Free Royal Purple by Susan Barrie Page B

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