by M C Beaton
Well, she would just see if this letter could possibly spoil that charming little lunch. Amy was not a vindictive girl; only very much in love.
• • •
What an utterly marvelous thing hot food was! Only a half an hour ago Polly Marsh could have sworn that she had not long to live, torn as she was between the torments of rage and jealousy. Now as the last spot of marmalade pudding, dripping with hot custard, was popped into her pretty mouth, she felt as if she would live to fight another day.
As for Bob Friend, he was so enraptured with his companion that Amy had to cough twice before he looked up. Amy could not resist saying, “I didn’t know you and Miss Marsh were old school friends.”
Bob blushed and murmured something incoherent into his pint of mild. “Anyway,” Amy went on, “I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch but I’ve got a letter for Miss Marsh and I thought it might be important.”
She held out the Bengal letter to Polly. To her fury, Polly only glanced at it and said, “Thank you, Amy,” in a condescending tone of voice. Amy hesitated, looking appealingly at Bob, hoping he would ask her to sit down. But Bob was too embarrassed to do more than study the remains of his marmalade pudding as if he thought it was the most fascinating thing on earth. Amy gave a jerky nod of her head and puffed out her small bosom like a midwinter sparrow and then walked away.
Polly’s heart was hammering but she was not anxious to open the letter. It would contain nothing but excuses and apologies—of that she was sure. Bob eyed her sadly. Polly’s face was like a mask and all her bright interest in him had fled. He miserably paid the bill and escorted her back to the office.
All the long, windy afternoon, the letter lay unopened on Polly’s desk. Already everyone in the office knew about it and the corridors buzzed with gossip. Lord Peter must have been interested in Polly after all to write to her on the day his engagement was announced. Sir Edward heard of it through the office grapevine and harrumphed all the way to his club. Mr. Baines, who had grown very fond of Polly as the days of his bachelordom lengthened, secretly hoped that it was not bad news. He secretly felt that Lord Peter was a shallow sort of chap.
All the long walk back to the hostel, Polly was aware of the letter in her reticule. She waited until she had shut and locked the door of her room and removed her hat, stabbing the long hatpins into the pincushion as if it were Lord Peter’s fickle heart.
Then gingerly picking up the letter as if it were a live bomb, she opened it and read:
My Dearest Polly,
By the time you read this you will probably have read all that nonsense about my engagement in The Times. Please pay no attention. My darling, there is no way anything can stop us having a happy future together. I shall be arriving home in time for the office party and I shall tell you of my plans. It will mean you will have to leave Westerman’s, my poor slave, but I’m sure you will enjoy being a lady of leisure. We belong together, Polly. My sweet girl, I can hardly wait to hold you in my arms again.
Yours only,
Peter
Polly jumped to her feet and twirled around the room. He meant to marry her. He said so! Nature seemed to celebrate as well, for the wind outside died as suddenly as it had sprung up and a thin, pale, weak sunlight gilded the sooty roofs and a starling imitated a blackbird in Gordon Square around the corner, bringing with its song a false illusion of spring.
Now the Marquis of Wollerton should have been a very happy man. It is not, after all, every day that one is proved so triumphantly right. He could not, therefore, understand why he was so depressed.
He had been so low in spirits that when Angela, Lady Bansbury, had telephoned to remind him that he was expected to grace her musicale that evening, all his well-thought-out excuses had fled and he had promised to attend.
Now, he was fidgeting on a little gilt chair and dismally waiting for some stout German to finally come to the end of a long, long repertoire of lieder. At last when he thought he would have to scream aloud, the singer hit the last sonorous note and the marquis was free to rise and make his escape.
He was working his way toward the doorway when he was accosted by a very fashionably dressed middle-aged lady. It took him a few seconds to recognize a singularly rejuvenated Lady Blenkinsop. He complimented her on her appearance and she blushed prettily. “Everyone should get rid of their spouse at some time,” she beamed. “Of course your mother was quite furious with me because I did not put Miss Marsh in her place, but really it’s all for the best. I mean, Peter is engaged to someone else.”
“My mother… Peter… I don’t understand,” said the marquis.
“Come with me and we’ll hide behind those desiccated palms,” said Lady Blenkinsop.
“Well!” she remarked when they were seated. “You must not tell your mother…” She then told him of her visit from the duchess.
“My mother has gone too far this time,” said the marquis angrily. “How dare she poke her nose into my affairs.”
“But it wasn’t your affairs,” said Lady Blenkinsop slyly. “Peter’s affairs, surely.”
“Nonetheless,” said the marquis stiffly, “I feel that Miss Marsh has been badly treated. One of us should call on her and—”
“And who better than yourself,” interrupted Lady Blenkinsop sweetly.
“You don’t expect my mother to go,” said the marquis, getting to his feet. “I shall see if I can persuade that dragon who guards the hostel to let me see her.”
“Tell Miss Marsh to call on me,” said Lady Blenkinsop, also getting to her feet. “I am deeply indebted to her.”
“You are a heartless woman,” laughed the marquis. “Are you never going to see poor Sir Edward again?”
She sighed. “I suppose I must. But not just for the moment. I am having such fun.”
The hostel in Euston was in darkness by the time the marquis arrived. He realized uncomfortably that he should go away but he was overcome by a sudden desire to see Polly and comfort her. He manfully pressed the bell.
After a few minutes a disembodied white face stared at him through the glass and then the door was cautiously opened an inch to reveal Miss Thistlethwaite with a massive wrapper clutched to her throat and her hair bristling with curl papers.
“My lord,” she gasped, recognizing her aristocratic visitor from the society photographs in The Tatler. “It is eleven o’clock.”
“I have come to see Miss Marsh on an urgent matter,” said the marquis in his most aristocratic tone.
Miss Thistlethwaite was torn between curiosity and her natural desire to exert her authority. Curiosity won. Holding open the door, she ushered him past the pampas grass and into the gloom of the sitting room, where the high-backed, hard upright chairs stood in their unwelcoming group. Miss Thistlethwaite lit the gas and bustled importantly up the stairs.
Polly climbed up through layers of dreams and staggered, half awake, to answer the persistent knocking at the door. Miss Thistlethwaite’s fat face swimming in the darkness of the corridor looked for a moment like the extension of her dreams. But then the all-too-real fruity accents informed her that “one of her aristocratic friends” was awaiting her in the sitting room. Polly lit her candle feverishly—the use of gas was not encouraged during the night hours—and then scrambled into her clothes. It must be Peter. Dear, dear Peter! Who else could it be?
Miss Thistlethwaite was entertaining the marquis with tepid tea and tepid conversation when Polly erupted into the sitting room and stood frozen with dismay at the sight of the marquis’s face. “I thought you were…” she began, but the marquis held up a long, white-gloved hand to silence her.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Thistlethwaite, and now, if you will excuse us…”
Miss Thistlethwaite rose reluctantly to her feet and seemed to take hours to leave the room. By the time the door was closed Polly had recovered her composure. Her future brother-in-law had no doubt hastened to make a social call. He looked very remote and aloof in his impeccable evening d
ress. Polly sat down primly on one of the hard chairs and smiled at him inquiringly. The marquis groaned to himself. Obviously she had not read The Times.
“Miss Marsh,” he began in his attractive husky voice, “I do not know whether you have seen the announcement of Peter’s engagement—”
“Oh, yes,” interrupted Polly blithely. “But that is all a lot of nonsense. I confess, all the same, that I was very upset until I received Peter’s letter of explanation.”
“There can be no explanation, dear girl, other than the obvious one, that Peter is engaged to Miss Bryant-Pettigrew.”
“Peter states quite clearly that he wishes to marry me,” said Polly firmly, radiant with beauty and confidence.
“Nonsense!” The chilly denial echoed around the wavering shadows of the room.
“I shall show you the letter. Wait there!” Polly jumped to her feet and rushed from the room. She was soon back, brandishing the letter like a flag.
The marquis took it silently and opened the stiff pages. As he read his brother’s letter, he was prey to a series of strange emotions. His first reaction was one of relief, the second anger, and the third, cold and fastidious distaste. His hooded lids covering the expression of his pale-gold eyes, he placed the letter on the table and said quietly, “He says nothing of marriage.”
“Not in so many words,” retorted Polly, looking amused. “What a difficult man you are to convince! One would think that the Marquis of Wollerton did not want Polly Marsh as a sister-in-law.”
“I don’t,” he remarked. “I think you might be too good for my brother. I don’t want to hurt you. Can’t you see that? But if you go on believing that Peter is going to marry you, you are going to be even more hurt in the end. It’s as plain as day that he is telling you that his engagement and marriage will not affect your future position as… his mistress.”
She got to her feet and stood looking down at him with quaint dignity. “You do not think much of me after all, my lord,” she said. “I would not have let Peter hold me and 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 well, Mister Baines?”
“G—gratified! Hon—honored!” gabbled Mr. Baines, running a finger along the inside of his celluloid collar.
“Good! That’s settled,” said Lady Blenkinsop airily. “We will go to your usual luncheon place. It will be divine to see the City gentlemen at play.”
She swept regally from the office, not looking around to see if they were following her. Polly and Mr. Baines trotted breathlessly after her, pulling on their coats.
Mr. Baines was dimly aware of the astonished admiration of his friends at Spielman’s. The menu swam before his eyes and he automatically ordered the same as Lady Blenkinsop, as did Polly.
Polly desperately wondered why Lady Blenkinsop had called on her but she was never to know. Lady Blenkinsop turned the full battery of her attention on the bemused office manager and bombarded him with questions. Since these were all about his work and since Lady Blenkinsop had insisted on ordering wine with the meal, Mr. Baines slowly began to relax. The aura of admiration emanating from his friends acted upon his senses more than the wine. He felt himself sparkling as he had never done before. Hoary office jokes were treated by Lady Blenkinsop as the height of wit and her tinkling laughter rang out over the hum of conversation in the chophouse.
Polly began to glance nervously at the watch pinned to her bosom. Lady Blenkinsop was talking of the enchantment of Venice and the glory of Paris and Mr. Baines was sitting drinking it all in, his middle-aged features the happy ghost of the young and carefree man he used to be. At last Polly found a break in their conversation and reminded them of the time. Both looked surprised to see she was still there.
“Run along, my dear,” said Lady Blenkinsop. “I shall just sit here a little longer and talk to dear Mister Baines. I am sure Westerman’s can spare him for a little longer.”
Mr. Baines banished the thought of the piles of work waiting for him as Lady Blenkinsop said good-bye to Polly. “Do telephone me as soon as ever you can,” said Lady Blenkinsop, “and we’ll have such long chats.”
They had resumed their conversation before Polly had left the table.
The long City afternoon wore on and still Mr. Albert Baines did not
return, but Joe Noakes, one of the messengers, told Amy who told Bob Friend who told Polly, that Mr. Baines had been seen departing in Lady Blenkinsop’s carriage and that, as the staid office manager had helped her ladyship into her carriage, he had squeezed her hand. Work at Westerman’s had ceased while this delicious piece of gossip was mulled over. Why didn’t Polly join them?
But the haughty Miss Marsh merely replied that she never gossiped about her friends and the much subdued Mr. Friend took that flea in his ear back to the more congenial company of Amy Feathers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The office party was to be held two days before Christmas. On her latest visit to Stone Lane, Polly had found to her embarrassment that she was meant to spend Christmas at home. Now Polly fully expected to be spending Christmas with the Duke and Duchess of Westerman and was at long last faced with the necessity of telling Mrs. Marsh of her hopes and ambitions.
Mrs. Marsh had held out one pudgy, work-reddened hand for the precious letter. She popped a pair of steel-rimmed glasses on the end of her nose and sat down heavily at the kitchen table to give the matter her full attention. Joyce and baby Alf were asleep, Alf senior was in the pub, and Gran had gone with him to imbibe her weekly glass of port and lemon.
Her lips moving slightly, Mrs. Marsh carefully read from beginning to end and then dropped the letter on the table and wiped her hands carefully on her apron.
“You’re a fool, Pol,” she said heavily. “Yerse. A silly, little, snobby fool. That there Lord Peter ain’t got marriage in mind. ’E wants up your skirts, my girl.”
Polly blushed at her mother’s coarseness and became more determined than ever to escape from the working-class mud of Stone Lane. Her love for her mother vanished in a wave of fury.
