The Duke's Proposal

His touch set her unruly pulse galloping again.

What is wrong with me? I regularly get wrapped up in the arms of the most beautiful men in the business. They don’t do this to me!

The breeze off the sea was cool. She refused to shiver, but they were walking so close that he picked it up.

“Cold?”

“Maybe a little.”

He stopped at once and took off his jacket. Before Jemima could think of a thing to say, he had swung it around her shoulders and taken her hand again, urging them on.

“Better?”

The jacket was surprisingly heavy. The silky lining slithered along her exposed skin like a live creature. She felt embraced by it. Soothed and somehow protected. And so warm! It was like cuddling up in front of a warm fire on a cold night. Like basking in sunshine.

Like being loved.

Oh, boy, am I in trouble here.

THE WEDDING CHALLENGE

Chased to the altar—three independent cousins swept off their feet by the most eligible Englishmen!

Pepper, Izzy and Jemima Jane are cousins—with nothing in common except the gorgeous red hair they’ve inherited from their grandmother! They even grew up on different continents: Pepper is heiress to an American business empire, Izzy and Jemima shared their very English childhood as adopted sisters….

But do they have more in common than they realize?

For the first time in their lives the three cousins find themselves together: as a family, as friends, as business partners. And they’re about to discover that they’re not so different from each other after all!

Pepper, Izzy and Jay Jay are thoroughly modern women, determined to be ruled by the head, not the heart. Now their lives are turned upside down as each meets a man who challenges her to let love into her life—with dramatic consequences!

Pepper had an unexpected encounter in The Independent Bride (#3747)

Izzy met her match in The Accidental Mistress (#3776)

Now Jemima is the last of the cousins to find her man—in The Duke’s Proposal.

The Duke’s Proposal

Sophie Weston

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Kate

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

THE tall, lithe man leaned on the balustrade and looked out to sea. The simple cottage was hidden away in the hotel grounds, a long way from the hustle and bustle.

He gave a deep sigh of pleasure.

Night. Warmth. A breeze, soft as a woman’s breath, across his skin.

Voices wafted over the murmurous water but he was alone. Just as he always was.

So? That was what he had chosen all those years ago. That was what he had stuck with. You make your choices. Then you live by them.

But sometimes, on a perfect night like this, when the air was heavy with the scents of leaves and the sea, he found himself wondering. What if it had been different? How would it feel if she were here with him?

‘“The not impossible she”,’ quoted Niall Blackthorne aloud, mocking himself.

Across the bay, the entrance to Casino Caraibe Royale was lit up like Las Vegas. Already people were arriving in their hired limousines. Pretty soon the steel band would start.

Party time, thought Niall.

He shook himself out of his uncharacteristic reverie and stretched lazily in the gathering dark. He was shirtless, his tanned legs bare under the disreputable denim shorts. At nightfall the air was still warm along the skin. It was only later that the wind off the sea would really get up. And he would go to work.

He grinned, thinking about it. Showered and smooth-shaven, his hair gleaming blue-black in the moonlight, his tuxedo tailored to perfection, he would drive over to the casino. He would circulate among the tourists and the professional gamblers, aloof and mysterious, and play blackjack and roulette and poker.

Sometimes he won, and people envied him. Sometimes he lost, and they marvelled at his cool indifference. But either way they kept their distance. Even the women who fancied themselves in love with the enigmatic gambler never stayed. He never wanted them to.

Now, just for a moment, in the hot, quiet night, he could pretend that he was the beach bum he looked like. There were compensations for being alone, he reminded himself wryly. No woman would tolerate his beach bum side for long. Even if he wanted her to.

And of course he didn’t. His grin died. Soberly, he looked at the shifting starlit ocean.

Face the truth, Niall.

He was a one-woman man. And the one woman belonged to someone else.

CHAPTER ONE

THE big, bustling room fell silent when Jemima Dare walked in.

Rooms did that these days. It was no more than a collective intake of breath. But it was more eloquent than a drum roll. It said, Love her or loathe her, the Queen is here.

That was what she was now, thought Jemima. The Queen of this little world.

She could feel the eyes. And the expectations. A wall of expectations pressing down on her. For a moment she felt as if she could hardly breathe.

Then she got a grip. Never disappoint your public…

So Jemima Dare flung back the gorgeous Titian hair, narrowed the famous amber eyes and smiled blindly into the silence.

It had started the moment Belinda Cosmetics chose her to front their international campaigns, that silence. Now she was on the cover of this month’s Elegance Magazine for the second time in a year and her crown was assured. Every model in the room was green with envy—and far too many of them loathed her because of it.

Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.

Instinctively Jemima squared her shoulders.

‘Hi,’ she said to the room at large.

But already everyone was back at work, adjusting the designer clothes, balancing on cruelly high heels, concentrating on hair and make-up. One or two of the women who’d used to be her friends before she was Queen smiled back. A new girl, fifteen if she was a day, was so awed that she looked as if she were going to cry. But nobody spoke.

Although the room was a furnace, after the ice and hail in the streets, Jemima felt frozen from her fingertips to her heart’s core.

Be careful what you wish for…

Well, she had wished. And she had got it. And not a thing could she do about it, not any more. The die was cast.

It had been cast years ago. She had been seventeen. She had believed Basil Blane when he’d said, ‘Babe, you’re a natural. I can make you a star.’

And, of course, he had. She was a star, all right. Queen of the catwalk. Imperious priestess of the photo shoot. Basil had just never said what it would cost.

For a moment she looked round this room of women who couldn’t even bring themselves to say hello to her and the amber eyes were bleak. Then she shrugged. The price of success, she told herself cynically. She lengthened her panther’s prowl and wove an expert way through the racks of shrouded clothes and palpitating assistants.

She had been navigating the backstage chaos of international fashion shows for five years and more. She knew how to do it. There was a job to do here, and she was good at it.

‘You’re here,’ said the designer. His eyes were wild and his hands colder than her own. This was his first big show. ‘I called and called. Don’t you ever answer your phone?’

Jemima sidestepped the question. ‘I don’t let people down.’ That was true. Almost the only thing in her life she was proud of now. ‘Relax, Francis. I’m going to do you proud.’

True to her word, she gave the performance of her life out on the catwalk—a prowling predator in minimalist silks. The show got a standing ovation. The designer gathered the models about him and wept.

Jemima dropped her head on his shoulder. The waterfall of Titian hair cascaded artistically across the front of his leather jacket. It looked spontaneous, friendly, even affectionate. And it would make a hell of a photograph.

Everyone knew that. That was how they had all sat round and planned it last night. The PR people, the publicist, Francis…

Spontaneous? Huh!

Just for a moment, when they’d told her last night, she had flared up. She was fresh in from Paris, and travelling made her edgy these days. For half a second she’d forgotten that they paid her a lot of money to pretend to be spontaneous.

‘You’re trying to get a rumour going about Francis and me,’ she’d accused them, with more accuracy than tact.

People started to read their briefing notes avidly, or stared round the untidy boardroom. No one met her eyes.

In the end it was left to the head honcho to spell out the facts of life.

‘Just do the business, Jemima,’ Belinda’s UK marketing director said wearily. ‘You’re the face of Belinda. We need the column inches. Madame’s in town for the show.’

And everyone, but everyone, was scared of Madame.

So now Jemima leaned against Francis and smiled up at him as if he was the boy next door, instead of a workaholic dress designer with no known social graces. The paparazzi snapped away, delighted. Columnists scribbled. There was even a romantic sigh or two.

You could see the headlines, Jemima thought dryly. Jemima in Love at Last?

She kept her smile so firmly in place her ears hurt.

Once they were behind the curtains Francis removed his arm at once. He looked almost uncomfortable, as if he shouldn’t be touching the Queen.

‘Thanks, babe.’

He called everyone ‘babe’, though. That illusion of intimacy was just for the camera. Once the performance was over, they both knew she was unattainable. Every man in the world knew she was unattainable. Except one. And he…

She swallowed.

‘You were right,’ said Francis, not noticing. ‘You did me proud.’

‘A pleasure.’ Jemima’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.

‘I suppose you don’t—?’ He was talented and obsessed, but suddenly he sounded uncertain.

She was easing off his last creation with neat, practised movements. One of his staff was helping. But at that she looked over her shoulder.

‘Don’t what?’ She slithered all the way out of the silky tunic and handed it to the assistant.

‘Don’t feel like a meal later?’ he muttered. His ears had gone pink. And not because she was down to her underwear.

Jemima sighed inwardly. Be nice, she told herself. Be nice. It’s not his fault he has the social sense of a toadstool.

‘No. Sorry, Francis. Madame’s in town. I could be summoned at any moment.’

Relief flashed in his eyes. He masked it quickly. ‘Another time, then.’

It was so unflattering Jemima nearly laughed aloud. She only didn’t because his assistant was hovering. Francis hadn’t noticed, but Jemima was more alert these days. She was almost certain that the assistant had a hotline to at least one of the tabloids.

‘Mmm, great. Call me?’ She flung a sweet, poisonous smile at the assistant. ‘Got that?’

The assistant was wooden. She transferred the tunic to its padded hanger without comment. But the air sizzled.

Jemima reached for her bra and clipped herself into it at speed.

Francis blinked. ‘You really were great,’ he said hastily.

‘Thank you.’

He hesitated. Then he said, ‘You just get better and better, don’t you?’

Jemima was surprised. It showed.

Francis laughed, bouncing into candour on a great spurt of relief. ‘Oh, you were always gorgeous. But the last few months there’s something new. Like you’re dangerous or something.’

She was pulling on silky pantyhose with care, but at that she stopped, startled.

’Dangerous?’

Francis might be socially unflattering but he was a professional. ‘It’s very sexy,’ he said reassuringly.

Suddenly, Jemima was charmed. She gave him her first genuine smile of the day. ‘That’s really sweet of you, Francis. Thank you.’

‘You’re better than you know.’ He patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘Now I gotta go mingle. Where are you due next?’

This was London Fashion Week, and the models were running from fashion show to fashion show at full tilt.

Jemima sighed. ‘Meeting with the PR people. Unless Madame Belinda blows her whistle first.’

‘What it is to be a supermodel.’ He was only half joking.

‘Semi-super. The days of the big celebrity are gone,’ said Jemima, pulling on slim tobacco leather trousers and a black cut-away top.

‘You could just be bringing them back.’

‘Some hope!’

She shrugged rapidly into the matching jacket. It was as soft as glove leather. It would be freezing outside in a London February—but what the hell. There might be photographers out there. The Queen of Top Models couldn’t bundle up in winter linings and woolly mittens. However much she might want to.

‘And then what? Back to Paris?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve got a shoot in New York. Fly out tomorrow morning.’ At least in theory, she thought, but didn’t say.

If Madame Belinda was on the warpath she was quite capable of cancelling a contract at twenty-four hours’ notice.

Jemima gave a little shiver. If she lost the high-profile Belinda contract her career was over and she knew it. And then what?

No point in thinking about it. She would have to deal with it when it happened. So she concentrated on the most important thing she could deal with now.

She snapped huge gypsy hoops into her ears and fluffed out her swirl of shining fox-red hair. Casting one quick, professional look into the mirror, she paused for barely a moment.

‘Good,’ she told her image. ‘Very good. High pneumonia risk, but good.’

The designer laughed. He should have been out among his audience, schmoozing the fashion correspondents. But for some reason he still lingered.

‘I mean it, Jemima. You’re a real star.’

She fished her big shoulder-bag out from among the chaos of bags and shoes on the floor.

‘Well, don’t hold it against me,’ she said flippantly. ‘It won’t last.’

He goggled. ‘What?’

Jemima was already regretting her momentary impulse to honesty. She gave him a wide, photogenic smile. ‘Forget it. I’ve got to scoot. The limo is waiting.’

They air-kissed.

‘You really made the show—’ he called after her.

But the door was already closing behind her.

The street was crowded with slow-moving traffic, but Jemima spotted her limousine at once. She knew the car. Knew the driver. Insisted that she always had the same one when she was in London. It was one of the reasons she was beginning to get a name for being demanding.

Behind her back they called her the Beast, the Dreaded Diva, the prima donna of pointless demands. They said there was no reason for her list of requirements on transport and lodging and entertainment, that she just did it because she liked to keep people jumping. Because she could.

If they only knew.

She slid into the back seat, stretched out her long legs and fished the mobile phone out of her designer bag. She bit her lip. Braced herself. Switched it on.

She ran through the voice messages quickly. She was summoned to Madame Belinda at the Dorchester at three. Well, it could be worse. She did not look at the text messages.

The PR agency were taking her to lunch at the Savoy. Two women, hardly less elegant than she was herself, were waiting on low, luxurious sofas, with a dish of canapés already on the polished wooden table between them. They offered wine, a cocktail, champagne. Jemima declined the lot.

‘Bad for the skin.’ She sank into a deep armchair with model-girl grace. ‘I’ll have a glass of water.’

The other two exchanged resigned glances. Difficult, they said without words.

Jemima winced inwardly. She had worked with these women for over a year. Her sister Izzy was even going to marry the brother of Abby, the junior on the team. And they still treated her as something between royalty and a delinquent five-year-old. They satisfied her every whim because she was Jemima Dare, the face of Belinda, and every magazine in the world wanted her to work for them. But they didn’t have to pretend that they liked it.

Be careful what you wish for…

They exchanged glances again, with purpose. A prepared attack, interpreted Jemima. She braced herself.

‘Do you want to check your messages before we start?’ asked Abby, confirming her suspicions.

Jemima tensed inwardly. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Then would you mind turning off your phone? We don’t want to be interrupted.’

‘It’s off,’ she said curtly.

They exchanged another one of those looks. Definitely a prepared attack.

Silently Abby handed her a folder.

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news first?’ asked Molly di Perretti. Not being family, even remotely, she didn’t have to mince her words.

Jemima put the folder on the table and sipped sparking water from a crystal glass. ‘Good. I’m an optimist.’

Molly tapped the folder. ‘Column inches up again. You were the model most talked about in the international press last month.’

‘Great.’

‘The bad news,’ pursued Molly hardily, ‘is what they’re saying.’

Jemima raised her eyebrows.

‘You work less, demand more. You’re an arrogant cow and everyone hates you.’ Molly’s tone was forensic.

Jemima did not blink. ‘I see.’

Lady Abigail, who was going to have to walk side by side down the aisle with Jemima behind Izzy Dare one day in autumn, and was not looking forward to it, tried a softer approach.

‘It’s so easy to get a bad name in this business. You’re just going to have to be a bit more careful.’

Molly said nothing. Loudly.

Jemima looked at her sardonically. ‘Go on, Molly. Spit it out. I can take it.’

Molly clearly agreed. ‘Abby’s too easy on you. You’re getting a name for being a spoilt brat because you’re behaving like a spoilt brat.’

Abby groaned.

The other two ignored her.

‘Your demands are getting out of control. It’s not just the other models who think you’ve lost the plot.’ Molly started to tick a list off on her fingers. ‘You’ve got to have a limousine you’ve travelled in before. Drivers you happen to fancy. Private planes instead of scheduled flights. Then refusing to stay in the best hotel in New York because you wanted to be alone, and that meant a private apartment at vast cost…’ She glared. ‘I’ve got news for you, Jemima. You’re not Greta Garbo. Wake up and smell the coffee.’

Jemima looked stunned.

Abby and Molly looked at each other, relieved. At least they had got through this time.

‘Drivers I happen to fancy?’ said Jemima, outraged.

Or not. Abby dropped her head in her hands.

Molly’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Fine. Don’t take our advice. See where you end up.’

Jemima said coolly, ‘I pay your company a whole lot of money to run my PR and analyse the results. I didn’t take you on as a life coach.’

Molly put down her margarita so hard that some of it slopped onto the highly polished table. Abby mopped at it with one of the paper cocktail napkins. Neither Jemima nor Molly took any notice.

‘Okay, I’ll tell you the truth—since nobody else will,’ said Molly with heat. ‘Your agent is too scared you’ll dump her, like you did the one before her. And your sister treats you with kid gloves. God knows why.’

Jemima’s famously melting golden-brown eyes flickered.

‘When Belinda went looking for their new face, they told everyone they wanted someone the professional girl about town could relate to. No more elegant skeletons. No more untouchable celebrities. They wanted a girl who had a family and friends and did normal things. I put some cuttings in your folder,’ she added with bite.

‘Thank you.’ No one could describe Jemima’s eyes as melting at the moment. They glittered.

‘I thought it would help to remind you. When you got the job, you fulfilled the job description. Now you don’t. I’m just betting the people at Belinda are beginning to notice.’

Did she know that Madame was sitting in the Dorchester like a black widow, waiting to crunch her bones?

Jemima’s jaw was rigid. But she said nothing.

‘Oh, please yourself,’ said Molly in disgust.

Her eyes met Abby’s. The message was clear, even to Jemima: I give up! She stood up. ‘Abby, you’d better finish up here. I’ve got real work to do back in the office.’

She stamped off.

Left behind, Abby said apologetically, ‘Molly gets very passionate about her work.’

Jemima swallowed. ‘Doesn’t she just?’ But her light tone sounded strained.

Just for a moment Abby thought the beautiful mask might crack. Just for a moment it seemed as if Jemima would come off her pedestal. Abby didn’t care what she did—laugh, cry, swear at Molly, throw things…. Just as long as she stopped looking poised and bored and totally, totally indifferent.

But she didn’t.

Instead she leaned back in her deep chair, pinned on the famous smile and drawled, ‘So, tell me about my family. The last time I spoke to Izzy she said they couldn’t finalise the date until Dominic had sorted out his training schedule.’

Abby gave up too.

Over lunch Jemima was barbed and witty, and as defensive as a killer crab. She was charming to the waiters, indifferent to the covert stares of several of their fellow diners. But when one of them got up and came over to their table she tensed visibly, Abby saw.

He turned out to be a lively barrister, with a copy of Elegance Magazine in his briefcase and a niece who wanted to be a model. Jemima gave him the slow up-and-under smile that had made her famous, signed the cover of the magazine as he asked, and told him to tell his niece to finish her exams before she tried out for any of the respectable model agencies. Delighted, he gave her his business card and went back to his table.

‘Someone who doesn’t think you’re a spoiled brat?’ asked Abby shrewdly.

Jemima was cool. ‘Yup.’ She tore his card into tiny pieces and dropped them onto the pristine tablecloth. Abby saw that her fingers were shaking.

Suddenly Abby was concerned. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Of course.’ But the golden eyes looked blind, almost as if she were afraid.

Abby leaned forward. ‘Are you sure? You looked like a ghost when he came over.’

The beautiful shoulders gave that arrogant shrug. ‘I—thought he might be someone I knew.’

‘But he wasn’t?’

The blind look went out of Jemima’s eyes. For a moment she looked rueful, almost the friendly girl Belinda Cosmetics had thought they were getting for their campaign.

‘No, he was a complete stranger.’ She added almost under her breath, ‘Thank God.’

More and more worried, Abby said, ‘Jemima, what’s wrong? Have you been overdoing it again?’