“Hardly,” Darcy said. “That family was driven from the castle more than two hundred years ago. I know that vengeance is a strong force in this part of the world, but the current royal families of both Romania and Bulgaria only came to their thrones in the eighteen hundreds. They really have no ties to the Balkans. They were set in place by the European powers, and, as you know, Nicholas is from the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha line, like yourself. A Transylvanian dynasty could have no feud with them.”

“Count Dragomir is bitter that he is now a glorified servant in a castle his ancestors used to own,” I said.

“Then he’d want to strike at the Romanian royals, not a Bulgarian prince, wouldn’t he?”

“Which brings us back to my mysterious Mr. X,” I said. “Lady Middlesex’s companion, Miss Deer-Harte—” I stopped as Darcy started laughing. “She can’t help her name,” I said. “Just stop it and listen. Miss Deer-Harte is a professional snooper. She claims she saw the same man creeping along one of the corridors at night and then she saw him lurking in an archway at dinner the first night. She says it was the archway immediately behind where Nicholas was sitting and she thinks he was casing the joint, as Lady Middlesex put it.”

Darcy got up and walked over to the fire, taking off his wet coat and throwing it onto a chair. “Have you told anybody about this except me?” he asked.

“I didn’t know who to tell,” I said. “We’ve managed to keep it from the royals so far. Count Dragomir is the only one who could institute a thorough search of the place and he might well be involved.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Darcy said. He perched on the low chair by the fireplace and started to unlace his boots. “I may do some snooping of my own, but in the meantime don’t let anyone know that I’m back. If you’ve no maid at the moment, all the better because I can hide out in here.”

“You’re not going to start snooping now, are you?” I asked.

“I have just made my way through a snowstorm and climbed a long way up a rope and I’m whacked out,” he said. “Move over. I’m coming to bed.”

He snuggled in beside me, wrapping me into his arms. “Now that you’re betrothed to the heir to a throne I could probably face the guillotine for this,” he whispered and kissed me. I tried to respond to his kiss, but the tension of everything that had happened kept intruding.

“I’m sorry. It’s no use,” I said. “I’m so upset by everything that I can’t stop thinking and worrying.”

“Don’t worry about this leading to anything, because it’s not going to,” he said. “I’m so tired that I could fall asleep on the spot. In fact . . .”