Polonaise Read online

  Daily messengers arrived now from the bridegroom, each one bringing a more impressive gift: one perfect pearl, a thoroughbred Arab mare, a set of sables… Prince Ovinski was not far behind. Brass and silver in the ornate little baroque church had been polished and polished again; peasants from miles around were camping in the pleasure gardens, waiting to see their Princess married. She moved always surrounded by a loving crowd. Watching her, Glynde felt his right hand raking through his hair, that old nervous gesture his Aunt Maud had worked so hard to cure. And at night, sleep would not come, or if it did, brought passionate, frustrating dreams.

  Jan was restless, too. ‘I hate to stay and watch it,’ he said, as the two of them returned from an intentionally exhausting ride in the forest. ‘To see her throw herself away like this. What do you say? Shall we cut and run for Warsaw?’

  It was enormously tempting. But suppose she were planning to send for him just once more? On her last night of freedom perhaps? Besides: ‘How could we? It would be the most appalling affront. And specially from you, her cousin.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. And, who knows, when she sees the man, she may change her mind. And if she did, would need all our support.’

  ‘Yours perhaps, as a member of the family,’ said Glynde bitterly. But how could he even think of leaving, his commission for Canning so totally unfulfilled? Fathoms deep in love with the Princess, he had put off, every night until the next one, the questions he should have been asking her. He was paying for it now. Talk among the wedding guests who thronged the salons was curiously superficial; no information to be gathered there. Family news was enthusiastically exchanged, down to the last marriage of the remotest cousin. When the ladies rose and left the gentlemen after dinner, hunting stories, not politics, were the rule, with an occasional reference to a campaign of long ago, but even this was obviously dangerous ground.

  ‘Is it us they don’t trust, or each other?’ he asked Jan now, reining in his horse at the bottom of the pleasure gardens, before they reached the noisy bustle of the stables.

  ‘A bit of both, don’t you think?’ Jan knew what he meant. ‘When you come right down to it, after all, it’s a police state, isn’t it? Even here, under all the luxury, you feel it. And there are Austrians here for the wedding, don’t forget. Not to mention Russians and even a Prussian or two. It’s amazing how the family web is woven across Europe. Don’t you find it so? Or is it the same in England?’

  ‘Not quite to such an extent. We have political differences within families, of course. I’m a Tory, for instance, my older brother is a Whig, we’re as unlike as chalk and cheese, but we’re not at daggers drawn about it. And we can talk politics when we do meet. If we want to. But then, we aren’t a police state.’

  ‘We’re lucky,’ said Jan. ‘I didn’t realise … Sometimes I think I’ll be glad to get home.’

  ‘You’ll go when the wedding’s over?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Slowly. ‘I’ve thought about it a great deal. I don’t suppose I’ll ever come to Europe again. My father’s a young man still, but he plans for me to begin to take some of the load of business off his hands when I get back. And once I’ve started … I had my first letter from him the other day. He suggests I go on to Russia before I leave; seems to think that with this new Tsar Alexander there may be a chance of business openings for us there.’

  Entering the stable yard by a side gate they found it in an even greater commotion than usual. A cortège of carriages and waggons was filing in from the front of the house, while an escort of Cossacks shouted angrily for attention. They exchanged glances. ‘He’s come,’ said Glynde.

  ‘Yes.’ Jan seemed to square his shoulders. ‘Too late to cut and run. I rather wish I had, now, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, thank goodness!’ A woman’s head appeared at the window of what they had thought an empty coach, and a shabby one at that. ‘You speak English! Would you be so good as to interpret for me? My Polish maid has been in strong hysterics all morning, and nobody seems to understand my German. Or they pretend not to! Well, of course, with the Prince’s arrival.’ Bright eyes under an unbecoming bonnet surveyed the usually immaculate stable yard, which was now littered with filthy straw and horse droppings as the newcomers vied for the attention of harassed grooms. ‘I hate to seem missish, but this is hardly the place for a lady to alight.’

  ‘You came in the Prince’s train?’ Glynde was trying vainly to place her.

  ‘Much against my will. He overtook us and swallowed us whole. Are you acquainted with the Prince Ovinski?’

  ‘I have not had that pleasure.’

  ‘He gets his own way. Oh, Olga,’ she turned to her companion, and to German, ‘do stop that crying. We’re here now; it’s all over; the Cossacks didn’t rape you; all we have to do is find some way of getting to the house without absolutely filthying ourselves, and I am sure these gentlemen will take care of that. I’m so glad to meet two Englishmen!’ She smiled at them impartially, the plain face transformed. ‘I’m Jenny Peverel, come to stay with the Princess.’

  ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Peverel.’ Glynde smiled back at her. ‘Glynde Rendel, at your service. My friend here, Jan Warrington, is American.’ But Jan had moved forward to speak rapid Polish to the coachman. Returning, he greeted her apologetically. ‘I’m afraid the man says it will be some time before he can get you back through this mêlée to the house door. I cannot imagine how he came to be so stupid.’

  ‘I can,’ said Jenny Peverel. ‘The Prince’s orders. He would not want to make his state arrival with two draggle-tailed females in tow.’ She said it entirely without malice and Glynde found himself thinking the Princess was going to be lucky in her companion. ‘There it is then,’ she went on, confirming his good opinion. ‘If you would be so good as to tell the man to do the best he can for us, we’ll just resign ourselves to the wait.’ She turned and explained the situation to her snivelling companion. ‘But don’t let us keep you two gentlemen. I’ve a very interesting book to read. Clarissa Harlowe, it will last me out nicely.’

  ‘It most certainly will, all seven volumes,’ Glynde smiled with her. ‘But we can’t abandon you to your fate here.’ A Cossack, sidling his horse nearer to peer in at the far window of the coach, helped to make his point for him. ‘Ah.’ He saw the groom who looked after their horses. ‘Tell him to stable them for us, Jan?’ And then: ‘If you ladies would allow us to carry you in?’

  ‘Sir Walter Raleigh himself.’ Drily. ‘But I’m afraid we’re not exactly a couple of sylphs.’

  ‘We’re stronger than we look.’ He opened the carriage door and gathered her up, a compact bundle inside the broadcloth riding habit, firm, and resilient and smelling curiously like his mother. She was laughing, listening to Jan expostulating with Olga in Polish. As she leaned forward in his arms to add her persuasions to his, her bonnet fell off into the filthy straw, revealing a tumble of unruly curls. ‘Oh, what a relief,’ she said, ‘I cannot begin to tell you how I have come to hate that bonnet! Olga, do stop screeching and let the gentlemen pick you up. We really cannot stay in this shambles for ever. We’re causing a bit of a stir!’

  They were indeed the centre of amused attention by now, the Cossacks crowding round, on horseback and on foot, with what were obviously fairly ribald comments.

  Glynde said something short, sharp and unintelligible. The comments ceased; a lane opened. ‘Well, you are a dark horse,’ said Jenny as he strode towards the house, carrying her as if she weighed nothing. ‘Russian! And the kind of Russian they understand.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the Russian of the camp and the knout.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d better ask you what they were saying.’

  He laughed shortly. ‘I most certainly won’t tell you, but I’m afraid you’re probably guessing quite right.’ Odd to find himself liking her so much and yet to be so fiercely aware of how totally she was not the Princess. After the long starvation, the desperate nights of waiting, it was m
addening, almost horrible to hold this strange woman in his arms.

  Get it over with. He lengthened his stride, tightening his grip on her as he pushed through a crowd of grooms.

  ‘Gently!’ She spoke as she might have to a jibbing horse. ‘You’re hurting me a little, Mr. Rendel.’

  ‘I am so sorry!’ Had the Princess ever made him blush? He certainly was now. ‘Here is terra firma for you at last.’ And then, apologising, ‘Dry land, I mean.’

  ‘Solid ground, perhaps? I’m not entirely without education, Mr. Rendel, even if I have been compelled to seek my fortune miles from home, here in Poland.’

  ‘A female Quixote?’ He smiled for the first time and her heart gave a little jump. ‘Well now, we must think what’s best for you to do. Shall we hand you over to one of the Princess’s retainers, or would you wish to greet her at once? She is doubtless still in the main salon, with Prince Ovinski.’

  ‘Then let’s go there.’ She ran a hand through shaggy curls. ‘I never shirk my fences, Mr. Rendel.’

  But when they reached the main entrance hall, they found that the Princess had chosen to meet this honoured guest almost at her front door. She was standing at the foot of the grand stairway, dressed in her favourite plain white, looking up at the tall man who held her hand in both of his. Entering from the rear of the hall, it was his face Glynde could see, and it surprised him. This was not at all the old fop he had expected. Keen eyes under heavy, greying brows had left the Princess for the moment to focus on the little stir their entry had caused.

  ‘So!’ He released the Princess’s hand with what struck Glynde as an odiously proprietorial pressure. ‘Here are my lost sheep, and in good hands.’ By what magnetism did he make the crowd of his retainers and hers melt away so that a clear passage opened for the four of them? He had said nothing, done nothing, but the way was clear and Glynde, aware of Ovinski’s careless elegance as he led Jenny Peverel forward, was angrily conscious of his own dusty riding breeches, his cravat undoubtedly dishevelled from carrying her. This was not at all how he had intended to meet the Princess’s future husband.

  ‘A thousand apologies, Miss Peverel,’ the Prince held out a friendly hand to Jenny. ‘A most unfortunate misunderstanding. But let me make you known to our hostess. This is Miss Peverel, my dear, whose company has so much brightened the last days of my journey.’ His French was impeccable, and the courtesy title he gave his future wife equally so, Glynde thought, respecting him, and angry at having to do so.

  Jenny was smiling and curtseying, apparently quite unaware of tousled curls and crumpled skirts, but the Princess moved forward to prevent her. ‘We are to be friends.’ Much the taller, she leaned down to kiss her, formally, first on one cheek then on the other. ‘I remember you so well! When Casimir would not wait for me, you used to make him. I was a poor little shrimp of a younger sister then,’ she turned back to the Prince. ‘Casimir was always impatient!’ Were her eyes clouded with tears? Jenny’s certainly were. ‘I’ve made you cry, the last thing I wanted.’ And, giving her time to recover, she turned to introduce Glynde and Jan to the Prince,

  ‘Your two cavaliers. I must thank you, gentlemen, for keeping my bride company while I made my elderly way to her.’ His keen glance moved from one of them to the other, friendly, dismissive. ‘If I had known, would I have come faster?’ He shared the question with them all, without expecting an answer. ‘No. Age must have its privileges.’ He had got the Princess’s hand back, now bent to kiss it. ‘You were that same little shrimp of a younger sister when we last met. I remember it well! You kicked me on the shins because you thought I was treating Casimir with insufficient respect. Of course, even then, I was old in your eyes. I have grown no younger, Princess, but I hope I have grown just a little wiser. Not much! When they told me you were beautiful, I am afraid I did not believe them. I had my picture, you see, of that little minx of a younger sister.’

  ‘If you had known, you would have come faster?’ It was almost a challenge, as she moved up on to the first step of the stairway, so as to be able to look him in the eyes.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘More slowly.’

  Prince Ovinski’s party had overtaken Jenny and Olga the second day after they had left the Brotherhood’s hunting lodge, just when Jenny had begun to wonder whether the little of her own money they had left her would in fact be enough for the rest of their journey, overcharged as the two of them, women travelling alone, inevitably were. There had been some moments of pure terror when the Prince’s cortège caught up with them, but after that she had travelled in great comfort as his companion, to allieviate, he said, his boredom. She had enjoyed it all, developing a taste for caviar and vodka and learning a great deal about European politics from the Prince. She had not been in the least surprised when on the last night of the journey he had toasted her in champagne and told her she must travel in her own coach the next day; but she had not reckoned on finding herself marooned in the stable yard at Rendomierz.

  It had meant a dramatic introduction to Glynde Rendel. She felt his strong arms round her still. It had felt like being carried by an explosion, a charge of dynamite. He was not nearly so handsome as his tall companion, this man of mystery on whom she must report, but being touched by him had felt like being touched by lightning. She would send the Brotherhood the reports they demanded, but there would be nothing in them to harm Glynde Rendel. And that would be easy enough. Only minutes after that first overwhelming encounter, she had seen him with the Princess, seen that he saw no one, thought of nothing but her. No need to look farther for his reason for staying on at Rendomierz, though now the Prince had come he would probably soon leave. Which would end her usefulness to the Brotherhood, and begin her struggle to forget him.

  Chapter 7

  The wedding took place next day in a blaze of candelabra and a cloud of incense. The bride was a hieratic figure: her plain white abandoned for cloth of silver, her hands full of white roses, her veil anchored by a diamond tiara. When the service was over at last and the couple turned to face the packed congregation it gave a sigh of pure awe, acknowledging a Queen, the future mother of Kings.

  Glynde’s hands gripped each other as he stood. There had actually been a moment when he had been tempted to rise from his place at the back of the church and interrupt the service. To forbid the banns. Could it have been the quiet presence of Jenny Peverel between him and Jan Warrington that had put this out of the question? Something matter-of-fact about her made such a melodramatic action impossible.

  The celebrations seemed to go on for ever. Palace and gardens were open to the world; wine flowed from the fountains; peasants from miles around drank the couple’s health, ate more food than they had seen for years, and fell asleep in the pleasure gardens. Very much the same kind of thing was going on in the palace, with servants always ready to remove the guests who succumbed to wine, food or emotion. And through it all moved the Prince and Princess, cool, composed, hand in hand, always ready with a friendly word, an instant recognition, an introduction if the guest was known to one of them only.

  Musicians had come from all over the country and Monsieur Poiret had organised them, so that as one passed from room to room, the music of one group gave gradual way to that of the next. Late on that first day, the Prince and Princess led off a stately polonaise from the great salon. As their guests fell in, two by two behind them, Glynde saw Jenny Peverel standing in a corner of the room, white with fatigue, plainer than ever, and felt a quick qualm of conscience. In his own misery, he had forgotten all about her, a stranger, just arrived, and the kind of person inevitably neglected by servants. He moved through the crowd to join her. ‘A long day.’

  ‘Yes.’ Even the monosyllable cost her an effort.

  ‘What have you had to eat?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Not much … Everyone’s been so busy …’

  ‘Come along.’ He took her arm. ‘There’s a buffet in the music room. What would you like?’

  ‘I could eat
a horse,’ she told him. ‘But if there should chance to be vodka and caviar? Only –’ she held back for a moment ‘– should we not be joining in this odd dance the Prince and Princess are leading?’

  ‘The polonaise? Don’t fret; it will go on for hours. It always does. The dullest dance in Europe. But the music is different tonight.’ They had reached the music room, where Poiret himself was conducting a string quartet.

  ‘Yes.’ She was silent, listening, as he pulled up a gilt-backed chair for her. ‘I know it! It’s variations on something called Dombrowski’s March. A kind of national song. How very bold, Mr. Rendel.’

  ‘Making a point of a kind.’ He tried to make it sound light; was not sure that he had succeeded. ‘Sit there, Miss Peverel, rest, listen to this brave music, while I find you your vodka and caviar.’

  Returning with a flunkey bearing a tray loaded with food and drink, he found that she had been joined by Jan Warrington, rather flushed of face and slow of speech, and was making him tell her about life at Rendomierz. Had he really meant to drink himself insensible? Instead he ended the evening demurely leading Jenny Peverel through the long, dull, graceful routine of the polonaise. ‘It’s as good a way as any of learning your way round the palace,’ he told her, leaving her at last at the entrance to the private apartments where she was lodged. ‘Goodnight, Miss Peverel, and thank you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled, and left him.

  Back in the little house, he found Jan snoring like a pig in a chair in the main room, tried and failed to rouse him and left him to sleep it off where he was.

  * * *

  ‘It’s a while since we came.’ Olga had brought Jenny a pile of freshly laundered linen. ‘They’ll be expecting a report.’

  ‘Then they’ll have to wait for it,’ Jenny told her. ‘Absurd to expect me to make any sense of things here while the festivities are still raging. If anyone should approach you, tell them I’ve hardly had a chance to speak to Mr. Rendel.’