The Duke's Proposal

by Sophie Weston

  He didn’t take her to the lobby but stopped just below her block. He cut the engine and turned to her.

  ‘Tell me, Jay Jay. What did I do?’

  She edged away. ‘Gave me a wonderful day,’ she said lightly. ‘Thank you. But my shampoo calls.’

  She found the door handle and slid away before he could stop her.

  Niall slammed on the brakes and stormed into the lobby before the car had stopped rocking. He went straight behind the reception desk where Al was sitting.

  ‘Show me the ledger,’ demanded Niall, spinning Al’s chair round to face him.

  ‘Can’t. It’s chuntering away to itself, updating. We’ve got another unexpected guest off the morning plane,’ said Al, pleased.

  ‘Congratulations. I thought you were playing solitaire to try and look busy.’

  Al looked like a wounded bloodhound. ‘You can be very hurtful.’

  ‘Show me the ledger,’ Niall said again curtly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Jay Jay Cooper. I want to see her registration again.’

  Al protested, but Niall took no notice. He tipped him unceremoniously off the computer chair, sat down at the keyboard and tapped in the relevant information. He had sat in for Al often enough in the early days of Pirate’s Point to know the system.

  Yes, there it was. Credit card: Jemima Dare.

  ‘Dare,’ said Niall, frowning. ‘Not Cooper. Now, why? She’s married? Running away from her husband, maybe?’

  ‘You mean she hasn’t already poured it all out?’ said Al cattily. He resented being turned out of his chair. ‘You’re losing your touch.’

  Niall ignored him. Instead he clicked onto the internet and pulled up a search engine.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Finding out who I’ve just spent the day with,’ Niall said savagely. ‘Ah, here it is.’

  And there she was. Jemima Dare. International model. In a hundred provocative poses, she looked out of the screen as she had looked at him this afternoon. Wide, slightly tip-tilted eyes, with their hints of green and amber, meltingly unreadable. Again and again the diabolically kissable mouth was slightly parted. A pain twisted in his gut.

  Al looked over his shoulder, irritation forgotten. He gave a low whistle.

  ‘Whew. What a difference. She doesn’t look like that now.’

  Niall was furious. ‘What are you talking about? She looks exactly like that. Siren.’ It was not a compliment.

  ‘“Gut-wrenching sensuality allied to Titania’s ethereal provocation,”’ he read aloud. ‘Oh, yes, she’s all that.’

  ‘Coo,’ said Al.

  He did not know what to say. He patted his friend’s shoulder in wordless sympathy. He was perfectly willing to get a good laugh out of Niall coming a cropper with one of his casual hotel flirtations. But this sounded serious.

  ‘She’s clammed up.’ Niall was talking to himself. ‘I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. But—why won’t she talk to me?’

  Al shook his head. ‘Women!’ he said, kneading Niall’s shoulder.

  ‘I bet now she’ll take off. She’s obviously a bolter. If only—’

  Al hoisted himself onto the desk and fixed his friend with a fishy eye.

  ‘Niall, you’re drivelling. Get real. She’s a woman. You’re you. She’ll come round.’

  Niall shook his head. ‘Not unless I can get her to open up. She hasn’t so far.’

  ‘So have another go. What can I do?’

  Niall looked at the screen. ‘Not a thing. My bet is she’ll be off tomorrow. And she’ll avoid me like the plague tonight. And I don’t know why.’ He slammed his fist down on the desk, so close that Al flinched and nearly fell off. ‘Nothing short of voodoo is going to help me now.’

  ‘Voodoo, eh? I’ll talk to Ellie,’ said Al, passing the buck to a higher authority.

  Niall got up and shot the chair into the back wall so hard that a potted plant lost several leaves and three files launched themselves off the bookshelf.

  Al was impressed. ‘I’ll talk to Ellie now.’

  Jemima spent so long in the shower her hands turned to prune skin and her face looked pink as a peeled blood orange. She put her hair through the full works—shampoo, condition, rinse, moisturise, gel, Velcro rollers. It took over an hour. It made her feel clean. It did nothing for the pain in her heart.

  She was drying her hair when she heard the tap on the door. At once she thought, It’s him!

  She could hardly bear to open it and go back into full bright performance mode. But she couldn’t bear not to.

  She huddled the hotel’s robe round her, tied a scarf over the rollered hair and braced herself.

  ‘I’m very tired…’ she began as she flung the door open, then, ‘Oh,’ flattened.

  For it wasn’t Niall. It was her hostess.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Ellie, tripping into the room as if Jemima had invited her. ‘But I wonder if I could ask you a favour?’

  Since it wasn’t Niall, Jemima didn’t care who it was or what they wanted.

  ‘Sure,’ she said wearily. ‘What is it?’

  According to Ellie, one of the hotel guests had recognised her.

  ‘She’s right, isn’t she? You’re Jemima Dare the model? I’ve seen you in Elegance.’

  ‘Then I won’t try to deny it.’

  ‘Well, you see, I wondered if you’d be our guest of honour at the party this evening? I mean, I know you’re on a private holiday and everything, but by the time it gets into the papers you’ll be long gone. And it could be a lifesaver for Pirate’s Point.’ Ellie clasped her hands. ‘We put our life savings into this. And then everyone stopped flying. We’re at about half capacity and that’s as good as it gets. We’ll be empty after Easter unless something happens.’

  Jemima put a hand to her head. ‘What a crazy world.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You think if someone who is basically a substitute for a coat hanger stays here, it will make a difference to whether people want to come here for a holiday or not?’

  Ellie was taken aback. The party was an instant invention to help Niall. The occupation figures, though, were real.

  ‘Yes,’ she said baldly.

  Jemima puffed resignedly. ‘Okay. I’m not doing much good at anything else. I might as well give your PR a boost. Though I warn you, if you want something dressy you’re out of luck.’

  Ellie could not believe her luck. She had not had much confidence in the PR party plan.

  Now she said, ‘No sweat. You can have anything of mine that will work. In fact, come and look now.’

  That brought Jemima out of her zombie indifference.

  ‘Oh, no. I can’t go out like this. He—I mean people might see me.’

  ‘Ah.’ Ellie stored up that betraying syllable for future use. ‘Not a problem. There’s a sunhat on the balcony. Every room has a couple. Along with umbrellas,’ she added with a grin.

  Jemima bowed to the inevitable. ‘Give me five minutes.’

  She was in jeans and a shirt in two. Ellie’s eyebrows rose. But she did not comment. Instead she whisked Jemima into one of the hotel’s buggies and took her out to their private cottage.

  ‘Who will come to this party?’

  ‘Oh, all the guests who are around. The local tourism minister.’ She did not say that he was her cousin. ‘The editor of the Queen’s Town Messenger. Maybe the local airline director.’

  ‘Guests?’ Jemima seemed to swallow something jagged. ‘Niall?’

  ‘Too right,’ said Ellie, seizing the bull by the horns. ‘The airline director has a massive crush on him.’

  ‘Oh.’ Presumably another woman who let him get away with murder, thought Jemima, trying hard to be amused.

  Ellie led the way into a spacious pine-floored bedroom and flung open a walk-in closet.

  ‘Take your pick. I’ve got everything from slit-to-the-thigh to the full Cinderella.’

  Jemima had worn her fair share of slit-to-the-thigh on the catwal
ks of the world. She didn’t want to parade like that in front of the Heartbreaker Pirate. He might think she wanted him to carry her off again. And if he did, she thought it would break her heart

  ‘What’s the full Cinderella?’ she asked, with a very good assumption of lightness.

  Ellie brought it out from the back of the cupboard. It was a loose muslin skirt, deeply frilled at the hem, and a draw-string top. It looked utterly plain, until you saw the exquisite embroidery, like a fall of leaves across one shoulder, mirrored in the skirt.

  ‘Started out white, but everything goes to cream here if you let it dry in the sun,’ said Ellie affectionately. ‘I wear it with a scarf of sari silk or it looks a bit bridal.’

  Jemima shuddered. ‘I’ll take the brightest scarf you’ve got,’ she said firmly. The last thing she wanted was to go to a party decked out in sub-wedding finery if Niall Blackthorne was going to be there.

  Ellie found her a scarf of worked emerald silk. It had little chips of glass on it that caught the light as she moved. It also, though Jemima tried hard to block out the fact, brought out the latent green in her wide brown eyes.

  She took it back to her room. The party was at seven. She lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. The pain was beginning to bite now. Jemima lay there dry-eyed, almost welcoming it. It sure as hell put other things into perspective. All the fear and betrayal she had felt about Basil now seemed like very small beer.

  At seven-fifteen she rolled off the bed, put on Ellie’s pretty draperies, and sat herself in front of the mirror.

  ‘This,’ she told herself, ‘is a professional engagement. Just do it.’

  These days celebrity hairdressers vied to style her Titian hair. But there had been years when she did it herself. She took out the rollers and fluffed it out with rapid, expert movements. In a matter of minutes she had tumbled waves that gleamed like fire, like rubies set in gold, like wine.

  Or so the editor of the Queen’s Town Messenger would say once she had cornered him, she thought, her mouth quirking. She scribbled the phrases into her diary and shoved it back in her handbag.

  Make-up wasn’t so important as hair, but it still showed whether she was trying or not. And with Niall Blackthorne among those present she was going to put on the show of her life!

  Her skin glowed pale gold from the day, so she did not add anything to it. She shaded her eyes very delicately with the merest hint of purply-grey. It would make them look wide, deep, and, she hoped, mysterious, but no one but an expert would be able to tell she had put any colour on her eyelids at all.

  She painted her lips a defiant copper, using all the skill she had: pencil outline, lip-brush, talc over the first layer, lip-brush again, then ending with a gloss that was slightly darker on the lower lip only.

  She glared at the mirror. If that didn’t make him break out in a sweat, then she might as well go into retirement now, she thought with black humour. Though what she was going to do about it if her sexy mouth actually succeeded in bringing him crashing to his knees…

  She stood up, waving an airy hand. ‘Details. Details.’

  She swept the glittering emerald scarf around her, fluffed out the luxuriant hair, and—

  And marched out to show Niall Blackthorne that there were some women who could get along without him very nicely.

  It was a beach party, Jemima found. She followed the burble of voices and the clink of glass along the terrace to a stone wall covered in headily scented angels’ trumpets. The sound of conviviality led her on, along paths edged with plumbago bushes, their sky-blue blossom ghostly grey in the moonlight, and through a garden gate onto the beach.

  Tall flambeaux had been driven into the sand. The party was happening in a pool of light that could have come straight out of a Rembrandt.

  Jemima stopped. Swallowed. Braced herself. And stepped onto a small podium in front of the greatest concentration of light. Around her, the chat dwindled noticeably as people turned to stare.

  As she had learned over the years, she did not acknowledge one of them. She stared over their heads, one hand on her hip in the classic pose. Then she tossed her hair and went into the sexy catwalk prowl that people expected. The conversation died to a back-of-the-hall muttering.

  Jemima strode through the guests without looking to left or right, straight for the master of ceremonies.

  ‘Hello, Al,’ she said in a voice that was carefully calculated to carry. ‘How lovely to ask me. A real Caribbean beach party!’

  She air-kissed him, once on each cheek, careful not to smudge the work of art that was her mouth. The cameras started to click.

  Al looked taken aback. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ he blurted.

  Jemima raised her eyebrows. ‘Why, thank you.’ She slid a hand through the crook of his arm and smiled at a photographer. ‘Introduce me, darling.’

  Al swallowed hard. But he walked her round the party in a bemused fashion.

  The great and the good of Pentecost had clearly turned out. Jemima said the right things about the island to the business-suited tourist minister and gave a couple of gossipy nothings to the editor in his Hawaiian shirt. It sent him off happy.

  Then she talked clothes with the minister’s wife—very New York, perfume with the director of the airline—very Paris, and Famous People I Have Met with just about everyone else, wearing anything from tuxedos to jeans. She talked and smiled and sipped at Planters’ Punch without taking in a mouthful until her head was swimming and her feet ached.

  And then the band started.

  And Niall Blackthorne stepped out of the shadows.

  Jemima’s mouth dried. She took her first gulp of the rum cocktail.

  ‘Dance,’ he said.

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’ she said captiously.

  He put an arm round her waist and walked her out of the light. ‘Guess.’

  ‘I can’t dance with a glass in my hand.’

  He took it away from her, tipped the drink unceremoniously onto the sand, and stuffed the sticky glass into the pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Oh, very neat. You can always tell a misspent youth.’

  ‘They trained us to think on our feet in the boy scouts,’ he said gravely. But she knew he was laughing.

  People were already dancing to the gentle, irresistible Caribbean rhythms. Niall took her into his arms and danced her backwards into the group. It was the lightest of holds. But Jemima could feel the heat of his hands through Ellie’s silk and muslin.

  The pain was suddenly almost suffocating.

  He bent his head so that she alone could hear what he was saying. She could feel his breath stir her loosened hair. Crazily, she was glad that tonight it looked its gleaming best. For the first time he would see her as she really was. She might not match his not impossible she. But at least he would remember her.

  He murmured in her ear, ‘What are you running away from?’

  Jemima was so startled that she stumbled. At once his hands tightened. The regret was suddenly so sharp that she caught her breath, unable to speak.

  When it had passed a little she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Don’t you—Miss Jay Jay Cooper?’

  She shrugged, though it was not easy to concentrate with his arms round her and his breath tickling her ear. ‘I’m a celebrity. We travel incognito all the time.’

  ‘Not so incognito that you have to pick up a bikini off a market stall,’ Niall said shrewdly. ‘Now, tell me the truth.’

  ‘So I’m inefficient. It’s not a crime.’

  ‘And it’s not celebrity behaviour either. And you’re good at being a celebrity, aren’t you?’

  She gave him a blazing smile. ‘I’m glad you noticed. I do my best.’

  ‘So why did you turn up here with your hair in plaits and tell Al your name was Cooper?’

  This was awful. Jemima closed her eyes briefly. ‘I felt like it.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Okay, I was tired
of being a spoilt princess. I wanted to see what life was like for an ordinary backpacker,’ she said desperately.

  He laughed, but there was an edge to it. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ said Jemima between her teeth.

  He was unsympathetic. ‘Try harder.’

  She made a sound that was pure frustration.

  ‘I reckon it’s got to be one of three reasons—career, money, a man. Which?’

  ‘Not money,’ said Jemima involuntarily.

  ‘A man?’ He looked at her searchingly. ‘Husband?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Please. Leave it alone.’

  ‘A boyfriend,’ he said, as if she had just confirmed it. ‘What happened? You fell out of love? He did?’

  ‘No. I could handle that,’ Jemima said before she had time to think.

  Niall’s dark eyes sharpened. ‘Sounds as if you could do with some help.’

  Her laugh was pure despair.

  ‘If you need a champion,’ he said with precision, ‘then I’m your man.’

  No, you aren’t. You’re a one-woman man. And I’m not the woman.

  Aloud she said coolly, ‘I don’t think so.’

  Just as coolly, he said, ‘Then you’re wrong.’

  Jemima drew herself up. ‘What have my affairs got to do with you?’ She was as frosty as she knew how.’

  ‘Let’s say you intrigue me.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘And this afternoon we were lovers.’

  It caught her unawares. Her whole body flinched.

  Through a haze of pain she heard herself say brightly, ‘Oh, that was just fun in the sun. You don’t want to take it too seriously.’

  His hands tightened alarmingly. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘This is the twenty-first century. Women have sex without the big production these days.’

  ‘Some do.’ He was grim. ‘Not you.’

  She was furious suddenly. ‘Oh, you think you know me so well.’

  ‘Are you saying I don’t?’ He was trying to sound amused, but the anger licked through.

  ‘I’m saying you know nothing about me,’ she flashed. ‘Now, let me go. I don’t want to dance with you. I never did.’