The man’s eyes bulged. “Didn’t we establish earlier that there are no rooms in this house? There is not a single bed available.”
Evie sniffed. “Yes, there is.” She batted her lashes at him. “Yours.”
He looked at her thunderstruck. “Mine!”
“Certainly.”
“I ain’t giving you my bed.”
She merely looked at him with a smile. “I am certain your wife would be inclined to disagree. Ah, there she is.” She nodded at the stout lady who was leaving the kitchen with a huge tray filled with plates of food. “Good lady, a word, if you please.”
The woman set down her tray and looked her over, seeing at first glance that Evie was a lady.
“How may I help, my lady?”
Evie explained the situation to her, appealing, cleverly, to her motherly side. “Surely, if you had a daughter, you would agree that I cannot possibly spend the night alone with these men in this room. My reputation!”
The woman nodded resolutely. “You are absolutely right. If you were my daughter, I would prohibit it. You cannot possibly spend the night in the common room, where the entire rabble is sleeping. I shall share my bed with you, indeed. Hans will need to find himself another place to sleep.”
“That is most kind. But you see, it is fair that I explain the following situation to you. Except it is rather embarrassing to do so in the presence of men.”
“Turn around, Hans,” his wife told him. The man grumbled and walked away.
She bent forward and whispered into the woman’s ear.
The woman clucked. “That is most unfortunate. I see that you will need your very own bed, then. It is not a problem and we shall make it happen. Hans, the girl will have our entire chamber. I insist on it.”
Evie smiled serenely. “I shall remain forevermore in your debt. Oh, and I shall need some fresh sheets and a bath, too. If you please. With some lavender soap, if you have any.”
“Certainly, miss. If you could follow me.”
Hartenberg’s cigar, which he had popped into the corner of his mouth as he avidly followed the conversation, fell out.
Evie cast him a tiny look of triumph and congratulated herself on having most efficiently acquired a bed on her own, without anyone’s help, least of all his. She inspected the chamber and found it, while somewhat cluttered and dark, to be a perfectly decent room. It would do very well, indeed.
She then conversed with the doctor, who reiterated that she, under no circumstances, was to enter Lady Evangeline’s room if she did not want to fall ill herself. Clara was feverish, with tell-tale spots in her mouth. Despite the gravity of her illness, she was relatively stable.
“How long will it take for her to recover?” Evie asked.
“Two weeks,” was his curt reply.
Two weeks! Trapped here, for two weeks? Evie repressed a groan. She could hardly leave poor Clara on her own, could she? The weather did not help matters, either.
The storm outside had intensified and whipped with furyaround the inn.
Descending the stairs, she puckered her forehead into a heavy frown. At the entrance of the inn, there was a squabble, and the innkeeper gesticulated furiously. “We have no room!” he roared.
A woman, with three little children, stood by the entrance, drenched to the bone. Her children were crying. The woman was clearly expecting a fourth. That heartless beast of an innkeeper had no compunction whatsoever about turning them out into the storm.
Evie sighed. Then she braced her shoulders and stepped up to the woman with determination. “Come with me.”
Chapter Seven
Georg von Hartenberg,one of the empire’s most prominent field marshals, war hero and man of immense consequence, found himself squeezing onto a hard, narrow bench in the dining room, between table and wall, together with a good fifty other people who had spread their blankets across the rough floorboards. Most of them huddled around the tiled oven, while some soldiers and officers who had not had the luck to obtain a room spread themselves out on the benches and under the tables.
The storm outside blew with fierce intensity about the inn, howling and rattling the shutters as though demanding entrance. There was snoring, groaning and sighing, the creaking of wooden planks and quiet whispering. The strumming of a guitar twanging a melancholic Hungarian folk song was oddly soothing and no one complained. It was one of the hussars in the corner by the tiled oven, who expressed his homesickness through the music.
Georg was in a foul mood, and the hard bench had nothing to do with it. During his years of campaigning, beginning as a youngLeutnantin one of the empire’s seniorinfantry regiments and rising through the staff, he had spent his share of nights on bare ground with only a thin blanket for company. It came with the profession. Only later, as he ascended the ranks, had he been given a narrow cot set up in a tent, and eventually beds in various inns along the road. Even at Leipzig, he had slept in a farmhouse bed while the battle raged in the fields beyond. It would have taken but a lift of a finger for Schneider to obtain him a second room; but he had already dislodged one officer and given the room to his betrothed, and he would not do so a second time. Where he slept hardly mattered. Earlier, another infantryman had recognised him and fallen into a reverent salute, very nearly alerting the entire room. Fortunately, the general chaos in the room had been sufficient to swallow the moment. Georg had growled at the man and threatened to court-martial him if he breathed so much as a syllable about his identity to anyone.
