Crowned and Dangerous (A Royal Spyness Mystery) (2 page)

N
OVEMBER
29
I
N
THE
MIDDLE
OF
THE
NIGHT
SOMEWHERE
IN
Y
ORKSHIRE
.

“What was that?” I asked, my voice horribly shaky.

“A bit of a wild ride for a moment there.” Darcy sounded almost as if he’d enjoyed it.

I glared at him, fear giving way to anger. “You didn’t do that on purpose, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t. Do you take me for an idiot?”

“Then why did you brake suddenly like that?”

“Because there is a damned-fool lorry blocking the road ahead.” Even he sounded tense now. He opened the door, letting in a freezing draft and swirling snow, then stepped out into the blizzard. I wrapped the rug more firmly around me, trying to peer out through the snow to see what was happening. Darcy had vanished into the swirling whiteness. I held my breath until he returned, looking grim.

“Well, that’s that for tonight,” he said. “The road ahead is blocked by snow. I asked if there was another route we could take
but the chap said that if the Great North Road was blocked then the smaller roads would be hopeless. His very words were, ‘If it’s snowing like this down here, then a right bugger of a blizzard would be howling up on the moors.’” He sighed impatiently. “We’ll have to wait until someone comes to clear it tomorrow. Or the day after. . . . The chaps there didn’t seem to know much, just that we can’t go any farther. So I’m afraid we’ll have to take your suggestion and find a place to spend the night.”

“We passed a pub a mile or so back,” I said.

“Then we’ll try that.” Darcy scraped the coating of snow away from the windscreen, then dusted himself down before he climbed back in and carefully turned the motor around. “I hope they’ll have some kind of accommodation. I don’t want to have to go back too far.” He slapped his palms against the steering wheel. “Oh, this is too frustrating, isn’t it? Just when I thought I had planned everything perfectly. When I’d persuaded that hopeless maid of yours to pack a case for you. When I’d managed to borrow a suitable motorcar. And now this.”

I laid my hand on his sleeve. “It’s only a delay, Darcy. They’ll have to clear this road pretty quickly, won’t they? It’s the main artery to Scotland and the north of England. What is a day or so more?”

He nodded. “You’re right. Just a delay. We’ve waited three years. What’s one more night?”

“I remember when you first met me you made a bet with my friend Belinda that you’d get me into bed within the week, or was it a month?” I gave him a quizzical stare.

He grinned. “I can’t remember, but clearly I lost the bet and should pay up. I hadn’t banked on your stern willpower and royal sense of propriety.”

“And circumstances conspiring against us, as they are now,” I said. “My mother could never believe we were taking so long about it.”

Darcy gave a half laugh, half snort. “Well, your mother is hardly
a good role model for chaste living, is she? How many times has she been married? Or not married, as the case may be?”

My mother had in fact bolted from my father, the Duke of Rannoch, when I was two, and since then had been a great many things to a great many men on six of the seven continents. Antarctica had only escaped as it was too bloody cold! At this moment I could appreciate her reasoning, as my feet had turned to blocks of ice.

We started retracing
our route southward. The pub I had remembered seeing was called the Pig and Whistle. It looked inviting in a quaint countrified sort of way, but the front door was, alas, locked and no lights shone. Darcy got out, shook and rattled the front door, then came back to the motorcar in disgust, brushing the snow from his jacket.

“Stupid licensing hours,” Darcy muttered as he put the motor into gear again. “Why can’t we be like France and Italy and let everyone drink all night if they want to?”

“Because we don’t want half the population blind drunk and unable to work, I suppose.”

He snorted at this. “Do you see them all blind drunk on the Continent?”

“I suppose they grow up used to it. And they drink wine rather than beer and whiskey. Wine is supposed to be good for you. And they don’t work as hard as we do. Drive past any café in France and you’ll see men sitting around with glasses of wine in the middle of the morning. They just don’t take life seriously.”

“How come you’re always so damned rational and composed?” he snapped. “Anyone would think you didn’t want to elope with me.” He stopped and turned sharply to look at me. “You do want to, don’t you? I never actually asked you.”

The question caught me by surprise. Did I want to? Wasn’t I worried about what my royal relatives would say? Hadn’t I looked
forward to the long white dress and veil all my life? Then I looked at Darcy. Even in the darkness of the motorcar he was so handsome, and I loved him so much. “Of course I do,” I said.

“You hesitated before you answered me,” he replied.

“Only because I’m too cold to make my mouth move.”

“I could warm it up for you,” he said. He reached behind my head and drew me toward him, kissing me long and hard. “Right,” he said when we broke apart a little breathlessly. “Let’s find somewhere to spend the night before we both end up frozen to death.”

We drove on, hoping to see at least a village close to the road. I think we must have been almost back as far as York when we finally found any sign of human habitation, at least humans who might be still awake. This was also a pub, a little off the road and by a railway crossing. The sign, swinging in the blizzardlike wind, said
The Drowning Man
and showed a hand coming out of a pond.

“Hardly encouraging,” Darcy said dryly. “But at least a light is still burning and hopefully someone is still awake.”

He opened the driver’s side door, letting in a great flurry of snow, then wrestled the wind to close it hurriedly before running across to the pub. I peered through the snow-clad windscreen, watching him. He knocked, waited, and to my relief the door finally opened, letting out a band of light across the snow. Darcy seemed to be having a prolonged conversation during which the other person could be seen peering at me, then he marched back to the car. For a horrible moment I thought he was going to say that they had nothing available and that we’d have to drive on. But instead he came around to my door and opened it for me.

“They appear to have rooms. Hardly the most welcoming of places, from what I can see, but it’s really a case of any port in a storm.” He took my hand and led me through the snow to the building. I was going to say the warmth of the building, but in truth it wasn’t much warmer than the motorcar had been. One naked bulb hung in a hallway and an uncarpeted stair disappeared into darkness.

“Caught in the storm, were you?” the innkeeper asked. Now that we could see her, I noticed that she was a big-boned cart horse of a woman with little darting eyes in a pudgy, heavy-jowled face.

I shot a swift glance at Darcy, praying he wouldn’t make a facetious comment along the lines that we were actually heading for the Riviera and took a wrong turn.

“We were heading for Scotland but the road is closed,” I said before he could answer.

“Aye. We heard that on the wireless,” she said. “Reckon it will take days, don’t they? So you’ll be wanting a room, then?”

“We will,” Darcy said.

“I’ve just the one room,” she said. “The others are occupied. You are a married couple, I take it?” And she gave us a hard stare, trying to see a wedding ring through my gloves, I suspected.

“Of course,” Darcy said briskly. “Mr. and Mrs. Chomondley-Fanshaw. That’s spelled ‘Featherstonehaugh,’ by the way.”

I fought back a desire to giggle. She was still eyeing us suspiciously. “I don’t care how it’s spelled,” she said. “We don’t go for airs and graces in this part of the country. As long as good honest folk have the brass to pay, we don’t care how many hyphens they have in their names.”

“Right, then,” Darcy said. “If you’d be good enough to show us the room?”

She didn’t budge but pointed. “Turn right at the top of the stairs and it’s at the end of the hall. Number thirteen.”

Then she reached into a cubby and handed us a key. “Breakfast from seven to nine in the dining room. Breakfast is extra. Oh, and if you want a bath you’ll have to wait till morning. Hot water is turned off between ten and six. And the bath’s extra too.”

Darcy gave me a look but said nothing. “I’ll take you up first then go and get the bags,” he said. “Come on.”

I followed him up the narrow stair. An icy draft blew down at us.

“Are there fires in the rooms?” Darcy turned back to ask the landlady, who was still standing there watching us.

“No fireplace in that room,” she said.

“And I suppose a cup of hot chocolate is out of the question?” There wasn’t much hope in his voice.

“Kitchen closed at eight.” She turned her back and walked into the darkness of the hallway.

“We don’t have to stay here,” Darcy whispered to me. “There must be proper hotels in York. It’s not that far now.”

“It’s still miles away. And we’ve no guarantee anyone else has a room,” I said. “If all the roads northward are closed . . .” In truth I felt close to tears. It had been a long day, starting with helping to dress the bride at Kensington Palace, then the ceremony for Marina and Prince George at St. Margaret’s Westminster, then the reception at Buckingham Palace and the long, cold, snowy drive. All I wanted to do was curl up into a little ball and go to sleep.

The floorboards creaked horribly as we tiptoed down the hall. Number thirteen was about the gloomiest room I had ever seen—and I had grown up in a Scottish castle noted for its gloominess. It was small, crowded with mismatched furniture and dominated by an enormous carved wardrobe that took up the one wall where the ceiling didn’t slope. In the midst of this clutter was a narrow brass bed with a patchwork quilt on it. A naked bulb gave just enough anemic light to reveal sagging and stained curtains at the window and a small braided rug on the bare floor.

“Golly!” I let out the childish exclamation before I remembered that I had resolved to be sophisticated from now on. “It is pretty grim, isn’t it?”

“It’s bloody awful,” Darcy said. “Sorry for swearing, but if ever a room deserved the word ‘bloody,’ this is it. Let’s just get out of here while we can. I wouldn’t be surprised if the landlady didn’t kill off the guests during the night and make them into pies.”

I started laughing at the thought. “Oh, Darcy. What are we doing here?”

“My lovely surprise,” he said, shaking his head, but smiling too. “Oh well, if we start off life together in these surroundings it can only get better, can’t it?”

I nodded. “Do you suppose there is an indoor loo or will it be at the bottom of the garden?”

We explored the hall and were relieved to find a lavatory and bathroom of sorts at the far end.

“I’ll go and get the bags,” Darcy said. “If you’re really sure you want to stay.”

“I’m not sure that I want to undress. I’d freeze.” I reconsidered. “But I suppose I shouldn’t crease my good outfit any more. Do you have any idea what Queenie packed for me?”

“I told her sensible outfits to travel in. And your nightclothes.”

“Knowing Queenie, that will mean a dinner dress and riding boots.”

However, when he returned with the bags I was pleasantly surprised to find that she had packed my sponge bag, a warm flannel nightdress and dressing gown and my tweed suit. She rose considerably in my estimation. In fact I felt quite warmly toward her. She’d be asleep right now in Kensington Palace, with fires in the rooms and hot chocolate whenever one rang a bell, while her mistress . . . I looked around the room again but words failed me. Darcy had undressed rapidly and looked ridiculously rakish in maroon silk pajamas. I felt shy about undressing in front of him, then reminded myself we were about to become Mr. and Mrs.

I turned away and unbuttoned my jacket. Then I remembered the dress had hooks down the back. I reached around but clearly they were impossible. Then a voice said, “Here, let me,” and he was unhooking them for me. I was horribly conscious of his hands touching my skin. He helped me out of the dress, then put his hands on
my shoulders and kissed the bare back of my neck. It was an incredibly sexy gesture and on any other occasion I would have responded. But at this moment I was cold and tired and a little frightened. I turned to him and buried my head on his shoulder.

“Oh, Darcy, what are we doing here?” I asked, half laughing, half crying.

His arms came around me. “I wanted our first night together to be very different from this,” he said.

“We’ve spent nights together before,” I reminded him. “At least parts of nights.”

“I meant our first real night together,” he said. “You know what I meant. And we will certainly save that sort of thing for a better time. I bet that old bat will be listening for any creaks in the bedsprings.”

That made me laugh. I finished undressing, put my robe on over my nightclothes, then climbed into bed. The sheets were stiff and icy.