As for Lord Gaston-Reade, still nominally her fiancé, toward him she had come to feel an aversion that was distressing in such a small group. That he appeared oblivious of her feelings was even more irritating. She wanted him to ask her what was wrong. She wished he would show some sign that he cared that there was a rift between them. It wouldn’t resign her to the engagement, nor to her future husband, but it would at least show he had the tiniest bit of sensitivity to her emotions.
But the most profound alteration was in her feeling toward Tony Heywood. She couldn’t even look at him without feeling a spurt of attraction. That it was doomed to dwindle, if she was fortunate, given their respective positions, into a sisterly affection did not ease her agitation in his company at the present.
She would conquer the feeling, she determined. And that could only be accomplished by either becoming used to his company or finding some part of his personality that irritated her as much as her fiancé’s smug superiority did. Either goal could only be accomplished by spending time with him, and so she steeled her will and threw herself into his company as often as she could, disregarding her fiancé’s perturbation—that ease with his secretary his lordship did, at least, notice—and her father’s worried glances.
She would defeat her preference or let it slip into casual friendship.
• • •
Tony found every notion of his carefully planned existence changed, and it had little to do with being marooned on a tiny cay in the outer reaches of the Caribbean with a disparate group of grumbling complainers. It was Miss Savina Roxeter, and how he felt whenever she was near, that had made a muddle of his thoughts and emotions. In all his controlled, organized life—an adventurer he had been, it was true, but always with a clear plan and goal—he had never felt the terror of being on the edge of something greater than his life’s charted voyage. But it was there, the knowledge that in Savina he had found the one other soul in the world that felt like he did, thought like he did, wanted what he wanted, even if she didn’t know it. As a well-raised young lady she was limited, perhaps, in what she could imagine for herself and her life, but he could see in her the magnificence of her mind and heart, and given free range, the endless possibilities of her life.
Was he misled by the utter enchantment of her face and form? There was no doubt, he thought, as he watched her graceful litheness after breakfast as she and Zazu did something so mundane as rinsing the tin plates, that he was attracted to her physically. There was more than that between them, though, much more.
“Let me help,” he said, drawn to her side by a force more powerful than magnetism.
Zazu, whom he often suspected of knowing his feelings, smiled and melted away to the path toward the beach, saying, “I have promised to help Lady Venture this morning with wood.”
Savina smiled and waved to her, and then turned to Tony. “I’m almost done,” she said, holding out a basket filled with hog plums and papayas. “But if you would conceal this, I would be grateful. I find that the birds and lizards are almost as voracious as we are, and all of our careful picking will come to naught if I don’t do my best to hide the fruit.”
He took the basket from her, his hand brushing hers as he did so, and set the basket in one of the empty wooden crates, covered it, placed a rock on the lid, then turned back to her and said, “I was thinking of going to a spot I found above the ridge beyond the north rock promontory to get a better view of the island. Would you like to accompany me? I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen the island from there.”
There was silence for a moment, other than the sounds he had become so accustomed to, the chirring of insects and the trill of birds calling back and forth between the trees.
She studied his face, then said, “I suppose we could; I would like to see more of the interior. Are you asking anyone else?”
“We’ll only be gone a couple of hours at most. No one will even miss us.”
She hesitated, looking up at him for a long moment, and, heart pounding, he pictured moving toward her, taking her in his arms and kissing her sun-chapped lips until she was breathless. If only . . . ah, but that was the problem. There were so many phrases to add after if only: if only she wasn’t already engaged, and to his employer of all men; if only she was not the daughter of a government official, retired but still well-respected; if only he had enough wealth and power to promise her everything he could ever want to promise her. If only.
“All right,” she said.
He grabbed a canvas sack to bring back fruit and coconuts, if they found any—every person had been admonished by Zazu to collect food whenever they could—and they moved away from their encampment through the thick tangle of undergrowth. In one spot, over a damp rock, he reached back and took her hand in his briefly, trying to keep the quickness of his breathing from seeming like anything but the exertion of the journey. He had never behaved like this, never been so unnerved by a young lady’s mere presence or touch. Flirting he had done in his past, and with ladies who spoke many different languages, but this one young English lass made him tremble with suppressed yearning. He had to conquer those feelings, he decided, and proximity was generally the best cure. Or so he would excuse his invitation to himself.
“There’s a bit of a climb involved,” he said as they reached a slope in a clearing. He looked down at her bare feet and his own, and smiled over at her. “At least we are similarly shod.”
“Scandalous,” she said, returning his smile. “The earl cannot look at my naked feet without frowning.”
“I don’t know why. I find them very pretty.”
She colored pink, and looked around. “I’ve never been to this part of the island before. Zazu and I walked around the other way by the beach, but we have never yet entered the interior of the island further than the freshwater lakes.”
He took her hand and helped her up over a rocky outcropping, and they started their ascent. “Miss Zazu is a fascinating young woman. I must say, I enjoy her childhood stories very much.”
“She is telling us more now than I ever heard in all her time as my maid,” his companion admitted. She stopped to catch her breath and gazed up at him. “Why don’t you call us Savina and Zazu, instead of adding ‘Miss’?”
“If you like,” he said, looking down at her, the blazing sun making her eyes sparkle and picking out golden threads in her dusky hair. “As long as you don’t think it disrespectful.”
“I would never think you disrespectful, Tony. And I have so long thought of you by your first name, it seems ludicrous not to admit the informality of our surroundings.” She shook her head. “Unlike my father and the earl.”
“Would you like to sit a minute and catch your breath?” he said, indicating the rocky ledge. He laid the canvas bag down for her to sit on.
She sat, and he sat beside her, feeling the warmth of her slim body radiating toward him in waves. “Do you find his lordship a little stuffy?” He was treading dangerous ground, and he knew it. He longed to hear every manner of complaint about his employer from her lips. He wanted to belittle Lord Gaston-Reade, and it was a hideous sensation, the urge to verbally pummel a man he considered a rival. And yet her reticence, her refusal to disparage her fiancé, no matter how ridiculous he occasionally appeared to Tony, was something he respected about her.
“I think,” she said, the words coming slowly, “that he is afraid to allow himself to waver from the behavior he considers necessary to call himself a gentleman. And that includes wearing a cravat, his boots . . . all of it.”
Tony considered his next words carefully, given how little he still understood about her feelings toward Lord Gaston-Reade. “My feeling is, a gentleman is not his clothes, nor is he the polish on his boots. Neither is it his insistence on adhering to the formalities of address in a clearly informal setting. A gentleman is a man who, in difficult circumstances such as these, provides for the women in his care, protects them, and allows them to explore means of aiding in the survival of the group.”
“Allows them?” She was staring over at him, trying to capture his gaze.
Her tone told him he had stepped wrong. “I didn’t mean ‘allows’ in that sense, Savina. Please don’t misunderstand me.”
“Good, or I shall begin to think you as pompous and condescending as the American captain found you.”
“I used entirely the wrong word.” He gazed directly into her eyes and saw her expression soften. “Let me say, unequivocally, that I believe in self-determination for every rational human creature, man or woman, of any country, of any color skin.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “I have long felt that you and I think alike on some subjects.”
He covered her hand where it rested on the rock between them. “I’ve felt the same, ever since that first conversation on board the Prosperous, when you spoke to the earl about slavery.” She turned her hand palm-up and he clasped hers, thrilling at the touch, feeling the trembling connection between them strengthen. This was not right, he thought, and yet could not draw away. He had hoped time alone would reveal to him some fatal flaw, some awful insipidity or hideous defect. But of all the young ladies he had ever met, not a one combined her steady and serious intelligence with such a rich sense of the ridiculous, and united it with a lovely lightness of being, a freshness of expression, and an unutterably breathtaking sweetness.
She broke the connection and looked away, staring at the horizon and biting her lip. Her expression cleared, though, and she said, “What a lovely view from here.”
“It is beautiful.” He gazed down over the palm-dotted slope to the turquoise water of the ocean, deepening to a true indigo toward the horizon. Fluffy white clouds dotted the sky, lazily floating across as if in a slow-moving stream.
“I haven’t been in England for almost ten years,” she said. “What is it like? My memories are dim and clouded with uncertainty.”
“Parts of it are beautiful. I was raised in Devon until I was fifteen and think it the loveliest spot on the island, but you know, every Englishman is fiercely particular to his own home county.”
“What of London, though, for we—my . . . my fiancé and I—are to spend a good portion of our year there.”
“And I will be there as his secretary,” Tony said, fighting back his wretchedness at hearing her talk of her coming marriage to Lord Gaston-Reade. “Let’s see . . . there are amusements in London one cannot find anywhere else, opera houses, theaters—”
“I don’t care about that kind of thing. What of the people?”
Tony shrugged. “There is a mix of good and bad, as one finds—”
“Tony,” she said, and put one slim hand on his tanned arm, where his sleeve was rolled up. “Listen to me.”
He looked down at her hand and felt his muscle flex involuntarily at the warmth of her touch.
“I’m not looking for platitudes about good and bad people. Tell me the truth, please. First, how much time have you spent in London?”
“Too much,” he said. “Or, too much for someone who dislikes it as intensely as I do. I could hardly be fair about the city when I despise it so.”
“Then don’t be fair. Be biased. Be cruel. Tell your own truth about the city. I have a mind of my own and a heart. I can sort out what is prejudiced by your own feelings. But be honest.”
He stared into her eyes: the clear color, like the ocean at sunset, the untainted white, the long dark lashes. And then he stood, put out his hand, and said, “Let me talk while we climb. I want to get over the crest and to the interior. You haven’t seen it yet, and it’s truly magnificent. There is another freshwater lake beyond the hills.”
Somehow, he never let go of her hand and Savina didn’t mind; while they were alone they were two children of nature, a part of the beauty that surrounded them. They scaled the hill, standing on the top for a long while just looking. The island, she found, was an irregular oval, only a few miles from one end to the other. Cradled in the basin of hills there was another larger freshwater lake. In the hazy distance, on the far horizon, she could see what looked like other islands. That they were uninhabited she thought was safe to assume.
Once they had canvassed Tony’s mostly negative feelings about London—he called it a vast, dirty, smelly sewer where the people acted worse than the rats and Savina laughed at him, saying he was right that he could not be fair about the city—they spoke of things of more immediate importance.
“What do you think of Albert’s raft?” Savina said as they scaled down a long slope into a jungle interior alive with birdsong and the sound of iguanas scuttling away from them. Birds flitted from tree to tree above them as they picked their way carefully among the damp brush. There were no paths, so they had to follow the contours of the vegetation, watching out for snakes and insects as they carefully trod the underbrush.
Tony put his free arm around her shoulder as they negotiated a tricky outcropping of sharp coral rock. Distracted by the warmth of his hand and the feel of his flat, hard chest at her back, she tried to control her treacherous breathing, which would defiantly quicken with his proximity.
“I was at first concerned that his lordship would be precipitate and go off on the raft, losing his way and perhaps getting into trouble. But I should have realized, the earl never does anything precipitate.”
She giggled. “No, if anything, he takes so long with every decision and every momentous pronouncement that we shall be old and gray before he has built the craft and charted his course. I’m no longer worried about the boat for the immediate future.”
The temptation to join her laughter was difficult to resist, but he was ever aware of his intense feelings of rivalry toward his employer, and he quashed his impulse. “I do hope the signal fire serves its purpose and finds us a rescuer.”
Savina did not reply, and he wondered if rescue held as many varying connotations to her as it did to him. It meant comfort and safety for the first time in weeks, and a welcome change of clothes, good food, a warm bed. But it also meant going back to England and all of the stultifying conventions society demanded. It would end their easy association. It would mean she was engaged and expected to marry Lord Gaston-Reade.
They walked on, chatting desultorily about other things. One thing she confessed she was relieved about was that there were no dangerous animals on the island. Iguanas and snakes were all, along with a delightful array of birds and butterflies. She already missed the gardens of her Jamaica home, and asked him about having a garden in London, which he admitted was an unlikely thing, except for a garden such as Londoners would expect, a few potted conifers on a formal terrace or a conservatory full of orchids.
“Why did you say yes when the earl asked you to accept his hand in marriage?” As he spoke, he was very aware of her slim hand in his own, and how he was betraying his employer’s best interest in his mind and heart, if not in fact, and how little he cared. Lord Gaston-Reade would be a fortunate man to marry a lady such as Savina Roxeter, more fortunate than Tony thought he deserved.
She was silent for a long few minutes, and he thought she was not going to answer. They walked on through the palm forest, swishing underbrush aside, heading for another elevation. When she stopped and turned to him, he threw down the canvas sack and took her other hand in his, so they stood linked, facing each other.
“I’d rather not speak of that right now, Tony, please?”
He swallowed hard, looking down into her pleading eyes, shadowed by the palms that arched over their heads. His body urged him forward and he released her hands and took her in his arms, holding her close and gazing down into her lovely eyes. There was no retreat, not when he felt her relax in his embrace and her eyes fluttered closed.
The touch, when their lips met, was sweet and tender, and warmth flooded his body. He surrendered to the sensation, unable to think clearly, incapable of abandoning the one perfect moment in his life.
He framed her face in his hands and took her lips, suckling and drawing them
in as the kisses became more lingering, devouring, and he lost awareness of anything but their passion. Her arms were around his waist, and her lithe body pressed to his, points of fire igniting where they met. He jammed his fingers in her dusky hair and, unaware of how far he was going, thrust his tongue into her, tasting her, feeling her warm, wet mouth.
But she didn’t draw back from the invasion. He did, though, finally releasing her and stepping away, staring at her, his breath coming in short gasps. She was trembling, her arms out, her eyes beseeching.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though for what he couldn’t say. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was unthinkably bold.”
“Then I would have you be bold again,” she whispered and moved back into his reach.
Twelve
Lost in new sensation, when Tony kissed her again, Savina was prepared this time for the invasion of her mouth and gave back, finding a ferocious pleasure in the thrusting duel of their tongues. In seconds he had backed her against a slanting palm trunk, and she felt the heat from his body, and the press of his muscular legs and torso against her. Her hands found their quarry, and she pulled at his shirt until her hands were flat against the marvel that was his chest, and the intriguing musculature she had first seen when he was shirtless and swimming.
He paused and stared into her eyes, his look searching, questioning. She was acutely aware of everything about him as she ran her fingers over his smooth skin, feeling him shiver under her touch. A wave of dizzying delight swept through her as he slowly lowered his face to hers and gently kissed her once again, tracing the outline of her lips with the tip of his tongue. She closed her eyes, running her hands under his shirt, feeling the pounding of his heart as he murmured something against her mouth. He clasped her close to him, and then his hands snaked up from her waist to her breasts, sending a trill of thrilling disquietude down her backbone.
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