"I live to serve, Your Grace. Speaking of which, you might want to observe the weather."
"The weather can wait. These calculations cannot."
"The weather, Your Grace, appears to be developing opinions about waiting."
Alaric finally looked up from his ledgers to glance toward the window. The sky, which had been merely grey an hour ago, had turned an ominous purple-black. Snow was already falling, but not the gentle, picturesque snow of the previous days. This was aggressive snow, horizontal snow, snow that seemed personally offended by the existence of anything not covered in white.
"That looks unpleasant," he observed.
"That looks biblical, Your Grace. I believe we're about to experience what the locals call a proper blow."
"A proper blow?"
"Their term for a blizzard that arrives with enthusiasm and stays with determination."
As if to emphasize Grimsby's point, the wind suddenly picked up, rattling the windows with enough force to make the glass shake in its frames. The gentle snowfall became a wall of white, obscuring the view of the square entirely.
"Perhaps I should secure provisions from the kitchen," Grimsby suggested. "If this continues, we may be trapped here for some time."
"We're in an inn, Grimsby. Being trapped in an inn is hardly a hardship."
"Your Grace has never experienced Mrs. Morrison's enthusiasm during enforced proximity. I'm told last year's blizzard resulted in three betrothals and one nervous breakdown."
"The betrothals or the breakdown was worse?"
"The breakdown was Mr. Morrison. The betrothals were various victims of mistletoe deployment under extreme weather conditions."
Before Alaric could respond to this alarming information, there was a pounding at the door—not knocking, but the kind of desperate hammering that suggested someone was fighting the wind for the privilege of entering.
Grimsby opened it to reveal Thomas Ironwell, looking like a small snow sculpture that had somehow achieved animation. His face was red with cold and he was breathing like he'd run a considerable distance through a hurricane.
"Mr. Fletcher!" he gasped, looking past Grimsby to Alaric. "Mrs. Whitby says you're to come to the bakery immediately!"
"In this weather? That seems inadvisable."
"She says if you try to stay at the inn, you'll either freeze to death trying to get back to your room because Mrs. Morrison's already started drinking her emergency blizzard brandy and has hung mistletoe in the hallways with strategic intent, or you'll end up betrothed to someone by morning, or possibly both."
"Both?"
"Betrothed and frozen. Mrs. Morrison doesn't let a little thing like being cold interrupt her matchmaking."
"And the bakery is better?"
"The bakery has ovens and no mistletoe. Also, her mother says we can't have the duke's steward dying on our watch because His Grace might actually have to visit to find out what happened, and nobody wants that."
Alaric felt a small pang at this casual dismissal of his presence, even though he was, technically, present.
"The square is only twenty yards away," he pointed out.
"Twenty yards of what my dad's calling 'white death.' He tried to get to the pub and got turned around twice. He was gone for twenty minutes and ended up at the church, and that's in the opposite direction."
The wind chose that moment to literally shake the building, and somewhere below, Alaric could hear Mrs. Morrison singing something that sounded like a Christmas carol but might have been a battle hymn.
"Your Grace," Grimsby said quietly, "perhaps the bakery would be safer."
"From the storm or from Mrs. Morrison?"
"Both."
