Polly and the Prince (2 page)

Again he bowed. He wondered what she would say if he addressed her as Polly. She might not even notice, but her mother certainly would. When she called him Kolya, she made plain her opinion of his low status—English custom was no different from Russian in that regard. Looking down at his clothes, his splitting boots and calloused hands, he could not blame her.

Polly was so nearly a Russian name—Polya, for Pelageya, his oldest sister’s little girl’s name. He would address her as Miss Howard, but he would think of her as Polly.

“Kolya is hungry, Mama. What can we give him to eat?”

To his amusement, the appeal to practicality calmed the older woman. She began to unload the basket while Polly took off her bonnet, revealing neat braids piled in honey-blonde coils.

“Polly, you are not wearing your cap and your pelisse is soiled. It looks as if you have been kneeling in the street! What will people think? And where are the eggs I asked you to buy? There is nothing under the bread but your oddments.”

“Eggs? I knew there was something else. How lucky that I did not buy them. They would have broken when I fell.” She took a sketch pad and a piece of charcoal from the pile on the table, sat down, and began to draw.

“You will have to make do with cheese, Kolya, and there is some oxtail soup I can heat for you. Sit down, sit down. Cut yourself some bread.”

“Thank you,
madame,
you are very kind.”

Mrs. Howard heaved a long-suffering sigh. “It is a waste of breath to argue with my daughter.” She bustled off to the larder.

Kolya took a seat at the table. “You are drawing me already, Miss Howard? You wish that I sit very still?”

“No, not yet. I find that portraits have more life if I do a number of unposed sketches of my subject first. Pray go ahead and eat and when you are done, if you do not object, I should be glad to hear how you come to be in England.”

“Yes, indeed,” seconded Mrs. Howard, looking at him askance as she set a cheese and a dish of cold meat before him. Her suspicion was unabated, though it had no apparent effect on the extent of her hospitality. “I trust you have no objection to explaining what you are doing so far from home, young man.”

Polly laughed. “Really, Mama, no one would guess you were married to a sailor,” she said affectionately. “Do you suppose Papa had to submit to interrogation every time he set foot on a foreign shore?”

“Are you a sailor?” she demanded.

“No,
madame,
but I was a soldier.”

“And the Russians were our allies,” Polly pointed out. “Did you fight Napoleon, Kolya?”

“At Borodino and at Waterloo.”

“At Waterloo?” For the first time, Mrs. Howard looked on him with something approaching approval. “Take more bread, Kolya. Your soup will be ready in a trice.”

As he ate, he wondered just how much to tell the Howards. It was his opportunity to raise himself in Polly’s estimation, yet it seemed likely that they would simply dismiss his story as a tall tale, as unwarrantable boasting. He did not want to figure in her eyes as a braggart.

The beginning of his flight had been dramatic enough, before it dwindled into a struggle for existence. He recalled the warning in the night, the mad dash across the snowy plain in his troika, until the lead horse foundered. Riding bareback he had crossed the Polish frontier just ahead of his pursuers. Though most of Poland had been forcibly incorporated into Russia in 1814, he had friends there more than willing to thwart the tsar by hiding him.

Yes, it would make a good story, if he chose to tell it.

The decision was postponed. He had just finished eating the rich, meaty soup when a mob-capped head appeared around the door. “Carter’s brung the packing cases, madam. Where d’you want ‘em set?”

“There’s the china in the dining room, Ella, and linen upstairs, and all sorts of bits and pieces in the parlour, besides the kitchen goods. Oh, and Miss Polly’s things in the attic. Did he bring the special boxes for her paintings?”

“Yes’m, I asked.” The maid nodded, greying curls bobbing.

“I had best come and direct him myself. Polly, you cannot possibly start on a portrait now. There is far too much to be done.”

“Botheration!” said Miss Howard. “I quite forgot.”

Chapter 2

Kolya set about packing china in straw as efficiently as if he had spent his entire life at it. He knelt on the floor and Polly, admiring his deft motions, passed him plate after plate of her mother’s best Wedgwood from the old Welsh dresser.

“It is kind in you to offer to help,” she said. “You have completely won over Mama.”

“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.”