Catriona took his arm. "How do you know I'm not cornered already?"
"I read in the paper you were sweet on some actor. But I don't see the actor on board."
"No, he stayed behind. His name's Nigel Myers. He's in Daydreams of 1924."
"I've seen it. It's pretty good. Didn't he want to come with you?"
"He couldn't," said Catriona. "He was working."
"That's too bad. You miss him?"
Catriona looked up at Mark and realised he was teasing her. "Yes,"—she nodded—a little."
Mark said, "Do you think this would cheer you up? I mean, after your daddy and Nigel and everything?"
Out of his blazer pocket he produced the dazzling diamond necklace that Catriona had been admiring only a few minutes earlier in the window of the Van Cleef & Arpels boutique. It flashed so brilliantly in his hand that she could hardly believe it was real. There were four strands of one-carat diamonds set in twenty-four-carat gold, suspending a centrepiece of twelve three-carat diamonds and a huge cushion-cut ruby.
"You just bought that?" Catriona asked him incredulously.
"I didn't steal it. It's for you. A token of appreciation from the head of one shipping line to another. And also a token of my respect and esteem, and the fact that you're a very beautiful young woman."
"You're insane," said Catriona, hotly. For some reason, she felt insulted as well as flattered. Did Mark Beeney really think that all he had to do was wave a $35,000 necklace under her nose for her to swoon at his feet? The next thing she knew, he'd be buying her a Rolls-Royce, simply so that he could make love to her in the back seat.
"You don't like it?" asked Mark, in exaggerated surprise.
"It's absolutely stunning. But what do you expect in return?"
Mark stared at her in disbelief for a second or two, and then burst out laughing. "You think I'm trying to seduce you?" He grinned. "You think I'm so unsubtle that I'd buy you a diamond necklace and then expect you to hop into bed with me? And anyway, it only cost thirty-five thousand."
"I suppose that makes a difference," snapped Catriona, walking quickly along, her arm still linked with Mark's, but jiggling her hips as furiously and uncomfortably as she possibly could.
Mark tugged her to a full stop. A few paces ahead of them, Rudyard Philips kept on striding purposefully forwards, until he realised that he was alone. He stopped, turned, and waited for them, trying to appear interested in a window display of Holeproof Hosiery in beige, Airedale orchid, and sunburn.
"I don't know why you're so mad at me," Mark told Catriona. "I'm giving you a gift, that's all. No strings attached, nothing. No corny seduction. It can't do anything to bring your daddy back to you, or give you any kind of comfort at all. But it's the best that I can do."
Catriona looked up at him, and his expression was so earnest that she felt both foolish and unfair. He was, after all, a fabulously rich young man, and a $35,000 necklace could probably be written off as business expenses—especially since it was a gift to the lady figurehead of the Keys Shipping Line. Perhaps, after all, he wasn't trying to get her into bed. But then that made her feel more irritated than ever, because he ought to have been. He may have been the high-and-mighty Mark Beeney, the Sheik of the Seas, but she was the Queen of the Atlantic, and he had no right at all to ignore her. She said, in exasperation, "I feel like a cigarette."
"Here," said Mark, and offered her a handmade Turkish oval out of a gold case. He lit it for her with a lacquered lighter, and watched her with faint amusement as she testily puffed out smoke.
"Will you take the necklace?" he asked her softly. "It would please me a whole lot if you did."
"I think you're very much more devious than you look," said Catriona.
"Devious? I'm the straightest guy in the world. You ask my accountant."
"You've got everything against you. You're too young and you're too good-looking and you're too rich."
"So what? You're in the same boat. Just look at you. You own a quarter-share in a shipping line that's even bigger than mine. You make Clara Bow look like a pouting walrus. And you're twenty-one years old. You've got it made."
Catriona, without warning, snatched the diamond necklace out of his hand. "You're so rude that I think I'll take it," she said. But then, much more meltingly, because she was amused and pleased and comforted by Mark and his gift, she said, "And thank you. You've him really kind."
"Do I get a kiss?" asked Mark, smiling, and adjusting his necktie in anticipation.
Catriona, standing on tippy-toes, lifted her lips to him, and brushed his mouth so lightly that he scarcely knew that he had been kissed at all. It was enough, though. The closeness of her cheek, the warmth of her flowery perfume, and the way her breast had pressed against his arm. He held her wrist as she backed away from him, and said quietly, "Do I get to fasten the necklace, too?"
She held the necklace up to her throat, and then turned her back to him. Mark took the clasp out of her hands, and fastened it. He held her shoulders firmly, longer than he needed to. Then he bent forward and kissed the nape of her neck, with that kind of lingering bruised-roses kiss that Hollywood thrived on. Catriona stayed where she was, she didn't want Mark to think that she was either repelled by his kiss, or overexcited.
"Do you think we might get on?" asked Rudyard Philips, plaintively. "We're getting a little pushed for time, and we still have the bridge to visit."
"Sure," said Mark, in a breathy voice. "We can get on."
Catriona touched the cold glittering necklace and glanced at Mark with mischievous warmth.
"Did you read that article in the Illustrated London News about flying people across the Atlantic in giant aeroplanes?" asked Mark, as they followed Rudyard Philips up the companionway towards the Arcadia's bridge.
"Do you really believe that's possible?" Rudyard replied.
"Sure it's possible," Mark asserted. "All you have to do is build an aeroplane that carries enough fuel to fly from coast to coast, and you're in business. They carry the mail by air, don't they, and from what I've heard they regularly bring bootleg liquor in from Canada by aeroplane. Then there's that fellow who flies people from Los Angeles to Reno, for quick divorces. If they can do all that, why can't they carry a few dozen people from London to New York?"
At last they reached the bridge, and Rudyard ushered them in. "Do you think anybody would be foolhardy enough to put money into such an enterprise?"
Mark grinned.""I wouldn't. You're never going to be able to persuade your cabin-class traveller that people can actually cross the Atlantic without passing out from the lack of roast canvasback duck and marble bathtubs with gold-plated taps."
Sir Peregrine Arrowsmith was on the bridge this afternoon, incongruously but majestically seated in a large Victorian library chair which he had asked Keys Shipping to install for the occasional relief of his sciatica. On the chart table beside him was spread a small cold snack of hare pate and assorted sandwiches, with a conspicuously large and effervescent glass of mineral-water. He rose stiffly as Rudyard Philips brought Catriona and Mark on to the bridge and saluted. He looked rather grey and drawn, but he managed to kiss Catriona's hand, and bow with old-fashioned courtesy to Mark.
"I trust you are finding your tour of my little ship entertaining?" he smiled, with a crusty effort at humour. "She's quite a stylish young lady, isn't she?"
"She's very fine, Sir Peregrine," said Mark. "My daddy would have given his only son to take the bridge of a ship like this."
"The very latest equipment," said Sir Peregrine, indicating the rows of softly-shining dials, the gyroscopic compass, the electric telegraph, and the streamlined art-deco wheel. Through the forward windows, Catriona could see the narrow elegant bows of the Arcadia cleaving their way through the dappled green Irish Sea, sending up spasmodic plumes of white spray; and far ahead of her, in the distance, a darker line on the horizon that looked like land.