The Duke's Proposal

Abby sank back in her seat, disapproving and trying to hide it.

She moved the subject firmly away from the professional. Fortunately they had family to get them through the next course.

They agreed that it was a bore that Izzy and Dom wouldn’t confirm the date for their wedding. Yes, it was great to see how happy they were.

And then Abby snapped her fingers, relaxing again. ‘That reminds me. I’ve got the Christmas photographs to show you.’

She fished in her bag and brought out an untidy handful. She sorted through them rapidly, extracted a couple, then handed the rest across with a reminiscent smile.

‘I’ll get you copies of anything you want.’

Jemima did not figure in any of the cheerful pictures. She had managed Christmas Day with the family, but she had been off on a big shoot in the Seychelles on Boxing Day. She flipped through them with the speed of one who spent much of her professional life looking at sheets of photographs.

‘All matching pairs,’ she said.

‘What?’

Jemima fanned out four and turned them to face Abby. There was Abby herself, dancing with her tall, elegant husband, Izzy and Dom, tumbling on the floor under the Christmas tree and laughing madly, and Jemima’s cousin Pepper leaning dreamily against her Steven’s shoulder.

‘Even my parents are holding hands.’ Jemima pointed at the fourth.

They were too.

‘I see what you mean,’ admitted Abby.

‘Just as well I’d moved on. I would have unbalanced the party.’

‘Oh, come on. You’d have been the star.’

Jemima said in an odd voice, ‘Same thing. Stars don’t come in matching pairs.’

Abby looked up, instantly alert. ‘Still no man in your life, then?’

There was the tiniest pause.

Then, ‘Not one I’d take home to Mother.’

The irony was very nicely done. It said, You and I are women of the world; we know that I’m beautiful and sophisticated and my relationships are very, very modern. Much too modern for my hand-holding parents to get their heads around.

But Abby was not quite convinced. ‘Are you telling me you’re one for the wild men?’ she said doubtfully.

Jemima narrowed her eyes at her. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Then what?’

Jemima hesitated. At last she said, ‘Put it this way—I’m not looking for a man to follow me round the world.’

‘Ah. Yes, I see. It’s not easy keeping a relationship on the rails when your work makes you travel,’ allowed Abby. Her husband had business ventures in four continents. Even so, he did not travel as much as a top international model. She looked at Jemima curiously. ‘Is it lonely?’

Jemima snorted. ‘Who has time to get lonely?’ It seemed to burst out of her. ‘So far this year I’ve done Madrid, Milan, Barcelona, Paris, London. Now I’m off to New York and Milan again. Then back to New York.’

It sounded grim to Abby. ‘You could still be lonely,’ she pointed out. ‘Do you ever want to do something else with your life?’

But Jemima was flicking through the pictures again and did not seem to hear.

‘Hello—what’s this one? Been away?’

Diverted, Abby held out her hand for the photograph. Unlike the others, it was a commercial postcard: a standard view of tropical palms with wild surf beyond. She turned it over and smiled as she read the message on the back.

‘Oh, that. It’s just a postcard from a friend.’ She gave it back. ‘He stays out of England, but every so often he sends me a postcard to show me what I’m missing.’ Her smile was warmly reminiscent. ‘Those palm trees look good on a wet Friday in London, don’t they?’

Jemima looked at those foaming waves and shook her head. ‘Bit energetic for me,’ she said dryly, and turned the card over to look at the legend. ‘“Pentecost Island”,’ she read. ‘Where’s that? South Seas?’

Abby shook her head. ‘Who knows? Could be. He gets around.’

‘He?’ teased Jemima. In the square left for messages on the back of the postcard someone had written ‘Time you tried the white horses!’ and signed it with an arrogant black N. ‘Should Emilio be worried?’

Abby grinned suddenly. ‘Not for a moment. He’s known me since I had spots and braces on my teeth. If there’s one man in the world for whom I have no mystery it’s him.’

Jemima pulled a face. ‘Sounds dull.’

Abby laughed aloud. ‘He’s a professional gambler and gorgeous with it. Whatever else he is, dull he isn’t.’

Jemima shuffled all the photographs together neatly and gave them back to her.

‘So you won’t be taking off to Pentecost Island for a dashing weekend with an old flame?’

Abby was serene. ‘Not a chance. I’ve never even heard of it before.’

‘Nor me. Must be pretty remote.’

‘Not that remote,’ said Abby dryly. ‘If he’s there, it must have a casino.’ She put the photographs in her bag and signalled for the bill. ‘Where are you going now? Can I give you a lift?’

‘The Dorchester.’

‘Nice,’ said Abby, her eyes dancing.

Jemima grinned suddenly. ‘Not so nice. I’m in for a grilling from Madame.’

Abby’s expression changed instantly. She shuddered.

‘Now, that woman scares me. I’m so glad we work for you, not Belinda.’

Jemima shrugged again. ‘She doesn’t scare me.’

‘You’re really brave, aren’t you?’

‘Hell, why? She’s my employer, not the Emperor Nero.’

‘But she can be so nasty. And she always looks so—immaculate.’

‘So do I,’ said Jemima coolly. ‘And I can walk away. She can’t. It’s her company.’

Abby was admiring. But still she shook her head. ‘Doesn’t she press your buttons at all?’

‘Not a one,’ said Jemima, her eyes glittering. ‘There are things worth getting worked up about. Madame Belinda isn’t one of them.’

If she had been at the Dorchester an hour later Abby would have seen that that was not the whole truth. Jemima was getting worked up, all right. But not with fear. With rage.

Jemima shook back her famous red hair as she felt the fury rise. It felt glorious. It had taken a long time. Too long. But now she was angry.

She stood up and glared at Madame, the President of Belinda Cosmetics.

‘Are you telling me you flew the Atlantic and made me find a space in the busiest week in the year to complain that I haven’t got a boyfriend?’

The Vice-President, seated at Madame’s right hand at the impressive boardroom table, blenched.

Madame President was unmoved. ‘Sit down, Jemima.’

But Jemima was on a roll. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

Madame President’s eyes held hers. They had about as much expression as a lizard’s. They clearly scared the hell out of the Vice-President.

‘The woman who pays your considerable bills.’

The Vice-President was theoretically tall, dark and handsome—and very sophisticated. Suave Silvio, they called him on the circuit. Jemima had been on a couple of ultra-cool dates with him, and she knew that his advance publicity was fully deserved.

But now he gulped audibly. Man or mouse? No contest, thought Jemima. She ignored him.

‘You don’t own me,’ she told Madame. ‘I have other contracts.’

Jemima looked straight into Madame’s lizard eyes, like a duellist facing the enemy.

There was a long pause. Neither blinked.

‘And how long will you keep them if I tell the world I sacked you?’ asked Madame icily.

Jemima did not let herself remember that she’d already thought of that. She was too intent on the battle.

‘And that means you can order me to take a boyfriend?’ She was scornful. ‘I don’t think so.’

Madame President stood up. It was scary. She was five foot nothing of concentrated power and purpose. She slapped her hands down on the table in front of her and leaned forward. Her voice went up to a roar, astonishing for her size. ‘You will do what I say!’

It was intimidating. It was meant to be.

But Jemima was in full duellist mode by now. She stood her ground. ‘I joined an advertising campaign. Not a harem.’

Suave Silvio moaned.

It reminded her. ‘Did Silvio date me on orders?’

Madame made a dismissive gesture.

‘He did,’ said Jemima on a note of discovery. She was so furious she had gone utterly calm. ‘And I suppose it was you who put poor old Francis Hale-Smith up to asking me out, wasn’t it? I told him to get lost, by the way.’

Madame went puce. ‘You are the face of Belinda. If I say you have a boyfriend, you will have a boyfriend!’

‘Nope.’

‘I pay you!’ yelled Madame.

It was the last straw. ‘Then I quit,’ said Jemima, very, very quietly.

Their eyes locked for electric seconds.

This time Madame President blinked.

Then she straightened and sat down again. The red subsided from her exquisitely made-up cheeks.

‘Coffee, I think,’ she said, quite as if nothing had happened. ‘Silvio, tell them to bring coffee at once.’

The Vice-President leaped to his feet, looking relieved. ‘Yes, Madame.’ He rushed to a phone in the corner and spoke into it urgently.

What was the old bat up to now? thought Jemima, deeply suspicious. ‘Not for me,’ she said coldly. ‘I just quit.’

Madame waved a hand so heavily encrusted with rings it could have set several small fires if the sun had been shining. Only this was London in February, and the sky was solid grey cloud. Even with lavish windows, the penthouse was safe.

‘Good. Good.’ She beamed at Jemima, nodding as approvingly as if a promising pupil had just made a breakthrough. ‘Sit. Take a coffee with me. We will talk about this.’

She’s going mad, thought Jemima. Either that or I am.

As much to steady herself as anything, she said levelly, ‘When I signed up to be the face of Belinda I agreed to do four photo shoots a year and various PR jobs. I’ve kept my side of the bargain.’

Madame President snorted loudly.

With a supreme effort of will, Jemima bit back the pithy response that sprang to mind.

When Elegance Magazine had first discovered Jemima Dare, one besotted staff columnist had described her as having ‘gut-wrenching sensuality allied to Titania’s ethereal provocation’. He would not have recognised her at the moment, golden-brown eyes narrowed and spitting mad. But then that had been four years ago. In the interim she had done a lot of growing up—not all of it pleasant.

Madame President was a new experience. But Jemima was a fast learner. And one of the things she had learned was that in confrontations you had to take control.

Right. Give the old bat something to worry about. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t walk out of here right now,’ she said.

Silvio nearly dropped the phone. Even Madame President looked taken aback for a moment. Then she gave another of those disconcertingly approving nods.

‘Because you and I can do business together,’ she said simply.

Jemima’s eyes skimmed the worried Silvio. ‘Not if you were thinking of picking my boyfriends,’ she said dryly. ‘We don’t seem to have the same taste in men.’

Madame’s eyes gleamed. ‘Silvio, get out,’ she said without looking at him.

He went.

Madame was talking before the door closed behind him. ‘Okay. Cards on the table. We have a problem.’

Jemima raised perfect eyebrows.

‘Oh, sit down,’ said Madame irritably. ‘It is like talking to a lamp post. Why are models so damned tall these days? When I was a girl in Paris, they were human-sized.’

In spite of herself, Jemima gave a choke of laughter. And sat.

‘That’s better.’

Madame leaned forward and propped her chin on her steepled fingers. The rings glittered but Jemima hardly noticed. The eyes were not a lizard’s any more. They were dark and expressive—and shrewd.

‘The press…’

‘Have decided I’m a spoiled brat,’ supplied Jemima. ‘I’ve just had lunch with my PR advisers. They’ve given me the rundown.’

Madame shook her head. ‘They’re wrong. The press enjoys spoiled brats. Our problem is that they are forgetting you.’

She picked up a handful of magazines and flung them across the coffee table. Jemima saw European titles mixed with North American celebrity titles.

‘Take a look,’ said Madame in a hard, level voice. ‘Show me your name. They’ve got film stars, baseball stars. Even some damned aristocrat who’s been missing for fifteen years. How far off today’s news is that? But no Jemima Dare. And, more important, no face of Belinda.’

Jemima frowned. But she was fair. She went through the magazines rapidly. Madame was right.

Tom and Sandy: will they split? Eugenio takes us into his lovely Florida home. Where is the Duke? The hunt is on…

She pushed the magazines away. ‘Okay. No Belinda. No me. I’ll give you that. So?’

‘Time to do something about it.’

Jemima’s eyes narrowed. ‘This is the One Last Chance chat, isn’t it?’ she said suddenly.

Madame President’s eyes flickered. ‘Yes,’ she said baldly. ‘Have you had lots of them?’

Jemima laughed. ‘My cousin Pepper is an entrepreneur. We share an apartment. I listen to her work problems,’ she said coolly. ‘I know the signs.’

Madame looked annoyed. ‘Then deal with it.’

Jemima smiled. ‘I’d say there was an unless coming. You’ll cancel my contract unless I—what? Dye my hair? Write a celebrity novel? Sing? What?’

Madame laughed unexpectedly. It sounded rusty. ‘I like you, Jemima. You’re gutsy.’

I need to be, with sharks like you signing my pay cheque.

She did not say it, of course. She gave her a demure smile. ‘Thank you. So spit it out. What do you want me to do? Short of dating Francis, that is.’

Madame was temporarily side-tracked. ‘Why not Francis? He’s very talented. He’ll go far.’

Jemima leaned back and crossed her legs. ‘And he’s a complete prune. He asked me out over the head of another girl while I was dressed in nothing but a pair of knickers and a lot of sticky tape.’

Madame was startled enough to allow herself to be sidetracked again. ‘Sticky tape?’

‘He’s into deep, deep plunge this collection.’

They exchanged a look of total understanding. In her time Madame President had been a model too. She nodded.

‘Ah.’

‘What’s more,’ said Jemima, watching Madame from under her lashes, ‘when I said I’d take a rain-check he looked as if he’d been let out of prison.’

There was a small silence. Madame’s lips tightened.

‘How on earth did you sign him up?’ Jemima was genuinely curious.

Madame looked like a lizard about to spit. But she was a good tactician. After a brief struggle with herself, she said curtly, ‘Offered him a joint promotion next Christmas.’

‘Well, he tried,’ said Jemima fairly. ‘So, want to tell me why?’

Madame examined her rings absorbedly. ‘When we were looking for the new face of Belinda, we had a very specific brief in mind,’ she said at last slowly. ‘A woman of today—a woman who made her own decisions, a woman with a career, sure, but a woman to whom other things were important too—friends, things of the mind, love, children.’

Jemima regarded her with an unblinking gaze. Then, ‘If you want me to have a baby, forget it.’ Her voice was hard. ‘That’s not a decision I’d take because a cosmetic company told me to. Or any other employer, for that matter.’

To her surprise, Madame looked delighted. Triumphant even. ‘Exactly. That’s the tone I want.’

Jemima flung up her hands. ‘I give up.’

‘Look,’ said Madame, suddenly a lot less dramatic, ‘you were my personal choice for the face of Belinda. I liked the way you presented yourself. You didn’t crave the celebrity circuit. You didn’t worry that laughing too much would crack your make-up. You thought about things and you weren’t afraid to have an opinion. I liked that.’

Jemima was taken aback. ‘Thank you.’

‘Silvio said you weren’t glamorous enough.’

Weasel, thought Jemima. That isn’t what he said to me when he was wining and dining me. Aloud, she said, ‘Really?’

‘But I said that it didn’t matter. This is the twenty-first century, I said. It is time for a change. She lives with her sister and her cousin like a regular person. Besides, they are all three go-getters.’

Jemima grinned. ‘Oh, yes, we’re that all right.’ She thought of Pepper the businesswoman and Izzy the adventure freak. ‘By the bucketful.’

Madame grinned back. She was very charming when she grinned, thought Jemima. For a shark.

‘So I thought—there’s my twenty-first-century woman. Gorgeous redhead who doesn’t spend her life worrying about the size of her bum. Girl with a life. And a future.’

Jemima was touched. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

‘So how did all go so wrong? What happened to that lovely girl with her feet on the ground?’

Jemima winced.

There was a brief knock and the Vice-President appeared at the door, ushering in a waiter with a huge tray. The waiter poured coffee and glasses of mineral water and left. The Vice-President hovered. Madame waved him to sit. He sank into an armchair with a distinct sigh of relief.

Frowning, she said, ‘When that stupid manager started turning you into a professional partygoer, I told Silvio, “Call him up. Tell him to back off.” Didn’t I, Silvio?’

He nodded enthusiastically. ‘You did, Madame.’

‘But then you fired him. And I thought, Great. The girl has good instincts. We’re back on track.’

Jemima had gone rigid. ‘I didn’t fire Basil.’

Madame ignored that. ‘Only now you don’t go out at all.’

‘I didn’t fire Basil.’

Jemima was starting to shiver, she realised. To hide it, she looked around for her shoulder-bag and fussed through it.

Madame seemed disappointed. ‘That’s not what I heard.’

The shivers down her spine were turning into a positive cascade. ‘I left his management by mutual agreement.’

Madame looked sceptical.

‘It was.’

Well, eventually. When she had threatened to expose the things he’d done—the pills to keep her thin, the break from her family to keep her ‘focused’, as he’d called it. Oh, yes, he’d been glad enough to give back her contract when she’d faced him with all of that. Only now he was having second thoughts, and…

If she wasn’t careful, she was going to start shaking again.

With another of her abrupt changes of mood Madame lost interest. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have no life. You don’t date. You don’t go out anywhere unless it’s an assignment.’

Jemima was still shaky. ‘I work. I don’t have time to go out.’

‘Make time.’

‘What?’

Madame said with finality, ‘Go back to being a regular person. You don’t have to disappear and come back a duke. You don’t even have to date a designer if you don’t want to. But date someone.’

‘I—’

‘I’m cancelling the shoot in New York. Take a break. Go meet some guys, like other girls. I want to see you living a life like our customers lead. And I want to see the press stories to prove it.’

She stood up. The interview was clearly over.

Jemima stopped shivering. She was not afraid of Madame.

She tipped her head back. On this dull grey afternoon the penthouse was lit by warm table-lamps. In their light the wonderful red hair rippled like fire, like wine. And Jemima knew it. She knew, too, that the woman who had personally chosen her as the face of Belinda would not want to admit she had been wrong.

She said, quite gently, ‘Or?’

Madame recognised a challenge when she saw it. She might like Jemima personally. But she couldn’t afford to let a challenge go unanswered. Her jaw hardened.

‘We’re already into planning the Christmas campaign. I won’t pull you off that. But it’s your last unless you—’

‘Get a boyfriend,’ supplied Jemima. Her temper went back onto a slow burn. She smiled pleasantly at the shark. ‘I’m almost certain that’s illegal.’

Madame did not care about piffling legalities. She snorted. ‘Unless you get a life.’

‘And if I don’t?’

The eyes were blank and lizard-like again. ‘You’re off the team.’

Jemima flipped off the sofa. ‘Cast your mind back,’ she said sweetly. ‘Like I said, I quit.’

She steamed out before they could answer.

The commissionaire summoned a taxi for her. She sank into the big seat and called the agency.

‘Belinda and I just fired each other,’ she said curtly.

She rang off to squawks of horror.

And then she did what she had been putting off all day. She checked her text messages.

Her fingers shook a little as she pressed the buttons. Basil had stopped leaving messages on her voicemail these days. But he texted a lot. Mostly she managed to zap them unread. But today she saw one she had thought was from her limousine service.

As soon as she saw it was not, she killed it. But not soon enough.

The message was the same as always. The words changed. But the theme was constant.

U R MYN.

CHAPTER TWO

JEMIMA let herself into the apartment. It was dark and silent. She dropped her overnight bag and closed the door.

‘Pepper?’ she called, without much hope.

But there was no answer. Well, it was only what she had expected. Izzy was away in the ice fields, helping her love with his training. She had hoped that her cousin might be here, though.

Jemima hefted the bag over her shoulder. Switching on lights, she made her way to the kitchen.

It was the heart of their shared home. Here they sat at the table and laughed and argued and made plans. Now it was unnaturally tidy. No flowers on the table. No scribbled messages on the memory board. All the work surfaces were clear and gleaming. Even the answering machine was neatly aligned in the corner, with what looked like a week’s post in front of it. The last person in here had clearly been the cleaning lady.

Jemima shivered and dropped her trim flight bag. She flicked on the radio and bopped gently to the music as she opened the fridge.

Lots of water. A couple of bottles of wine. Some elderly cheese. It didn’t look as if Pepper had been here for days.

‘With her Steven in Oxford,’ said Jemima aloud.

Just like Izzy, with her Dominic.

‘And I could be out on the town with Francis Hale-Smith,’ she mocked herself. ‘Holding hands whenever we spotted a camera.’

It was even more chilling than the empty flat.

She started to make coffee, although she didn’t really want it, and hacked off a small corner of the dying cheese. Not because she wanted that either, but because Izzy always made her some food when she came in late. Or she’d always used to.

‘Hi, Jay Jay. How was Paris? And how have you been?’ she said to the empty chair.

She walked round to the other side of the table and answered herself. ‘Oh, you know—busy, busy. And my ex-manager won’t leave me alone. Hounding me seems to be his new career choice. He’s really putting his back into it, twenty-four-seven.’

In the silence she did not sound anything like as ironic as she’d meant to.

‘Damn!’ Her voice broke at last.

She sank down on a kitchen chair and dropped her head in her hands.

The phone started to ring. She ignored it. She had not cried, not once, since Basil started his campaign. And now it didn’t seem as if she could stop. She didn’t even try to answer the phone.

The answering programme clicked onto Izzy’s voice. She sounded as if she were laughing.

‘We can’t take your call at the moment. But talk nicely and we might get back to you. Here come the beeps.’

Jemima gave an audible hiccup. They had laughed so much when Izzy recorded that. It had been airlessly hot. All the windows open. They’d been drinking white wine spritzers and they had juggled ice cubes to decide who got to record the message. Izzy had been wearing a tee shirt and nothing else, and she said you could hear it in her voice on the recording.

Now Jemima reached across and pressed the outgoing message button, just to remind herself of that night. Now Izzy had Dom, and Pepper was getting married. And Jemima?