Polly and the Prince (9 page)

“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 sure 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.

“I think I can manage them,” Kolya said gravely.

Polly and Nick did not keep them waiting long. The little girl was swathed in a blue woollen shawl with a white garment under it that looked suspiciously like a pillow bere with holes cut for head and arms. Her curls were neatly combed. She still clung to Nick, who was still in his damp and dirty shirt and breeches.

“Susie starts crying if I leave her,” he explained.

“I was going to go with you, to hold her,” Polly said, “but I believe Nick will have to go.”

“I meant to anyway. I found her, so I ought to make sure she gets home safely.”

“You are a dear, Nick.” Polly kissed his cheek.

Kolya saw both Mr. Bevan and Lord Fitzsimmons brighten as they realised that she would be staying with them.

He had not the slightest difficulty in driving Mr. Bevan’s bays. Once he was sure of that, he turned his attention to his companion, whose face was gloomy above the child he held in his lap.