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 wecando.”
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 theopen, 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 theweak 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.
While he awaited his meal, he wandered to the window where he could see a carriage in the mews. It was large, of a fashionable rather than solid build with a flourish of impractical ornamentation in its trim, the sort of thing designed to draw the eye without rewarding the attention. There was no coat of arms, no crest, nothing to suggest anything more exalted than a pampered young lady of the gentry travelling in style. His lips pressed together when he recognized it as the same vehicle from the night before that had endangered them all by speeding past the accident.
He could picture her now, swathed in furs she had never needed to earn, issuing commands from behind the safety of the glass while nearly running down the men who had stopped to assist. A London miss of comfortable fortune, accustomed to the best seat, the best fire, the best of everything,arriving here to play at being a foreign princess simply because it amused her.
He had just begun to eat when the door from the passage opened, and a young woman stepped into the room. She was modestly dressed, and he knew without being told that this was the pretender herself. She was accompanied by a neat, alert, and disapproving older woman who could only be the companion.
Darcy held his hands out to the fire and watched without appearing to do so.Every inch the modest traveller, too unaffected to demand the best seat in the house, though the innkeeper will no doubt rush to give her one.
The innkeeper bustled over, beaming as though he were about to announce the arrival of the monarch herself. “Your breakfast will arrive soon Princess, just as Mrs. Hobart ordered. Freshest eggs, strong coffee.”
“Miss Bennet,” the young woman said, with a pleasant firmness that did not invite argument. “I am Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
The innkeeper blinked, uncertain whether to look abashed or conspiratorial. “Of course, of course. Miss Bennet. Quite so.” He offered to send her breakfast upstairs. She refused, citing overheated rooms.
Darcy bristled. Then he sat, wrapping first one hand and then the other around his coffee cup. It was the first time since early yesterday that his hands had been warm.