Royal Purple (10 page)

Lucy felt almost startled as this thought crossed her mind—that he loved the piano, and the piano loved him—and she wrenched her gaze away from the compelling dark serenity of his face and looked round the room. She saw it not as she had seen it when she first entered the room, but in detail, as if it was something more important than a room, and everything it contained had a vital interest for her which, now that she had the opportunity, she must examine with the closest possible attention.

The music flowed on, but it was the room that was the key to se
c
rets ... a revelation of its owner’s taste. He liked Hepplewhite furniture, and there were some elegant examples of it in the lovely long, low room, with its latticed windows; there were one or two very beautiful rugs, some flowers prints on the walls—or were they originals?—and a cabinet full of delicate china. She remembered their conversation in the car, and wondered whether he collected china as well as glass.

And then her eye was caught by the photograph, in a narrow silver frame, that stood on the top of a writing-desk. It was the writing-desk that should have riveted her attention, for it was a collector’s piece, but it was the photograph that gave her the most extraordinary sensation, as if something had jarred her in the pit of the stomach.

She realised that a man who looked like Paul Avery, and apparently had quite a lot of money to spend! must have women friends. Probably quite a number of women friends
...
apart from herself. But the girl in the photograph was so staggeringly lovely that it was almost like experiencing a pain for Lucy to gaze at her. Yet she went on gazing hard at her, and the wide and mocking eyes gazed back in absolute tranquillity, and the enchanting mouth curved upwards mockingly at the
corner
s.

There came a slight tap at the door, and Avery returned to a recollection of things about him with a sudden rush of chords and an apologetic
smil
e at
Lucy.

“Come in,” he called, and a woman in a neat overall entered with a tea-tray. She put the tray down on a little table beside Lucy, smiled at her pleasantly but diffidently—and afterwards Lucy wondered what it was about her that should make anyone behave diffidently her presence—and then smiled with real pleasure and a great deal more diffidence at Paul Avery.

“It’s nice to see you again, sir,” she said. “Very nice!”

Paul smiled at her with a fleeting charm and the tiniest measure of condescension, and then inclined his head.

“I’ll have a word with Miles before I leave,” he said.

“Very good, sir.” She looked across at Lucy alm
o
st eagerly. “If I’ve forgotten anything, miss, just ring the bell. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Lucy cast a swift glance over the tray, an
d
decided that there coul
d
be nothing missing. It was a beautif
u
lly arranged tray, bright with silver—embossed silver, as she noted cut of the corner of her eye—and the most exquisite flowery china. And in addition to sandwiches there appeared to be several varieties of cakes.

“It’s a wonderful tea!” she said, and Mrs. Miles withdrew, obviously gratified.

Paul moved across the room until he was near enor.gh to drop down on to the chesterfield b
e
side Lucy.

“I hope I didn’t bore you just now,” he said, referring to his playing. “I’m afraid I always get carried away and forget my manners when I sit at a piano.”

“Oh, but I loved it,” she assured him, and he smiled at her quizzically.
H
e helped himself to some cake and bit into it, while Lucy coped with the heavy silver teapot. “I ought really to insist on listening to you, but I think you’d prefer to be permitted to enjoy your tea in peace.”

“Oh, I would,” she assured him.

She was trying to decipher the crest—or whatever it was—on the
c
ream jug near to her.

“This is very beautiful silver,” she remarked. “Have you much of it?”

He appeared momentarily surprised.

“Oh yes, I think there’s quite a lot packed away somewhere. My mother keeps a lot of it in store.
”

She knew that her eyebrows flew up.

“Your mother?
Then you have a mother?” she said quickly.

He lay back in a corner of the chesterfield and his eyes were sleepily indolent, as well as amused, as they dwelt on her.

“Oh yes, I have a mother. One day I hope you’ll meet her,” he added.

CHAPTER IX

AFTER tea he showed her over the house, and Lucy thought it a peculiarly perfect little house. The kitchen, where Mrs. Miles was busy washing up the tea things, was like a model kitchen, and every device invented to save labour seemed to have found its way to it.

The dining-room was everything that, in Lucy’s opinion, a dining-room ought to be—especially when it was small and intimate. The dining-table was oval, chairs were covered in oyster-coloured tapestry, and a lovely piece of mahogany, and the seats of the Oyster curtains of satin-damask flowed before the windows, and the wide window-seat was made comfortable with matching cushions. The sideboard matched the dining-table, and the collection of glass Paul had mentioned was housed in a corner cupboard that in itself was a graceful feature of the room.

Lucy was terrified to touch the lovely array of glass, but some of the bowls and goblets made her fingers itch with the desire to handle them. She had never seen such radiant colours in crystal before, such glowing reds and jewel-bright greens, and the slender stems of a set of champagne glasses looked as if they might shatter at a touch.

Although she hadn’t been paying very much attention at the time, she recalled something Augustine had said about glasses shivering at a touch.

Upstairs there were only four bedrooms, but they were all beautifully equipped. The one Paul used himself when he was staying at the cottage was the least pretentious, even a little stark, Lucy thought, with its white walls and dark crimson bed coverlet.

The bathrooms—two of them—were quite fantastically luxurious.

“Oh, I
think
this must be a wonderful house to stay in,” she exclaimed, without quite realising what she was saying, as they went downstairs again. “Everything in it is so perfect!”

“You think so?” Paul enquired, his eyes grave as they rested on her, standing two stairs above him in the hall.

“Oh, yes.” Then she flushed and looked away. “Who did all the furnishing? Did you?”

“I was responsible for some of it.”

“The colours are so perfect, and the arrangement of everything is ... well, a woman might have given a lot of time and thought to it! It’s a woman’s house, although it is occupied by a man ... and that’s rather strange,” she added thoughtfully, still standing on her stair and looking down at him, “because most houses that are intended for male occupation have nothing feminine about them. A woman would have to introduce a lot of softening touches if she wanted to make them habitable
...
from a woman’s point of view.”

“Would she?” The statement made him smile a little, and he put out his hands and lifted her down the two stairs until she was standing close beside him in the hall. He looked down at her softly waving fair hair. “I think you ought to have a drink before you go back to London,” he said.

She looked up at him in alarm.

“Oh, but it must be getting late! I ought to have gone before!”

“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “You
’ll
be back by six o’clock,” with a sudden low laugh. “But in case you’re not
I’ll
telephone the Countess von Ardrath and warn her that you might be just a little late.”

“She
’ll
be very annoyed.”

And then she realised that the hall was very shadowy, and the dark panels seemed to shut them in in a kind of purposeful seclusion. Mrs. Miles, having finished her washing-up, had departed, and the house was very quiet
...
Paul’s hands were on her shoulders, and his nearness was disturbing. In fact, it was much more than disturbing; it made her pulse flutter wildly as if they were imprisoned birds beating their wings against the bars of a cage, and the one at the base of her throat made her catch her breath. All at once she was so breathless she felt as if she had been running, and her heart was beating so fast and so heavily she was certain he could hear it. When she put back her head to look up at him swiftly and then away again she realised that she was lost, for his dark eyes were caressing her
...
and his hands had closed very firmly over her shoulders, and he had drawn her into his arms.

“You’re very sweet, Lucy,” he said softly, and she felt his lips pressing hard and firm against her own, and a sensation of bliss such as she had never dreamed she would ever experience rose up like a flood wall and practically drowned her.

When at last he drew back his head, and the bliss
r
eceded slightly, she heard him murmur with a half tender, half huskily amused note in his voice, “You really are
very
sweet, Lucy
!”
And then he pressed her golden head into the hollow of his neck for a moment, and she had the fantastic notion that that was where it belonged, and that that was where it would have to stay if she was ever to know happiness—complete and perfect and slightly delirious happiness!

But he put her away from him gently, and he said quietly: “We must go, Lucy. Her Highness will be telephoning the police if I don’t return you to her soon.”

She stared at him dazedly.

“Do you really think she would do that?”

“I think she will hand me over to the police if I prove that I’m not the right sort of person to take you out for the afternoon!”

He was joking, she knew, but as she followed him out to the
c
ar she had a temporary mental image of the Countess ordering Augustine to get on to the telephone and the local police station, to find out why a young woman she employed had not returned on time, after promising that under no circumstances would she be late.

They went out to the car by a side entrance, and as they passed through the room where they had had tea Paul stopped and turned and looked at Lucy. His mouth was unusually soft, his eyes had a st
r
angely regretful look in them, and he said impulsively:
“
Oh, darling, I didn’t bring you here to make love to you but I can’t let you go like this. Come here!” and he caught her back into his arms again.

This time his kiss was a revelation to Lucy. There was nothing calm or deliberate about it, and her own eagerness to return it seemed to set him on fire. He crushed her against him until her bones threatened to crack, and although she could have cried out with the pain of such a relentless hold she merely turned her soft mouth up to him, and he bruised it with his own. She found it hard to breathe, but his kiss went on and on, and she closed
her
eyes and clung to him and the room rocked round her
...

T
h
en he kis
se
d her as if he was apologising for so much violence, on the tip of her nose and her eves, on her cheeks and her chin and her brow, and when he let her go this time there was no question of anything humorous in the darkness of his eyes, and he said nothing at all until she spoke.

“I—I’ve dropped my handbag
...”

He picked it up for her, and he offered it to her with the utmost gravity and
c
ourtesy, the fire d
y
ing slowly out of his yes, although he seemed to find it hard to look anywhere but at her.

“I’m afraid I was rather rough just now. Please forgive me!” he said.

Her eyes were very clear as she lifted them to his face, and there was nothing embarrassed about her expression. She smiled warmly and impulsively at him.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said.

“Isn’t there?”

He smiled back at her a little crookedly, then he took both her hands and held them up against his face. He kissed them lingeringly, until the colour scorched her cheeks again, and then he let them go.

“You are adorable,
”
he told her.
“
I find you utterly adorable!”

But on the journey back to London he was very silent, and his silence affected Lucy in such a way that she too began to find little to talk about. Up till then she had chatted about his house, and said how much she had enjoyed the afternoon, and how lucky he was to have such an excellent woman as Mrs. Miles to look after everything for him.

She had talked quickly and a little nervously, because as the miles between her and the delightful week-end cottage—attached to a farm which she had a feeling might well be prosperous—where she had had tea, increased, and the memory of those moments when she had been kissed passionately for the first time in her life by a man who knew how to kiss passionately and memorably was overlaid by the detachment which seemed to have altered him a little, she felt the need to talk quickly of almost anything that couldn’t give rise to embarrassment. Or was in any way connected with the afternoon’s highlight.

Paul answered as if at least a part of his mind was dwelling on something else—or that was the impression she received; and although he occasionally directed at her his sideways smile, and his voice had a warm note of intimacy in it just occasionally—sufficiently warm and intimate to set something deep inside her trembling, as if it was a bird that had encountered unexpected tempest, and was trying to recover from the shock—for the most part he concentrated on the business of driving, and let her spate of light, inconsequent talk flow over him.

When they drew near to London, Lucy’s thoughts turned to the Countess, and in addition to a feeling of let-down and slight bewilderment she began to anticipate her employer’s annoyance because it was already nearly a quarter to seven. Paul glanced at a clock and remarked that it would be fully seven before they arrived at twenty-four Alison Gardens, and Lucy felt the palms of her hands grow moist.

What in the world was she going to say to the Countess to explain away such a piece of careless disregard of her expressed wishes?

But Paul laid a hand on her knee, and told her to stop worrying.