Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘S ELAMAT .’
Arif offered peace as he greeted him, just on the edge of dawn.
‘Selamat,’ Carter said. ‘I thought you were away...?’
‘I heard you were back...’
And, like a friend, he’d dropped everything the moment he’d found out.
It had taken Carter a full twenty-four hours to get back, and he’d eaten more of that damn fruit—but thankfully not rotten this time. Or was it that the world was a bit sweeter this day?
‘You need to bathe,’ Arif said. ‘Eat...’
‘Sleep?’
‘Soon.’
And as Carter ate a light meal he was grateful that he did not ask how it had been.
Only as Malay cleared his plate did Arif tell him he was in trouble. ‘You left the plans behind.’
He frowned.
‘Your blueprints. Grace was calling everyone...’
He would have to come up with a suitable lie, Carter decided.
Or simply tell her the truth about where he’d been.
‘She’s asleep,’ Arif told him.
‘Who?’
‘Grace,’ Arif said, and told him his brother had picked her up last night.
‘She’s here?’
‘Pacing all day.’ Arif smiled. ‘I told her to get some rest, that you might not be back till tomorrow. You made good time.’
‘You mean she’s here now?’
‘In your residence.’
Carter wasn’t sure if he was sleepwalking, or if he was having some delusion and would wake with a fever, but this was not like the last time. He felt invigorated, rather than collapsed. Curious, rather than frantic, as he walked through his part of the property.
Climbing the stairs, he found he wasn’t avoiding the pictures now. He could see his parents smiling, and Hugo too.
Then he pushed open his bedroom door and indeed Grace was there, lying on her back, wearing a muslin nightdress, the fan blowing.
He could not quite believe she had followed him here.
That she was waiting at his home.
And then he could—because he knew she loved him or he’d never have come here.
She was still wearing the ring.
‘Grace...’ He sat on the bed, and this time when he reached for her slender shoulder he did not pull his hand back. ‘Grace!’
Her eyes shot open, and so did her mouth, but she said nothing, just wrapped herself around him, coiled around him, more sweet pea than bindweed.
‘I thought you were dead...’
‘You were having a very good sleep,’ he teased, holding her and breathing her in. ‘Perhaps you fell unconscious with panic?’
‘Stop!’ She pulled back. ‘You lied...’
‘I did—but I had to.’
‘No.’
She wanted to tell him it didn’t work like that—except he’d climbed into bed and, given it was his bed, she couldn’t really refuse him entry.
‘I’d have come with you.’
He shook his head, tried to explain, but Grace had been waiting a long time to say what she’d come here to say.
‘I know you don’t want anyone, but...’
She’d thought he had died every moment since she’d seen the plans he had left behind, and her biggest regret was the one thing she hadn’t told him.
‘I love you. I’m sorry, and I know you don’t want to hear it...’ She put her hands up when it looked as if Carter might say something. ‘But let me speak. I want you to know that. And I want to say a proper goodbye.’
‘Why would you come all this way to say goodbye?’
‘Because goodbyes are important.’
‘I know,’ he told her. ‘But this was never about goodbye, Grace.’
Carter lay down and the bed was like a pillow, and then she was running her fingers over his eyes, and his scratches, and he was aware of just her fresh air scent.
‘I hated the thought of you here,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t want you on a jungle walk... I didn’t want you coming back...’
‘Don’t be—’
‘I mean it. I hated the thought of you here... I had to go into the jungle to find out that I don’t hate the land, and I don’t blame my parents. I thought I did, and I even hated myself. But I didn’t know what I feared till now.’
She looked at him.
‘It was losing another person I love to this place.’
‘You love me?’
‘From the moment we met.’
‘No, from the night we came here.’
She kissed his dry mouth and then she got up, and he lay still as she put orange gloss on his parched lips.
He shook his head. ‘The moment we met,’ he confirmed. ‘I felt obliged to go over to you...obliged to pick up your passport—the same way I feel obliged to this place. I think it’s a little like love.’
‘No...’
‘Sometimes it seems that way,’ he insisted.
And she breathed, and he nodded, because there were obligations, and some were hard to keep, but when you loved someone you stepped up.
‘I couldn’t tell them apart,’ Carter admitted. ‘Obligations and love. I didn’t want to tell them apart. But I know for certain this is love.’
Grace rested her head on his chest. He loved her—she knew that from his kiss, from the way he held her for a full moment, just breathing together.
But then another wave of panic at what might have been hit.
‘You could have died.’ She said it again. ‘Even Arif was worried.’
‘Grace, I’ve been dead for almost thirty years. I haven’t felt a damn thing since I watched them all disappear.’
Now he felt everything. This sensory overload, this pain, the fear, the warmth of her smile...
His kiss was rough and yet tender. He felt the scratch of his unshaven jaw, his swollen lips, and then the balm of her tongue.
‘Grace, I had to get my head straight.’
He lifted her hand and looked at the ring, then at the woman who had chosen the cheapest ring in the box.
‘Fireflies over diamonds?’
‘Every time.’
‘Marry me?’ he asked. ‘Not because of this place, and not to take care of your mother.’
He saw her close her eyes.
‘I shall take care of your mother whatever your answer. I shall fight Benedict through the courts. I am asking you to marry me because I love you, and because I believe you love me.’
‘Would that change if I told you I was pregnant?’
‘Not one single bit,’ he said. ‘And as for all I said before, I regret every word. Are you pregnant?’
Grace nodded, scared not of his reaction but because it was all so new.
All of it. Being in love, being loved, being pregnant...
‘It’s too soon,’ she said.
‘Would it help if I told you I am brilliant with babies?’
She looked at him.
‘I got up to Hugo all the time. We would laugh and sing...’
He reached over and handed her the silver teething ring.
‘I adored him...he was the light of this place. And now we’re going to have our own Ulat.’
She smiled and examined the teething ring. ‘What about its teeth?’
He laughed—he’d clearly worried about the same.
‘How soon can we marry?’ Grace asked.
‘I’m not sure of the rules in London.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll ask my PA.’
‘I meant how soon can we get married here ?’
He frowned, clearly unsure what day it was.
‘Twenty-one days after the application.’
‘That’s today.’ She looked at him. ‘We can marry today...’