Polly and the Prince (25 page)

“Your Grace, my lady.” Impatiently he bowed over their hands. “Danville, where is Miss Howard?”

“The silly chit did not turn up when we were ready to leave, Prince,” the duchess said crossly. “Neither Boggs nor Davis could find her and we could not wait.”

“Sorry, Volkov,” said Lord Danville, “but no one had any idea where she had gone.” Another group moved up behind them. “We’ll have to go in now. Do you go with us?”

Kolya was ready to wager he could guess, if not where Polly was, then what she was doing. No doubt she would turn up, breathless, in a hackney in a few minutes. How he would tease her!

“No, I shall wait here,” he said.

Lady Danville laid her hand on his arm. “I do hope she comes in time,” she said earnestly.

The three went on into the Abbey. The stream of guests and dignitaries continued to flow past him in swirls and eddies, now and then casting up someone he knew to exchange a few words. The flood began to slacken. One of the guards came up to him.

“We’ll have to close the doors soon, sir. Make sure everyone’s settled before the procession arrives.”

Kolya nodded. She was not coming. His only reason for attending the coronation was to enjoy her pleasure in the colourful pageantry. The king would never notice his absence. He remembered how he had defied protocol in St Petersburg to take Rebecca Ivanovna home early from the tsar’s midsummer fête—there was far less cause to dread King George’s wrath.

He waited until the great doors swung shut, then pushed his way through the crowd and found a hackney to take him to Stafford House.

It was several minutes before anyone answered the door bell. A footman in the green-and-red livery which reminded him of his Preobrazhensky uniform opened the door and said firmly, “No one’s home, sir. They’s all gone to the crownation.”

“Miss Howard is not here? She did not come to Westminster Abbey.”

“I don’t know, I’m sure, sir. I’ll ‘afta ask Mr. Boggs.”

Waiting in the grand circular vestibule with its pink marble floor and pillars flanking each doorway, Kolya paced impatiently. Then he caught sight of a familiar object on a side table. Polly’s sketch book. He picked it up and flipped through it. Page after page of celebrating Londoners met his eye—he was right, she had been drawing and had forgotten the time. But she must have come back to the house to leave this. Where on earth had she gone?

Mr. Boggs hurried in, buttoning his coat, followed by Mrs. Davis straightening her cap.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said the butler, “we was just putting our feet up, as you might say, with everyone gone. You’re looking for Miss Howard? I’d know if miss came in, sir.”

“She’s not here,” the housekeeper confirmed. “Will I send for the maid who helped her this morning, sir? Could be she said something.”

The maid was sent for. “Miss told me she wanted to draw pitchers of the crownation, sir, if they’d let her,” she said. “She promised to show ‘em to me. Fine as fi’pence she were in her pretty new frock. For sure she was meaning to go to the cathedral.”

Kolya laughed. “Expect she went to cathedral,” he said. He could imagine her, rushed and flustered, the word “cathedral” uppermost in her mind after the maid’s morning chatter. That was what she would have told the jarvey, and in the unfamiliar city she would not have realised she was going the wrong way.

Enlightenment hit Mr. Boggs. “You mean St Paul’s, sir!”

“Is other cathedral in London?”

“No, sir, that’s it.”

“Then to St Paul’s I go.” He gave the confused maid a shilling.

The butler himself condescended to summon a hackney, a feat he somehow accomplished simply by raising his chin at it. “I’m sure I hope you find miss safe and sound, sir,” he said as he ushered Kolya into the vehicle and closed the door. “A right pleasant-spoken young lady, if I may be so bold.”

Any hackney favoured by Mr. Boggs was bound to be above average, and this one set off at a fair clip. Kolya had no idea how far behind Polly he was. Even if he had guessed right, there was no reason to suppose she would still be at St Paul’s when he arrived. If only she had taken her sketch book with her, he could have been certain to find her there. Despite her disappointment at missing the coronation, nothing would have stopped her drawing the great cathedral, he thought with a smile.

The hackney slowed as they started up Ludgate Hill. Kolya could not bear sitting still any longer. He paid the driver and strode along the quiet street, all business halted for the celebrations, towards the dome looming over the surrounding buildings.

As he approached Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece, he paused a moment to admire its splendid simplicity, so different from the ornately Gothic Westminster Abbey. Almost he wished he had brought Polly’s painting equipment for her, so that she could sit right down and start on a picture. He grinned—no, this was no time for painting. If she was here, he had other things in mind for her.

Entering the church, he crossed himself in the Russian fashion and looked around the vast, hushed space. No sign of Polly, or anyone but an old man sitting in a pew nearby, who stood up creakily and came towards him.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I look for a young lady.”

The verger frowned in suspicion. “This is no place to be looking for the ladies, young man.”

“My sister,” Kolya improvised. “She is needed at home. Is fair, with dark blue eyes.” He wished he had thought to ask the maid the colour of the new gown.

“Could be her up in the Whispering Gallery,” the old man admitted grudgingly. “I’ll show you the stairs, but just you remember this is a house of God. There’s to be no funny business, mind.”

“What is Whispering Gallery?” Kolya asked, intrigued, as he walked beside the verger down the aisle.

The question earned him another suspicious look, but an explanation followed. “A whisper against the wall can be heard right around the other side. Here, you go up here.”

And there she was, not twenty yards from him, sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, her knees clasped in her arms. Even at that distance he could tell that her gaze was fixed on an interior vision—she was planning a picture.

He leaned close to the wall. “Polly,” he whispered. She started, looked around in bewilderment, then saw him striding towards her. Her eyes filled and a forlorn tear trickled down her cheek.

He had never seen her cry. He broke into a run and a moment later was seated beside her, pulling her into his arms. “Polly,
lyubimaya moya
, do not weep.”

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped. “I made you miss the coronation. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid.”

“I do not care for coronation.” He held her a little away so that she could see his teasing smile. “Was not stupidity,
dushenka.
I know just how happened.” He told her his deductions.

“Yes, it was just like that. But how could you guess?”

He took out a handkerchief and dried her eyes before pulling her close again. “Was easy. I know my Polly. You will marry me,
dushenka?”

She stiffened. “I don’t want to be a wife, I want to be a painter,” she said in a small uncertain voice, but she did not try to escape his embrace.

“Is possible to be both,” he said, with a soft laugh. “I promise I will never let anything interfere with your work,
golubushka.
Except that I hope you will not insist on painting in bed.”

Though she blushed, she looked up with a twinkle in her eyes and said, “I only sketch in bed,” then buried her red cheeks in his shoulder when he laughed again. “What does
golubushka
mean, Kolya?”

“My little dove,” he said tenderly. “
Dushenka
, my soul.
Lyubimaya
, my beloved. But this is not time for Russian lesson. You will marry me?”

“Oh yes. And I will try to be a good wife and…and mother, but you must not mind if I am sometimes absentminded. Besides,” she added, sitting up straighter, “we shall need the money I earn. Perhaps I should paint more portraits. I prefer landscapes but portraits pay better.”

“You will paint just what you want, my practical Polly. I have news. My father has sold an estate of three thousand serfs and sent me the money. Already I have made offer on estate next to Westcombe. You will like to live there?”

“Oh Kolya!” She threw her arms around his neck. “Is it true? Right next to Ned and Sylvia? I cannot imagine anything better.”

“I show you something better.” Even if they were in a church, he could no longer resist kissing her. Her lips were sweet, her body soft and yielding in his arms, and the way she clung to him promised a passion equal to his own.

“Ahem!”

The verger stood at the top of the steps, glowering at them. With one accord they jumped to their feet. Kolya smoothed his hair and Polly her skirts and they moved forward to lean on the balustrade. The verger stumped around the far side of the gallery, casting black looks at them as he went.

The sun’s rays poured into the building until the great dome above them seemed to float in a sea of light. A familiar, faraway look entered Polly’s eyes.

“Do you think they would let me paint in here?”

“I will arrange,” Kolya promised recklessly. “All is possible.”

“Thank you, dearest.” Tearing her gaze away from the architectural glories and transferring it to the long, lean, lithe length of him at her side, she touched his cheek. “I have always considered it most unfair,” she mused, “that male artists are allowed, indeed expected, to draw female nudes from life. I don’t suppose...”

“This too I will arrange,” he said grinning and, to the verger’s horrified disgust, he caught her to him and kissed her again.

To my mother, Margaret Brauer,

who did so much research for me

and who was my most loyal fan

Copyright ©1991 by Carola Dunn

Originally published by Walker

Electronically published in 2003 by Belgrave House

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.