Polonaise (3 page)

‘I thought so,' said Mrs. Peverel with a kind of gloomy satisfaction. ‘I should have had more sense than to let her run tame with those two young foreigners. But at the time it seemed such a chance to get her a little social polish. And so young as they were; and surrounded by that train of tutors and governesses … She profited by it, too. Look at the languages
she speaks. She's kept at them most faithfully, ever since that summer they were all here. I wonder if she really hoped …'

‘You don't seriously mean to suggest that she set her heart on young Prince Sobieski? Is grieving for him now? I always knew our daughter was a fool, but not such a fool as that, surely? I'll never let another of those damn fool novels of yours into the house!'

‘A bit late in the day for that? I said before that Jenny has great good sense, and I stand to it. If she lost her heart a little to the Prince, I can't entirely blame her. He was one of the most charming boys I ever met. In a careless kind of way.' She thought about it. ‘I think it could just be possible that he said something, casually, and our Jenny took it more seriously than it was meant.'

‘Well, if the little fool's been wearing the willow for him all this time, at least it's over now he's dead. You think that's why she turned down Dick Forester?'

‘The Prince set a high standard.' Mrs. Peverel wisely refrained from mentioning various other young men from whom she had seen her daughter gently edge away almost before they knew themselves that they were approaching her. ‘I know our Jenny's not a beauty, Mr. Peverel, but I sometimes think that if you didn't tell her of her plainness quite so often, she might make more of herself. She has a kind of something, you know …'

‘I'm glad to hear it,' he interrupted her. ‘Because I begin to lose faith in that sense you speak of. Dare I let her go, if she's already made such a fool of herself? Tell me that, Mrs. Peverel.'

‘You have already said she may,' replied his wife. Since his favourite phrase was that his word was his bond, this was unanswerable, and, expecting no reply, she went on, ‘I wish I could remember the Princess Isobel better, but what with her brother and that powerful mother of hers she didn't stand out very much.'

‘She was set to be a raving beauty,' said Mr. Peverel, surprising her. ‘I remember those eyes of hers, dark, set deep … She was a young thing, of course, what – eleven, twelve? Very much in her mother's shadow, but I'd lay you any odds she's a stunner now. Pity to think she's to throw herself away on an old roué twice her age. I wonder if that means the
Sobieski estate's entailed away from her? By what I've heard, Polish ladies can often inherit in their own right, like the Russians, but it might not be so in this case. God knows her fiancé Prince Ovinski's rich enough; owns half Lithuania, I believe.' He gave a firm tug to the bell-rope. ‘I'll have my horse sent round and ride to Petworth right away. Egremont will advise me what to do for the best, but if we can get her there, I think there should be a good enough future for Jenny in such a household. Palace, rather. Odd to think of the chit living in a palace.'

‘Yes.' Her mother swallowed a lump of tears.

Peverel returned late, full of port and good news. ‘Took me a while to get his Lordship alone,' he confided to his wife, who had already retired to bed. ‘Full house as usual: artists, children, dogs – fellow called Turner I never could abide. Open house, mind you. I always enjoy going there.' He dropped his clothes on the floor and reached for his nightshirt. ‘Egremont says she's a lucky young woman.'

‘Jenny?'

‘Who else? Now her mother and brother are dead, Princess Isobel is absolute mistress of the estate at Rendomierz and God knows what else. And won't lose possession when she marries. I always knew those Poles were a set of barbarians. Wife setting herself up independent of her husband! No wonder she's had a bit of trouble finding one.'

‘Has she?'

‘Must be rising twenty. They can't have been exactly flocking forward, can they?'

‘Maybe she's hard to please,' said his wife sleepily.

He snorted with laughter. ‘Can afford to be, God knows. One other thing.' He put the candle on the table at his side of the bed and climbed in. ‘You'll have to say a word or two to Jenny about the husband, Ovinski.'

‘Oh?' She shifted a little away as his heavy bulk settled into the bed.

‘An old rake, as I thought. Nearer sixty than fifty and a sick man, Egremont says. Never married before; wants an heir in his old age; dynastic arrangement; you know the kind of thing.'

‘I don't like it! Mark –' How seldom she called him by his
given name. ‘Let's not let her go.' She reached out a hand to him.

‘Nonsense. Gave my word, didn't I?' He blew out the candle. ‘My word's my bond. Always was, always will be. No need to fret yourself about the chit. Plain as a pikestaff; probably why the Princess wants her. Lots of prettier girls in Rendomierz.' Enflamed by the idea of them, he rolled over and caught her in the hot, familiar grip.

‘It's all settled,' he announced at the breakfast table, to which the two women had come heavy-eyed from lack of sleep. ‘You're in luck, miss. Egremont knows of a very good sort of merchant, a Mr. Richards, who is taking the chance of the peace to get his family out to Petersburg by the land route. Wife can't face the Baltic. So they are going by sea as far as Hamburg, and then overland by Berlin and Warsaw. Egremont had heard from the Princess too,' he explained belatedly. ‘Wasn't a bit surprised to see me. She'd written to him, old friend of her mother's, asking his help in a host of commissions for the wedding. It's going to be quite an affair. She mentioned you, Jenny.' His surprise was obvious. ‘She really wants you, seems like. You'd better bustle about, girl. The Richards leave in two weeks. Can't waste a moment if they are to get to Petersburg before winter sets in; Mrs. Richards don't stand the cold any better than she does the sea. Going to have a hard time in Petersburg, I fancy. Egremont's written Richards telling him you'll join them in town Monday week.'

‘So soon!' exclaimed Mrs. Peverel. ‘It can't be done!'

‘Has to be. You can have the horses tomorrow; go into Chichester; buy what you must. Little as possible. You should be there well before the cold sets in. Didn't the Princess say something about that?'

‘Yes.' Jenny had the amazing letter almost by heart. ‘She gets her wadded clothes for the winter from Vienna, she says. It will be her pleasure to outfit me. Imagine Isobel so rich, so sure of what she wants! Do you remember, mama, what a little bit of a thing she was when they were at Petworth? She couldn't keep up with Casimir and me; we used to run ahead and hide from her in the pleasure gardens and she'd come calling after
us: “Wait for me! Wait for me!” It's good of her to remember me so kindly. I wonder what she is like now.'

‘A great beauty, they say,' her father told her, ‘but of course so rich as she is, she might well be called that. Well, I'm glad she promises to rig you out for the winter, Jenny, because the expense of your journey is going to be quite bad enough, without spending a mint of money on clothes for it.'

‘You shall have my fur pelisse,' said Mrs. Peverel, making the supreme sacrifice.

‘Oh, mama!' Jenny recognised it as such. But a messenger, bearing gifts from Petworth House, made the sacrifice unnecessary.

‘It's from Mrs. Wyndham!' Jenny stroked the smooth fur of the pelisse. ‘How good of her!'

‘Lady Egremont, you should say.' Her father corrected her. ‘The word is that they've hardly spoken since he married her two years ago. Pity, after all those years together, and all those children.' And then, aware of a fulminating look from his wife, ‘Come now, ma'am, if the chit is going on her travels she must learn to call a spade a spade; a mistress a mistress. You'll mind your behaviour, girl, in this Polish palace you're going to, and remember you're my daughter, an English clergyman's daughter.'

‘Yes, papa.'

‘This Prince Ovinski, now, that the Princess is marrying. Egremont told me a thing or two about him. You'll take care not to be alone with him in any dark Polish grottoes. An old goat! Caught the Empress Catherine's fancy back in the seventies, after the first partition. Took over from Stanislas Augustus for all I know.'

‘Stanislas Augustus? You don't mean the last King of Poland?' Now he really had shocked her.

‘You didn't know that was how he got the Polish throne? One of Catherine's cast-offs. Just remember that when they tell you what a great romantic figure he was. Probably a cousin of Princess Isobel's, come to that. They do all seem to be related. So don't go blabbing about any of this to her. Or to anyone else!'

‘No, papa. Is he really so old? Prince Ovinski?'

‘Sixty if he's a day. But rich as Croesus and belongs to one
of the first families of Poland. I expect the Princess knows what she's doing. But I can see how she may feel the need of some other companionship than that of her husband. I just hope she doesn't find you a bore. Which she most certainly will if you make great shocked eyes at her like that!' He retired to his study to choose himself a sermon from Blair's invaluable five volumes.

Left alone, mother and daughter sat for a moment in silence, Jenny still lovingly stroking the fur. ‘May I really accept it, mama?'

‘Oh, yes, I think you should, my dear, and write a pretty thank you.'

Applied to by their mother, her two married sisters also searched their wardrobes for outmoded garments that might be of use to their sister in launching herself into the world, and since Jenny was adept with her needle and had a good eye for what suited her, she had soon assembled what seemed to her a more than adequate trunkful of clothes. It was merely a matter of removing frills from Araminta's dresses, and blonde from Bella's, and letting them out a little at the seams to allow for the sturdy build that Prince Casimir had once called classic proportions …

That was no way to be thinking. Casimir was dead. Dead in a duel against one of the Russians he had talked of with such hatred. And Isobel was about to marry an old man of sixty who had been the Russian Empress Catherine's lover. It made no sense. No sense at all. Isobel had adored her brother. It was when she recognised that Jenny adored him too that she had dropped that curious prickly reserve of hers, and made friends. And now she was marrying a Russian. No, not a Russian. A Russian-loving Pole. Surely worse? More despicable? They had played a game that summer the Sobieskis stayed at Petworth House. One of them would be the King of Poland. Jenny had found his name hard to pronounce then, Stanislas Augustus; she knew it well enough now. The one who played him – often Isobel, because it was the smallest part – would stand in the little Greek temple in the pleasure gardens and look down towards the London road, now in their game the Vistula, shading her eyes, watching the Russian soldiers massacre the innocent citizens of Praga. The less
popular of the children staying at Petworth House played the Russians and all the rest were Poles. ‘Where are my gallant Poles? Where is Kosciusko?' Isobel was supposed to cry, and then all the rest of the children would fall upon the ‘Russians' and drive them out of the gardens, sometimes right down into the fields beside the London road. Casimir had thought of the game, and it was he who finally put an end to it by losing his temper and nearly strangling a visiting English boy. Later that day, deep in disgrace, he had caught Jenny for a moment on the nursery stairs. ‘My mother says we must leave tomorrow, but I shall come back. You'll wait for me?'

Had she really been waiting? Not knowingly, she thought, unpicking the stitches of some blonde trimming. And she smiled to herself, remembering Dick Forester's proposal, his absolute certainty that she was his for the asking and angry amazement when she refused him. A dangerously good listener, she had been more careful after that, choosing just the moment for a small question or quiet comment hinting a flaw in the male argument. It had worked like a charm. Too well? But now: Isobel certainly wanted her. With her mother and brother both dead, she wrote, she had no close relatives left, since one whole family of cousins had died in the massacre at Praga. No wonder Casimir had struck the Russian officer who made a joke about that day. ‘You're the nearest I have to a sister,' Isobel had written. ‘Come to me and we will mourn him together.' Of course she was going.

Travelling to London by the night mail, with some discomfort and considerable saving, she reached Mr. Richards' brother's house in Holborn very early, since the mail coach got to London at six in the morning, and found only Mr. Richards himself up to greet her. He was younger than she had expected: a stocky, fresh-faced man, maybe in his thirties, and looking anxious.

‘Miss Peverel? Delighted! Can't tell you how glad. You must let me –' He took over the business of paying the boy who had brought her trunk from the General Post Office, and she could only be grateful. She had never travelled alone before and had fretted over the problem of tipping the boy. ‘No, no.' Richards refused her timid offer of repayment. ‘More than delighted.
Company for Maria. She's not quite the thing this morning; you'll cheer her up, I'm sure of it. A seasoned traveller like you; all the way from Petworth by yourself! Now: breakfast. Kidneys, perhaps a chop, a little bacon? Maria's having her chocolate in bed; not at her strongest first thing, poor girl. We start in half an hour.' An anxious glance at his watch. ‘Easy stages: Ipswich tonight; Yarmouth tomorrow; packet leaves tomorrow night; mustn't miss that.' He watched with satisfaction as Jenny dealt with her loaded plate. ‘Pleasure to see you eat, Miss Peverel. Keep your strength up! Poor Maria! Homesick, of course. Never left her mother before; sad business yesterday; feel better once we're on our way. Of course she will.'