Polly by M.C. Beaton Page A

kiss me if I had not been sure that his intentions were honorable.”
    The marquis felt his temper rising. He did not know that Peter’s “holding and kissing” of Polly was one very chaste occasion in St. James’s Park, and so a series of lurid and tantalizing pictures flashed through his mind with all the jerky rapidity of the latest bioscope show.
    “
I
held you and kissed you,” he said in a low voice.
    Polly turned her back to him. “That was none of my doing,” she said in a suffocated voice. “Please leave, my lord.”
    He stood, irresolute, looking at the slim back facing him and at the faint blue veins on the slender neck topped with its golden mass of curls.
    He slowly put his arms around her and held her to him. “But you responded, my Polly,” he said huskily and he bent his head and kissed the back of her neck.
    Polly stood very still. The hot lips seemed to burn her skin and the man’s overwhelming virility made her knees tremble. She had a sudden languorous longing to turn and put her arms around his neck. Instead she said in a chilly little voice, “I see, my lord, that you are confusing your own intentions with that of your brother. I will marry Peter with or without his family’s approval. Good evening.”
    She walked quickly from the room, leaving him standing there feeling a strange mixture of anger and pain.
    Polly did not reply to Peter’s letter. It was marvelous to think that he would be sailing for home before any reply of hers could reach him. But most of the pleasure of anticipation had gone. Every time she tried to conjure up his face, it was the marquis’s face that looked down at her, it was the marquis’s lips she felt. As the morning at Westerman’s wore on, her typing became more erratic. She had typed “Peaking, Pekking, Pekign” five times and torn up five letters before she had achieved the simple address of the office in Peking. She had arrived at the office that morning at the same time as Amy Feathers and Bob Friend. Bob had looked at Polly with his eyes glowing and Amy had looked at Bob.
Why, she’s in love with him
, thought Polly, wondering how on earth she had not noticed it before. She had given Amy a warm and sympathetic smile and received a cold stare in return for her pains.
    Now all Polly wanted to do was to rush to Shoreditch and pour out the whole story to her mother. But she had a sneaking feeling that her mother would agree with the marquis. That letter! After the marquis had left the evening before, she had read and reread it until her eyes ached.
    Some of the times it had looked like a pure and touching declaration of innocent love; at others, it seemed like a sleazy outburst of lust. If
only
she could remember Peter properly as she had known him. But every memory was soiled by the picture of the sneering marquis and the memory of his lips against her skin.
    It was almost lunchtime when Mr. Baines ushered Lady Blenkinsop into her small office. Her ladyship was attired from throat to ankle in magnificent Russian sable, her face was delicately rouged, and a saucy little feather hat was perched on her newly curled hair.
    “I shall tell your husband you are here,” said Mr. Baines with a deferential bow.
    Lady Blenkinsop waved her hand. “No, please don’t. Are you by any chance, Mister Baines, the office manager?”
    “I have that honor, my lady,” said Mr. Baines, desperately wishing that he had had time to remove his cardboard shirt-sleeve protectors and don his jacket. His braces were of a bright, lurid red and embroidered with small Scottie dogs—his one outward concession to dashing bachelor freedom—and he hoped Lady Blenkinsop would not find him frivolous because of it.
    “Ah, Mister Baines. I have heard of you,” said Lady Blenkinsop, taking out a small lace handkerchief and releasing a gentle aroma of Fleurs d’Antan around the stuffy office. “I was just about to ask Miss Marsh to join me for lunch. Perhaps you would care to come as