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“We can’t have the ladies whingeing all the way to Vienna! They won’t give us any peace!”

After a small nod from Darcy, Mr Trevor took the proffered notes from Bingley. Following a hastily whispered exchange with the earl’s nephew, he went off to find a better ship, having essentially been given carte blanche. Mr Trevor knew he would also have to pay a fine for giving up the humbler vessel he had already hired. It seemed his efforts to facilitate the journey by arriving early in Rotterdam had been for nought.

Chapter 19: Tigers in the corridor

Mr Trevor did his best to hide his frustration as he reported on the progress of his search for a better boat to Darcy that evening. Nothing suitable had been found. But the earl’s secretary had been told by a shipbroker that a vessel belonging to the Prince of Bavaria, which must surely suit his requirements, would return to port in one or two days. It turned out to be three.

Meanwhile, Darcy had gone walking in Rotterdam and had quickly become fascinated with dikes, locks and ingenious bridges. He had arrived back to the inn on the third day to find that Bingley and Hurst had graduated from cards to dice.

“Ah! You’re back, Darcy!” cried Bingley, carelessly throwing a main, much to Hurst’s disgust. “Found any fascinating new bridges today?”

“No, but I found several fascinating old ones,” Darcy joked.

Bingley, always easy to laugh, gave an appreciative guffaw in reply. “And I suppose you had the Dutch explain everything in their guttural language?”

“Mostly, although I did have to resort to French occasionally to make myself understood.”

“Hah! I am having trouble getting a decent cup of tea! They do like their koffie here, don’t they? Although I shall forgive them because of these tasty little biscuits,” said Bingley, picking up another speculaas.

“Where are the ladies?” asked Darcy, thankfully aware of the absence of the fawning Miss Bingley.

“They have gone to approve Mr Trevor’s new vessel. Although I think the fact it is owned by the Prince of Bavaria has already sold them on it.”

The ladies returned not half an hour later, lauding their own prescience in urging Mr Trevor to search for something more suitable. They began what promised to be an exhaustive description of the staterooms of this vessel.

“Darcy’s not interested in how many flounces the curtains have, Caroline,” said Bingley, attempting to shut down the topic. “Tell him how many masts and sails it has.”

“It has its own French chef!” announced Caroline, trying another tack.

But this attribute only drew a heartier grunt from Mr Hurst.

When Mr Trevor returned to the inn two hours later, it was to relate that all should be ready for their departure in the morn.

In consequence, the men and the servants were up at the crack of dawn, eager to be off. But Caroline was tardy, dissatisfied with the ensemble her maid had chosen for her—it was not sufficiently nautical. Finn and Bingley’s valet, Crimplesham, had long since finished supervising the porters stowing the rest of the luggage by the time Miss Bingley’s dressing case arrived, closely followed by its mistress and her sister.

As promised by the shipbroker, the boat was an impressive one, used exclusively by the Crown Prince of Bavaria during the summer months, but available for charter during the colder seasons. It had two masts, forward and aft, and a large chimney amidships.

“Well!” Caroline exhaled as she joined the men in the stern, twirling a green-fringed parasol with hands encased in dainty teal blue kid gloves. “Was this not worth waiting for?”

As Darcy would have been happy to get to Vienna by hedge or by stile, he maintained a polite silence in response to this sally, leaving Miss Bingley to take comfort in her brother’s, “Quite!” and in Mr Hurst’s grunted assent.

Meanwhile, the bo’sun blew his whistle, the ropes were untied from the dock and looped on the deck, and the crew used poles to push off from the pier. The funnel, which had been issuing a thin stream of white smoke, now belched forward great clouds of it. Miss Bingley’s dismayed exclamation of disgust was drowned by the roar of water churning from the concealed central paddlewheel. Thus, the cosmopolites were finally on their way.

Darcy spent a pleasant day on deck with the men. Louisa had retired below decks with Caroline only half an hour into their voyage, complaining of a headache. After admiring the multiple windmills of the Kinderdijk, Darcy ensconced himself in a deck chair to watch the passing countryside and the activities of the crew, which ranged from adjustments to the sails to fishing from the deck. This leisurely interlude was interrupted only occasionally by exclamations from Bingley and Hurst who continued to play Hazard.

They made Dordrecht by mid-afternoon where the captain abandoned the wheelhouse temporarily to wave to a girl holding a baby ashore. He advised the Englishmen they would stop next in Nimeguen to pick up supplies, likely around sunset on the morrow.

All three gentlemen dropped into a snooze on the afterdeck soon afterwards. Darcy dreamt of windmills and mechanical devices, which somehow reminded him of a theorem he was working on two years ago. The inked Greek letters of his notes drifted up off the page, linked like a chain, and he proceeded to feed them through some cogs, noting how they had been changed as they emerged from the other side of the apparatus.

He was woken by Bingley, who had decided to abandon the deck in Hurst’s wake due to the creeping chill. The sun was now low in the sky.

On retiring to his room to prepare for dinner, Darcy found his valet laying out his clothes in the spacious stateroom.

“Well, Finn! I must admit these are superior accommodations to those Mr Trevor found us previously.”

“Yes, sir,” said Finn, placing a chair against the door.

Darcy raised his eyebrows at this unusual move. “Are there tigers in the corridor, Finn?”