“Not at all. The princess is being married at the royal ancestral castle in the mountains. That is why it is most important that I see you safely to your destination. I gather it is quite a long drive from the station.”

As she spoke, the train began to slow. We could hear the squealing of brakes and then it jerked to a halt. A door was opened for us and we were escorted down onto the platform of a small station. Peasants wrapped up against the cold stared at us with interest, while our trunks were unloaded from the baggage car. Then a whistle blew and the express disappeared into the gloom.

“Where the devil is the person they’ve sent to meet us?” Lady Middlesex demanded. “You stay there with the bags and I’ll go and find a porter.”

A local train came in, people got off and on and the platform emptied out. Suddenly I felt the back of my neck prickle with the absolute certainty that I was being watched. I spun around to see a deserted platform with swirling snow. Of course someone is watching us, I told myself. We must be frightfully interesting to peasants who have never gone farther than the next town. But I still couldn’t shake off the uneasiness.

“They can’t know we’re coming,” Miss Deer-Harte said. “They’ve probably mixed up dates. We’ll have to spend the night at a local inn and I can’t even imagine how awful and dangerous that will be. Bedbugs and brigands, you mark my words.”

At that moment Lady Middlesex reappeared with several porters. “The stupid man was waiting with his car, outside the station,” she said. “I asked him how we were supposed to know he was there if he didn’t present himself. Did he expect us to walk around looking for him? But he doesn’t appear to speak English. You’d have thought the princess might have taken the trouble to send an English-speaking person to welcome us. A proper welcoming party would have been nice—with little peasant girls in costume and a choir maybe. That’s how we would have done it in England, isn’t it? Really these foreigners are hopeless.” Suddenly she yelled, “Careful with that box, you idiot!” She leaped up and slapped the porter’s hand. He said something in the local language to the others and they gave a sinister laugh and took off with our bags. Miss Deer-Harte’s suspicions were beginning to rub off on me. I half expected the porters to have run off with our things, leaving us stranded, but we met up with them in a cobbled street outside the station.

Before us was a large square black vehicle with tinted windows. A chauffeur in black uniform stood beside it.

“My God,” Miss Deer-Harte exclaimed in a horrified voice. “They’ve sent a hearse.”

Chapter 11

Chapter 11