Polly and the Prince Page 7

  It was Kolya’s turn to be puzzled. “Then why you are not here even earlier?”

  “I forgot I needed time to change my dress.”

  He burst into laughter. “This I forgot also!” He stopped and turned her to face him. “I did not look before—was looking at your face only. Is most elegant gown, with the beautiful woman inside.” His slanting eyes were serious now.

  Polly felt hot all over, hot enough to melt inside. Fortunately, at that moment the butler opened a door and announced the Howards, and she and Kolya hurried to catch up. In the swarm of introductions which followed she forgot her embarrassment—and the peculiar sensation which had accompanied it.

  Far from overwhelming with splendour, the drawing room was a comfortable apartment, though several superb pictures hung on the walls. Polly recognized a Canaletto, and she thought one of the portraits might be a Van Dyck. She tore her eyes away and concentrated on the introductions.

  She had scarcely taken a seat when the gentleman who had been presented as Lord Fitzsimmons materialized at her side. Of middling height and slight build, he had classically perfect features and golden locks which might have been envied by Apollo. Though his bottle green coat and brown pantaloons were elegantly restrained, a green satin waistcoat embroidered with daisies, a profusion of fobs, and an intricately tied cravat hinted at a sternly repressed tendency to dandyism. His bright blue eyes held an expression of ingenuous enthusiasm.

  “May I join you, ma’am?” Receiving permission, he sat down at her side. “Understand you paint. M’sister Julia was a dab at watercolours before she married. Expect she would have had a go at the river here. I daresay you have painted it?”

  It soon became apparent that what he really wanted to talk about was the splendid fishing to be found in the River Arun, which ran through the Five Oaks park. Polly reciprocated with stories of Nick’s angling prowess, which all the family had heard so often they could have repeated them word for word. She also told him that she had seen several large fish in the Loxwood mill pond, jumping for flies at dusk.

  “I say, ma’am, good of you to mention it,” he said, and as he took her in to dinner she heard him mutter approvingly to Mr. Bevan as he passed, “Sensible female!”

  To her disappointment, she was not seated next to Kolya at the dinner table. He sat opposite, but remembering her mother’s instructions Polly made no attempt to converse with him. Though she had never before attended a formal dinner party, she was not at all apprehensive of making mistakes. It seemed unlikely that she would do anything truly dreadful, and everyone was surely too amiable not to forgive any minor errors of etiquette.

  The elderly vicar of Billingshurst, on her right, was a gentle, vague man who probably would not have noticed if she had eaten her fish with a soup spoon. On her other side, Lord Fitzsimmons was flatteringly eager to converse, and to pile her plate with interesting and irresistible delicacies. Polly enjoyed both her dinner and his inconsequential chatter.

  She caught Kolya’s eye across the table and smiled at him. He winked. He was having a difficult time with the vicar’s daughter, a spinster of uncertain years who seemed to speak in homilies. Polly was glad to see him laughing with his other neighbour, Lady Graylin, a dark, striking woman whom she would have liked to paint. The Graylins, however, were leaving for Paris on the morrow. Along with Polly’s disappointment at losing a prospective model, she felt an odd, inexplicable sense of relief.

  When Lady John led the female exodus from the dining room, leaving the gentlemen to port and brandy, Polly found herself beside her hostess.

  “As I mentioned the other day, Miss Howard, I do not know much about paintings,” said her ladyship apologetically as they entered the drawing room. “However, I understand his Grace has an excellent collection. I hope you will feel free to come and inspect them one day soon. We shall be here for another fortnight or so before we remove to Loxwood Manor.”

  “Thank you, my lady, I should love to. You do not mind if I take a closer look now at those in this room?”

  “Not at all. Let me hold a light for you.” Lady John took up a branch of candles and they went to stand in front of the Canaletto.

  The Grand Canal of Venice stretched before them, busy with gondolas and schooners, lined with palaces and churches stretching into the distance.

  “It reminds me a little of St Petersburg,” Lady John said, and she shivered as if struck by a sudden chill. “There are canals lined with palaces there, too. I was imprisoned in a fortress on one of the islands, you know,” she went on doggedly, her soft voice shaking. “Nikolai Mikhailovich rescued me—that is why he was exiled.”

  “Kolya? Mr. Volkov?” Polly asked, astonished. “No wonder you were both happy to see him.”

  “He did it for the sake of his friendship with John, though he was fond of me also, I believe. Miss Howard, you will think me monstrous interfering, but I must tell you what John told me then. He said that Nikolai Mikhailovich is a rake.”

  “You mean he has designs upon my virtue?”

  Her ladyship looked shocked at such bluntness. “Good gracious, no. I’m sure John exaggerated, but it’s true, I fear, that Kolya is a shocking flirt.”

  Polly was almost disappointed. Of course her principles would never allow her to give in to the seductive wiles of a rake. All the same, there was something attractive in the idea of a life divided between her work and Kolya, and if he were not her husband, he would not be able to make her stop painting.

  Misinterpreting her silence, Lady John said sadly, “Now you will tell me that it is none of my business and never speak to me again.”

  “Of course I will not. I know that your words are kindly meant. But indeed, Mr. Volkov does not flirt with me, my lady. Or hardly ever,” she added, trying to be honest. “Most of all he is an interesting model, though we talk of a hundred subjects while I paint and I hope I can say he is my friend.”

  “And you are not offended?”

  “Indeed I am not.” Polly touched her hand in reassurance. The subject was dropped and they moved on to another picture.

  Despite her dismissal of Lady John’s warning, Polly was left vaguely uneasy. When the gentlemen joined the ladies, she was quite glad that Kolya stood talking to Ned for long enough to allow Mr. Bevan to take the seat beside her. Not that she had the least expectation that Mr. Volkov meant to rush to her side. She gave Mr. Bevan her attention. Lord John’s friend was plainly a Corinthian. Though not tall he was well muscled, and his coat was cut with an eye to comfort rather than elegance. His face was engagingly ugly, with a lantern jaw and slightly crooked nose, doubtless the result of an unfortunate encounter at Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon.

  Unwittingly, Mr. Bevan set Polly’s mind at rest with his first words. “At last I have you all to myself, Miss Howard,” he declaimed dramatically. “I have been ready to call Fitz out for monopolizing you since you glided through the door like Mozart’s Queen of the Night and cast your magic spell on my heart.”

  Now that, thought Polly, was flirting. Kolya had never made the slightest attempt to pay her such an extravagant compliment.

  “Surely the Queen of the Night should have black hair, sir?” she suggested.

  “Never!” He cast a half-laughing, half-apologetic glance at Lady Graylin, seated nearby, whose hair was glossy black, then turned back to Polly. “Yours shines like the harvest moon.”

  Lord Fitzsimmons leaned over the back of the sofa and murmured discreetly in his friend’s ear, “Sorry, my boy, but the Queen of the Night’s a bad lot.”

  Mr. Bevan was unabashed. “I tend to sleep through operas,” he told Polly with aplomb. “Ought to stick to mythology and poetry. ‘Queen and goddess, chaste and fair...,’ that’s the ticket.”

  “Huntress,” Fitz advised him. “‘Queen and huntress.’”

  “Dash it, Fitz, does Miss Howard look like one of those ghastly females who chase about the hunting field covered in mud and ruin the sport? Don’t hunt, do you, Miss Howard?
” he added as an anxious afterthought.

  “No, I confess to being on the fox’s side. They are beautiful animals.”

  “There you are,” said Bev triumphantly. “‘Queen and goddess, fair and kind.’ That’s how it ought to be written.”

  To her amusement he continued to spout flattering nonsense until the tea tray was brought in. Shortly thereafter Ned announced that they must be on their way. Polly was surprised when both Mr. Bevan and Lord Fitzsimmons begged her permission to call, but as she liked them both she readily granted it.

  It was Kolya, however, who put her cloak around her shoulders. “You have enjoyed self?” he asked, smiling down at her with his hands resting lightly on her shoulders.

  “Very much.”

  “It will be late when you come to home tonight. Tomorrow morning you will sleep late.”

  “I shall be up long before eleven.”

  “So I come at usual time?”

  “At the usual time.” She nodded. “I shall finish your portrait in a day or two, if it does not rain.

  Mrs. Howard broke in. “Polly, the carriage is waiting.”

  “Until tomorrow then, Miss Howard.”

  As the carriage rolled homeward, Polly admitted to herself that Kolya’s portrait could have been finished long since, in spite of the occasional interruption of a rainy day, if she had concentrated instead of talking to him.

  Chapter 8

  Kolya arrived late at the Howards’ on the morning after the dinner party. He and Ned had been at the far end of the Loxwood estate, talking to the gamekeeper at his cottage in the woods. The English custom of taking pains to protect the pheasants, even providing special breeding grounds, just so as to be able to go out and shoot them later, amused Kolya. In Russia, wild game was wild, and one did not shoot domestic fowl.

  When he reached the gate from the meadow into the Howards’ garden, he saw that Polly had already set up her easel in the usual place. She was sitting on the bench where he always posed, on a white carpet of cherry blossom petals, but she was not precisely waiting for him.

  Beside her sat Mr. Bevan, and Lord Fitzsimmons lounged against the nearest tree. She was laughing.

  Kolya turned his horse loose to graze. Leaning with folded arms on the top of the gate, he thoughtfully regarded the merry group. He had delighted to watch Polly enjoying herself in company last night, but somehow he was less content to see her in such high spirits today. This was his time, the time he looked forward to every morning and recalled with pleasure every evening.

  He shrugged his shoulders and opened the gate. The portrait was nearly done. One morning’s delay would give him more time to invent a good reason for continuing to visit Polly regularly once the painting was finished. No doubt the gentlemen would soon be on their way back to London and the delights of the Season.

  As he approached, unnoticed, he saw that Mr. Bevan wore a frown of intense concentration.

  “I’ll give my oath there’s a bit of verse with Polly in it,” he was saying. “Dashed if I can recall it though.”

  Lord Fitzsimmons and Polly exchanged a glance and launched into a ragged chorus in two different keys.

  “Polly, put the kettle on; Polly, put the kettle on…”

  “No, no, can’t be the one I was thinking of,” protested the discomfitted Corinthian.

  “Indeed, sir, I know how to boil a kettle,” Polly assured him, laughing again, “and even how to make tea, though my cooking leaves somewhat to be desired.”

  “Volkov!” Lord Fitzsimmons had spotted him. “Dashed fine picture Miss Howard’s painted. Caught you to the life.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Polly said, but Kolya decided she looked sceptical of his lordship’s credentials as an art critic. She stood up and went to contemplate the canvas on the easel.

  “M’sister never could get noses quite right,” Fitz went on. “Always seemed to come out looking like Bev’s beak.”

  “I say, don’t insult my phiz or I’ll rearrange yours to match,” said Mr. Bevan with mock bellicosity. “Tell you what, ma’am, I’ll commission a portrait from you if you promise to straighten my nose.”

  “Oh no, I could not do that,” Polly said absently. “It gives your face character.”

  “Yes, but what sort of character?” enquired Fitz, grinning. “Positively villainous, wouldn’t you say, ma’am?”

  Not for the first time, Kolya wondered at the English sense of humour. If a Russian gentleman had issued such insults, he would have found himself facing pistols at dawn. In their peculiar way, the English were much saner.

  He stopped beside Polly. Now that Bev and Fitz had seen his portrait, it was difficult to obey her oft-repeated injunction not to look. Instead, he watched her face as she studied it with the faraway gaze he knew so well.

  “The hands,” she said. “Today I want to work on the hands.” She looked up at him, a smile on her delectable lips.

  “You are occupied today. You will not want to paint.”

  “But I do. Pray take your place while I fetch my smock.”

  “A long-standing engagement, gentlemen,” Kolya explained smugly as she headed for the studio.

  “You mean we are dismissed?” Bev sighed. “Alas that beauty should prove so cruel.”

  Polly returned, quite unconscious of the effect on the gentlemen of her appearance in her voluminous, multicoloured painting smock. Kolya watched in amusement as their startled expressions were speedily brought under control.

  “We’ll be off, Miss Howard,” Lord Fitzsimmons said. “Will you be painting the mill pond this evening? You will not object if I bring my fishing rod to try for some of those brutes you spotted?”

  “An angler will make a good addition to my picture, my lord.”

  Not to be outdone, Bev asked if she would care to go out for a spin in his curricle on the morrow.

  “That will be delightful, sir. I don’t suppose you could drive me into Horsham?”

  “Anywhere, Miss Howard,” said Mr. Bevan expansively. “Anywhere at all.”

  Kolya hid a smile. Polly would make use of both her new admirers in the interests of her art: Lord Fitzsimmons as the figure of a fisherman, a rôle Nick had no patience for; and Mr. Bevan to convey her local landscapes to the bookseller in Horsham to be sold, an errand Ned had no time for.

  The gentlemen were turning to leave and Polly was picking up her palette and brush when Kolya saw a strange figure, tall but hunched, struggling with the catch of the meadow gate he had just come through.

  “Kakovo chorta!” he exclaimed. “Is Nicholas!” He jumped to his feet and hurried to help.

  The others swung round as Nick succeeded in opening the gate one-handed. He was wet, muddy, and in his shirtsleeves, and on his shoulders he carried a small child with tangled blonde curls, wrapped in his coat.

  “Nick, what happened?” asked Polly, joining them. “Who is she?”

  “Dashed if I know,” said her brother, lifting the little girl down. Lost in the folds of the jacket, she clung to his leg, hiding her face. “I was with Bob Brent walking across the fields and we saw her playing by a stream. There were some ducks with babies. I think she must have tried to reach them. Anyway, she fell in and I fished her out. There was no one else around and no farms or cottages nearby, and she couldn’t tell me where she came from, so I reckoned I’d best bring her home. Bob cut and run,” he added in disgust.

  “You were on Loxbury land?” Kolya enquired. “I know most of the tenants.”

  Polly knelt on the ground beside the child, who peeked at her shyly. Her face was pinched with cold. “Poor mite. She needs dry clothes and a hot drink. What is your name, pet?”

  She put a dirty thumb in her mouth and glanced up at Nick.

  “Tell the lady your name,” he urged.

  “Thuthie,” she mumbled round the thumb.

  “Susie?”

  She nodded. Polly looked up at Kolya.

  Ned had introduced him to every family on the estate. He was not su
re of the names of all the children but the blonde curls were familiar. “I think I know. Is your father’s name Stebbins, golubushka?”

  Susie stared at him, her face blank.

  “What’s your daddy called?” Nick interpreted.

  She reached up and tugged on his sleeve. He bent down and she whispered in his ear.

  He broke into a grin. “Thilath Thtebbinth,” he reported. “Looks like you’re right, sir.

  “Silas Stebbins? I know where she lives then,” Kolya confirmed.

  “How are we to take her home?” Rising from her knees with Kolya’s assistance, Polly noticed Mr. Bevan and Lord Fitzsimmons, who were watching the proceedings from a safe distance. “Oh, I forgot. Mr. Bevan has his curricle here.”

  Bev looked aghast at the thought of being seen with a tousled urchin sharing his elegant equipage. “I say, Miss Howard…”

  “I’ll do it, ma’am,” Lord Fitzsimmons interrupted with the air of a man nerving himself to face a horrid fate. “You won’t mind if I borrow the curricle, Bev?”

  Amused, Kolya glanced at Polly, but she was holding out her hand to Susie. “I must go to show the way,” he pointed out. “If you will entrust the horses to me, will be no need for anyone else to go.”

  “Of course Bev will trust you with his horses, Volkov,” his lordship said heartily and hopefully, with a look of appeal at his friend. “Danville was telling us just the other day how you taught him to drive a troika.”

  “Mr. Volkov is a famous whip,” Nick assured Mr. Bevan. “He has won any number of races.”

  Bev did not appear to think this much of a recommendation but he consented gracefully.

  “Susie must have dry clothes first,” Polly said, “but she will not come with me. You will have to bring her, Nick. Fortunately Mama is out visiting.” She shepherded her brother and the child into the house, abandoning her admirers without a backward glance.

  Somewhat disgruntled, Bev took Kolya round the house to his curricle, issuing anxious instructions about his bays’ tender mouths and skittish ways.

  “They’re a high-bred pair,” Fitz agreed.