Free Marrying Up by Wendy Holden Page A

allowance, tell her.
     She’ll have to get a job.’

Chapter 9
    Max had arrived to pick her up in a Land Rover almost unrecognisable because it was so sparkling clean. Polly, watching for
     him out of the kitchen window, sprang up in excitement. Could he possibly have washed it just for her? She watched him jump
     out, his white shirt spotless and his jeans old-looking but clean. His dark hair shone in the sun and the sight of his brown
     forearms, finely muscled and corded, made her heart thump.
    Until, that was, Dad, who had opened the door to Max, cast a suspicious look over him and expressed, in a voice heavy with
     warning, the hope that he wouldn’t ‘mess her about like the last one had’.
    Polly wanted to sink through the floor. ‘Oh
Dad
!’ she hissed through gritted teeth, squeezing past him in the doorway.
    They had driven to the pub in awkward silence, Polly racking her brains for something light and amusing to say, something
     to dissolve the tension.
    ‘Where’s Napoleon?’ was all she managed in the end.
    ‘He’s not mine,’ Max said, frowning through the windscreen.
    ‘He belongs to the people I’m staying with.’
    ‘Who are they again?’ Polly asked; Max had never really explained. His hands tightened on the steering wheel and he did not
     explain now.
    ‘Here we are,’ he said, drawing up in front of the pub. Like its sister pub the Shropshire, the Oakeshott Arms had recentlyreceived a makeover at the delicate hands of the duchess.
    ‘They do champagne by the glass,’ he told her, waving the wine list. ‘No thanks,’ Polly replied in alarm, remembering Alexa.
     She wanted this evening to be as different as possible.
    But then she saw how surprised he looked and realised she had been too vehement. Possibly she had sounded ungrateful. Rude,
     even. A great start. Even greater than the one Dad had given the evening. Oh
why
had he said that? He was trying to protect her, Polly knew, but surely there were subtler ways? She had no idea what Max
     had made of it; he had said nothing. But it was unlikely he was impressed.
    And so, while Max approached the bar, Polly hung her head and stared at the pub’s rustic flagged stone floor. He returned,
     handed her a glass of rosé and straightaway an embarrassed silence fell, made worse by the fact that the Oakeshott Arms, previously
     thumping with landlord-sponsored heavy metal was now a muzak-free zone.
    ‘Shall we go outside?’ Max suggested eventually.
    ‘That would be lovely,’ Polly replied politely. Their exchanges,
    she felt gloomily, had every bit of the excitement of those between the vicar and local spinster in a bonnets-and-shawls BBC
     drama.
    They took their drinks outside to where several wooden tables and benches nestled against the pub’s rough, sun-warmed stone
     wall.
    They smiled at each other, self-consciously, then looked awkwardly away at the same moment. ‘It’s very pretty here,’ Max said
     rather stiffly.
    ‘Yes,’ Polly agreed, feeling more Cranford-like than ever. Judi Dench was going to walk past in a crinoline at any moment.
    She would have fitted in; Oakeshott village was a Victorian ducal fantasy dating from the days when the owners of the big
     house determined the entire surrounding landscape. Every cottage bordering the green reflected a different architectural style.
     One was half-timbered Tudor, with red herringbonebrickwork filling in the spaces between the black oak beams. A miniature Italianate villa stood next door, and beyond that
     a tiny medieval castle and a Swiss chateau. The gardens were as picturesque as the houses; the hollyhocks mighty and magnificent,
     and with vegetable patches neater even than Mr McGregor’s in
Peter Rabbit
. The apple trees along the old brick back walls were bent double with the weight of the fruit. Around the cottage doors,
     roses foamed in pink profusion.
    A more charming setting, particularly on a soft summer evening, full of scent, sunshine, the calls of