Authors: Susan Barrie
‘
I can’t make up my mind about the colour of your eyes, but each one of these flowers is like you. Paul Avery
.’
“
We-ell
!”
said Augustine, regarding her employer’s
young companion with entirely new eyes, as it were.
“I—I can’t believe that they’re really for me!” Lucy exclaimed, eyes shining as she gathered the flowers into her arms. The scent of them, the coolness, the moisture that clung to them, was a combined wonder. And what such a profusion must have cost she couldn’t even begin to think.
But Augustine, more practical, examined the lid of the box, and at sight of the florist’s name she expressed the opinion that Lucy’s gentleman friend must be made of money. And if he wasn’t made of money then she must have made an extraordinary impression, for such a tribute must have cost far more than they expended on fruit and vegetables in one month.
Lucy couldn’t help smiling at Augustine’s preoccupation with housekeeping, and she pointed out that the last time they bought fruit in the luxury class was when the Countess had a bout of influenza, and she insisted on a very large and succulent pineapple being procured for her. And as for Mr. Avery being made of money...
She shook her head.
“Well, he isn’t,” she said.
Augustine appeared surprised.
“
In that case you have indeed made an impression!
”
She offered to help Lucy arrange the flowers, and a large number of containers was brought out from various cupboards. The Countess, when she saw the display in the sitting-room, arched her eyebrows but made no enquiries, and she merely suggested that Lucy should take one of the vases to her own room.
“Your admirer, I feel sure, would like it if you did,” she remarked with some dryness.
The following morning the telephone rang for Lucy. It was Paul Avery, and he asked her whether she could lunch with him the following day, which was Saturday.
“Your—day off?” she enquired, a trifle breathlessly. She could almost see him smile.
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to ask the Countess,” she said, the same breathless note in her voice.
“Then do you mind running away and doing so now, while I hang on? I haven’t got a great deal of time, and if I say I’ll ring you later I may not get the opportunity.”
She approached the Countess with a certain amount of timidity, for the old lady was not in one of her sunniest humours. She had slept badly, and her rheumatism was troubling her, and in addition she declared that the scent of so many flowers in the house had given her hay-fever. Lucy didn’t believe in the hay- fever, but she did believe in the sleepless night and the rheumatism. Her employer’s eyes were tire
d
, and she moved her hands stiffly and awkwardly when she reached for anything.
“I
don’t know that I can spare you for a whole day,” she returned in response to Lucy’s request. “And if you have lunch with this man, and it’s his day off, I suppose his idea is to keep you with him for the whole of the day?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy answered, thinking however that a whole day in the company of Paul Avery would be too much to hope for. “And of course, if you can’t spare me—”
“I didn’t say that I can’t spare you,” the old lady snapped. “I said that I didn’t know whether I could spare you. But as it would be intolerable for me to have you mooning around the house looking as if someone had deprived you of something, I say that you can go off for the day if you want to. But don’t make a night of it as well as a day! That’s all I ask
!”
“Of course not,” Lucy gasped, in gratitude. “As if I would!”
“Be back here by six o’clock.”
“Oh, I will,
madame
.”
The Countess smiled at her unexpectedly.
“Cheer up, child. You’re entitled to a day off since I can’t remember when you had one last, and see to it that you enjoy yourself. Make yourself as attra
c
tive as possible for the young man’s benefit, but don’t bowl him over completely. Remember we have only a limited number of vases!”
Lucy raced back to the hall and the telephone to let Paul Avery know that it would be all right. She could almost see the smile enter his eyes when she confided that the Countess had given her the whole day off if she wanted it. So long as she was back by six o’clock!
“Fine!” he said, and for the first time she thought his voice sounded faintly American. “I’ll see to it that you’re safely returned to your doorstep by six o’clock. And I’ll call for you about midday, if I may?”
“Of course,” she answered. And then she thanked him for the flowers. “They were wonderful,” she said. “I’ve never had so many flowers all at once in my life before.”
“In that case I’m sorry I didn’t double the order. .But that’s something that can be rectified in the future. Until tomorrow, Lucy!”
As she set down the receiver she breathed into the silence and the heavily flower-scented atmosphere of the hall, “Until tomorrow!”
CHAPTER VIII
UNLIKE her employer, Lucy was not particularly interested in food, but she did realise that the lunch they consumed in a small Soho restaurant was good.
She thought it was an Italian restaurant to which Paul Avery took her, until he corrected the impression and explained that the man who ran it was a Seronian. His eyes flickered towards the dark little man who stood watching them and beaming as Lucy sipped her coffee appreciatively at the conclusion of the meal, and then beckoned him towards them.
“This is Mademoiselle Gray, Andrei,” he said. “She has the honour to be employed by Her Excellency the Countess von Ardrath.”
“The Countess von—?” The little man’s eyes rolled in a kind of awe. “But that is wonderful!” he declared. “That is very wonderful!”
A gleam that might have been amusement lit Paul’s dark eyes. He said softly to Lucy:
“So now you understand that it really is an honour to work for the Countess! Especially when she despatches you on an errand connected with the sale of her jewellery!”
The proprietor of the restaurant was concerned to find out whether Lucy really had enjoyed her meal, and whether everything had been entirely to her taste. She assured him that lunching at his restaurant was an experience she wouldn’t forget, and his worried expression vanished and he started to beam again in a relieved fashion, although a slight mistiness in his melting dark eyes betrayed the emotional fervour which any link with his fatherland aroused in him. The Countess von Ardrath was a princess of Seronia by birth, and as such he must always revere her.
He seized a white flower from a table and held it out to Lucy, apologising for the fact that it wasn’t a white rosebud—the emblem of Seronia—but begging her to accept it in its stead.
“We who are exiles never forget our homeland,” he said, and the mistiness in his eyes spread. He turned them on Paul Avery, and Lucy thought that the way he shook his head was lugubrious. “Even you,
monsieur
...
even you do not forget!” he asserted.
Paul shrugged.
“There is little point is remembering,” he remarked.
The man he had addressed as Andrei spread his hands.
“But how can one not remember
...
occasionally?” he enquired. Then he fairly leapt to light the other man’s cigarette for him with his own lighter, and as they were leaving he came up behind Lucy’s companion and thanked him with warmth for his patronage.
“It was good of you,
monsieur
,”
he said, almost humbly. “It is always an honour when you come here, either alone or with your friends. Always a great honour.”
Outside, on the pavement, Lucy’s eyes fastened curiously on the man who had bought her her lunch. She thought that he looked extremely impeccable and peculiarly distinguished, and it wasn’t perhaps surprising that the proprietor of the restaurant had display such an unusual amount of subservience towards him. But, at the same time, he
was
merely a fellow worker in the same line of business
...
employed to perform the same duties that Andrei’s attentive waiters performed!
And so far he hadn’t risen to Andrei’s level and acquired his own business!
She looked away rather quickly when she saw Paul smiling at her a little oddly, and then he hailed a taxi and put her into it. He got in beside her and said:
“We go now to pick up my own car, and as it is such a splendid day we will drive out into the country. Is that something you would like to do?”
Lucy repeated:
“Your own
c
ar?” She turned to him in surprise. “I didn’t know you had a car.”
“But of course. How otherwise do you think I get out of London when I feel the urge?”
She felt taken aback. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that he was a man who would wish to get out of London for his own pleasure. She associated him with taxis and the Hotel Splendide, with formal clothes and a neatly furled umbrella, with a white tie and tails, gilt
framed mirrors, and plush carpets. Today it was true he was wearing a beautifully tailored light grey suit and a casually flowing tie—an Old Etonian tie!—and he certainly had a more casual air about him, an air of having come off parade and being prepared for a little relaxation.
But as a man who drove his own car and liked drives in the country...
She felt him pat her hand lightly where it rested in her lap, and heard the amusement in his voice as he admitted:
“Of course I like to get away from crowds sometimes, and this afternoon I’m going to see to it that you get away from crowds too.” He surveyed her with a cool gleam in his eyes and a quirk to the corners of his mouth as he pressed out one of his specially blended cigarettes—she had discovered that they were specially blen
d
ed—in an ashtray attached to the door-frame nearest him.
“
Do you know that you look like the very breath of spring itself in that pale suit, and with your g
olden hair? Your eyes have the c
ool green of a flower stem, and you make me think of a snowdrop
...”
He broke off.
“Of course you must get away from London sometimes in order to breathe. And so long as we have you back under the Countess’s eagle eye by six o ’clock
.
..
!”
She realised that he was laughing at her, and she laughed with him.
“But the Countess hasn’t got an eagle eye! She’s the most reasonable person to work for, and exceedingly amiable most of the time.”
“And when she isn’t amiable you forgive her.” He patted her hand again, the feel of his long fingers sending queer little electric sparks speeding up and down her arm. “I should think you find it a simple matter to forgive most people their eccentricities most of the time.”
He picked up his car in a garage that was one of a series of lock-up garages in London’s West End, and the man who was on duty as an attendant touched his cap to him very politely. The car was a low-slung elegant Jaguar in a pale cream colour, and Lucy’s eyes widened considerably when she first caught sight of it. Paul put her into the seat beside him at the wheel, and then in a riot of warm March sunshine they set off for the green lanes and the steep hillsides of Surrey.
Lucy was never to forget that afternoon, and she was never to forget her first experience of riding in such a luxurious car. The upholstery was a bright scarlet, and the instruments on the dashboard dazzled her. The window beside her was open, and a cool breeze came in at it and fanned her cheeks, and lifted the ends of her hair on her forehead, and the comfort of the well-sprung seat made her feel as if she was travelling on a cloud.
Paul Avery drove as if he enjoyed driving, and he was also a very experienced driver. When he settled into the seat behind the wheel Lucy received the impression that he was relaxing in a way that was a luxury to him, and she also received an impression that in some curious way he had cast aside his workaday personality and become someone entirely different. His hands grasping the wheel were the strong and capable hands of someone who was master of his own fate, and yet in a way they too were relaxed and even indolent, as if his fate was assured, and he knew it. The gravity in his expression had been replaced by a curl of arrogance which altered the shape of his mouth, and his chin and jaw were tip-tilted a little, as if that was their natural elevation.
When he glanced sideways at Lucy to make certain that she was completely comfortable, there was a smile in his eyes that invited her to become a changed personality also, and filed her with a strangely breathless sensation of excitement. Something
lik
e
a tide of excitement rising inside her.
“Is the draught from that window too mu
c
h for you?” he asked, extending an arm across her to close it.