Polly's Story Read Online Free PDF

beginning to think of him as a friend. We were meant to keep away from the menservants but I would often bump into him early of a morning when I was laying the fires downstairs and he was filling up the coal buckets. There was never anyone else about at the time, so we could have a chat quite safely (we were not supposed to talk to each other in the front of the house, as a rule). He looked more ordinary then too, not being in livery or having his hair powdered until it was time to serve the family breakfast. He said the powder made his head itch something terrible, and I thought he looked much more handsome without it; such thick, wavy brown hair he had, and brown eyes like mine that were usually crinkled up in a smile. He was always making me laugh with some tale about what had happened at dinner the night before, and it got my day off to a very good start if I should happen to see him.
    There would soon be no time for cosy chats with anyone, however, because it was shortly Miss Eugenie’s eighteenth birthday and we would be rushed off our feet from morning till night. A large party of guests were staying at the Hall, including Lord Vye’s two sisters and their families, and Master Edward and Master Rory (his two older sons) were coming home too. There would be dinner parties and dancing to entertain the fine company, and hunting and shooting no doubt, for those who liked that sort of thing - and then there was to be a grand masked ball to mark the birthday itself.
    ‘You’re bound to like my brothers,’ Harriet informed me. ‘All our maids fall in love with one or other of them. Some people say Edward is more handsome, but Rory can charm the birds out of the trees and he’s a cavalry officer, which is too dashing for words. If you saw him in his uniform, you would just die on the spot.’
    ‘Then we had better hope he’ll not be wearing it this weekend,’ I said, and we laughed. I was brushing out Miss Harriet’s hair; she said I had a lighter hand than Agnes. ‘And is Master Edward in the army too?’
    ‘No, he’s studying at Oxford University. He finishes his degree in the summer and then he’ll come back and learn how to run the estate, since he’s going to inherit it all when my father dies. So he’ll soon be looking for a wife.’ She sighed. ‘And there’s Eugenie already after a husband.’
    ‘But she is so young! There will be plenty of time for that, surely?’
    ‘She wants to be mistress of her own house. Anyway, all the best girls get snapped up in their first season, or so my stepmother says.’
    I’d only seen Eugenie from a distance but, to be honest, I didn’t find her quite as beautiful as everyone else seemed to think. She reminded me of a painted porcelain doll, with that rosebud mouth and her round blue eyes set so wide apart. In my opinion, her face seemed to lack some spark of expression to make it interesting. Give me Miss Harriet any day of the week, for all her red hair and freckles.
    Harriet was looking hangdog at her reflection in the mirror. ‘Just think,’ I said, to cheer her up, ‘you will be in Miss Eugenie’s place in a few years’ time, going through to dinner on the arm of some dashing young man! I am sure you will look very elegant.’ And I piled up her hair to see how it suited her. In fact this made her chin seem a little too - obvious, somehow, but a few pretty ringlets would probably soften the effect.
    ‘I’d sooner be dead!’ Harriet said crossly, shaking her hair out of my hands. ‘Having to make polite conversation with some boring creature my stepmother thinks is suitable! Eugenie told me she dozed off when she was sitting next to the Honourable Henry Cavendish last week, but when she woke up he was still droning on about his collection of interesting fungi and she hadn’t missed a thing.’
    We both laughed some more at this, and I decided that perhaps I had misjudged Eugenie. ‘Do you ever want to get married, Polly?’ Harriet asked, which