Gift For A Lion. Sara Craven

I suppose I shall spend the evening protecting you from the local lechers.'

      ‘I can protect myself,’ Joanna protested, a little pettishly, and he smiled at her.

      ‘I've brought you a treat. Would you believe—an English newspaper?'

      ‘Lord! How many days behind the times?’ Joanna said as he handed it to her. She opened it at the social pages and cast a casual eye over the engagement notices, but none of her friends were among them. Engagements seemed to be going out of fashion, she thought. Trial marriages were the ‘in’ thing, but not, she was secretly relieved to acknowledge, where her father was concerned. She glanced dismissively over some of the items on the front page, ignoring the discussion between Paul and Mary on whether they should have a light or a heavy lunch.

      ‘Anything interesting?’ Tony squinted over her shoulder.

      ‘The usual mess. Another big bank robbery in London. A row in the House of Commons over cuts in spending. Some Red scientist defecting from a conference in Venice.’ Joanna tossed the paper to the deck. ‘But it's all so out of date. World War Three could have started without us.’ She looked impatiently at Mary and Paul. ‘Oh, do stop it, you two. It's too hot for anything but salad anyway, and I hope you've brought some decent cheese.'

      ‘Yes, o queen,’ Paul muttered. ‘Come on, darling. We'll get things started.'

      Joanna looked after them as they disappeared down the companionway and there was a bright spot of colour in each cheek. Tony touched her arm gently.

      ‘Joanna?'

      She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Is that what I'm like?'

      He hesitated. ‘A bit—but it doesn't matter to me, love, because I know you don't mean it. Having your own way over things comes naturally to you, somehow, and of course Uncle Bernard being as he is …'

      ‘What do you mean?’ She stared at him.

      ‘Well, darling, he is—Rear-Admiral Leighton. I know he has a desk job these days, but he does still give the impression of being on a quarterdeck somewhere supervising a keelhauling, and—sometimes—it takes some getting over.’ His voice died away a little unhappily.

      Joanna said tautly, ‘I see.’ She stared hard at the immaculate polish on her toenails. ‘I'm sorry, Tony. I'll try and be a little less—regal from now on.'

      He nuzzled her shoulder. ‘I think you're perfect,’ he whispered.

      ‘Then you're a fool,’ she said, but smiled, robbing the words of their sting. ‘I think perhaps the queen had better make amends by helping with lunch.'

      Shs got to her feet, slim and lithe in the minuscule black bikini, but somehow the golden day seemed less radiant, she thought.

      In her attempt to be amenable, Joanna not only helped Mary prepare lunch but insisted on clearing away and washing up afterwards, while Mary sat in the most sheltered corner of the deck with a selection from the stock of paperback thrillers they had found in one of the fitted cupboards in the saloon.

      As she tidied the last of the cutlery away and wiped down the surfaces, Joanna could hear the murmur of voices from the saloon and guessed that Paul and Tony had got the charts out to plan the next stage of their trip.

      Tony loved sailing, she thought, pushing a strand of bright auburn hair back from her damp forehead. It was a pity in many ways that he had no boat of his own. He had been loaned Luana by the senior partner of the firm of architects where he and Paul both worked. Both the partner and his wife were keen sailors and kept the boat moored at Cannes, spending as much of the summer as they could in the South of France. This year, however, they had gone to Canada, where their eldest son was being married, and Tony and Paul had been offered the use of the boat.

      Joanna looked round with slightly critical eyes. Luana was fine for two, she thought, but definitely crowded for four. Not for the first time, she toyed with the idea of persuading her father to give Tony and herself a boat as a wedding present. They could spend their honeymoon on board, she thought, at the same time acknowledging that her father would not really approve of the idea. She could almost hear his voice— ‘Behaving like a lot of damned hippies.'

      His idea of a honeymoon would be a luxury hotel in Paris or Rome, she decided with amused impatience.

      On the whole, he seemed quite pleased with the idea of her marrying Tony. His only complaint was that Tony had become an architect, instead of joining the Navy as his uncle had suggested, but eventually he admitted that at least this decision showed that the boy had some mind of his own. Tony must take after his father, Joanna thought, because both Mary and Aunt Laura were hardly strong characters. Her father had taken the whole family under his rather formidable wing when Anthony Leighton had died suddenly of a heart attack some years before. Mary and Joanna were only a few months apart in age, and Sir Bernard had arranged for them to attend the same school, apparently under the conviction that they would be ideal companions for each other. He had also hoped that Aunt Laura would provide Joanna with the mother she had lost while still a baby.

      None of it had really worked out at all, Joanna thought ruefully. She and Mary had barely anything in common except the family name. Mary was inches shorter than she was and inclined to be dumpy, and she was sometimes quick to show resentment of her taller, more attractive cousin. And while Tony had always appeared totally oblivious to the difference in financial standing between both halves of the family, both Mary and Aunt Laura had made no secret of their awareness that they were the ‘poor relations’ of the Leighton family.

      In a way, Joanna was thankful that Mary had met Paul and fallen in love with him and settled her own future so painlessly. She would no longer feel obliged to see that Mary received the same party invitations as herself. Not that Mary had ever been particularly grateful for Joanna's efforts to broaden her social life. Joanna had gone through a fairly prolonged art college phase, before eventually recognising the limitations of her talent, and Mary had not approved of the circle of friends she had acquired as a consequence. Mary had an almost suburban horror of ‘getting talked about', and Joanna admitted it was fair to say that some of the past exploits of members of her circle had enlivened the gossip columns of some of the less responsible daily papers, while she had grown quite accustomed to her own doings being highlighted in the social pages of glossy magazines.

      On top of that, there had been regular battles with her father, who had condemned all her friends out of hand as ‘hippies and long-haired layabouts'. At first Tony had been someone to grumble to occasionally about her father's uncompromising attitude, but soon she began to enjoy his companionship for its own sake, and not merely because he was her cousin and happened to be handy. Probably that was why her father had made so little demur about their relationship. He was undoubtedly relieved that she seemed to have chosen someone who corresponded fairly well to his idea of an eligible young man.

      She looked into the saloon, thick with the smoke from Paul's pipe, and grimaced at the charts spread over the folding table.

      ‘Where next, Marco Polo?'

      ‘Corsica, we think, eventually, but we're going to stop here first.’ Tony's finger stabbed a point on the chart. ‘Saracina. It's only a tiny island, but it sounds quite interesting and it's only a couple of hours from here. Rocky, of course, but with a few nice bathing beaches.'

      ‘Well, that's what we want,’ Joanna said lightly. ‘Nothing too civilised.'

      Paul got up and stretched, knocking his pipe out into a large pottery ashtray. ‘I'll go and see what Mary's doing, I think.'

      Tony watched him go with a grin, then turned to Joanna, holding out his arms and drawing her down on to his knee. ‘That's what is known as a tactical—and tactful—withdrawal,’ he mentioned.

      ‘Tact isn't the quality I most associate with Paul,’ Joanna muttered.

      ‘I wish you liked each other better. He's a great guy when you get to know him—and we shall all be related in the near future.'

      ‘When he marries Mary.’ She