Royal Purple (14 page)

In addition, it was the most blatantly scarlet, and the most exotic mouth Lu
c
y had ever seen. Quite a
fascinating
mouth, even to a woman.

Ulla Renshaw led her through the press and straight up to the spot where Paul was standing. Lucy might not have existed as the enthusiastic greetings took place, Paul still staring as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes, although obviously delighted as soon as his brain registered the truth that this was no hallucination. The girl with the eyes of a
born
enchantress held out both hands to him—just as Ulla had done when they first arrived—but unlike Ulla she didn’t make any spontaneous movement towards
him,
or kiss him. She put her shining brown head on one side, and regarded him from behind the protective fringes of her sweeping dark eyelashes.

“Paul!” she exclaimed, as if that was enough.
“
Paul
!”

Ulla said quickly, excitedly:

“I knew Sophie was back in England, and that if she could manage it she would look in tonight, but I wanted it to be a surprise for you, Paul darling, so I didn’t tell you! Now aren’t you glad I didn’t spoil the surprise? Aren’t you glad I absolutely insisted that you came along tonight?”

CHAPTER XII

AT last Lucy was remembered. And it was Paul who remembered her.

Having gazed into the eyes of the radiant Sophie much as a shipwrecked seaman, standing on the beach of a desert island, gazes at a ship that is steaming in his direction, and kissed both of the hands that were extended towards him—with a bemused fervour, or so it struck Lucy—he said something about being utterly unprepared for such an astonishing piece of good fortune, and then remembered the girl who was standing beside him.

“Forgive me, Lucy,” he said, very quietly and formally. “Ulla’s little surprise made me forget my manners.” Then he made the two girls known to one another. “Mademoiselle Devargue, Miss Gray. Sophie, you have a habit of springing surprises, but this is surely the finest surprise you have ever sprung!”

“Ulla seemed to think it would be,” Sophie murmured demurely. She had offered the tips of her fingers to Lucy, and then decided to ignore her altogether. “Of course, if I
could
have let you know in advance I would have done so. Then we could have come here together
...”
The merest glance at Lucy informed her that she didn’t exist, and in any case she could have been dispensed with without it upsetting anyone. “But I only got in last night, and I had a few urgent appointments this morning. Ulla warned me that you mightn’t be free during the afternoon, so I just schooled myself to patience.”

“I thought it much the best thing she could do,” Ulla said complacently.

Paul was obviously trying to collect himself after being shaken by surprise.

“You say that you only got in last night?” he echoed. “That means, of course, that you flew here? Is that the first time that you’ve flown all the way from America by yourself?” He gazed at her with undisguised admiration, as if he fully appreciated the risk that anyone as delectable as herself ran by travelling without some sort of an armed guard. “Yes, of course it is! The last time you came over you were accompanied by my Aunt Helen. How is she, by the way?”

“Perfectly well,” she assured him, devastating dimples appearing at the
corner
s of that lovely mouth. Her eyes were neither blue nor grey nor brown, and in some curious way they were rather like Lucy’s, only they had depths to them that Lucy’s eyes would never possess. They were like violets hidden in the depths of a shadowy wood. “She sent you her affectionate greetings, and I am to hope that so long as I remain in London you will keep a watchful eye upon me for her sake. I haven’t the temerity to suggest that you will do it for my own!”

Paul smiled, one of his most attractive, whimsical
smiles.

“As I remember you, Sophie, you always had quite a lot of temerity,” he told her. Then he displayed curiosity about the reason for her visit to London. “Why are you here? And how long do you propose to stay? Does my aunt approve of your being on your own, as you apparently are?”

“Oh yes. And I’m here to do a job of modelling. It was so lucky, but my Mama has a friend who has a friend who has a friend in a business house over here, and the whole thing was arranged
...
!
” She was dimpling breathtakingly, and her eyes were alight. “If I prove suitable I may be transferred to Paris in a few months’ time. Isn’t it marvellous?”

“Marvellous,” he echoed, and continued to gaze at her. Then he asked more abruptly: “Where are you staying?”

“I spent last night at the Dorchester, but I’m going to share a flat with someone we know. I move in tomorrow, and after that I shall have a telephone number I can give you.”

She looked at him as if she could already pass on the information if he wanted it, and he said at once: “Good! You’d better let me have it now, and then I can get in touch with you tomorrow evening. I
’
ll ring you about eight.”

She opened her handbag and produced a card which she passed to him. She said in the most seductively soft voice in the world:

“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
b
e 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, darlin
g
!”

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
h
eadier than any perfume that had ever been invented!

She heard him murmur gently to he
r
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.
Y
our 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.

“Apparent
l
y 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.”