Crowned and Dangerous (A Royal Spyness Mystery) Read Online Free

roughness of his cheek. “They’ll think you’re a pirate carrying me off.”
    “You like the thought of that, I can tell,” he teased, raising an eyebrow and making me blush.
    He carried the suitcases downstairs and put them in the car boot, before returning to settle up the bill.
    “You’ll not be wanting breakfast?” the landlady demanded. “After I’ve gone to the trouble of heating up the black pudding?”
    “We have an appointment in Scotland,” Darcy said tactfully. “We have to change our plans and see if we can catch a train from York.”
    “I shouldn’t think so with all this snow,” the woman said with obvious relish. “On the wireless they said it might all be shut down for days. Trains, roads, the lot.”
    On that encouraging note we left. The motor started, to my relief, and we drove back southward until we came to the signpost to York.
    “It says fourteen miles,” I said, fighting back disappointment. “That’s a long way.”
    “York is on the main train line to Scotland. Let’s just hope these side roads aren’t blocked. The snow doesn’t seem so bad here.”
    We turned off the highway onto a smaller road. Darcy seemed to be right and the snow here was already melting a little in the morning sunshine.
    “I hope we come to somewhere soon,” he said. “I’m starving. How about you?”
    “Absolutely ravenous,” I agreed.
    At a crossroads we found a transport café, with lorries parked outside. Darcy pulled up beside a laundry van with no complaint from me. Inside it was warm and smoky and noisy but we were treated to enormous mugs of coffee and equally large plates of bacon, eggs, sausage, fried bread, baked beans and black pudding. And I have to confess that we ate it all. We emerged in a much more cheerful mood, in time to see another van unloading the morning newspapers.
    “Perhaps the paper will have up-to-date news about the state of the roads and railways,” Darcy said, and he went to get one from the delivery boy. He came back to me.
    Blizzard Halts Traffic on Great North Road,
said the headline. He scanned on down the column. “They don’t seem to know much more than we do,” he grunted. “Or at least they didn’t when this paper went to press. In fact if you ask me . . .”
    There was a long pause.
    “If I ask you what?” I demanded. Then I saw his face.
    He was staring at the front page as if he were having a vision. He had gone deathly white.
    “Darcy, what’s wrong?” I leaned in to see what he was looking at. The main headline and lead article were about the storm but right below that, in big black letters, a headline read, IRISH PEER ARRESTED FOR MURDER .
    Darcy’s hand was shaking and I held the paper with him to try to read the small print.
    Thaddeus Alexander O’Mara, Sixteenth Baron Kilhenny in County Kildare, Ireland, was arrested yesterday, charged with the murder of Mr. Timothy Roach. Mr. Roach, an American from Chicago, purchased Kilhenny Castle and the adjacent horse racing stable from Lord Kilhenny several years ago. Lord Kilhenny had still acted as manager and trainer of the racing stable until adoping scandal earlier this year. Mr. Roach was found inside the library at Kilhenny Castle, having been struck violently on the head by an ancient battle club belonging to the O’Mara family.
    “Oh, Darcy.” The words came out as a whisper and my breath hung in the still, cold air, like smoke
.
    Darcy looked up at me with hopelessness in his eyes. “I must go to him right away,” he said. “You’re a good driver, aren’t you? This car isn’t hard to drive. It has preselected gears.”
    He saw my blank stare and added, “You only have to move the little lever on the panel, then press the accelerator. Easy. I can’t take it across to Ireland. I only borrowed it from a friend for a couple of days. If you can drive it back to London, I’ll take a train from York.”
    I hesitated, considering my limited driving experience and whether I could