Polonaise Read Online Free Page A

used to run ahead and hide from her in the pleasure gardens and she’d come calling afterus: “Wait for me! Wait for me!” It’s good of her to remember me so kindly. I wonder what she is like now.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜You shall have my fur pelisse,’ said Mrs. Peverel, making the supreme sacrifice.
    â€˜Oh, mama!’ Jenny recognised it as such. But a messenger, bearing gifts from Petworth House, made the sacrifice unnecessary.
    â€˜It’s from Mrs. Wyndham!’ Jenny stroked the smooth fur of the pelisse. ‘How good of her!’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Yes, papa.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Stanislas Augustus? You don’t mean the last King of Poland?’ Now he really had shocked her.
    â€˜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!’
    â€˜No, papa. Is he really so old? Prince Ovinski?’
    â€˜Sixty if he’s a day. But rich as Croesus and belongs to oneof 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?’
    â€˜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