Polonaise by Jane Aiken Hodge Page B

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?’
    â€˜Sir Walter Raleigh himself.’ Drily. ‘But I’m afraid we’re not exactly a couple of sylphs.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Yes,’ he said, ‘the Russian of the camp and the knout.’
    â€˜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 ofhow totally she was not the Princess. After the long starvation, the desperate nights of waiting, it was maddening, 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.
    â€˜Gently!’ She spoke as she might have to a jibbing horse. ‘You’re hurting me a little, Mr. Rendel.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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