Chapter Five #2
A quarter of an hour passed in blessed quiet before the door opened again. This time it was the innkeeper’s wife, a plump, motherly woman whose face beamed with excitement and nervous pleasure.
“Oh, Miss—Your Highness—I do hope you’ll forgive the intrusion,” she began, bobbing a curtsy that would have done credit to a royal presentation. “But I couldn’t help thinking you might be uncomfortably seated, what with that old sofa-bed being none too soft for delicate sensibilities.”
Elizabeth was not sitting on the sofa-bed.
The woman held in her arms an enormous cushion, embroidered with every flower known to botanists, executed in colours that would have been visible from a considerable distance.
The thing was so abundantly filled that it resembled a small haystack.
The embroidery, however, was exceptionally fine.
Elizabeth thought it might belong to the woman’s own family.
“You are thoughtful,” Elizabeth said carefully, “but I assure you I am quite comfortable as I am.”
“Oh, but this cushion belonged to my dear mother, God rest her soul, and she always said it was fit for a queen. Nothing but the best for our royal guest!”
The woman advanced with such determination that Elizabeth found herself obliged to accept the cushion or risk giving serious offence.
The moment it was behind her back, she discovered why the good woman’s mother had found it fit for royalty.
It was the size and firmness of a modest throne and thrust her forward at such an angle that reading became nearly impossible.
“There now,” the innkeeper’s wife said. “Doesn’t that look a treat? And so befitting your elevated position!”
“It is marvellous,” Elizabeth assured her benefactress, attempting to shift the cushion to a more manageable position. Her efforts only seemed to make it expand further, until she felt like a small boat overwhelmed by a particularly large wave.
“And might I say, Your Highness, what an honour it is to have you beneath our roof! Why, when my husband told me we was entertaining a real live princess, I nearly swooned clean away. I’ve told everyone in the village—”
“You told everyone?” Elizabeth’s voice emerged rather higher than she might have wished.
“Oh yes! The roads are snowed over, but we can still walk to town, you know, and such news cannot be kept quiet. Why, the baker’s wife, Mrs. Jacobs, she said she never thought to see such a day, and young Tom, the blacksmith’s boy, he’s been hanging about the yard hoping for a glimpse of you.”
Elizabeth pressed her fingers briefly to her temples, as though she might steady the buzzing that had begun in her head. “I do wish you had not done that,” she said with as much composure as she could manage. “It was meant to be a quiet journey.”
The woman’s face fell, but Mrs. Hobart leapt in before Elizabeth could soften her words. “Nonsense. It is entirely proper that the people should know when royalty is amongst them. They will feel honoured by the privilege.”
Sir Reginald had insisted on discretion.
What was Mrs. Hobart about? Elizabeth fixed her gaze on the window, lest her irritation spill out into sharp words.
She thought longingly of Jane’s gentle wisdom, of Mary’s earnest morality, even of Kitty and Lydia’s chatter.
Any of it would be preferable to this suffocating, confusing performance of grandeur.
The innkeeper’s wife, oblivious to the tension, bobbed again and backed out of the room, promising to send up the meat pies when they were done.
Elizabeth set down her book with a thump. “Mrs. Hobart, forgive me, but were we not instructed to travel without undue notice? For safety’s sake, I believe?”
“Well, of course. But I did not think the innkeeper was so little to be trusted.” The companion sniffed.
“We shall be here a day at most before we will be on our way. Why not enjoy the condescension of the local people during that brief time? You will not be seen here again, so it cannot matter, other than to our present comfort.” Mrs. Hobart dabbed at her nose again and leaned back.
Elizabeth, however, could not rest. At last, she rose, tossed the cushion on the old sofa-bed, and watched the snow blur the landscape into soft indistinction.
Mrs. Hobart’s pride, she supposed, was to be expected.
The woman had spent her life in proximity to grandeur, and such constant exposure must inevitably distort one’s understanding of what was truly important.
To have one’s position depend entirely upon reflecting another’s consequence was a peculiar sort of existence, and one that might naturally breed an overweening concern for rank and ceremony.
Yet Elizabeth could not like it. There was something fundamentally uncomfortable in witnessing another person derive such evident satisfaction from borrowed superiority.
Mrs. Hobart found genuine pleasure in the innkeeper’s excessive deference, in the village’s knowledge of their presence, in every small demonstration that she travelled with someone of importance.
Elizabeth sighed softly against the cold glass. Perhaps in Thurnia, such attitudes were commonplace. Perhaps her family would expect her to cultivate them herself. She did not know if she could.
“Mrs. Hobart,” she said at last, “would you see whether there is any tea or coffee available?”
The companion’s expression suggested she knew she was being sent away on purpose, but she was the princess’s servant and not the other way around. So she went.
Alone at last, Elizabeth found her pelisse and shrugged it on to protect her dress, for she had determined upon an experiment.
Her bed, it seemed, had acquired a positively regal number of mattresses, so many that it had been difficult to climb into the night before.
With considerable tugging and a muffled grunt, she dragged one, then another, from the top of the stack.
The effort cost her, for as she held the second mattress above her head, she lost her footing and a sharp twinge shot across her back, making her catch her breath.
At the same time, several small items rained noisily to the floor: a button, two hairpins, and, most mysteriously, a handful of dried peas that scattered in every direction.
Suppressing a laugh at the absurdity, Elizabeth knelt, picked up the button, set it and the two hairpins on a table, and gathered the peas, absent-mindedly slipping them into her pocket. Then she removed the pelisse, shook the dust from its sleeves, and rang for the inn’s man-of-all-work.
When he appeared, cap in hand, she gestured to the displaced bedding with as much royal hauteur as she could muster.
“These mattresses will not do for me at all. Perhaps Mr. Darcy will find them to his liking. And be so good as to send along some of the wood as well. His chamber is apparently quite starved of it.”
The man blinked at her in surprise, but Elizabeth waved him off. “Do not tell him who has sent it. I do not wish for his thanks.”