Free Pretty Polly by M.C. Beaton

gave him a blinding smile.
    He smiled warmly back, quite enchanted with her. She was more beautiful than he had remembered. He was heartily sorry he had just invited the first names that had come into his head. How depressing it must be for her not to have any young people to talk to.
    “You did not mention Miss Bascombe in your letters,” he said, “or I would have included her in the invitation.”
    “Perhaps if you care to call, you can meet her. She is quite amusing in a provincial kind of way.”
    The smile left his eyes. The Charlotte who had written those letters could not be the Charlotte who called her friends “provincial.”
    But, he reflected, it would do no harm to take Mrs. Manners out driving. He was sure, away from social strains and stresses, she would turn into that lady who had become his favorite correspondent.
    “May I take you driving tomorrow?” he asked. “Provided, of course, that the weather is not too bad.”
    “I should like that above all things,” Charlotte was about to say, but she was shrewd in the ways of stalking a man and so she affected disappointment instead. “What a pity, Denbigh. I am already engaged to go out driving.”
    The duke’s interest in her quickened even more. Of course she would have many beaux. “Then the day after,” he said eagerly.
    He watched anxiously as Charlotte pretended to sort through the busy appointment book of her mind. Then her face cleared. “That would be splendid.”
    “Shall we say four-thirty?”
    “Yes, four-thirty.”
    Later that night, Charlotte sat on the end of Verity’s bed and listened, appalled, as that young lady recited all of the things she had written to the duke about.
    “A visit to the Tower…and a ride on the Catch-me-who-can? How could you, Verity? That is the behavior of a rustic.”
    Verity flushed with annoyance. “My yokelism does not seem to have prevented him from enjoying my letters.”
    “If only you had had the wit to write them more like
me
and less like you!”
    “If I had written them like
you,
they wouldn’t have fetched him,” said Verity tartly.
    Charlotte was about to say something very nasty. But the thought that the evening she had just spent would have been so much more pleasurable had Verity been there to protect her from the dragons stopped her.
    “Now you are furious with me,” she said instead. “Dear Verity, give me a smile. We are friends, are we not?”
    Verity looked at Charlotte’s pleading blue eyes. No one was completely selfish and Charlotte did really seem to want to be friends.
    “Of course we are,” said Verity, stretching out her hand. Charlotte took it and gave it a squeeze. Verity was such a good foil. No beauty there, so no competition. Yes, Verity could be very useful in the entrapment of Denbigh.
    The duke was cantering along Rotten Row the following day. It was a beautiful morning and he appeared to have the park to himself. The air was warm and sweet and smelled of a mixture of soot and new leaves and grass. He glanced up at the clear blue sky, reflecting that one hardly ever saw a completely blue sky anywhere in England at any time of the year. A large parrot sailed slowly over his head. He reined in his mount and watched it. It was gray and red but had a ridiculous gold fringe of downy feathers on each leg. He could see it quite plainly now, for it circled round and round over his head, getting lower each time.
    Someone has lost their pet bird, was his first thought; and then his next was, Perhaps that is Mrs. Manners’s parrot.
    The parrot stopped circling and began to fly off slowly in the direction of Park Lane. He set hishorse in motion again and followed it. It sailed across a wide expanse of grass, then circled down again and landed on the shoulder of a female sitting on a bench.
    The lady had her head bent and was wearing quite a modish bonnet. Mrs. Manners, he thought. He dismounted and started to lead his horse toward her. It struck him again that she must