Polly and the Prince (20 page)

If his brother and Sylvia’s daughters were not there, Ned had no idea where to look next. He started towards the house.

“Nick!” he called. “Annette! Edwina!” He paused. Was that a shout? “Nicholas?”

“Ned!”

A figure appeared at a first-floor window. Ned broke into a run, flailing at the rose branches that caught his clothes and scratched his face. By the time he reached the house, Nick was emerging from a doorless doorway.

“Lord, Ned, I’m devilish glad to see you.” He was filthy, his hands, face, and clothes smeared with black. “Come in, quickly. The girls get frightened if I leave them. That’s why I couldn’t go for help.”

“What’s happened? What are you doing here?” Ned followed his brother into the house.

“Careful on these stairs, they’re shaky. We were playing hide-and-seek, and Winnie decided the best hiding places must be in here. I think she just plain forgot she wasn’t supposed to go near the house. She’s only little.” He stopped at the top of the creaking stairs and barred the way. “This is
where it gets difficult.”

“Where are they?”

“Just around the corner. Winnie went into a room and shut the door, and it’s stuck. I can’t budge it an inch. The trouble is, the floor’s in rotten shape. Annette,” he called, “we’re coming.”

Ned saw that the landing floor was burned through in places, revealing the joists. As Nick stepped cautiously onto it
,
a piece of wood fell clattering to the floor below.

“I suppose Winnie is so light she crossed easily,” Ned observed.

‘Yes, and Annette, too. She’s game as a pebble, such a sensible creature. She’s sitting outside the door talking to Winnie. You have to go around by the wall—it’s stronger there—and watch that you place your feet directly above a joist. If you look at the holes you can see where they run.”

Pressing close to the scorched plaster, Ned followed Nick. Fortunately the floor of the passage beyond the landing was in much better shape, the boards charred but solid. Above, the ceiling was gone, only a crisscrossed litter of timbers separating the intruders from the twilight sky.

Annette was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, her face pale in the gloom. Her tremulous smile, so like her mother’s, made Ned’s heart turn over.

“We shall soon have your sister safe, love,” he said, crouching to put his arm about her thin shoulders with a gentle squeeze. “The best place for you will be under a door lintel, I think. Come and stand over here in this doorway and don’t stir, while Nick and I have a go at that door. Nick, do you know what the floor is like in the
room?”

“Winnie says it’s solid.”

Ned glanced up at the heavy beams lying across the passage and tried not to think what would happen if their efforts dislodged them. Their settling weight must have distorted the walls, jamming the
door. He went over to the door, put his mouth close to it and said, “Winnie, you must go over to the farthest corner. Stay away from the window but keep close against the wall. We’ll have you out of there right away.”

He put his shoulder to the door and heaved. Nothing happened.

“Told you it’s stuck,” Nick said. “We’ll have to charge it. I thought of using a battering ram, but there isn’t enough clearance.”

The passage was about four feet wide. Together the brothers threw themselves across it, hitting the door shoulder-first. It burst open with a crash. Ned, on the latch side, hurtled into the room and sprawled full length. He pushed himself up, and sank back with a groan. His shoulder was on fire, shooting arrows of agony up his neck and down into his ribcage.

Two small feet shod in kid half-boots appeared before his eyes. “Did you hurt yourself, sir?” enquired Winnie in dismay.

The difficult return around the landing was excruciating, and the walk back to Dean House seemed endless. Winnie, tired but otherwise undamaged in body and spirit, rode on Nick’s shoulders. Ned offered Annette his good hand, which she took after asking with touching solicitude if he was sure it would not make the pain worse. He found that it was       bearable as long as he kept up a slow, steady pace, but the slightest independent movement of his arm, hidden beneath his coat in its makeshift sling, brought torture. Not wanting to upset the children, he managed to hold back his groans.

Nick lifted Winnie down to go through the door in the
garden wall. The two girls dashed ahead through the deep dusk towards the welcoming light in the uncurtained windows of Lady Sylvia’s sitting room. When Ned and Nick reached the French doors, they were in their mother’s arms, babbling the tale of their adventure, interrupting each other and both talking at once.

Over their heads, Lady Sylvia saw Ned step into the room. She set her daughters aside and came swiftly to him, her eyes alight with joy and gratitude.

She put her arms around his neck. He fainted.

* * * *

The first voice to penetrate Ned’s consciousness was his mother’s, but the gentle hands that bathed his forehead with lavender water were Sylvia’s. He was about to open his eyes when soft lips touched his cheek, followed by a teardrop, and a soft voice murmured, “Oh, my brave dear.”

Unfortunately, the next voice to make itself heard was Nick’s. “Where’s Polly?”

The only answer was a shocked silence. Ned opened his eyes at last. It was pitch dark now—and Polly
always
came home by nightfall.

Chapter 17

A spark burned Polly’s hand as the last strand parted. She let go. Kolya picked up the remaining foot of the fuse and flung it into a corner. For half a minute they watched it fizzle and sputter, then it went out. Darkness and silence closed in.

She reached out towards him, and suddenly she was in his arms. He held her close. The rough brick beneath her knees vanished and she was conscious only of his warm breath on her cheek, the long leanness of him pressed against her.

“Polly,” he murmured, “Polly,” and his voice shook.

For a moment which seemed endless but was all too short, she clung to him. Then he released her and helped her up.

“The door is this way, I think,” he said matter-of-factly.

“They locked it. I heard them.”

“I too, but I must try.” Holding her hand, he moved cautiously forward. “Come, I do not want to lose you.”

Polly stretched her other hand ahead of her. The absolute absence of light was blacker than she had ever imagined, yet she peered into it
,
straining her eyes to see the invisible. The only sound was the shuffle of their feet, then Kolya stopped.

“Here is the wall. The door must be near.”

She took another step and her fingertips hit wood. “It’s here.” Waving her hand, she found the handle, turned it
.
“And it’s locked.”

“Then here we will stay until we are found. Best we sit down and make as comfortable as we can.”

“Nick will guess where we are.”

“Of course. Do not say my fearless one is afraid?” he teased, pulling her down to sit against the wall, his arm around her waist.

Her hat was in the way, so she pulled it off. “No, but I would be if you were not here. And I would have been before, if there had been time. They were trying to blow up the king!”

“His Majesty’s suite is just above us—his bathroom or his dressing room. At this moment he is probably dressing for the dinner. Was well planned.”

“It was very wicked of them, but I cannot help sympathizing a little. I recognized one of the men yesterday. His business was ruined by the construction. Do you think I ought to give him away?”

“Give him away?”

“Inform against him. Tell that I saw him. No, I cannot! He would probably be hanged. But suppose they try again?”

“I doubt they will, especially if I speak to this man so that he knows he is
discovered.”

“And if I tell you who he is, you will not lay information against him?”

She heard the grin in his voice. “I am not a friend of the authorities. You know why I was exiled from Russia—for rescuing a prisoner from my own emperor.”

“Will you tell me about it? Lady John said a little, but I should like to hear the whole story.”

Kolya’s description of Lord John disguised as an imperial footman made her laugh, and the horrors of the dungeons of the Peter Paul fortress made their own cellar seem almost cosy in comparison. Not quite. By the time his tale was finished, the chill was seeping through her thin summer gown and she began to shiver.

“You are cold!” He moved away from her, withdrawing the one patch of warmth. “You must put on my coat.”

“Then you will be cold.”
“I have the leather riding breeches. Besides, it is the privilege of a gentleman to freeze so that a lady will not. Now, put your arm here.”

In the process of helping her into his coat in the pitch darkness, his hands brushed against her body, feathered across her breasts, settled for a moment on the back of her neck. She was glowing with heat long before he fastened the buttons and put his arm back around her waist.

Of its own accord her head came to rest against his shoulder. In the ringing silence she felt the tension in him, heard his quickened breathing.

If he wanted her, she would give herself to him without a second thought. She knew it without a doubt. How wrong she had been to think her principles were strong enough to withstand her attraction to Kolya! Marriage was not for her, but she would take whatever he offered.

Her hand crept to his chest. It came to rest on the icon he always wore about his neck, under his shirt. He put his own hand over hers, pressed it, sighed, and began to talk about his mother and his sisters.

Gradually she relaxed, and even dozed. When she woke to feel his cheek resting against the top of her head, she kept quite still so as not to disturb him and soon drifted off to sleep again. Then they both woke at the same time and walked cautiously around the edge of the room, Kolya trailing his fingers against the wall, to restore their circulation before settling again.

“It feels as if we have been here for days,” Polly said as they set
out on their third tour of the room. “How long do you think it will take Nick to persuade someone to come and look for us?”

“Ned will be with him,” Kolya reminded her, “and Ned looks too respectable to be ignored.”

“Unlike me in my painting smock,” she had to admit. “If only it weren’t so dark. I’m beginning to imagine I see
things. Things like huge, crusty loaves of bread, fresh from the oven, and yellow rounds of cheese, and dishes of strawberries and cream. You know, I think my next painting will be a still life of food.”

Kolya laughed. “Excellent idea. I will buy. Ah, we are halfway around. Here is the hole in the wall.”

“The niche where we hid? I wonder what it’s doing there. Do you suppose it could be part of their plot—to weaken the walls so they crumble more easily?”

“I believe is beginning of a tunnel. Mr. Nash is to build an underground passage for the king, so that he can go to the stables privately.”

“I heard that he is too heavy to ride. There was an article in the
Times,
it must
have been five years ago, about his difficulty in mounting. Ned told me about it. They had to build a special contraption.”

“What is contraption?”

“This one was a slope, about two feet high, I think, with a platform at the top. They would push Prinny up on a chair with rollers, then the platform was raised by some sort of screw mechanism until it was high enough for a horse to pass under it. Then Prinny was lowered onto the horse and off he went.”

Kolya was shouting with laughter when the door opened. Polly screwed her eyes shut against a flood of light as half a dozen people poured into the room. When she opened them Ned was standing in front of her, dear, respectable Ned with his arm in a sling, smears of what looked very like soot all over his clothes, and a huge grin on his scratched face.

“What’s the joke?” he asked, then fended off her attempted hug with his good arm. “No, don’t touch me, I’ve done something frightful to
my shoulder. You, on the other hand, look to be in fine fettle.”

Nick left the other four men, one a footman and two in military uniform, who were more interested in the barrels of gunpowder than the pair they had rescued.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Jupiter, I knew there was something smoky going on.”

Kolya explained, “Was plot to explode king.”

After their discussion of His Majesty’s excessive girth, Polly suspected that his choice of words was deliberate. His face was innocent, but there was a gleam in his
eye.
Luckily the soldier who now turned towards them didn’t notice.

“We’ll need to know everything you saw and heard, ma’am, sir,” he said grimly.

Suddenly Polly was exhausted. “I want to go home!” she wailed. Ned, looking equally tired,
put his good arm around her.

“Just a few questions,” said the officer in a harassed voice. “Come upstairs and we’ll make you comfortable, ma’am.” He ordered the other soldier to stand guard, then led the way out of the cellars.

They emerged in a part of the Pavilion Polly had not visited. She caught sight of a clock—it was past three in the morning. The officer ushered them, Ned and Nick too, into a small room with a large desk and stacks of papers everywhere.

“Sit down, I shall be with you in a moment,” he said.

He
was turning to leave when Nick said loudly, “Some tea for my sister, sir!”

“Bless you,” said Polly, sinking onto one of the hard chairs as the soldier nodded and shut the door behind him. They heard him issuing commands in the corridor.

He returned in a few minutes with two other men. One he introduced as the
king’s equerry and the second appeared to
be
a secretary, as he wrote down everything Kolya and Polly said. They denied adamantly that they had any idea who had planted the gunpowder, and, following Kolya’s lead, Polly did not mention the plotters’ motive. Nick was equally reticent when the officer turned to him for confirmation of his sister’s story.

There was not a great deal to tell. They were finished by the time a footman brought in tea, wine, and sandwiches. Ned and Nick had also missed their dinner so the interrogation turned into an impromptu picnic, though Polly was too tired
to
do more than nibble.