Royal Purple by Susan Barrie

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 The gravity in his expression had been replaced by a curl of arrogance which altered the shape of his mouth, and his chin and jaw were tip-tilted a little, as if that was their natural elevation.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.
    But she stopped him.
    “Oh no, I love it ... the way it blows my hair about, and the scent of fresh growing things. It’s the scent of spring.”
    He smiled.
    She stroked the warm red leather against which she was reclining.
    “A car like this must—cost a lot of money,” she remarked, rather thoughtfully.
    He laughed, a richly amused laugh, low in his throat.
    “What you really mean,” he said, “is that you find it difficult to comprehend how a man like myself—employed in what I’m afraid you consider rather a humble capacity!—can make enough money to own such a car.” His voice dropped, as if he was letting her into a secret. “By raking in the tips, of course! By hoarding them carefully and occasionally risking a few pounds on a certain outsider fancied by the chef. He has an unerring instinct in such matters, and is good enough to pass on his hunches to me occasionally.”
    But Lucy looked at him with such clear, doubting eyes that he laughed again.
    “You don’t believe me, little one? Why is it that you don’t believe me?” he asked.
    Lucy shook her head.
    “I don’t know.”
    “I assure you I seldom lie about anything ... Lies have a habit of recoiling on one.” He adjusted the little shield above the windscreen and prevented the golden beams of afternoon sunshine from striking right into his eyes. “And you, of course, never lie ... something tells me it would never even occur to you to prevaricate.”
    “You mean I’m as transparent as