Elizabeth moved a few yards along the lane, holding her pelisse close, breath showing faintly on the air. Her toes tingled painfully as sensation tried to return. She walked a little farther, then placed one hand on a tree and bent forward as though she was about to become ill.
“Miss Bennet?” Sir Reginald called. “Are you well?”
She waited, then pretended to wipe at her mouth before straightening. “I am.”
As she had hoped, his lips quirked in a quickly muted expression of disgust, and he did not approach her. “We are ready to proceed.”
“A few moments more,” she called back, making her voice thin. When she dared delay no longer, she returned and allowed him to help her up into the carriage again, as though she were unsteady.
After that, she rationed her “illness” carefully: a murmur when the coach lurched, a pause when the road grew worse, a request for care spoken with mild apology. Each time, Sir Reginald called out to Gibson to drive with more caution. It was not out of concern for her so much as the interior of the coach, but Elizabeth did not mind. It was time bought, and time was everything.
Gibson was not the same man who had driven them to the Crown and Compass.
“Sir Reginald, these lanes are shocking,” Mrs. Hobart declared, startling Elizabeth from her thoughts. “We must not fly along them. My nerves cannot bear it, and I am persuaded Her Highness’s spine will be jarred to pieces.”
For once, Elizabeth was grateful for her querulous companion. Sir Reginald’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Nevertheless, he rapped upon the roof yet again, and the pace moderated.
At last, as the light thinned to a dingy grey and the hedges seemed to close in, Sir Reginald stirred and glanced out. “We are nearly there,” he said.
“There?” Elizabeth repeated.
He smiled with practised warmth. “A small house where I can ensure your comfort for the night. This road is not well furnished with inns. I should be loath to allow you to enter a place like the Crown and Compass a second time.”
Elizabeth kept her counsel.
A narrow drive led up a slight rise and then down again, to a low house half hidden behind the leafless trees. No sign swung above the door, no lantern hung out to tempt travellers. It did not look like any inn Elizabeth had ever seen. It looked like a house that would very much prefer not to be noticed.
The coach drew up before the door. A man emerged, tugging his cap off as he came. He was middle-aged, with a weather-beaten face and a careful manner.
“Good day to you, Sir Reginald,” he said. “We did not expect to see you.”
“It could not be avoided,” Sir Reginald answered. "Do you still have my rooms?”
“We do. The parlour and the chambers above it.”
Sir Reginald’s gaze flicked, quick and assessing, over the coach. “Can you take this to the back?”
“Yes, sir.”
The man stepped back as Sir Reginald let down the coach step.
“Gibson will help you with the horses and then he will ride back,” Sir Reginald said in a deep voice as Elizabeth stepped down and moved toward the front door.
Ride back? Where? To the Crown and Compass? And how were they to continue tomorrow if they only had three horses?
Inside, the parlour was small and low-ceilinged, shutters already closed, a fire burning grudgingly in the grate. Two chairs and a narrow sofa were set about it; a candle stood on the table.
“Pray warm yourselves,” Sir Reginald said. “I will speak with Mr. Gregory about the provisions. Mrs. Hobart, you will see that Princess Elizabeth has what she requires.”
She was Princess Elizabeth again. She wondered what that meant.
The men spoke in the passage as they were moving away, but Elizabeth could not hear what they said.
Mrs. Hobart sank into the nearest chair and stretched her hands towards the fire. “To think that we might have been left to the mercies of the road without even a common inn in which to stay. How fortunate that Sir Reginald should have found such a retreat for us.”
Elizabeth crossed to the hearth and held out her hands to the flames. Feeling began to creep back into her fingers in painful little stabs.
Mrs. Gregory arrived presently, bearing a tray. She was thin, with an anxious, closed look about the mouth. Her curtsy was proper enough, but her eyes seemed more to measure than to admire.