Polonaise (11 page)

‘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.

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.'

‘They already have. And you spent the whole wedding evening with him.'

‘Dancing the polonaise! Who told you?'

‘I'm not to say. But to remind you of what they threatened.'

Jenny shivered and let Olga see that she did so. She was frightened, wanted the girl to think her terrified. ‘Tell them they must give me time,' she said. ‘Tell them Mr. Rendel is so deep in love with the Princess that I am having trouble getting him even to notice me. If you know we danced the polonaise together on her wedding night you doubtless also know just how little we talked.' Terrifying to think that the palace must be full of spies. ‘It will be easier when more of the guests have left,' she went on. She had hoped and feared that Glynde Rendel himself would be one of the first to leave, but neither he nor Jan Warrington showed any sign of doing so, though both of them looked quite absolutely wretched, and tended to follow the Princess with their eyes when they thought no one was noticing.

She herself felt entirely useless, a most unusual and unhappy state of affairs. At home she had never had a moment to call her own; here time hung endless on her hands. The Princess must honestly have thought she would need her, and she had been most happily proved wrong. If the Prince had found his wife unexpectedly beautiful, she had obviously found him immensely good company. Always together, they talked as if they were catching up on a lifetime of separate experience, which was now to be shared. No wonder Glynde Rendel and Jan Warrington looked so miserable. But there was also no chance of speaking to the Princess without a strong risk of being overheard. She should be grateful for the unconscious warning conveyed by Olga's message. She must speak alone, or not at all. Any of the servants, any of the guests could be a spy for the Brotherhood, or even a member. Sometimes, listening to a group of men talking, she wondered if she recognised a voice,
but what chance was there, granted the muffling hoods the group had worn?

And although she was both angry and frightened by the Brotherhood's threats, she did not at all wish to betray them to the Austrians. Even here, in the luxury of Rendomierz, there were constant reminders of the enslaved state of Poland. Remembering how freely political talk had flowed in Petworth House, where Whig and Tory threw facts and figures like debating points across the dinner table, she found the contrast here wretched indeed. She said so to Glynde Rendel one morning, when she had strolled out for a breath of autumn sunshine before breakfast, and met him on his way to the palace from the guest-houses. Had she hoped to do so? She was afraid she had, and not for the Brotherhood's sake.

‘Yes, the talk's dull as ditch-water.' He smiled, and her heart jumped. ‘But can you blame them? I was warned in Vienna that every third man in Warsaw is a spy and I suppose the same must be true here.'

‘Every third man? Yes, that would figure: one Prussian, one Russian and one Austrian.' She was pleased with her note of cool interest.

He laughed. ‘On the nail, Miss Peverel, but don't you think probably a Frenchman and an Englishman as well? Or at least, people in their pay. I hope you are a little careful in those long letters I see you writing to your family. I've been wanting a chance to say this. I should think letters from here are bound to be open to some kind of censorship.'

‘Thank you! Yes, I do confine myself rather to generalities. It makes for sadly dull letters.' Here was a chance, if she could trust him, to tell Glynde Rendel that she was in fact supposed to be spying on him. But could she trust him? His devotion to the Princess was all too obvious, but what had that to do with his reasons for being in Rendomierz? The fact that he had stayed on after the marriage he had obviously found so painful did seem to suggest some hidden reason, though she found it hard to believe it as sinister as the Brotherhood had suggested. She took his proffered arm, angry as always at what his touch did to her.

‘Homesick, Miss Peverel?' What had he sensed?

‘A little.' She seized on it. ‘Thinking of England certainly.' It was true. She longed for the simple duties of her English life. To be needed; to be useful. To be away from Glynde Rendel? But here came Jan Warrington hurrying after them, and the moment alone with Glynde Rendel had passed.