Polly and the Prince Read online

“Even Russian vagabond is good for something,” he said with a grin that made her fingers itch for a piece of charcoal. “Madame will not now demand story of my life, I think?”

  “I daresay you will think me shockingly inquisitive, but I still would like to know why you are in England, if you do not mind telling.”

  “I do not mind.” He sat back on his heels with a sigh. “I have made tsar very angry. Tsar—that is our emperor, you understand.”

  “The Emperor Alexander? Who was here in 1814 for the peace celebrations?” She wondered what he had done to enrage the monarch.

  “Da. I too was here, as one of Imperial Majesty’s soldiers. I admire greatly your country, and have English friends. When was forced to leave Russia, decided to come here. Is long way, and I had very little money with me. I worked for food in Poland, in Germany; begged to ride on carts of farmers. In Holland, found place as sailor on English fishing boat.”

  “So you are a sailor, as well as a soldier. That will please Mama.”

  Shaking his head, he said wryly, “Am not good sailor. When we come to harbour at Rye, captain will not pay me.”

  Polly was indignant. “How dare he!”

  “He said food I ate is worth more than I have earned. So now I walk to London to find my friends. Is not difficult to find work for meal. Here, as I cannot be good dog and sit for food, will help with packing instead.” Suiting action to the word, he returned to the task. Polly handed him a soup tureen. “Now is your turn, Miss Howard. You tell me why we pack household goods in box for carter.”

  “We are going to live with my brother Ned.” Polly explained that Ned was a land agent. After several years learning the business, he had spent the past three years restoring a much neglected estate for his employer. At last he had a house fit to invite his family to join him. “He is coming to fetch us tomorrow,” she added.

  “You were not pleased when matyushka—mother—reminded you,” Kolya observed. “You are not happy to go to brother?”

  “Oh yes, Ned is a dear. I was just disappointed not to have the chance to paint you.” Forgetting the pile of saucers she had just picked up, she thought of the sketches she had already made. Had she managed to catch his lively expression, the amusement in those extraordinary eyes? “I believe I have enough already to produce a tolerable likeness, though it will not be as good as if I could paint from life.”

  He stood up and removed the saucers from her hands. “You paint always portraits?”

  “I like landscapes best. That is another reason I’m pleased to be removing to Loxwood—there will be different scenes to paint. I have lived all my life in Tunbridge Wells, you know. You will scarcely believe that, except for going to Penshurst Place and Chiddingstone to see the art collections, I have never been farther afield than Tonbridge.”

  “You have never left this town? Pass cups, if you please, Miss Howard.”

  She complied. “Oh, Tonbridge is a quite separate town, spelled differently though it sounds the same. It is four or five miles north of here, and it has a ruined castle which I love to paint. Loxwood is forty miles off.”

  “Is great distance.” His voice was grave, but his eyes laughed at her.

  “It’s all very well for you to tease, who have travelled so far. To me it is a great distance.”

  “Perhaps you must leave sweetheart?”

  “No, there is only the rector, and Mr. Grant, who is a schoolmaster in Tonbridge, and Dr. Leacroft. I do not care...” But what on earth was she doing discussing her oft-rejected suitors with a stranger? “No, no sweetheart,” she said firmly. “And you, did you leave someone in Russia?”

  He sighed. “Parents, brothers, sisters. My poor matyushka wept when I left. Perhaps we never see each other again. She gave me icon to watch over me.” From beneath his homespun shirt he pulled a silver medallion with a painted face, on a silver chain. “Svyatoy Nikolai, Saint Nicholas, my namesake and patron saint of travellers. And of Holy Russia.”

  As Polly leaned down to see the icon better, he put it reverently to his lips and kissed it. The eyes he raised to her face, however, were anything but reverent. Polly felt herself blush and hastily straightened.

  Unused to being put to the blush, she was cross. Even Dr. Leacroft’s enthusiastic, and sometimes indecorously anatomical, compliments had always failed to disconcert her, let alone to make her feel as peculiar inside as she now felt at the gleam in Kolya’s eyes. She was inclined to think she had better call Mama to supervise the packing of the silver while she went up to her attic studio to sort out her canvases.

  But Kolya was now carefully stuffing straw between the nested cups. Had she imagined that warm look, the look that had seemed to tell her that the saint’s image was a poor substitute for her lips?

  A vigorous rat-a-tat-tat at the front door interrupted her confused thoughts.

  “Polly,” her mother called from above-stairs, “pray see who is there.”

  Before she reached the dining-room door, she heard the front door open with a crash, followed by a thunderous tread that suggested the presence of a stampeding herd of cart-horses.

  “Nicky? Surely not!” She hurried into the hall, where a sturdy, fair-haired youth seized her in a bear hug, lifting her feet from the floor. “Nicky! Put me down at once.”

  “Not unless you promise to stop calling me Nicky, Poll. I’m not a child anymore.”

  “I promise, I promise. But what are you doing here in the middle of term, Master Nicholas?”

  “Nick will do,” he said jauntily.

  Polly put her hands on her hips and scowled at her fifteen-year-old brother. “Don’t try to avoid the question.”

  “Nicky! My dear boy!” Mrs. Howard pattered down the stairs and embraced her son. “Why have they sent you home?” she asked anxiously. “Are you ill?”

  “Well, not exactly, Mama.” Gently but firmly Nick extricated himself from her clinging arms. “Is there anything to eat? I’m half starved.”

  “Yes, of course, my poor boy. Come into the kitchen.”

  Polly put out a restraining hand. “Wait just a minute. He is not likely to expire from hunger. Let us have an explanation first.”

  “It was a famous jape, Polly,” he assured her ingenuously. “You would have laughed yourself silly, honestly.”

  “Nicholas Howard, cut line.”

  Nick looked wildly round for an escape and saw Kolya, leaning in the dining-room doorway. “Who’s that?”

  “Kolya. He is helping with the packing. Now…”

  “Packing? Damn—dash it, I forgot all about it. When are we going to Loxwood? It’s deuced lucky I didn’t come back and find everybody gone.”

  “It would have served you right,” said his unsympathetic sister. “What was a famous jape?”

  “Oh Nicky, what have you done?” wailed his mother.

  No further delaying tactics came to mind. “We—that’s Greville and I—we borrowed a dancing bear from a Gypsy and hid it in the vestry. Old Bagwig went in there to put on his cassock for morning chapel. He came out backwards like a cork from a bottle with the bear following him. Half the fellows jumped up on the pews and hopped around squealing, as if that would have saved them from anything bigger than a mouse,” Nicholas said scornfully. “The other half gathered around poor old Bruin and flapped their prayer books at him as if they were trying to stop him, but really egging him on. Greville and I were waiting in the gallery above the door with a sheet to drop over the bear when it passed below, but the sheet landed on Bagwig by mistake. I think he thought the bear had got him. You should have heard him yell!“

  “I’m very glad I did not,” Polly said, not quite truthfully.

  “Oh, Nicky,” moaned Mrs. Howard.

  “The bear went blundering past and out of the chapel, where the Gypsy was waiting for it. He rushed it off quick as winking, I can tell you.”

  “And then?” Polly demanded.

  Nick had the grace to look abashed. “Well, the long and the short of it is, I was
expelled.”

  Mrs. Howard burst into tears. “Nicky, how could you!”

  “Don’t take on so, Ma. I don’t care above half…”

  “When your brother has so generously paid your fees!”

  “That’s it, though. Why should Ned be wasting his money on school fees when all I want is to go to sea?”

  “Do stop arguing, you wretched boy. Hush, Mama,” Polly soothed her afflicted parent. “Come and sit down. Ella shall make you a cup of tea and you will feel better in a trice.”

  “But...” Nick began again.

  “In Russia,” Kolya intervened, “we hunt bears.”

  Polly flashed him a look of gratitude over her mother’s head as Nick turned to him with eager questions.

  She took Mrs. Howard into the parlour, where empty crates awaited the souvenirs of Captain Howard’s voyages. Carved masks from Africa hung above the chintz-covered chairs and a glass-fronted cabinet displayed a Chinese jade Buddha, a feathered Red Indian peace pipe, strange shells from the South Seas, and a jaguar carved in stone. As Polly now pointed out, her father had circumnavigated the globe several times in the course of thirty years at sea, and in the end had succumbed to sickness, not drowning. There was no reason to suppose that Nick would fare worse.

  Ella appeared with the promised tea, which further soothed the distraught mother. A judicious reminder that Nick was hungry, and that there was a great deal of work to be done if they were to be ready for Ned on the morrow, completed the cure.

  “Ned will know what to do,” sniffed Mrs. Howard dolefully. “He is such a reliable boy. And I must say, Polly, that sometimes you are a great comfort to me. I shall fry up some potatoes for Nicky, to go with the rest of the cold mutton.”

  She bustled off to the kitchen, and Polly returned to the dining room. Her brother and the Russian were on their knees, packing straw into the full china crate.

  “So I shot my poor horse and left him to wolves,” Kolya was saying, “and while they were eating, I stumbled through snow to peasant’s izba—hut, I think is word.”

  “Polly, Kolya has had the most amazing adventures!” Nick informed her. Kolya nudged him in the ribs. “Oh yes, I’m sorry I upset Mama. I expect I ought to have told you privately and let you break the news. But what was a fellow to do when you kept asking why I was home?”

  Avoiding this invitation to dispute, she said, “Go and apologize to Mama. She is in the kitchen...”

  “Food!” Nick jumped up and sped from the room.

  “Thank you for diverting him,” Polly said, dropping into a chair. “He is at an argumentative age, I fear.”

  “Hungry age, also. Is good lad, I think?”

  “He’s a dear, though it was monstrous wicked of him to introduce a bear into the church.” Involuntarily she giggled. “All the same, I wish I could have seen it. Pray don’t tell Nick I said so.”

  “Was famous jape indeed. Expelled means he cannot return to school?”

  “Yes. Ned will be distressed, I fear, but I’m not really surprised. Nick is not at all inclined to book-learning. In fact, he has wanted to join the Navy, like Papa, since he was in leading strings. Mama dislikes the notion—Papa was away so much and she missed him dreadfully. And Ned always wanted to go to university, but there was not enough money for a good school, so he felt he was doing Nick a good turn by sending him to Winchester.”

  “I understand. Is not always easy to know how best to help others. To get good position on ship for Nick, this is possible?”

  “He cannot go as a common seaman, of course. Papa started out as a midshipman, so I expect that is what Nick wants. It is the lowest grade of commissioned officer. Ned will know how to go about it.”

  Kolya nodded and stood up. “Box is full. Is necessary to nail top, or tie with rope?”

  “I shall ask Ella.” Polly wondered why she had explained about Nick’s schooling. It was nothing to do with the stranger, and he could not possibly be interested. Somehow it was difficult to remember that he was a stranger. Suddenly recalling her disconcerting reaction when he kissed the icon, she said abruptly, “Thank you for the work you have done. Since Nick is come, he can help with the rest. I shall give you money for the stage fare to London, and enough for a night’s lodging in case you cannot find your friends at once.”

  “I am not beggar.” His response was unexpectedly sharp. “I have earned meal, no more. If you do not need me, I shall be on my way.”

  “But it is too far to walk. London is thirty miles and more.”

  Once more he was amused, her unintended insult seemingly forgiven. “I have walked much farther, Miss Howard. Since you have not time for painting, is best I go.”

  Between the way he flustered her and the upset of Nick’s arrival, Polly had forgotten the portrait. Kolya’s reminder re-awoke her enthusiasm. “No, stay. With you and Nick to help, the packing will be done much faster. And with Nick here, there can be no objection if you spend the night. I shall be able at least to start the portrait tomorrow. Please?”

  He looked doubtful. “To start portrait will be useful?”

  “Yes, oh yes. I can draw the right pose on the canvas, and work out the colour tones. And you will earn several more meals so that when you leave you will be rested and well fed.”

  “How can I resist? Very well, I shall be good dog and sit for food, if matyushka agrees.”

  “Mama will agree,” said Polly blithely. And when Ned comes tomorrow, she thought, perhaps he will be able to persuade the proud Russian to accept the fare to London.

  Chapter 3

  “And the story you told Nick about the wolves, was that true?”

  “Almost.” Kolya was sitting patiently on a stool under the skylight Captain Howard had had set in the roof when he came home and found his daughter seriously interested in painting. “It happened to friend, not to me. When wolves chased me, I was not so brave. I hid up tree.”

  “I cannot tell whether to believe you or not.”

  A cry of anguish rang up the stairs. “Polly! Polly!”

  “What is it, Mama? I cannot come just now.” She was preparing the colour for Kolya’s hair and she had it almost right. Just a tiny spot more of the yellow ochre—once she had a sample on a scrap of canvas she could match it when she came to paint the portrait, when he was gone. Mrs. Howard’s footsteps were heard pattering up the stairs to the attic at a rapid pace. She trotted in, slightly out of breath.

  “Polly! You never posted the letter to Ned. Ella moved your chest of drawers to sweep underneath and she found it lying there. You drew a picture on it!”

  “Oh, yes, I remember. The sealing wax looked like a rose so I drew some leaves around it. My window was open so it must have blown onto the floor while I was putting on my bonnet, and I forgot it. I’m sorry, Mama. Kolya, sit down, pray. The light changes when you stand.”

  He had politely risen when Mrs. Howard entered, and he was buttoning his shirt. Art outweighing embarrassment, Polly had had him open it at the throat to display his icon.

  Her mother was far too agitated to notice this impropriety. “How can you be so calm? What are we to do if Ned does not come today? The tenants are moving in tomorrow, and even if they can be put off, the carter has taken everything but what we need for one night. Oh Polly, how could you?”

  “But it was only a confirmation, was it not? Ned himself set the date in the first place. You can rely on Ned.”

  “Ma?” The house shook as Nick thundered up the stairs. “There you are. What else is there to eat?”

  “Nothing beyond your brother’s dinner, though I daresay he will not be here to eat it. And do not call me Ma in that odiously vulgar way.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mother dear, but you keep calling me Nicky and I’ve asked you not to a thousand times. Polly, did you know that Kolya’s real name is Nikolai, which is the Russian for Nicholas? Is it not famous?”

  “Famous,” said his sister dryly, testing the colour she had mixed. “I suppose you will next want
us to call you Kolya.”

  “Lord no, Nick will do. Mother, I’m starving. When’s dinner-time?”

  “When Ned arrives, if he does.” Mrs. Howard cast a reproachful glance at Polly. “Polly, you have paint on your chin.”

  She dabbed at her chin with a corner of her smock. “I shall wash it off later.”

  “But I can’t wait,” Nick insisted.

  “I’m sure Ned never had such an appetite at your age. You will have to go down to the shops and buy something to eat now and some extra eggs for breakfast.”

  “Ho, not I. Marketing is for females.”

  Kolya laughed. “Is plain to see you do not understand meaning of ‘starving,’ Master Nicholas. I will go to shops for madame, if she wishes, as soon as Miss Howard is finished.”

  “Oh, if you are going, I’ll go, too,” said Nick at once. “How long are you going to be, Poll?”

  “Ten minutes. The best of the light is nearly gone and I have everything I need.” She thinned the mixture of pigments on her palette with a drop of turpentine and tested the colour again.

  The aromatic odour reminded her all too clearly of the moment when she had made Kolya’s acquaintance by falling into his arms. His gentle strength, his kindness, his willingness to help, and his lively sense of humour, all added up to a man who was far too attractive for comfort. It was just as well that tomorrow he would be on his way. She did not even know for what dastardly deed he had been exiled, she reminded herself.

  She looked up to find that her mother and Nick had gone. If Mama knew how she felt, she would never have left her alone with Kolya. Of course, to Mrs. Howard it was inconceivable that her well-brought-up daughter might be attracted to a common tramp, however gentlemanly his manners and laughing his eyes.

  His eyes were not laughing at present. He was regarding her with an intentness that made her cheeks feel hot. She hoped he did not notice her flush—the light in the attic had dimmed suddenly as the setting sun passed behind a cloud.

  “That is all,” she said quickly, busying herself with cleaning her brushes. “Thank you for your patience.”