"What if I had made a bid?" he asked her. A crescent of shuddering sunlight danced on the side of his face, the bright reflection from a crystal ashtray in the shape of a half-moon. "Would that really make any difference?"
Catriona gave him a look of utter simplicity. She was pale from tiredness, but the darkness under her slanted eyes gave them the fashionable lambency of a desert princess" eyes, as if they were staring at Mark over a yashmak. Mark, for his part, had to concede to himself that if a man liked ravishingly pretty girls with high cheekbones and well-shaped jaws, and that shapely kind of figure that was halfway between the forbidden delights of puppy fat and the elegant leanness of the mid-twenties, then Catriona was as irresistible as cocaine or champagne or kisses in the first light of a summer morning at sea.
"I didn't mean to upset you with all that talk about bankruptcy', he said. "I guess I'm just plain clumsy when it comes to mixing business with pleasure."
"You did make a bid, though, didn't you?"
"Well, was it so wrong that I made a bid? I was doing what anybody else in my position would have done. Nothing more. I was thinking about my company's future, that's all. Trying to expand and progress."
"I'm not criticising your business acumen," Catriona retorted, very quietly but also very vehemently. "And, believe me, I don't think you're clumsy at mixing business with pleasure at all. You seem to have managed to make an offer both for me and my father's ship in one go. I can't say that you're not clever, or that you haven't got a good eye for a bargain. The trouble is, I can't say that you're a particularly lovable kind of person, either."
"Catriona, will you give me a chance?" Mark retorted. "I made the offer for the Arcadia because the ship is beautiful; and because American TransAtlantic sorely needs an elegant flagship. I called Edgar Deacon on the day your father died. In fact, I called him as soon as I got the news. I realise that may sound ghoulish to you, but I very much wanted to get my bid in first. I offered four million pounds in cash. The offer still stands, although I'd like to have some kind of an answer by the time the Arcadia reaches New York. I'm surprised that Edgar didn't tell you about it."
"Perhaps he didn't think your offer was worth considering," said Catriona tartly.
"Nonsense. With four million pounds, he can make an appreciable payment to all of your creditors, and refit two or three more of your ships, a keep Keys going as a moderately profitable family business. At least, that's the way John Crombey has assessed it."
"What on earth do you think Keys Shipping would be without the Arcadia? The Arcadia was my father's dream."
Mark smiled and shook his head. "Sometimes, when people dream, they lose touch with reality. I'm not decrying what your father did. You only have to look at this ship to see what he did, and what he was capable of doing. The man was a genius, and a visionary. But there are mouths to be fed, not the least of which is yours. And, one way or another, you're going to have to sell. Either the Arcadia alone a or the whole damn fleet."
"And of course you'd prefer it if we sold the Arcadia to you?"
"Naturally. I haven't made any secret out of it."
"But you think that if you seduce me, you'll have twenty-five per cent of the voting stock in your favour, right from the beginning?"
Mark reached out his hands for her, but she tugged herself away. "Listen," he snapped at her, "if you think I've been making love to you just because I happen to want the Arcadia, then you're doing me a serious injustice. I mean, personally. The two things are entirely separate and distinct. I wouldn't even insult your intelligence trying to cajole you into selling me the world's most expensive ocean liner by making time with you? What kind of a rat do you think I am?"
"I don't know," said Catriona cuttingly. "But whatever you are, you're not being very decent about it."
"I don't believe this," said Mark. "I don't believe what you're saying to me! You really think that I'm trying to flatter the Arcadia out ofyou? You really think that?"
Catriona looked away and didn't answer. The truth was that she wasn't at all sure whether Mark had actually been trying to seduce her into selling him the Arcadia or not. If he had been planning on using her to undermine Edgar and the rest of the Keys board of directors, why had he started talking about business so openly and ingenuously as soon as they got back to his stateroom? Why hadn't he done nothing more than feed her with a surfeit of brut champagne, devious flattery, and gentle kisses, and wait until she was swooningly in love with him before he suggest that she should use her shareholding to pressure the Keys board into selling their flagship to American TransAtlantic? He was either being dazzlingly clever or numbingly stupid, and she couldn't decide which. The trouble was, Mark was so wholesome and so handsome, and his teeth were so startlingly white, that it required a particularly sustained and strenuous kind of anger for anyone, let alone a pretty young girl, to feel betrayed by him for very long.
"Maybe we're both tired," said Mark. "Maybe we should call it a night and talk again tomorrow."
"I don't know what there is to talk about," said Catriona.
"There's us, isn't there? Or am I deluding myself?"
"Us?" she said, with a sideways smile. "The rich shipping line owner and the poor shipping line owner?"
Mark shook his head. "Not at all. Two people who happened to meet on a maiden voyage, Mark Beeney and Catriona Keys."
"Well," she said, heavily, "we'll see."
"You will talk to me, won't you?" he insisted. "You won't just leave me hanging?"
"No," she said, more gently, "I won't just leave you hanging."
She crossed the stateroom and picked up her shoes. She felt as if her throat had been tightly bandaged and she could scarcely find it in herself to speak. "Thank you for the champagne," she said, going to the door.
Mark said, "You haven't even drunk it. Why don't you stay and drink it? You might as well. They won't be serving breakfast for another hour."
"A quarter of this ship is mine. I can get breakfast whenever I want to. And I'm sure you can, too, with your charm."
"Catriona—"
She closed her eyes. She didn't want to hear any more, not at the moment. She just wanted a chance to go back to her own stateroom and look at herself in her own looking-glass and cry to herself in the privacy of her own bed. Whatever Mark said now, she wouldn't be able to believe him. She wouldn't even be able to delude herself that he was telling the truth. The night's romance had melted like spun sugar in the heat of the morning sun, and suddenly all the sparkle had gone.
"I'll see you later, perhaps," she said, and went to the door. Mark came over and opened it for her.
"I want very much for you to believe me," he told her. "I know how you're feeling now, and I'm sorry I upset you. I guess I'm just another damned crass American businessman at heart. Marcia always told me that it showed from a mile away, because of the pointed lapels on my dinner jackets."