Royal Purple

by Susan Barrie

  He ran a finger along the smooth side of her throat, and she quivered like an aspen deep inside her. The hypnotic brilliance between his thick black eyelashes grew more brilliant, and she felt suddenly confused.

  “I’m not at all sure that I ought to stay...”

  “Oh, my adorable little Lucy, why not?” He was caressing her with his eyes and his hands and his mouth, and it was the compulsion of his mouth that set her trembling violently, and caused her heart to pound heavily and thickly against her ribs. “We came close to quarrelling just now, but it was my fault. I said things I didn’t mean! I was beastly and abominable to you, and I ask you to forgive me! Darling, darling little Lucy! Little love! Say you forgive me, and let us be as happy as I intended this afternoon!”

  “How happy did you intend us to be this afternoon?” She managed to free her mouth, and she gazed at him with wide, fascinated eyes. “I rather gathered that you were annoyed with me ... really annoyed!”

  “Oh, my darling, no!” The softness of his mouth, the tenderness of his eyes, would have lulled her absolutely, but for the fact that she couldn’t be entirely lulled following the accusations he had levelled at her. He could carry her away with him temporarily on a sea of emotion, but the instant she was permitted to think again ... she wanted to struggle up on the settee and hold him off purposefully, without any further yielding. “Sweetheart, don’t be so foolish,” huskily. “How could I ever be really annoyed with you?”

  “You sounded—very annoyed!”

  “I’ve told you, I think you’re adorable!”

  “I also think you despise me.” She placed her hands against his shoulders and held him away from her. “I honestly think I ought to go now—”

  “No!” That eager light in his eyes had vanished as if it had never been, and a cool and comfortless darkness was all that looked back at her as she gazed at him in bewilderment. His whole dark face had altered completely, and the line of his jaw was rigid. “It doesn’t matter whether I despise you or adore you, I’m not going to let you cut short our time together. This is something I’ve looked forward to all the week.” She caught the cold gleam of his teeth as he smiled for an instant. “And I thought you understood when I suggested that we lunched here instead of in town that it was in order that our time together should be longer ... and as perfect as we could make it!”

  He detached the hands that were keeping him at a distance and, after kissing them lightly, forced her back into his arms. He held her with a ruthlessness that not merely bruised the tops of her arms, but was a final and bitter reason for disillusionment, and filled her with panic because she could not escape. She tried to make him understand.

  “Paul! I didn’t realise—!”

  “Darling, it doesn’t matter.” His eyes were bright again, and his mouth was close to hers. “Only don’t spoil this afternoon, and be my sweet enchanting Lucy!” His voice cracked huskily. “The Lucy I met that afternoon in the park ... and whom I thought was so naive! Only you’re not really naive, are you, my lovely one?”

  The door to the kitchen opened, and someone stood there looking at them. Lucy was the first to realise that the door had opened, but Paul was forcing her back on to the cushions, and she could do nothing to warn him. It wasn’t until a voice with a faint American accent spoke in slow surprise that she felt herself released, and he stood up.

  “I’m sorry ... I really am sorry if I’m interrupting something,” Sophie Devargue said clearly. She was wearing a new spring suit, and her soft brown hair was crowned by an absurd little hat. Her unusual eyes had an odd, transfixed expression. “Mrs. Miles didn’t warn me that you had a visitor!”

  Paul asked jerkily:

  “Where is Mrs. Miles? I thought she had left.”

  “Yes, I met her outside where I parked my car. She was feeding her hens. As I say, she didn’t warn me that you had a visitor, Paul!”

  The great eyes were lifted to his face, and Lucy could have sworn there was reproach in them.

  He tried to recover his normal poise and to call to his aid his usual excellent manners, but the jerky note was still in his voice as he attempted an introduction that wasn’t necessary.

  “We have met before,” Sophie said quietly, while Lucy stood smoothing down her dress and feeling like a kitchenmaid who had been caught in a compromising position by someone who had a right to object very strongly if she wished. “Miss Gray and I were introduced at Ulla’s party, if you remember? On the night I arrived in London. I understood she is employed by your grandmother ... her companion, or something of the sort?”

  Lucy forgot her crumpled dress, and even her agonising embarrassment ceased to be really agonising. She faltered:

  “Grandmother?” She looked towards Paul, and his expression supplied the key to the mystery that should never, she now realised, have been a mystery at all ... not when he actually looked like the Countess, with her same slightly arrogant features, and her aloofness at times. And having seen the two of them together she should have guessed at once, especially as the Countess took such a dislike to him, and she had always made it plain that she had no time at all for her daughter’s son. And yet when someone questioned his status as a gentleman she had been quick to assert his right to the title!

  A gentleman ... Prince Paul of Seronia! Seronia didn’t want him, but that didn’t alter the fact that he had been born of royal blood.

  “I ... I’m afraid I’ve been very stupid.” Lucy said automatically, before Paul could say a word. “I didn’t realise...”

  She looked at him helplessly, and he moved to her swiftly.

  “Lucy!”

  But once again Sophie Devargue spoke clearly.

  “My car is at your disposal, Miss Gray, if you feel that you ought to return to town without waiting for Mr. Avery to drive you there. I’ve no doubt you can drive ... and you can leave the car with the garage who looks after it for me. The address is on a card attached to the dashboard.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind, Lucy,” Paul ordered sternly. “I’ll drive you back—”

  But Lucy decided to ignore him, and she looked to Miss Devargue for the support she badly needed just then.

  “I’m afraid I can’t drive, but if I could get a taxi...?” The words came mechanically, and seemed to stick in her throat. “There must be a garage in the village. If I could ring them...?”

  “Is there a garage in the village, Paul?” Sophie asked, turning to him with extraordinary calm and composure. “If there is you must know of it, and it’ll be in the telephone book ... Or perhaps Mrs. Miles could help. I remember her husband was just starting off for the village in a rather ramshackle old car. We could catch him...”

  She turned back to the kitchen door, but Paul caught her by the arm and spoke angrily.

  “This is no concern of yours, Sophie! Miss Gray is my guest, and I’ll see her safely back to my grandmother’s house. I invited her here, and I’ll be responsible for getting her back to London. I don’t know what decided you to drive down here this afternoon, but I can’t ask you to stay.”

  “No?” But Sophie’s inscrutable little smile was not so inscrutable when she looked across at Lucy. “Perhaps I don’t need to be asked. You should remember, darling, that you placed the cottage at my disposal when we had dinner together the other night, and you actually presented me with one of your keys.” She produced it from her bag, and held it in her slim gloved fingers under his nose. “And when I opened the door just now it struck me that Miss Gray wasn’t exactly keen to stay. I’d even go so far as to say that you appeared to be forcing your attentions on her!” Nevertheless, she smiled indulgently up into his face, and tapped him lightly and familiarly on the cheek with the small Yale key.

  “I suppose you think that a mere companion is fair game; but you must remember that these are modern times ... What Prince Paul of Seronia might have done well away from the blaze of publicity fifty years ago would be nobody’s idea of fun nowadays! And, in any case, there�
��s a union to protect everyone and everything ... and you’re no longer Prince Paul of Seronia!”

  Lucy caught a glimpse of the grimness of Paul’s expression—grimmer than she had ever seen it—out of the corner of her eye as she groped for her coat and her handbag, but she was in no state of mind to be impressed by it. While Sophie was still looking challengingly into the dark eyes of Paul, the waiter, grandson of her employer, and exile from his homeland, she tiptoed swiftly towards the door and in a matter of seconds was flying across the garden towards the white gate beyond which was the farmyard, and—she hoped!—Mr. Miles’s ramshackle car.

  CHAPTER XV

  TO her inexpressible relief Mr. Miles was just starting off with a noisy rattling of the ancient framework of the car, and a most unpleasant smell from the exhaust. He consented at once to take her to the village, and a local hire-car man drove her back to London. She paid for the drive from the wad of notes that represented her arrears of salary.

  The Countess was in the sitting-room when the car drove up, and from behind the festooned curtains she watched Lucy alight. She was waiting for her explanation when Lucy entered the sitting-room, and the girl told the story she had invented in the ear.

  “Mr. Avery’s car broke down. He couldn’t bring me back.” But it was so plain she wasn’t telling the truth, and she looked so white and unlike herself, that the Countess thumped on the floor with her stick, and demanded to know the truth.

  “Where is your gentleman friend! Where is our arrogant waiter, who took you out to lunch and allowed you to return without an escort?” A table rattled as the stick gave an extra thump. “It’s no use you telling me any lies, for I’ve never yet been deceived by lies, and my faculties are alert enough to prevent me being deceived by them now! So get on with what happened, and don’t soft-pedal any of it.”

  Lucy sank down on a chair and tried to marshall her wits, but thirty miles of driving—being silently driven, while she sat in the back of the car—with her mind in a turmoil, and her heart like a leaden thing inside her, had not prepared her for this. She slipped out of her coat and her soft wool dress looked too pale for her colouring, and her hair was still a trifle disordered, for she hadn’t thought to comb it in the car.

  The Countess looked grim, and rang the bell for Augustine, who brought Lucy a cup of tea. After one quick look at the latter the old servant suggested something stronger, but the Countess waved her away.

  “Now, drink your tea, and tell me about everything. What happened?” she insisted.

  Lucy told the truth as nearly as her pride would allow. In point of fact, she took all the blame for reading into Paul’s intentions more than he intended, and she tried to excuse Paul on the grounds that she had been very easy game. He had never once told her he was in love with her, and he had probably realised that she was hopelessly in love with him. It had no doubt occurred to him that he was giving her pleasure by taking her out and about.

  “And making violent love to you?” The Countess shot a disdainful glance at Lucy’s ruffled golden hair, although the girl had been careful to avoid any actual admission that she had been made love to. “Is that a way to cure a young woman who bestows her affections unwisely? And unasked! What nonsense, girl! Your waiter is a gentlemanly cad, and so I always suspected.”

  “But he’s your grandson,” Lucy said quietly, watching her employer’s face closely.

  The Countess looked down at the head of her cane, and after a second or so she nodded her head with compressed lips.

  “Yes; I know that.”

  “You knew?” Lucy felt only mild astonishment, for on the way home she had faced the fact that the Countess must have known for some time. Otherwise she was not the type of woman to have trusted him so much, and allowed her young employee to go about with him. Which made it all rather peculiar since she was so disinclined to own that he was her grandson. The Countess said slowly, heavily:

  “I knew from the moment you brought him here, and after our little talk together of course I had no doubts. He is my daughter’s son ... and my daughter and I have had no time for one another for a very long time.”

  “But—” Lucy began.

  The Countess waved her to silence.

  “I told you that I didn’t approve of her marriage, but it appears that the marriage was a reasonable success, and certainly there has been no lack of money. Paul has had everything he wanted all his life—excepting, of course, his rightful position in Seronia!—and to my great humiliation it is he who has paid my allowance into my bank for the past five or six years. Apparently Stanislav became careless with the payments, and finally allowed them to get so badly in arrears that there was nothing at all in the bank, and the manager communicated with the most likely relative I possess who would hardly be prepared to see me starve.”

  For such a proud old lady, who had lived with a grievance for so long, the admission was like gall and wormwood, and Lucy forgot her own disillusionment in a temporary burst of warm sympathy for her employer.

  “You should have sold your jewels long before, madame,” she said gently. “They would have kept you in comfort and dignity instead of having to pinch and scrape.”

  But the old lady shook her head at her, smiling little wryly. “My dear child, only a few items in that jewelbox of mine are genuine,” she confessed. “Most of the pieces are reproductions, otherwise even my great love for Seronia would not have driven me to accept charity from my relatives.”

  “But, madame...!” Lucy was shocked. “Now that you’ve sold the brooch, and the rings—and if there isn’t very much else!—what will you do if you badly need money in the future?”

  “Appeal to my relatives,” the Countess replied, knowing that that was the very last thing she would ever do.

  “Paul would help you. I’m sure he would help you!” Lucy declared eagerly, forgetting that in future she would have to revise her opinion of Paul. “You say- he has plenty of money, and—well, I’ve always thought he must be much better off than an ordinary waiter could ever hope to be. But I still can’t understand why he allows people to think he’s just a waiter.”

  “Probably in order to gain experience for running a chain of hotels, or something of the sort, one of these days,” his grandmother suggested boredly. “In any case, I don’t think many people ever take him for an ordinary waiter.”

  “You didn’t, did you?” Lucy said, feeling a trifle sick as she recalled that amazing evening when she had worn her new pink evening dress for the first time, and Paul had made his second appearance in her life. “That was why you invited him here to have a drink.”

  “Which, incidentally, he has never had, for I never repeated my invitation,” the Countess said musingly. She looked hard and curiously at Lucy. “I could have sworn...” she began, and then she broke off, shrugging her shoulders slightly. “I have never pretended to understand men, for they are most difficult creatures to understand, but I was prepared to believe that my grandson was interested in you, Lucy, and that he would behave towards you at all times like a gentleman! In fact, that was what he promised, when we had our private talk here. Are you absolutely certain...?”

  She looked in a puzzled fashion at Lucy, and then shook her head again.

  “Ah well, after what you have told me there can be no doubt, I suppose. But I’ll confess I’m surprised. He has probably become entangled with this Sophie Devargue, who belongs to a very wealthy and a very ancient family. No doubt his mother thinks it would be a good match,” with a slight sniff. “But when, and if, he comes here again I’ll tell him I refuse to accept his allowance. And you, my dear,” thudding once more with her stick on the floor, “will decline absolutely to see him, do you understand?”

  “He won’t come here again to see me, madame,” Lucy prophesied drearily, gathering up her gloves and bag, and hoping she would be allowed to escape to her room.

  The Countess reached out and squeezed her hands, nodding permission when she realised that the girl had ha
d about enough for one afternoon.

  “If he does, leave him to me,” she said. “But you’ll get over him, child. Love is like the measles, but most people recover from it.” She smiled sadly. “I know, because I had one very serious bout of it myself at one time.”

  “I—wish I could go away for a time,” Lucy said, maltreating her gloves as she looked appealingly at the Countess. “I don’t mean far away, but I don’t want to stay in London!”

  The Countess patted her hands again.

  “We’ll see. And in the meantime you could start doing some packing to occupy yourself. Get out a few things you might need for a short visit and put them into a case. Now run away and have a good cry because you wouldn’t listen to my advice and as a result you feel as if the world’s come to an end. Believe me, you’ll feel much better when you’ve shed a few heartbroken tears!”

  When she had left the room the Countess went to the window and sat down to watch the traffic and the pedestrians passing outside. She settled herself very deliberately, as if she was there for a purpose, and in less than a quarter of an hour her vigil was rewarded, and a long cream car drew up in front of the house.

  By the time Augustine had shown Paul Avery into the sitting-room his grandmother was standing and waiting to receive him with an expression on her face which would have daunted most men if they had found themselves suddenly confronted by it. Particularly if their conscience was not in the least clear, and they had come to offer an explanation.

  But Paul didn’t look as if his conscience was troubling him particularly. He merely looked terribly concerned, and rather white and worn, as if he had been driving fast at an hour when there was a lot of traffic on the road and all the time something had been tormenting him badly.

  “Where is she?” he asked, without wasting time on saying anything else. “Where is she, Grand’mere? She did get back all right, didn’t she? I’ve been half out of my mind wondering whether she’s all right!”

  “She is upstairs in her room,” the Countess replied with perfect calmness.