Karen Robards: Desire in the Sun

"Miss Remy-Delilah-you are in my thoughts night and day! Like that Delilah of old, you are an enchantress, and you have enchanted my heart! I…"

"Pray say no more, Mr. Calvert," Lilah murmured, trying to repossess herself of her hand. The infatuated Mr. Calvert, impervious to her tugging, clung doggedly to her fingers as he sank to one knee before her. She looked down in dismay at the curly brown head bent over her hand.

Michael Calvert was hardly more than a boy, perhaps a year or so younger than her own age of twenty-one. She was no more in love with him than with Hercules, her great-aunt's pampered spaniel, who was curled blissfully beside her in the porch swing at that moment, his short red hairs shedding copiously all over the fragile white silk of her Empire-style gown. But so far it had been as impossible to convince Mr. Calvert of her disinterest as it had been to discourage Hercules. Neither of them seemed the least inclined to take a polite hint. Mr. Calvert had been courting her assiduously for most of the three months she had been visiting her great-aunt, Amanda Barton, at Boxhill. Nothing she had said or done to indicate her complete lack of interest in his suit had served to deter him in the least. Now he was clearly determined to have his say. If he heard her soft-spoken plea, he disregarded it.

Lilah sighed, making no effort to muffle the sound. Trapped in the night-dark corner of the verandah as she was, and unwilling to make a scene, she had little choice but to hear him out.

"I love you! I want you to be my wife!"

Much more had come in between, but she had missed a great deal of it. Now he recaptured her attention by pressing his face to her hand, kissing its back with moist enthusiasm. Lilah tugged at her hand again. He held it in a grip that would not be broken.

"You do me too much honor, Mr. Calvert," she said through gritted teeth.

Under the circumstances, it was difficult to force herself to adhere to the ladylike phrases that had been drummed into her by Katy Allen, her beloved former governess, whose thankless job it had been to supervise her growing-up years. The proprieties had not mattered so much on her home island of Barbados, where, for all the inhabitants' pride in being more British than Britain itself, manners were much freer than they were here in the best houses of colonial Virginia.

At Boxhill manners counted. Though the Colonies had officially freed themselves from British domination more than a decade before, and were by this time, the year 1792, enjoying an ardent love affair with all things French, that love affair did not extend so far as embracing French ideas of what was considered acceptable behavior for unmarried young ladies of good family. In this one area the Colonies remained as Britishly circumspect as ever, with every word and gesture rigidly prescribed.

Following her natural inclination to reward Mr. Calvert's devotion with a shove that would land him on the seat of his breeches was sure to be frowned upon by the old tabbies within, the undisputed leader of whom was her own formidable great-aunt. During the weeks of her visit, Lilah had developed a healthy respect for the vinegar of Amanda Barton's tongue. Unless forced to it by the direst of circumstances, she would just as soon forgo another scolding. It shouldn't be impossible to pass the three weeks remaining of her visit without treading on another of Amanda's sacrosanct tenets on the behavior expected of proper young ladies.

"To do you too much honor would be impossible," Mr. Calvert rhapsodized, pressing his lips daringly close to her wrist. "As my wife, you will be worthy of every honor!"

Lilah stared down at the boy kneeling before her, annoyance puckering her forehead. Really, this was getting absurd! The eligible gentlemen of Mathews County apparently found her particular combination of golden- haired beauty and Barbados sugar plantation riches irresistible, which of course was just as it should be. Never in her life had she lacked for male attention, and she had not expected colonial males to be any different. Four years after her debut, she had nearly two dozen proposals of marriage to her credit, all of which she had unhesitatingly declined. Mr. Calvert's was the third proposal she had received during her stay at Boxhill, and two more gentlemen were paying assiduous court to her, but she had so far managed to keep them from coming to the point.

She sighed again. The truth of it was, she liked none of them any better than the next, and certainly none of them well enough to marry. But she was not getting any younger, she was her father's only child, and as he lost no opportunity to point out to her, it was time she was wed and producing heirs for Heart's Ease. It was beginning to look as though she could do no better than to accept her stepmother's nephew, Kevin Talbott, who had a standing offer for her, made when she was seventeen, that he renewed regularly and she just as regularly re- fused. Kevin was her father's choice for her, and her father, for all his faults, was the smartest man she knew. At least marrying Kevin would have the advantage of permitting her to live out her life at Heart's Ease, which she loved with an unswerving devotion, while at the same time providing the plantation with a competent manager for years to come. As her husband, Kevin would continue to serve in his present capacity of overseer until her father's death. Then he and she would inherit, and life on the vast sugar plantation would continue as it always had. Her father seemed to find that thought immensely comforting. Lilah found it more than a little distressing.

She had had such hopes for this visit-such dreams that, in this new and (she'd thought!) excitingly different place, she might find a man who'd sweep her right off her practical little feet and make her fall in love. But as her stepmother had warned her before she set sail, such dreams were just that, and harsh reality was this ridiculous boy at her feet. Looking down at him, Lilah had a momentary vision of him climbing into bed with her on their wedding night, and she actually shuddered. Better by far Kevin, who for all his rough-and-ready ways was at least familiar. Her father, as usual, was in the right of it. Love was nothing more than the blather of fools, and if she used the brain she'd been born with she'd marry for sound, sensible reasons.

"… say you'll be mine!"

Despite her lack of attention, Mr. Calvert was still making declarations of undying love, and kissing her hand with the devotion of a puppy. The tart response that hovered on the tip of her tongue had to be suppressed in favor of the polite phrases fashioned for such situations. She certainly could not tell him that, with his high-pitched voice and curly hair, he reminded her of nothing so much as a large-sized version of Hercules!

At least not unless he continued his slavering over her hand past the point where she could bear it.

"Pray release my hand, Mr. Calvert. I cannot marry you." There was the slightest edge to her voice. Her free hand was itching to box his ears. But she would hold off just a little longer, and perhaps Mr. Calvert would see reason before she had to blot her copybook so thoroughly. It would be nice if she could escape from this encounter with Mr. Calvert's image of her as a spun- sugar princess intact. But if his mouth crawled much farther up her arm…

Mr. Calvert, carried away by an onslaught of passion and apparently afflicted with deafness besides, began pressing kisses on each of her fingers. Tugging ineffectually at her hand again, Lilah cast despairing eyes around the shadowy verandah to assure herself that the ridiculous scene was unobserved.

An outdoor party had been given by her great-aunt in her honor that afternoon. As night had fallen the company had moved indoors for the dance party that was the traditional finish to such an entertainment. Music and merriment drifted through the open windows onto the verandah and beyond, over the green velvet lawns and carefully cultivated rose gardens. Couples strolled through those gardens, but they were mere murmuring voices in the distance, too far away to cause Lilah any embarrassment. Besides, they were too caught up in their own concerns to spare a thought for what might or might not be happening on the verandah, which except for herself and Mr. Calvert was presently deserted.