Poppy Read Online Free

you know why?”
    “No.”
    “Well, she entertained some Eastern monarch—I won’t say who—and he sacrificed a sheep in the bedroom, ruining her carpet; something that amused her not at all.”
    “Garn! You’re making it up!”
    “I wouldn’t lie to
you
, Poppy… I mean Miss Duveen,” said Freddie with sudden intensity, and Poppy blushed and looked at her plate.
    “I say, what’s this?” cried Freddie all of a sudden, picking up the bill, plugging a monocle in his eye, and squinting down at it.
    “The bill, sir,” said the waiter apologetically.
    “Well, what are you giving it to me for?” said Freddie crossly. “Put it on the Duke of Guildham’s account.”
    “Again, sir?” faltered the waiter. “The last time, sir, His Grace said—”
    “What a fellow you are for gossipping,” said Freddie, rising from his chair with great alacrity and slapping the waiter on the shoulder. “But don’t bore me with my uncle’s jokes, there’s a good chap. Come along, Miss Duveen. These fellows will chatter all night if you let ’em.”
    He hustled Poppy from the table and toward the entrance, and she only caught a fleeting glimpse of the waiter’s face as he opened and shut his mouth helplessly like a landed mackerel.
    “Now, where to?” demanded Freddie, cane at the ready to flag down a cab.
    Poppy’s face fell. All at once, like Pip in
Great Expectations
, she realized what it was to be ashamed of one’s home, something all people have felt at some time or another, despite their place in the caste system. Certainly Poppy’s was a hard case, as she envisaged her father communing with his snakes and angels and the dirty dishes piled high in the sink and the drawers hanging drying on the kitchen pulley and the stale, cold, cabbage-smelling air of the house.
    “Thanks ever so,” she said, “but I gotter go alone. Me pa don’t like gentlemen callers.”
    “Strict, is he?” asked Freddie sympathetically. “My uncle’s a bit like that.”
    “You mean that one you said was a duke?” said Poppy.
    “Yes. Him. Miserable old codger. Don’t worry about it. Only say you’ll have supper with me tomorrow night. Please.”
    “Oh, all right,” said Poppy quickly. She was anxious to get away.
    Freddie’s face became transfigured with joy, and then he flagged down a passing four-wheeler. Freddie knew instinctively that Poppy did not want him to know where she lived. He pressed a guinea into her hand.
    “I insist,” he said over her protests. “Till tomorrow.” And with that he ran lightly away.
    Poppy climbed into the growler. “Bermondsey, my good man,” she called to the driver in accents of freezing gentility, and then sank back, suddenly bone tired.
    That “old codger,” the Duke of Guildham, was not precisely old, being thirty-eight years of age. He was, however, hardly in the flush of youth, and was a very imposing-looking man even when stark naked and sitting on the edge of his mistress’s bed, which is what he was doing some two days after Poppy’s supper at the Café Royal. He was one of those haughty men who contrive to look fully clothed even when they are not. He had a trim, muscular body, and piercing black eyes fringed with heavy lashes, set in a stern, handsome face. His hair was as pure white as it had been since his twentieth birthday. His mistress, a merry widow of impeccable lineage and beautifully doubtful morals, Freda von Dierksen, was sprawled on the bed behind him, drawling in her deliciously slight German accent, “Dahling Hugo, stop looking so stern and tell me what we are to do today. I want to go somewhere
low
, really, terribly, frightfully low.”
    “Very well,” he said indifferently, without turning around. He rose, shrugged his broad shoulders into a dressing gown, and rang the bell.
    “Ah, Stammers,” he said as his butler entered the room. “We wish to go somewhere… er… low today. Please tell us an appropriate spot.”
    “If Your Grace pleases,” said