by Susan Barrie
“I shall be waiting beside the telephone!”
They smiled at one another.
Ulla suddenly remembered the rest of her guests, and she said quickly:
“I’ll have to run away now and do my duty, but you must keep in touch with me also, Sophie. Paul is not to be the only one with a knowledge of your whereabouts!”
She divided an unmistakably meaning glance between the two of them, and then half apologetically excused herself to Lucy also.
“If you want to leave us before the rest of them break up I’m sure my husband will run you home, Miss Gray,” she said. She added as if she felt that she ought to offer some sort of an explanation: “I was thinking that the Countess might not like you to be out too late!”
But Paul said swiftly, shortly:
“I brought Miss Gray here, and I shall take her home. She has the Countess’s permission to be out until midnight.”
Ulla glanced at the clock.
“It’s very nearly half past eleven,” she said sweetly.
Outside number twenty-four Alison Gardens Lucy glanced at the man who sat behind the wheel of the cream Jaguar and thanked him in a quiet voice for providing her with such a pleasant evening’s entertainment.
It was about ten minutes to twelve, and the street was very silent. The gardens opposite the row of tall houses were in dense shadow, save where the stray beams of a waning moon penetrated the thickets of laurel and other evergreens, and the daffodils that grew beneath the trees waved gently in the night breeze. A church clock that was at least ten minutes fast started to chime the hour of midnight, and Lucy gathered up her little brocade evening bag.
“It’s late,” she said. “I must go.”
Paul rested both his hands on the wheel, and looked at them.
“Have you enjoyed the evening, Lucy?” he asked.
“Oh, very much,” she assured him.
He went on looking at his hands.
“You sound like a small girl being polite to a hostess after her first party. A small girl who found the cakes too rich, and didn’t really enjoy the conjurer!”
She laughed a little shakily.
“Oh, but I assure you I did enjoy it.”
He sighed, and she couldn’t think why he should do anything of the kind.
“When shall I see you again, Lucy?” he asked. “I know the Countess doesn’t allow you a lot of freedom, but I don’t think it’s quite fair to you to ring you up suddenly and expect you to get permission from her to fit in with something planned in a hurry. Can’t we arrange something now about the week-end? Could you be free on Saturday?”
“To—go down into the country, you mean?”
“If that is what you would like.”
Her fingers played nervously with the clasp of her handbag.
“How—do you know that you will be free on Saturday?” she asked.
He turned to her and took away her handbag and slipped it into his pocket. He cupped her face with both hands and, when she shrank a little, tilted it backwards until he could see into her eyes, and his personal magnetism prevented her from lowering her eyelids, and screening her eyes with her eyelashes. “Because I shall be,” he answered quietly.
“Something might—might stop you!”
“Nothing is in the least likely to stop me.” He ran a finger down her cheek, and she quivered at the roots of her being. The muscles of her throat worked as emotion rushed up over her, and she wished she could control it sufficiently to make no pretence about her withdrawal as he laid his mouth against her own, and then folded her very completely in his arms. “Oh, darling!” he said, his own breath catching. “Oh, darling, darling!”
She felt his fingers straying in her hair, and her heart beat wildly against his own. His cheek had a delicious slight roughness that made her close her eyes and revel in the sensation of it pressed against her own and the faint masculine fragrance of it was like a heady French perfume in her nostrils. Only much headier than any perfume that had ever been invented!
She heard him murmur gently to her as if he was crooning over a child:
“You have such a ridiculously humble opinion of yourself, my little Lucy. Don’t you know I’ve been longing to do this all the evening? I felt wildly frustrated every time I looked across the room and saw you seated beside my godmother.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I don’t know how I'm going to survive until Saturday!”
She turned her face into his shoulder and kept it there.
“I’ll call for you at ten o’clock, and we’ll have a really long day together. Longer than the last day we spent together!” He spoke with sudden urgency. “Lucy, you do like me a little, don’t you? I find you so utterly sweet. I’ve never met anyone quite like you before, and you intrigue me amongst other things. You’re so absurd and feminine, and yet the Countess assures me you’re very capable, and even a dominating young woman.” He laughed unevenly. “I’ve always been afraid of dominating young women.”
She brought her face out into the open and demanded swiftly, “Why?” Her heart pounded as she waited for his answer.
He shrugged. The expression on his face in the dim light of the dashboard puzzled her, for although something brooded unmistakably in his eyes, one corner of his mouth curved whimsically, quizzically.
“Perhaps because I’ve never wanted to be dominated!”
“I see.” She drew away from him, and he let her go. “Mademoiselle Devargue is very beautiful,” she said, as if she had been thinking of nothing else for the last few seconds.
“Very,” he agreed.
“You must be very glad that she has come to London. She obviously expects to see a lot of you.”
“I shall naturally see as much of her as possible,” he replied.
“Naturally? Why naturally?” she queried.
“Because she is Sophie,” was the answer to this. “And because I am very devoted to her!”
Her hands were linked tightly together in her lap, and suddenly a pain shot up her arm as one of her polished nails dug into the back of her other hand. She repeated the punishment, and found that it prevented her from betraying herself utterly in this moment of appalling disillusionment ... worse, appalling dismay!
She heard herself saying in a quick and breathless voice:
“I don’t think I told you that the Countess is taking me to Italy, did I? She says she wants to find me a husband, and that’s why she bought me a lot of new clothes recently. Your godmother said something about understanding I was a kind of protégée of the Countess ... well, I suppose I am,” brightly and smilingly.
He sat up very straight.
“Italy?” he said.
“Apparently she has a lot of friends in Rome—the Countess, I mean—and she’ll get them to pull strings so that I’ll meet the right people. It’s wonderful, isn’t it, since Rome appears to be crawling with eligible young men who simply can’t resist Anglo- Saxon types like myself? The Countess hasn’t a doubt that I’ll make a conquest before we leave ... aided by all my new clothes, of course!”
For a moment she thought that he was about to say something violent, and then he changed his mind. He handed her back her brocade evening bag, and then he got out and opened the car door for her. As he assisted her to alight he said with nothing more than a note of amusement in his voice:
“Well, I’ve no doubt you deserve a rich husband, little Lucy, and Italy is a most attractive country. Even if the Countess is disappointed and her friends fail to pull the right set of strings you’ll enjoy it. And in the meantime ... until your fate is sealed, I hope to see as much of you as you’ll allow me. I’ll call for you at ten o’clock on Saturday.”
CHAPTER XIII
BEFORE Saturday arrived Lucy did a certain amount of thinking, along lines that disturbed her.
She was beginning to have no doubts at all as to the importance of the impact Paul Avery had made on her life, but she had a great many doubts concerning the quality of his interest in her. And
everything about him puzzled and bewildered her to an extent that made her long for someone in whom she could confide them ... Not someone like the Countess, who had several times expressed her opinion that young men picked up casually during the course of what should halve been a purely business transaction (she was inclined to overlook the fact that Lucy owed a lot to Paul Avery, and but for the fortuitous circumstances that had placed him on hand at precisely the right moment, she herself would be short of two thousand guineas) were hardly likely to prove satisfactory. Or someone like Augustine, who had been starved of romantic interludes for so long that Lucy’s little ‘affair’, as she called it, seemed to her entirely right and proper, and beautifully unconventional and straight out of a modern novel.
Not that Augustine read many modern novels, but she dipped into stories in magazines occasionally—the shop round the corner, where she bought provisions, was ran by a friendly little woman who passed them on to her—and Lucy’s unexpected encounter with the tall dark man who bought flowers in such generous quantities when his interest was aroused had all the highlights of one of those stories.
She wanted to know all that Lucy would tell her after one of her outings with Avery, but Lucy was cautious about creating wrong impressions. The first two occasions when she had met him in the park and had lunch with him had been wonderful, and perhaps it was natural that she should have returned home glowing with so much ill-concealed excitement and happiness that Augustine should have drawn wrong conclusions. But the night of the party at the Renshaws’ flat was an entirely different affair ... and it had provided Lucy with so much food for thought that, in order to digest it, she felt she needed time and quiet, and some outside assistance as well.
One thing was absolutely clear to her, and that was that Paid was not just an ordinary waiter. She didn’t think he was an ordinary man pursuing an ordinary job for ordinary reasons. He was not even an ordinary Seronian, and she was quite certain the Countess knew it. The Countess had had a long and secret talk with him that had not, apparently, improved her opinion of him—since it was obvious she would have discouraged Lucy from pursuing the acquaintance if she could; and the only thing the highly partisan old lady would admit was that he was a gentleman.
A gentleman she trusted to behave, otherwise she wouldn’t have allowed Lucy to see anything more of him at all. She would have sent him about his business after that very private talk with him and ordered him not to darken her door again ... or something almost as dramatic.
But the very fact that she had done nothing of the kind sometimes puzzled Lucy. She was willing for the girl to be taken out and about and amused, but she was making preparations for a trip to Italy that would nip the acquaintance in the bud, and encouraging Lucy to think of her future as something that was still quite unsettled.
Paul Avery had no part or lot in it ... that was either the Countess’s intention, or as a result of some information which she possessed she was adopting a practical attitude, and hoping that Lucy would adopt a practical attitude also.
But until Sophie Devargue arrived from America, Lucy was prepared to be completely impractical and to go on living in a dream in which (in spite of her constant fear that she would wake up!) a man with whom she had fallen irrevocably in love from the moment that she met his eyes across a display counter in a jeweller’s shop was in love with him. She had so little experience of men that she could not accept it that a pair of eyes as dark and deep and unusual as that particular pair could lie ... especially after he kissed her in a way no man casually interested could possibly kiss.
Or could he?
Even on the drive back to town, after that afternoon at the cottage, there had been one or two doubts. But they vanished like a breath of cold air when the sun comes out when he spoke to her at the other end of a telephone wire. An evening of feeling slowly more and more bewildered, more and more uncertain of the type of man with whom she had allowed herself to fall so hopelessly in love, had not created a really big doubt—one that could shatter her, or show in her face so that those around her were enabled to guess how foolishly she had been dreaming—until Sophie Devargue had been brought into the room by her hostess, and Paul was so unmistakably overcome.
There was no doubt about it, he was delighted. He found it almost impossible to express his delight. And Ulla Renshaw had beamed all over her face, as if she knew how much pleasure she was giving to them both.
Sophie, the exquisite young woman whose photograph adorned Paul’s desk, and Paul—the best-looking man in the room!—had stood clinging to one another’s hands and gazing at one another, and Lucy had been temporarily forgotten. True, it had only been very temporarily ... but she had wished it wasn’t necessary to take him away from his friends in order to drive her home to Alison Gardens, and she was sure Ulla Renshaw considered her introduction to their circle that night had been a little ill-timed.
But Paul had declined to say goodnight without lingering a little ... and he had re-created the dream when he took her into his arms as if he knew she was expecting it and made it impossible for a brief while for doubts to exist. If only he had said the one thing she wanted above all else to hear him say! If only he had said, “I love you!” Then doubts wouldn’t have had the power to destroy her peace of mind again, for she would have believed him, and whatever happened in the future she would have clung on to her belief in spite of everything.
But all he said was: “... You intrigue me, amongst other things!”
And she had said stupidly that the Countess was taking her to Italy to find her a husband, and even in her own ears it had sounded crude and vulgar and naive, and unworthy of a young woman who had just allowed herself to be passionately kissed, and returned the kisses with equal fervour. Definitely surprising in such a young woman!
No wonder she had sensed a recoil on Paul’s part, and that he had parted from her without any more tender moments. With a certain casual carelessness that kept her awake for hours when she got indoors.
The Countess had betrayed quite a lot of curiosity about the people she met at the party, and she had wanted to hear as many names as Lucy could remember. She arched her eyebrows when Lucy mentioned Princess Sasha Karadin, and Ulla Renshaw’s name didn’t appear to be entirely unfamiliar to her. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
“Ulla is quite a common name in Seronia,” she remarked. “And of course I’ve met Princess Sasha. How did she react when you were presented to her?” she enquired, her eyes bright with curiosity.
“I wasn’t exactly presented to her,” Lucy admitted. “At least, not at first. She came over and sat beside me and asked me a lot of questions.”
“About what?”
“Mostly about you, madame.”
The Countess looked amused.
“Did you succeed in convincing her that I still have the use of my faculties, and that I am not entirely senile? What else did she want to hear about me?”
“She seemed to think it a pity that you are not more sociable, and that so few people see you these days.”
“Tush!” the Countess exclaimed. “We were not all as fortunate as she was when the trouble arose in Seronia. She and her husband had a great deal of money invested in this country and in America, and they were not rendered destitute when they had to leave their homes. In any case, I never liked the woman!”
“It appears that she is Mr. Avery’s godmother.” Lucy said quietly, as if she was secretly hoping to impress.
The Countess reached out and gently touched her cheek.
“You and your Mr. Avery! When are you seeing him again?”
“He—he asked me whether I could be free on Saturday.”
Her employer studied her with sudden intentness.
“You do realise, don’t you, child, that he is not the sort of man you can take seriously? We know nothing about him—or very little about him, and beyond the fact that you find him pleasing there is little I can advance as justification for the curious weakness I keep betraying
every time I hesitate to order him bluntly not to come here again. I honestly think that that is what I should do.”
“Oh no!” Lucy exclaimed, and it was a cry from the heart.
The Countess sat back in her chair and shook her head of auburn curls at her.
“So it has become as important as all that, has it? You foolish child! You ridiculous child to throw yourself away on the very first bidder who comes along! Not,” with an increasing dryness in her voice, “that I would be willing to wager that you have already received a proposal from our Mr. Avery. Have you?” with a touch of sharpness that dyed Lucy’s cheeks scarlet.
She had to admit that it was not as serious as all that.
“I’m relieved to hear it,” the old lady declared, the acid note still in her voice. “Marry in haste, repent at leisure ... that is true enough. But I don’t think the gentleman we are discussing is the type to marry anyone in haste. He struck me as having a very level head on his shoulders, and as he must be nearly thirty he can’t be too impressionable. Which is all to the good, as you are obviously highly impressionable.”
Lucy would have denied this with a certain amount of indignation at any other time, but now it didn’t seem to matter. The Countess was trying to prove that Paul was a sophisticated man of the world who had no real interest in her, and it made her feel rather sick. It was quite possible it was true, for making the discovery that a person ‘intrigued’ one was a very long way from making the discovery that one was in love with a person.
Her employer continued, wagging her stick at her: “I don’t want you to make a fool of yourself, my dear! It’s the easiest thing in the world for a woman to do when there’s a man in the case. How do you know he isn’t already entangled with some woman or other? Engaged to one!”
Lucy’s voice sounded faintly strangled as she answered, “I don’t.”
“Well, there you are!” The stick wagged triumphantly. “You can’t even be sure that he isn’t married, if it comes to that. Although from the little I’ve seen of him I’d offer the opinion that he doesn’t look married.”