Passionate Choice

Chapter 8.9

   "You can't do this," Selena shouted against the noise of the engine, the wind and the water. "You can't take me away against my will. It's nothing short of kidnapping. I won't go with you. I won't."

   Keith didn't answer, but after making sure the anchor was fixed in place and the rope and chain had disappeared down the hawse pipe into the chain locker below, he hurried back to the cockpit, pushed the gear lever, increase the speed of the engine and began to steer the boat out of the anchorage towards the buoyed entrance.

   "I won't go with you. I won't," Selena raged as she stepped down into the cockpit and glared at him, standing in front of him, the wheel between them.

   "My dear, you have no choice," he retorted, smooth as silk, but she thought his grin was wolffish and apprehension tingled along her nerves. "Unless," he went on, "you want to swim for it in that filth."

   She glanced over the side at the dirty, tea-coloured water and could scarcely suppress a shudder at the thought of swimming in it. Yet beyond the filth, beyond the shabby docks, there was beauty; the soaring green mountains, empurpled where clouds hovered over their summits in rolls of silvery grey vapour; the droop of palm fronds over flashes of pale sand; the natural beauty of the islands of Hispaniola, considered by Columbus when he first saw it to be the most beautiful of all the islands in the West Indies.

    "I was going to go on the funicular railway to the top of Isabela de Torres, tomorrow. I was going to buy amber in the market," she grumbled. "Keith, please go over to the wharf, put me ashore."

   "No."

   "But I left my bags by the gate. I have no clothes with me."

   "I'll call Emilio on the radio. He'll get your bags and send them on."

   "To where? Where are you going?"

   "To Nassau. Here, take the wheel and steer while I go and call Emilio now before we're out of range."

   And so she found herself behind the wheel, steering a strange boat out of harbour between red and green buoys which marked a channel between a wicked-looking reef of rocks and a spur of land on which the remains of an old fort stood.

   When Keith returned to the cockpit, he was wearing a white shirt and sunglasses.

   "It's done," he said crisply. "Emilio will wend your bags by air to Nassau and they'll be waiting at the airport when you get there." He glanced about him. "You can change course now," he said and gave her the numbers of the compass course she should follow. "I'll hoist some sail."

   "But, Keith," she protested.

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