjoy a breakfast that might compensate for the previous night.
The room was warm, no doubt to keep the princess from the risk of a cold should she deign to leave her rooms.
The smell of eggs and coffee promised consolation.