"Mulled wine, Your Grace."
"Wine seems rather a generous description. Still, I appreciate the gesture." He set the cup down and would have walked away, but the innkeeper was still hovering expectantly. "Was there something else?" Alaric asked.
"Well, Your Grace, seeing as it's the season and all, I wondered if you might be interested in contributing to our local orphans' fund. We're trying to raise money for Christmas dinners for the poor children."
Alaric studied the man for a long moment. "How much do you need?"
"Whatever Your Grace sees fit to..."
"No, how much do you need? Total. For all the dinners."
The innkeeper blinked. "Well, I suppose... twenty pounds would feed them all quite handsomely, Your Grace."
Alaric reached into his coat and withdrew his purse. He counted out fifty pounds and placed them on the bar. "Twenty for the dinners, twenty for warm clothes, and ten for you to stop serving that abomination you call mulled wine."
The innkeeper stared at the money as though it might disappear. "Your Grace, this is... this is most generous!"
"It's not generous, it's practical. Hungry children grow up to be desperate adults, and desperate adults are bad for property values. Pure self-interest, I assure you."
But as they returned to the carriage, Grimsby noticed his master didn't look quite as severe as usual.
"That was kind, Your Grace."
"That was strategic investment in social stability. Entirely different thing."
"Of course, Your Grace."
"Stop smirking, Grimsby."
"I'm not smirking, Your Grace. This is my normal face."
"Your normal face looks suspiciously pleased."
"Perhaps it's the Christmas spirit, Your Grace."
Alaric made a sound that in a less dignified man might have been called a snort.
The afternoon wore on, and the snow continued to fall with increasing enthusiasm. What had begun as a picturesque dusting was rapidly becoming what Bridges would probably call "a bit of weather," which in coachman speak meant anything from a light drizzle to the apocalypse.
"How much farther to Hollingford?" Alaric asked, consulting his pocket watch. It was nearly four o'clock, and the light was already beginning to fade.
"Another hour in good conditions, Your Grace," Grimsby replied, peering out at the steadily worsening weather. "Perhaps two in this."
"Marvelous. We'll arrive in the dark, in a snowstorm, at a house that hasn't been properly inhabited in years. It's like something from one of those novels my cousin Augusta insists on leaving around my library."
"The ones Your Grace claims never to read?"
"I've glanced at them. Purely to understand what drives seemingly intelligent women to such literary depths. Did you know that in the one she left last month, the heroine fainted seventeen times? Seventeen! In three hundred pages! The woman needed medical attention, not a brooding hero."
"Perhaps fainting was fashionable."
"If unconsciousness becomes fashionable, I'm retreating to an abbey. Though knowing my luck, they'd probably celebrate Christmas too."
The carriage hit a particularly impressive rut, sending both occupants briefly airborne.
"I beg your pardon, Your Grace!" Bridges called from his perch. "The road seems to have opinions about our presence!"
"The road," Alaric called back, "can take its opinions and..." He caught Grimsby's reproving look. "Never mind, Bridges. Carry on. Try not to kill us."
