Bed Check: Inn BoonsBoro, writing the book on romance

A biweekly staff review of East Coast and regional lodgings.

It’s a tough choice: Elizabeth and Darcy? Or Jane and Rochester?

Which will it be?

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Best romantic hotels and B&Bs: Looking for an amorous getaway for Valentine’s Day — or any other day? Here are some of our favorite romance-inspiring lodgings from our Bed Check archives.

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Aargh. I don’t know. Let me think.

“Pride and Prejudice,” well, what a book. I swoon at the thought of that haughty Darcy buckling under for love of the tart-tongued Lizzy Bennet. I mean, don’t you?

But then, “Jane Eyre.” . . . All those wind-lashed moors and lowering skies. Those longing looks and brooding stares. That plucky heroine and her tortured hero. Oh, be still my heart.

If only Nick and Nora were available. We adore “The Thin Man.” So debonair and dashing, sophisticated and smart. But drat, someone has beaten us to the martini shaker — that love nest is occupied.

So, okay. How to break this deadlock? I could flip a coin. I could ask my husband what he prefers (nah). I could look at pictures. Yes!

And there it is — the decider. In the Jane and Rochester room, a fireplace. There’s nothing more romantic, in my book. Click. Done.

And so it goes when you’re looking to reserve a room at Inn BoonsBoro, romance-novelist-supreme Nora Roberts’s uber-romantic (of course) B&B in the tiny town of Boonsboro, Md. Picking your favorite literary lovers can be hard! But clever Nora: Naming your rooms after fictional couples and decorating them in period style makes for a smart, kicky gimmick to what could otherwise be just another beautiful, high-priced hostelry.

Of course, we’re talking only happy-ending lovers here, so no star-crossed Heloise and Abelard or Cathy and Heathcliff. Too bad. . . . Isn’t the passion always steamier when the love’s forbidden?

Ahem, well. Down that road we will not go.

I confess that I’m not the hugest romance-novel fan (though I have read my share). But I definitely favor romance, so I’m pretty happy to have scored Jane and Rochester, although I’m a little chagrined when innkeeper Ellen Tholen tells me that it’s “probably our most occupied room.” Oh no. Does that mean I have pedestrian tastes?

Of course not! There’s nothing pedestrian about J&R. Nothing pedestrian about this inn at all, in fact. Except perhaps for the exterior, which is of the stone-facade-with-porch-and-mansard-roof variety that you find in lots of smallish rural towns. The former stagecoach inn, you know. They’re handsome in a rustic way, but not really imposing or anything. And in Inn BoonsBoro’s case, not really indicative of what’s inside.

Which is: an ultra-new, ultra-lush interior, thanks to Roberts’s $3 million investment — and a 2008 fire that gutted the building while a first restoration (the inn had been abandoned for years) was underway — an event that’s a little weirdly, but fascinatingly, commemorated on four photo mugs in the library.

The fire ate everything but the 1790 foundation and some external walls, so the whole place, rebuilt and opened in 2009, is sleek and polished. In the very best way. Ellen leads us from the lobby (wow, you could get lost in those deep wingbacks in front of the fire) past the gleaming granite and steel guest kitchen (drool), gives us a peek into the lounge (love the Civil War-themed chess set) and points out the “Victorian stairs” (two inches wider and one inch lower than regular) and the ornate metal stair railing, handcrafted by a local blacksmith, complete with his mouse signature.