The Duke's Proposal

by Sophie Weston

  She stirred the brown bag with her foot. ‘So what’s all this?’

  ‘The makings of a picnic. A couple of things you might need.’

  ‘Me?’ She was wary. Not alarmed. She was an experienced woman who had been chatted up in four continents, she reminded herself. Certainly not alarmed. Just—careful. ‘You’ve bought me a present? Another present?’

  He leaned forward and gazed deep into her eyes, like Casanova on the case.

  ‘Just a little something to wear. I had to guess the size.’

  ‘Something else to wear?’ She felt her cheeks were on fire. And, sophisticate or no, her voice rose in a squeak of pure alarm.

  She sounded like a chipmunk in a panic, she thought disgustedly. But she couldn’t help it.

  He straightened, pleased.

  ‘Here.’ And from the second brown paper bag he produced a pair of floppy black rubber pumps.

  Jemima took them like an automaton. They looked like lifeless fish.

  ‘What on earth—?’

  ‘Sea urchins.’ And when she looked even more blank he said blandly, ‘Nasty little spiny animals. I told you last night. You can’t go staggering about the beach on heels. But you can’t go barefoot. Sea urchins are everywhere, and much too easy to tread on. They’re painful and they can turn septic, too. So—you wear these to wander about. In fact, you should wear them when you’re swimming too.’

  ‘Th-thank you.’

  His eyes crinkled up. ‘We aim to please.’

  He’s irresistible, thought Jemima suddenly.

  From the quiet smile that played about his mouth she suspected he knew it.

  But he did not push his advantage. Instead, he gave her a brisk guided tour of the boat and set about making ready.

  She had been right about the competence, Jemima saw. He hoisted sail and took the little boat out into the harbour with a calm expertise which did nothing to hide his enjoyment. Once they were out in the open sea he came and sat beside her, his face tilted to the sun.

  ‘Great, isn’t it?’

  They were not far from land yet, but even so in open water there was a breeze. It ruffled his dark hair, making him look even more like one of the island’s piratical settlers.

  Jemima watched with appreciation. ‘You do this a lot?’

  ‘Do what? Carry off unsuspecting women? Or sail?’

  Their eyes met. She narrowed hers. ‘Sail. I’m not unsuspecting. I can take care of myself.’

  He laughed. ‘Good.’

  She could not interpret that. ‘So you sail regularly?’

  The breeze shifted a little. He got up to adjust the sail. Without his shirt, it was clear that he was unexpectedly muscular. These were not the over-developed abs of the glamorous male models she worked with, though. These were muscles he needed—and used.

  Oh, yes, he was irresistible all right. She had never met anyone like him.

  He narrowed his eyes at the horizon, then looked up the mast.

  ‘Regularly?’ He sounded absent. ‘No, not these days. I sailed all the time when I was a boy. We had a lake in one direction and the Gulf Stream in the other. I learned to sail when other kids were getting their first bicycle.’

  Jemima looked at the way he moved with the lift and fall of the boat and was not surprised. He trimmed the sail, then sat down next to her again, one arm thrown casually behind her.

  She leaned forward. ‘Were you born on Pentecost?’

  Niall looked completely blank for a moment. ‘On the island? No. What makes you think that?’

  She looked round the perfect little deck. ‘Your boat.’

  ‘Oh, that. Not mine, I’m afraid. I borrowed her from the guys. I don’t have a boat of my own any more. Not in Pentecost or anywhere else.’

  Was that a note of regret in his voice? She did not think he was a man given to regret. He would think it a waste of time. She was sure of it.

  Still, she wanted to know more about him. ‘Why not? Too expensive?’

  He shrugged. ‘Lifestyle, I suppose you’d call it. I travel all the time. If you live out of a suitcase, you don’t have anywhere to moor a boat.’

  Or a home, thought Jemima. It sounded bleak.

  ‘Did you choose to be a nomad?’

  He scanned the ocean. ‘In a way.’

  She said nothing.

  He looked down at her. ‘You want to know the full story of my scandalous life?’

  Yes!

  But there was still that duel. She shrugged as if she didn’t care. But it left the door open for confidences if he wanted…She hoped—oh, how she hoped—that he wanted…

  ‘Okay, then.’ He stretched. ‘I ran away from home when I was seventeen.’

  For some reason that shocked her. ‘Ran away? Were you badly treated?’

  He chuckled. ‘Well, they didn’t send me up chimneys, if that’s what you mean. But it had been coming a long time. I had a blazing row with the current stepmother. And my brother thought he could ground me. I told them both to stuff it. Stole the kitchen float. And walked out.’

  Jemima frowned. This did not sound like any family life she knew anything about. ‘Your brother grounded you? What happened to your father?’

  ‘Off getting another divorce. Though none of us knew that at the time.’ He laughed at her expression. ‘Don’t look so appalled. We were the original dysfunctional family.’

  ‘It sounds as if you were better off without them,’ she said, oddly furious for him.

  Well, for the seventeen-year-old he had been, she assured herself. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. It unsettled her.

  ‘Oh, one or two of the stepmothers were okay. My brother, though—what a complete bastard. Very like my father in lots of ways.’

  Jemima found that she could have cried quite easily. Which was crazy. His reminiscences had not disturbed Niall at all. She wished she had bought a handkerchief as well as a hat, and tried to sniff quietly. It was not a success.

  ‘Hey.’ He put a hand under her chin and turned her face to him. He was laughing. ‘No need to look like that. It’s a long time ago.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said, not very coherently. ‘It’s just that I love my parents, and I have this great sister, and I think it’s a shame when families hate each other.’

  She had to sniff again. No point in trying to hide it, with him watching her like that. She scrubbed the back of her hand across her face.

  ‘I need a tissue,’ she said disagreeably.

  He tossed her canvas bag across to her. She caught it and rootled until she found a scrap of paper handkerchief that had seen better days. She blew her nose savagely.

  ‘Hey,’ he said again, more gently.

  She pulled herself together. It was stupid to go spraying unwanted sympathy around.

  ‘I suppose you don’t see them any more?’

  ‘Haven’t been home in over fifteen years,’ he agreed cheerfully. ‘My father died and my brother—well, have you heard of the English habit of having an heir and a spare?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you wanted to pass on an estate to your descendants you had the son and heir, who was going to cop the lot, and then you had another son as an insurance policy, in case the first one got the plague. Well, I’m the spare.’

  It sounded dreadful. Jemima said so, before she had time to stop herself.

  ‘Depends on the family, I guess,’ said Niall tolerantly. ‘Not great in ours, I admit. Running away was a real one in the eye for them.’

  She blew her nose again. ‘Is that why you became a professional gambler? To annoy your family?’

  He had risen to trim the sails again. But at that he looked over his shoulder, his eyes dancing.

  ‘For a girl with such a wonderful family you seem to have quite a grasp on the politics of hostility.’

  ‘I’d sometimes want to do something that made them really furious,’ she admitted. ‘Well, for a while anyway. Don’t you get tired of it?’

  ‘Ah, but I
was born to gamble,’ he assured her solemnly. ‘I have a photographic memory and I’m ace with numbers. A natural.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  But, looking up at him, with the spray leaving diamond droplets on his tanned chest and his eyes narrowed against the dazzling sea, Jemima thought he looked more as if he were born to sail.

  ‘Don’t you ever want to do anything else?’

  ‘Oh, one day, maybe.’ His tone was dismissive.

  Then he began to point out the features of Pentecost’s southern coastline and confidences were over.

  He kept the travelogue up all the way to the island he had promised her. The only time he stopped talking about the wildlife or geology was when he told her to move or, once, to put on a hat.

  And her one successful purchase blew away!

  ‘Oh, damn! No hat now,’ said Jemima.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ He ran lightly down the companionway and re-emerged with a battered straw hat with some ageing cherries pinned to its brim.

  ‘That looks as if it’s been sailing the Caribbean longer than either of us has been alive,’ said Jemima, startled.

  ‘Don’t knock it. It’s Ellie’s grandmother’s gardening hat. I swiped it this morning. You’ll need it. The sun is lot stronger in these latitudes than Europeans allow for.’

  Jemima accepted the hat philosophically, and rammed it down on top of the tangle that the wind had made of her hair. If the agency could see her now they’d die! She bit back a grin.

  ‘It sounds as if you come here a lot, even if you don’t live here.’

  ‘I go everywhere there’s blackjack,’ he said dryly. ‘Didn’t I tell you last night? From Las Vegas to London. From New Jersey to Monaco. ‘

  Jemima was ultra-casual. ‘I live in London.’

  He raised those wicked eyebrows. ‘And I had you down for another nomad.’

  ‘Me?’ She was astonished. ‘No! Why?’

  ‘Travelling alone. Minimal luggage. Don’t bother to book a hotel in advance. You’re not the run-of-the-mill tourist.’

  There was something in his voice which made her look at him sharply.

  He added softly, ‘And you don’t like people carrying your bags.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like to keep it in your hands. Got something precious in it, has it? A file? Some press cuttings?’ His voice was still lazy, but somehow it sounded as if he was interrogating her and it was important.

  Jemima shook her head. ‘No. Nothing like that.’

  ‘So you didn’t come to Pentecost on an assignment?’

  She gave a crack of laughter. ‘Far from it. I suppose I’ve run away, just as much as you did.’

  He searched her face. ‘Run away?’ he echoed, as if he did not believe her.

  There was a little gust of wind that blew a strand of red-gold hair across her lips. It lifted the disgraceful hat. Jemima grabbed it and held it in place, squinting up at him.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, admitting it at last. ‘There was something I couldn’t handle and I turned tail.’ She grimaced. ‘Not very impressive.’

  He waited. When she did not go on he said, ‘But you live in London? Probably have a regular job, too?’

  She bit back a smile. ‘Well, fairly regular.’

  He sent her a quick look. ‘Are you going to tell me what that means?’

  She jumped. ‘What?’

  ‘The private laughter.’

  All amusement died abruptly. Jemima’s eyes widened. She shifted on her wooden seat.

  ‘You’re very sharp,’ she said at last.

  ‘Part of my stock in trade, reading people. I’m an expert on body language.’

  That made her feel even more uneasy.

  ‘Can you read me?’

  He gave the ghost of a laugh. ‘Up to a point,’ he said.

  He wouldn’t be drawn any further, no matter how much she tried to beguile him.

  So she kicked off her shoes, wedged the hat on her head more firmly, and gave herself up to enjoyment.

  The sea was like a great animal, purring with pleasure because they had come to play, she thought. Around them it was no colour, but as it stretched to the horizon it was blue and purple and even turquoise, where it curled round an island. Above them the sky was cloudless aquamarine. When Jemima half closed her eyes, the sun struck rainbows off the mast. A faint breeze cooled her skin deliciously. High in the bright sky great birds wheeled with majestic slowness.

  ‘It’s like a dream,’ said Jemima, stretching luxuriously.

  Niall was busy at the helm, but at that he looked across at her and grinned.

  ‘With our own desert island waiting for us,’ he said in thrilling voice. ‘No buildings, no people, no electricity. Just us and the elements.’

  ‘Mmm. Sounds like heaven.’

  ‘Of course that means we have to catch our own food, build our own cooking fire, dig our own poo pit…’

  Jemima waved a lazy hand. ‘I don’t care. I can handle it.’

  ‘You think?’

  She tipped back and looked up at the birds. Their great wings spread, they seemed just to lie on the thermal up-drafts, abandoning themselves to the power of the elements. And the wind took care of them.

  I want to be like that.

  ‘Yup,’ she told the sky with confidence. ‘For a day in Paradise, I can handle anything.’

  The movement of the sea around them seemed to change. She sat up and saw that they were really getting quite close to one of the islands. Niall stopped teasing and began to concentrate.

  The shoreline looked impenetrable to Jemima, with vertical swathes of rock and densely wooded hillside tumbling straight into the sea. Only then they rounded a headland, and she drew a long breath in sheer wonder.

  It was a natural harbour. The water was as clear as aquamarines at a beauty’s throat. It pawed at the pristine sand like a lazy cat—stretch and withdraw, stretch and withdraw. Will I be bothered to do it again? Yeah, why not? Stretch even further, slower…and withdraw.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ said Jemima softly.

  Niall lowered the sail and they drifted in with the current, on a curving trajectory that took them the length of the empty beach.

  At first all Jemima could see were great dark trees that looked as if they would be more at home in the jungle. The beach below them was deeply shaded, and a steep green slope rose up behind them.

  ‘Mangroves,’ said Niall, working the rudder with effortless expertise. ‘There’s a stream comes into the sea there. We get fresh water from it if we run out of bottled stuff.’

  Beyond the mangroves the beach flattened out and the vegetation became sparse. At the far end there was a scattering of smooth rocks. Niall nosed the boat into the lea of the rock shelf and dropped anchor. Then he jumped out and turned to give Jemima a hand.

  But she had already jumped after him. The water came up to her thighs and made her stagger. He caught her strongly and held on. The water lapped and swirled about her. But in the passionless embrace she felt utterly stable. She let herself sway with the water, laughing, as she turned to look round the beach in amazement.

  ‘It’s like something out of a children’s adventure book.’

  There was an avenue of palm trees, like great open fans, where the beach met the grassy scrub. The sand was as smooth as a bowl of newly sifted flour.

  ‘And there’s nobody here but us,’ she said softly, wonderingly.

  ‘Told you.’

  She stood very still. She was aware of the dense, living matter of the ocean floor under her bare feet, of the tang of salt, of the cicadas crackling incessantly in the trees, the steady swish, swish of the tide.

  And, under it all, the silence.

  Jemima’s lips parted. ‘It’s real. It really is.’

  ‘You’d better believe it.’

  For some reason tears seemed to be stinging her eyes. She shook her head impatiently.

  Niall looked down at her. Suddenly the nearly
ugly features seemed to be the handsomest, kindest, most vital she had ever seen. He scanned her face for a moment. Then slowly, as if it was terribly important and he wanted to do it right, he put out a gentle hand and, scarcely moving at all, stroked a strand of windblown hair off her face. It felt as if all the warmth and strength in the world was there, just waiting for her to…to…to…

  To do what? Say what? Jemima didn’t know. All those parties, all those glamorous men and that sophisticated flirtation and she had no idea what to do next.

  She stood as still as a woman in a dream. Off balance. Dazzled. Desperately confused. And—somehow—incredibly shy.

  The brown hand cupping her head stilled. Dark eyes searched her face. There was no longer a vestige of teasing in them.

  ‘You shall have your day in Paradise,’ he said, very low, almost fierce. ‘Trust me.’

  It was a vow.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THEY splashed to shore, hand in hand, laughing.

  For a moment Jemima thought of the couples she had seen last night, hand in hand. Of Izzy and Dom, her parents. Hand in hand meant, I love you. We are together. Well, it did for everyone else.

  But Niall Blackthorne was a stranger. He didn’t love her. He thought she was fun and sexy and knew the score. And she was. She was. She wished she wasn’t. She wished she were an innocent for whom walking hand in hand meant something.

  Well, there was no point in thinking about that now. The place was magic. The man was gorgeous. And there was adventure in the air.

  ‘First footprints!’ said Jemima gaily. ‘I can’t resist.’

  She danced on the spot, laughing at him. He let go her hand.

  The sand was as hot as freshly cooked toast under her bare feet. She gave a wild whoop and pounded off along the beach. Silky sand flew under her heels. Once she was out of the lee of the rocks it was almost too hot to bear, but she kept on running.

  In the end she tumbled onto the ground under a low branching tree at the edge of the beach and looked back. Niall was standing watching her, his face alight with laughter. Between them stretched a straight line of footprints. He gave her a mock salute.

  She waved energetically, beckoning.

  ‘That’s some battle cry you’ve got,’ he said, as he strolled up. ‘You could train rugby teams.’