Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Evie was no milk-and-water miss.
They ought to have set Evie loose on the French in Corunna, her brother once claimed. It might have spared the British heaps of trouble, including the loss of a soldier or two, if not an entire regiment.
Evie, who’d looked up Corunna on the map and dearly wished she had been there, heartily agreed.
Despite her penchant for unladylike pastimes, she also excelled at all the female graces which were expected of a duke’s sister, such as embroidery, watercolours, and playing the pianoforte.
She had a voice as clear and light as a nightingale’s.
She spoke four languages fluently, including German.
And she could dance the waltz as gracefully as any Austrian.
Not a single person in the entire English ton could have imagined that Lady Evie was sturdy and resilient, with a constitution made of steel.
Therein lay the problem.
She was small and dainty, barely reaching her brother’s shoulders, with a delicate hourglass figure, and a waist so small one could span two hands around it.
She had wide, limpid eyes the colour of bluebells in a narrow, elfin face framed with bouncy brown curls that took on a coppery hue when the light shone on them, the bane of her existence.
“Who,” Evie liked to complain, “will ever take me seriously looking like this?” She pulled at a corkscrew curl that bounced back into its original perfect form.
All the ladies in the ton envied her for it, for they spent hours curling their hair into precisely this shape, and here was Evie, naturally born with a head full of this crowning glory, and without ever having to resort to paper curls and curling tongs.
Her hair was a source of singular irritation.
It made her look too damnably adorable. In the patronising sense, the way kittens were adorable, or newborn puppies, or her particular vexation that outshone them all: dolls.
She looked like a life-size version of one of those pale, pretty, dainty, fragile porcelain things that little girls played with in the nurseries, all girls except Evie, for she’d set up her dolls on the fence to practise shooting with her bow and arrow.
After she’d mastered archery, she moved on to pistols, and then, to her delight, found her true talent.
Seeing the heads of the porcelain dolls smashed to a thousand pieces with a single shot filled her with endless satisfaction.
It scandalised the servants to no end.
Her brother Julius, lovable but entirely clueless as to how she was really occupying her time, kept giving her those dolls long after she’d outgrown the doll-playing age. She received them graciously, with a pasted smile on her face. “Truly, Julius, you are most kind.”
More victims for her shooting practice.
So, when she heard that man, the one who looked like he was hewn out of a massive block of granite and who stood several yards away observing her arrival, state with utter loathing that she resembled a cursed ‘china doll’, she was offended beyond measure.
And that was an understatement.
Evie was so livid, it brought tears of fury to her eyes.
What had she just heard? She, a china doll? A milk-and-water miss? She, the most level-headed, practical female in the ton, who’d run her brother’s extensive, ducal household like clockwork since she was thirteen years old, personally checking the household books, lacking in practical common sense?
Simpering?
She never simpered. Even if she wanted to, she had no idea how to simper.
How dare anyone imply that she did?
And out of the mouth of a rude, boorish stranger who clearly had no inkling of how to behave in a gentlemanly fashion himself. She had never been so insulted in her entire life.
She turned to her cavalier, who was looking up at her with moon-eyes, and thanked him prettily.
The poor chap’s trousers were dripping from kneeling in the puddle, a chivalrous and entirely unnecessary act, for Evie had been preparing to leap across it, lifting her skirts.
But then he’d so conveniently offered himself as a stepping-stone and prostrated himself before her.
It would have been rude of her not to accept such a sacrifice.
Truly, her ballroom gown was most inconvenient in a place like this. She’d changed in the carriage after the coachman had dislodged the wheel from the mud hole.
Her maid had carried the dress in a separate bag inside the coach, together with her other valuable items. Because of that, it had been spared the fate of her other clothes, which had bathed in the puddle.
Her companion, Clara, had changed into her ballroom gown as well, her best one, a beautiful green and gold one, complete with a train, and she looked truly regal in it.
“My,” Evie had joked, “one could easily mistake you for a noblewoman.” She’d preferred to wear her own white one simply because the hem had been shorter.
For even though Clara wasn’t splattered by the mud, the rain had come, and she was drenched to her skin within a minute, and she was already ill. It had been Clara’s suggestion, in fact, to change their clothes. At the time, Evie had thought it a capital idea.
For what else was she to do? Remain in her wet clothes and die of lung fever?
Wear nothing at all?
Surely the soldiers, who were milling about in the yard, would have liked that.
A snort escaped her. If she had emerged from the carriage in the same state as Venus rising from the foaming waves, they would have all fallen into a dead faint and she could’ve stepped with dry feet on their bodies until she reached the entrance to the inn.
Including that of granite man.
For a fleeting moment she wondered if he would have been as disdainful if she had. Then she dismissed the idea.
The men surrounded her, and with a pretty smile, she asked them to help Nellie and Clara out of the carriage as well, which they readily did.
At that moment, the rain resumed, accompanied by a loud clap of thunder.
One gentleman offered her his woollen greatcoat, which Evie gratefully accepted.
In addition to warmth, it covered her ballroom gown entirely.
She deemed it a good idea to cover her ballroom finery before she stepped into yonder inn, which looked somewhat seedy and run-down.
“I shall return it to you anon,” she promised the young officer, who blushed a fiery red.
Then Evie entered the inn.
It was crowded and stuffy, with the taproom, dining room and parlour teeming with soldiers, travellers and tired children. The innkeeper, a short, bald man with a leather apron bound over his round stomach, was clearly overwhelmed and profoundly ill-humoured.
“No rooms available. No rooms, I say,” he snapped before she even opened her mouth. “Don’t even ask.”
“But—”
“No. What do you want me to do? All rooms are gone. They’re already sleeping in the corridors and in the attic, packed together like herring in a barrel.
They’ve even herded the cows into half of the stalls and taken over the other half of my stables,” he added bitterly.
“If my cows refuse to be milked tomorrow, the blame’s not with me. ”
“I just need a tiny room,” Evie tried again. “Truly, I—”
“Impossible. Even the officers have to share their quarters.” He lifted his chin towards a corner, where several officers stood with their spurs and sabres. Some of them were hussars, looking dashing in their braided dolmans, pelisses and shakoes.
Evie glanced into the dining room, where people had begun to spread out their sleeping mats on the floor. The inn, indeed, seemed to be bursting at the seams. This was a problem.
“Unless you’re a person of higher consequence that would justify my dislodging these officers, who have earned their bed with their blood and sweat, after the horrible trials they went through, I advise you to drive on to the next inn.”
“How far away is that?”
“About an hour.” He cast a look through the window. “In this weather, it might take longer.” Just as he was speaking, a clap of thunder tore through the sky.
Clara stepped up to her and gripped her arm. “Maybe we’ll just have to do that,” she suggested quietly.
Evie took in the feverish glow in her eyes. Her entire body was radiating heat, and her cheeks were flushed.
This wouldn’t do. Evie’s mind worked quickly.
“See here.” Evie placed both hands on the counter, pulling herself up on her toes to squarely meet the man’s eyes. “You have no idea who we are, do you? You have no idea who that lady, in particular, is?” She waved at Clara.
The man’s wary look travelled down Clara’s expensive green ballroom gown. He was clearly unimpressed. “Who? Someone of significance?”
Evie cast a look to her right and left, before leaning forward. “Indeed. She is none other than the sister of the Duke of Aldingbourne.”
The innkeeper narrowed his eyes. “That English duke?”
That was how he was mentioned in the papers.
‘The English Duke’ who had arrived with the English Foreign Secretary to save the congress before it had even begun.
He was of immense consequence and rubbed shoulders with the most powerful men in the realm, and some said he even had tea with the Kaiser himself.
Evie nodded emphatically. “Yes, yes. The very same, indeed. A very important person, the duke. Now, don’t tell me you don’t have a single bed for Lady Evangeline Stafford-Hill, particularly as you can see she is dreadfully ill?”
The innkeeper threw a mistrustful look at Clara. “You’re truly the sister of a duke?”
Clara hesitated.
Evie stepped on her foot.
Clara drew herself up, with chin in the air. “Indeed, I am.” She looked down her regal nose at the innkeeper as though he were dirt beneath her feet.
Well done, Clara, well done. She could mime the haughty duke’s sister so much better than she, herself, ever could.
“There you are.” Evie turned back to the innkeeper. “What will you tell her brother, the English Duke, when he discovers that you denied her a bed and she ends up dying on your doorstep? Can you answer for that possibility?”