‘Oh, you,’ she said indulgently. ‘I’d better go and find my husband. The junior bridesmaid showed signs of kidnapping him to go and play tennis.’
‘Then rescue him at once,’ advised Jemima. ‘The junior bridesmaid is a force to be reckoned with.’
Abby lifted a hand in farewell and went.
Left alone with her, Niall tugged her round to face him.
‘You look amazing,’ he said huskily.
Jemima had driven fashion writers to rave reviews and poetry for five years. But she blushed.
‘Wedding finery,’ she said. ‘Of course clean hair helps.’
He chuckled, and touched the masses of dark red silk. His fingers were not reverent. But they were gentle, respectful. His touch said, I have the right to stroke your hair. You have given me that right.
Jemima’s lips parted
‘You take my breath away,’ he told her.
She hardly dared to believe him. But there was a caressing look in the ugly-handsome face which even she, with all her doubts, could not mistake.
‘I must talk to you,’ he said. ‘Where can we go?’
She cast about for a solution. ‘Well, there’s a sort of private garden. We were taking photographs by the roses. But it’s full of happy snappers.’
Niall’s chin jutted. ‘Not for long.’
He marched her into the walled garden and rounded up the amateur photographers with the kind but firm determination of an expert sheepdog.
‘Food’s being served. Better go before it’s all gone,’ he said.
They believed him. They went.
He shut the ironwork gate behind them and turned the big key in the lock.
‘I hope you haven’t locked us in for ever. That key looks awfully old,’ Jemima pointed out.
‘I don’t care. I’ll build you a shelter and we can live off rosehips and rainwater,’ said Niall, alluringly driven to poetry. ‘Oh, my darling, my darling, my darling, I thought I’d lost you for ever.’
And he hauled her into his arms like a drowning man.
His kisses were just as she remembered. No—more than she remembered. There hadn’t been that wild intensity before. It made him a little clumsy. And a hundred times more passionate.
‘I’m a fool,’ said Niall. ‘A crass, unkind, fool. Telling you all about my adolescent first love when I should have been saying, You’re the light of life, stay with me.’
Jemima was trembling. ‘What?’
‘My only excuse,’ he said, ‘is I’m not good with feelings. Give me a card table—or a boat—or anything practical—and I can do anything with it. But tell the woman of my dreams I need her? Forget it.’
‘Woman of your dreams?’ faltered Jemima. ‘But that’s Abby. You and she—you’re the same sort of people. She’s like you. She wants a big house and horses and stuff.’
Niall stared at her unflatteringly. ‘That is such twaddle,’ he said, a lot less poetic all of a sudden.
‘She’s even got a title,’ said Jemima, distracted. ‘Whereas I’m your instant celebrity, just trading on my looks. No substance to me at all.’
Niall let her go. ‘The only thing that’s wrong with you is you’re a snob.’
That brought her out of her distraction. ‘What? I’m not. How dare you?’
‘Yes, you are. You were in love with me when you didn’t know I was a duke,’ he said smugly.
Jemima prudently decided to ignore the first part of that. ‘Come to that, why didn’t you tell me you were a duke?
His face clouded. ‘I would have got round to it. Only I was still getting used to the idea myself. And I had the money laundering job to finish before I came back and took up the reins.’
‘You didn’t want to come back to England,’ said Jemima sadly. ‘Because that was where Abby lived. And you couldn’t have Abby.’
Niall groaned. ‘Oh, boy, you really have bought my retarded emotions hook, line and sinker, haven’t you?’
She shook her head, not understanding.
‘Well, I have only myself to blame,’ muttered Niall. ‘Listen to me, you beautiful revelation, you saved me from wandering around like something out of bad Victorian poetry, telling myself my heart was broken for the rest of my life. You made me want you. Then you made me love you. Then you made me do months of hard labour when you walked out on me. Enough, already. Will you please stop messing with my head and do the decent thing? You know you want it too.’
He was laughing, but the look in his eyes was very, very serious. Jemima’s hands went out to him in pure instinct.
But he had called her a snob. And he hadn’t told her he was a duke. There was a need for some redress in the power balance here.
She hung back, her brown eyes glinting gold in the sun.
‘Let me get this straight. Are you asking me to marry you?’
He raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Trying to, God help me. Trying to.’
It was a gift. Jemima’s eyes danced.
‘Try harder,’ she said.
So he did.
EPILOGUE
‘MADAME was furious,’ Jemima told Niall.
They were walking along the untidy harbour at sunset. The air hummed with warmth.
Her hair was loose and fragrant in the breeze. Niall turned to nuzzle it luxuriously.
‘Mmm.’
She chuckled. ‘She was so pleased with me for netting a duke. She’d already put out the wedding dress to tender. Even when I told her we were getting married in the Caribbean, she still thought she could mastermind the party.’
‘I could have told her she wouldn’t,’ Niall said calmly. ‘When you set your heart on something you’re unstoppable.’
‘Just as well I set my heart on you, then.’
‘I give thanks for it every day.’ But although his voice was light she knew it was a truth too deep to dwell on.
She hugged his arm. ‘Me too.’
He looked down at her, his face almost unrecognisable with the love blazing out of him.
‘And you’re sure you don’t mind? Giving up all the stuff of a big wedding?’
‘I,’ said Jemima with feeling, ‘have had enough big weddings to last me a lifetime. I want to share something you did.’
They had got to the side of the vessel they were travelling on. It was stained and shabby and to her it looked like heaven.
‘After all, I don’t know anyone who has got married on a banana boat,’ she said wickedly. ‘I’ll be able to loll around in bed all day, while you show off your muscles hauling crates of bananas.’
‘Any lolling, we do together,’ said Niall firmly.
He kissed her hard.
‘Yes, please.’ There was that sexy little catch in her voice which always made his collar feel too tight.
‘Siren,’ he said fondly. ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve got something to give to you.’
She was intrigued. ‘Some ducal heirloom?’ she teased.
‘No. An heirloom of our own,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Something to remind me that I nearly missed the real thing because I’d got too used to the old fairy story.’
It had taken him a long time to convince Jemima that she wasn’t a second-best substitute for his imaginary Abby, but he had done it at last.
She punched him playfully. ‘Oh, you! What is it? Don’t keep me in suspense.’
And from out of his pocket he produced two scraps of material in day-glo turquoise and cerise.
‘My bikini,’ cried Jemima, choking with delight. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you found another one. I was so stupid, throwing it away like that. Only I was so hurt…’
He stopped her and took her face between his hands.
‘I know you were, my love. And it was my fault.’
‘Not entirely.’
‘Mostly.’ He held her strongly. ‘I can’t promise that I won’t ever hurt you again. But if I’m being stupid and blind come and put that damned bikini in front of me. And I’ll do better.’
‘Oh, my love,
’ said Jemima, moved.
The long, slow, passionate kiss was much admired by the crew of the banana boat, connoisseurs of kisses to a man.
And later, after they had put out to sea and the captain had married them under the stars, holding high an old-fashioned hurricane lamp so he could read the service, Niall took her down to the small passenger cabin and made love to her with his whole heart.
Only at the end, as she lay in delicious exhaustion in his arms, did he say smugly, ‘Oh, by the way. It wasn’t another one.’
‘What?’ said Jemima, caressing him, drowsy and shameless.
‘The bikini. I went into your room and liberated it. It’s the real thing.’
She lifted herself up and stared at him, amazed. ‘What?’
‘The real thing. Like us,’ he said soberly, holding her against his heart. ‘Just like us.’
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6619-6
THE DUKE’S PROPOSAL
First North American Publication 2004.
Copyright © 2004 by Sophie Weston.
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