Pretty Polly Read online

  “Then there is no need to write to the duke,” exclaimed Verity.

  “Pooh! I am not going to accept Chalfont. It will do my standing in society no harm to be followed around by a languishing and rejected beau. Faith, but it was tedious today. I wish you had been with me. But why not! I mean, why not accompany me on some of my jaunts. Kean is playing Richard III tomorrow, and I have a box.”

  “I should like that above all things,” said Verity, her eyes shining. “Oh, to see a Shakespeare play on the stage.”

  “Silly widgeon. Who looks or listens to the play? Society goes to see each other. But you shall come and I shall point out all the quizzes to you. I see you have got rid of that pesky parrot.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing without your permission, Charlotte. It is on its perch in the drawing room. I did not want to move it until it became accustomed to me. I wonder, Charlotte, while we are on the subject of Pretty Polly, whether we might have a cage for the bird?”

  “Why? Has it become violent?”

  Verity suppressed a grin. She had a sudden mental picture of a parrot wielding an ax. “No, but a cage is more easily cleaned of bird droppings than the drawing-room floor.”

  “As you will. Chalfont is to call at noon. We shall go down together and you shall see how prettily I break his heart.”

  Charlotte kissed Verity and sailed out and then let out a slight scream as Pretty Polly sailed in. The parrot flew straight to the rail at the top of Verity’s bed and shuffled up and down. She turned in the doorway. “If I were you, Verity, I would poison that ugly bird.”

  Verity bit back an angry reply. She had no patience with people who made pets of birds and animals only to lose interest in them.

  “In any case, I must get a good night’s sleep and be prepared to break Chalfont’s heart.”

  “Is he handsome?” asked Verity curiously.

  “Chalfont, handsome?” Charlotte gave a tinkling laugh, that fashionable laugh that young ladies practiced as assiduously as their pianoforte lessons. It was supposed to start at the top register and cascade down the scale with a “chiming” sound. “My dear, he is the veriest quiz and such a bore. He wears false calves. Do not worry. My refusal of his suit will not dent his massive vanity one whit.”

  Charlotte went out and closed the door.

  Verity decided to undress and go to bed. She was just twisting around to unfasten the tapes of her gown when she met the unblinking stare of three pairs of eyes. There was a screen folded in the corner of the room. She pulled it forward and went behind it to undress, feeling silly but reflecting that she would feel even sillier undressing before the interested gazes of Charlotte’s pets.

  She climbed into bed and stretched out luxuriously. The bed was very comfortable. There was a soft thump as the cat landed on the bed beside her and started doing a mad dance on the coverlet, digging its claws in and out, its eyes shut in ecstasy.

  “Shoo!” said Verity, waving a hand at the cat, which seized and bit it. Verity picked up her book from the bedside table and thumped the cat on the head, and it slunk off the bed.

  The grating sound of the watch calling the hour awoke Verity during the night. She groaned and turned over and found the cat lying on the pillow next to her. She was going to throw it off the bed, but there was something comforting and soothing about its purring, so she closed her eyes and let it stay where it was.

  The next day, Lord Chalfont stood in Charlotte’s drawing room and studied his reflection in the looking glass. “Fine. You’re looking very fine,” he told himself aloud. He felt his new wasp-waisted coat did him justice, and his skintight pantaloons were drawn over his false wooden calves, making him feel like some muscular Greek god.

  A huge parrot sailed into the room and landed on its perch with a thump. It stared unblinkingly at Lord Chalfont, who looked at it uneasily. “Bloody parrot,” he said.

  “Pretty Polly,” said the parrot in a harsh parrot voice. Then it put its head on one side, and in an uncanny imitation of Charlotte’s voice, it said, “Chalfont, handsome? My dear, he is the veriest quiz and such a bore. Do not worry. My refusal of his suit will not dent his massive vanity one whit.”

  Charlotte and Verity were descending the stairs during Pretty Polly’s speech. They looked at each other in surprise as they heard the faint sound of a female voice coming from the drawing room.

  But before they could reach the door of the drawing room, it opened and Lord Chalfont came storming out.

  He stopped short at the sight of them. “Good day, madam,” he shouted. “A very good day to you.”

  “Why are you leaving, my lord?” asked Charlotte, amazed.

  “Because, madam, there is nothing for me here!” Lord Chalfont stalked toward the street door just as a footman sprang to open it. One of his false calves slipped and he went off with it bulging above his ankle.

  Charlotte and Verity retreated to the drawing room where they stared at each other in amazement. “You see, Verity?” said Charlotte. “It has happened again. Who was that woman we heard speaking?” She rang the bell and questioned the butler closely. But Pomfret could only shake his head in bewilderment. Only Lord Chalfont had gone into the drawing room and only Lord Chalfont had come out of it.

  “Perhaps the place is haunted,” said Charlotte with a shiver.

  Verity looked at Pretty Polly. “Perhaps the parrot can talk.”

  “Pooh! Not that stupid bird. And even if it could, it would have a squawking parroty voice.”

  “Perhaps I should try to ask Lord Chalfont what happened,” volunteered Verity. “Will he be at the play this evening?”

  “He said he was going,” said Charlotte, biting her fingernails. “Fiddle. I hate mysteries. Would you say there was something repellent about me, Verity?”

  “Not in the slightest,” said Verity, for what else could she say to her young hostess? But when she was alone later she thought about the problem. Charlotte was vain and self-centered, but very beautiful. She appeared to view men in the light of providers of titles and money. She did not pretend to have any finer feelings, and surely that was to her credit. Verity recalled the conversations of the young misses at the seminary. Dowries, land, and titles were discussed at great length. Of course they all read romances and sighed over dream heroes, but each girl obviously knew her duty to her parents, which was to secure an eligible man and increase the prestige of the family. Love was something one found outside of marriage.

  Verity had not thought of the gentleman she had seen in the posting house for some time. Now, his face was once more vividly in front of her. She could see that lazy smile, hear that mocking voice, and see the sun shining through the coffee-room window on that golden hair. It occurred to her that such a splendid creature would surely be in London for the Season. She might even see him again.

  Pretty Polly looked at her cynically and strode up and down the desk, the parrot’s wings making it look like a fussy old gentleman in a tail coat.

  “You’re probably right,” said Verity. “Bound to be married by now. Probably was married then.”

  The Duke of Denbigh was in a very bad mood. He was tired of his staff and neighbors trying to block any innovations by telling him his father would “turn in his grave.” The duke had a macabre picture of his father’s corpse revolving furiously like a busy drill until he surfaced in Australia to startle the aborigines.

  The duke had not been very close to his father or to his brothers, who had been some ten years older than he. And yet he felt their loss, combined with a strong feeling of guilt that he should have survived.

  He shuffled through the morning’s post, dividing it into neat piles of bills to be paid, social invitations, requests for money, and personal letters. He had pensioned off his late father’s elderly secretary, who had been foremost in the father-revolving-in-the-grave school of thought.

  Among the personal letters were many delicately scented ones, reminding him coyly of the time he had danced with
Miss This or Miss That. He had nearly run out of patience by the time he reached the Verity-Charlotte missive.

  His eye fell on the signature at the bottom and he experienced a feeling of distaste. That he had ever proposed marriage to such an empty-headed creature as Charlotte was a source of shame. He glanced at the first sentence and his thin eyebrows rose. He was amazed that a woman like Charlotte would have the good taste to sympathize with him on his bereavement. He read on. The tenderness and the sympathy in the letter touched his heart. Perhaps he had not been such a young fool after all.

  He pushed the other letters aside and began to write a short reply.

  The visit to the play engendered in Verity the beginnings of liking and affection for Charlotte Manners. For a Charlotte who could so casually open the door to such miracles was a Charlotte to inspire gratitude.

  Edmund Kean had just arrived on the London stage to dazzle and amaze audiences. He was no Romeo, no Hamlet; because he was small and had a harsh voice, he had to be Shylock, Richard III, Iago, or Macbeth.

  For once, the London audience did not eye each other or chatter. For once, even the busy, noisy prostitutes were silent.

  The poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had declared that “to see Kean act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.” Kean’s huge personality dominated the theater. He released a tremendous force. He was Richard: hunchbacked, evil, plotting, yet every inch a king.

  At the interval, Charlotte’s box was crowded with admirers, but Verity barely noticed them. She sat in a daze, waiting for the play to begin again.

  When it was all over, she turned to Charlotte, tears glittering in her eyes, and said simply, “Thank you.”

  “Stoopid,” said Charlotte, but looking pleased. “I, for one, do not know what people see in the man. He is so little and insignificant and not at all pleasing to the eye. Lord Chalfont is not here. Fiddle. If only I knew what on earth had happened. Perhaps he is mad. Perhaps he talks to himself when he is alone in a falsetto voice like a woman’s.”

  As they made their way out of the playhouse, Verity, released from the spell cast by Kean, was able to observe Charlotte’s behavior when she stopped to exchange greetings with various gentlemen. She had to admit she could find little fault with it. Charlotte glowed with beauty; her eyes were amused and flirtatious. It was only when one gentleman introduced his sister that Verity observed Charlotte’s eyes becoming bored and noticed how she barely gave the young miss a civil reply. Charlotte had little time for her own sex, unless they could be used.

  But Verity, still elated by the performance, could not find any hideous character defects. Charlotte was spoiled by her great beauty to a certain extent, but she was surely no worse than many of the other ladies in the Season whose sole concern was to find a husband.

  But their friendship was to receive a blow in a very short time.

  Verity had a restless night and awoke just as dawn was breaking. The sun was streaming through the slats in the Venetian blinds.

  She decided to take her zoo for a promenade in the gardens in Berkeley Square. There was no need to take a footman. No one would be about.

  She dressed and walked out into the fresh air, followed by the dog and the cat and with the parrot nestling on her shoulder.

  But Verity did not know that dawn was the time when the bucks and bloods of London were usually heading homeward. She had just entered the gardens and was walking under the young plane trees when a party of noisy and drunken bloods entered the square.

  They saw Verity dressed in her old cloak and with her hair down her back, saw the parrot, the dog, and the cat, and thought she was some maid sent out with her mistress’s pets.

  There were three of them, their eyes red with drink, their faces gross and swollen. They were dressed like coachmen, with many capes to their coats and many strings to their knee breeches.

  “Let’s have some sport with the pretty maid,” cried one.

  “Keep your distance, sirs,” said Verity haughtily.

  This brought roars of laughter. One darted forward and tried to lift Verity’s skirts with his sword stick. She slapped him and then found another had caught her around the waist.

  “Help!” screamed Verity.

  The parrot, which had flown off her shoulder at the beginning of the attack, suddenly dived like a hawk, talons outstretched. The man holding Verity cried with alarm and released his hold. Another was savagely bitten in the ankle by the cat. They started to run from the square. Pretty Polly dived again, seized the leader’s hat and wig, and tore them off. The parrot tried the same ploy with one of the others, who unfortunately was wearing his own hair and who started to scream when the puzzled bird tried to rip it off. Emboldened by the men’s terror, the dog, Tray, leaped, snapping, into the fray, and the hullabaloo rose to the heavens. Charlotte’s servants came running out armed with sticks and finished the rout.

  Panting and disheveled, Verity walked into the house to find a very angry Charlotte, in her nightgown and negligee, waiting in the hall.

  “You should know better, Verity,” said Charlotte, “than to go roistering with the men of the town. Have you no thought for my reputation? Fie! For shame.”

  “I was attacked, Charlotte. Brutally attacked.”

  “Fiddle!”

  “Charlotte, how can you be so cruel and unkind?”

  “My name, else you had forgot, is Mrs. Manners.”

  Verity gave her a look of contempt and went on up to her room with dog, cat, and parrot and locked herself in.

  “Hoity-toity miss,” said Charlotte petulantly. “Well, she can pack and leave this very day.” Then she went back to bed and back to sleep with nothing on her conscience to trouble her.

  She awoke at noon and rang for her chocolate, which was brought to her with the morning post. The first thing she saw was a letter with Denbigh’s seal on it.

  With an exclamation, she ripped it open.

  “Dear Mrs. Manners,” Denbigh had written:

  Your warm and sympathetic letter pleased me greatly. In fact, you are the only person who has had the good taste to commiserate with me rather than to congratulate me.

  I have much work to do here, my servants regarding change as being next to Jacobinism!

  I appreciate your views that the pleasures of the Season, though trivial, can help to alleviate grief. But I must confess, however, to having taken the Season in dislike. What else is there but vanity and malicious gossip?

  You have made me feel guilty. You, too, have felt the grief of loss, and yet I did not honor you with the courtesy of a letter of condolence. Please forgive me. Your words have brought me great comfort.

  Yr. humble servant,

  Denbigh

  “Drat and double drat,” said Charlotte aloud. “I was rude to her, I think. But she will understand.” Anything waking Charlotte from a deep sleep put her in a foul temper, but she assumed that everyone was like that and therefore everyone should understand.

  Verity was regretting having paid the vet herself. She was counting her small stock of pin money and reflecting that the mail coach, besides being very expensive, would not relish the presence of cat, dog, and parrot inside. She would need to go by stagecoach, and the menagerie would need to travel with her on the roof. Verity did not really want to be burdened with Charlotte’s pets, but she was sure they would be destroyed if she left them behind.

  Two housemaids were packing her clothes; the butler, Pomfret, was scratching the parrot’s head; James, the second footman, was crouched on the floor, putting air holes in a box to make a carrying case for the cat; the housekeeper, Mrs. Andrew, was fussing about, trying to get Verity to eat; and the first footman, Paul, was trying to get her attention so that he could brag about the neat traveling box of bird seed and animal food that he had made up for the journey.

  “What is all this?” demanded Charlotte, looking at them all.

  “We are helping Miss Bascombe to prepare for the journey,” said the butler.
r />   Charlotte ran forward and hugged Verity. “Oh, you silly puss. How missish of you to take me so seriously. I am cross as crabs when I am awakened. Go away, all of you, and leave us in peace.”

  When the servants had left, Verity said in a firm voice, “Your behavior is not acceptable, Mrs. Manners. I was attacked this morning, and had it not been for the brave behavior of your pets, I shudder to think what would have happened to me.”

  Charlotte looked at her in alarm. “Why do you call me Mrs. Manners?”

  “You told me to this morning.”

  “Oh, this morning I was a beast. Listen, my friend, I am a monster when I am awakened. I deeply apologize for my behavior. Come, we shall go driving this afternoon and buy a cage for your parrot.”

  Verity gave a reluctant smile. “Your parrot, Charlotte.”

  “Oh, say you will accept my apology. Dear Verity, my heart is wrung.”

  Verity hesitated. She had had a letter from her father in which he said he would be setting out for Scotland in a week’s time, after shutting up the house and giving the servants a leave of absence. After a week, she would not have another chance to leave until his return. And yet… Charlotte did seem so genuinely contrite.

  “Then I shall stay,” said Verity.

  Verity enjoyed the drive, enjoyed Charlotte’s prattle and the fun they had choosing a magnificent cage for the large parrot.

  She was comfortable she had made the right decision in promising to stay. I believe Charlotte is really fond of me, Verity thought with surprise.

  Charlotte had further surprised her by promising a quiet evening at home.

  But no sooner was supper over and they were seated over the tea tray in the drawing room than Charlotte handed Verity the Duke of Denbigh’s letter. “So you see how clever you are,” cried Charlotte. “Do pen something to show him that he would be better off in London.”

  “When did this arrive?” Verity asked quietly.

  “This morning,” said Charlotte, avoiding her eyes.

  “I see,” Verity said sadly.

  Charlotte would remain fond of her only for so long as she proved useful. Verity thought again about leaving and then decided to oblige Charlotte with one more letter.