A Marriage In The Making

by Natalie Fox

  ‘What was the sigh for? Wishing you weren’t here?’ he suggested cruelly.

  She couldn’t respond, not the way he expected. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun on white, white sands. ‘Sigh-inducing beautiful,’ she added.

  He laughed but she wasn’t sure if it was a mocking laugh or not.

  ‘Come on!’ Josh urged impatiently.

  They walked the plank together, the three of them, Josh skipping between them till they reached the end of the rickety jetty where he leaped off into deep fine white sand.

  ‘It is beautiful,’ Daniel agreed as he reached out to help Karis down.

  She remembered him taking Simone’s elbow on the jetty on Levos that first day. The thought tugged painfully at her and she took a deep breath to rid herself of it.

  ‘Another sigh?’

  Karis turned on him angrily. ‘Can’t I breathe without you commenting sarcastically?’

  ‘Keep your voice down!’ he bit out. He strode on ahead of her, breaking into a run to catch Josh up before he burst into the old bleached wooden hut on stilts at the edge of the beach.

  No, I won’t, she thought recklessly, and then shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Watch out for dragons and ten-legged monsters in there! And I don’t mean the mythical sort!’

  ‘What does mythical mean?’ Josh asked his father as he slipped his hand into his, suddenly nervous at the closed door in front of them.

  ‘Just your moth…just Karis trying to be funny,’ Daniel said sardonically.

  Karis heard. She was right behind them, on the last step. She heard and heat flooded her fiercely. Daniel had nearly said ‘mother’; he had corrected himself in time for Josh but not for Karis. Daniel turned and obviously knew she’d heard because colour suffused his throat. Their eyes locked, only for a brief, painful second, but long enough for Karis to know that he hadn’t made the mistake because he was thinking of his wife. She didn’t know how she knew; she just did. Hope sprang inside her—a tiny, tiny nub of hope.

  ‘Cowards!’ she taunted, recovering quickly. She stepped around them both, kicked the door back with her bare foot and stepped inside, only to freeze, throw up her hands and let out a blood-curdling scream.

  Josh threw himself at her, shrieking at the top of his voice and then laughing hysterically. Karis swept him up into her arms and spun him around and Josh clung to her, laughing till his face was red. Karis stopped and let Josh down. Daniel stood frozen in the doorway, clutching his chest with both hands.

  ‘Christ, the pair of you frightened the life out of me,’ he said nervously.

  ‘We always do that,’ Josh told him breathlessly. ‘We call it spooky time. Kari pretends to be a monster and we scream. Saffron says you mustn’t use that word unless you are praying or in church; otherwise it’s a swear word. I’m going to bring the stuff in.’ He rushed out and leapt down all the steps at once and went haring down the beach to where they had left the bags.

  ‘Since when has “spooky” been a swear word?’ Daniel asked in mock innocence.

  Karis’s heart squeezed as a broad grin spread across his face. She smiled to match his, a warm glow spreading inside her. But softly, softly, she warned herself.

  ‘Let that be a warning to you,’ she told him, mischief sparkling in her eyes. ‘If you want to swear, go behind a palm tree to do it…or the monsters will get you,’ she added in a scary voice as she swept past him to catch Josh up.

  An hour later they had unpacked, circled the island twice—it really was very small—and gathered driftwood for a fire later.

  ‘This is my bed,’ Josh claimed, leaping onto the bunk under the reeded window at the end of the one room.

  There were four crude bunks in the hut, all with mattresses stuffed with dry palm leaves. Saffron had packed thin cotton blankets for them and Josh had laid one on each bed, leaving the fourth stacked with their clothes and towels and the rest of the stuff they had brought He knelt up on his bed and propped open the woven reed flap. ‘It’s so hot’

  Because of the smallness and the flatness of the island a cooling breeze had earlier had Daniel commenting that it was refreshing not to have humidity pressing down on them all the time.

  ‘Well, if you will rush around at breakneck speed all the time, is it any wonder you are hot?’ Daniel told him, searching in a box for candles for later.

  ‘I’m a boy. Boys rush around,’ Josh told him knowledge-ably, and Karis and Daniel laughed.

  When it was dark they lit the fire outside and Daniel warmed Saffron’s rotis on a griddle they’d found in a box in the hut The spicy pastries were as good cold as they were hot but Daniel insisted that pirates didn’t eat cold food, and besides, the fire was a warning to other pirates that this island was already occupied and whomsoever set foot on it would fear for their lives.

  Later Josh lay on his bed, exhausted, eyelids drooping, and Daniel told him the story of Henry Morgan who rode the high seas, the most daring and successful pirate in the Caribbean, and who eventually won respect and was knighted by King Charles the Second in England and returned to Jamaica to become Governor.

  ‘Was he Fiesta’s father?’ Josh murmured faintly, but was asleep before Daniel could think of an answer to that.

  ‘Was he?’ Karis asked, feigning seriousness, when Daniel joined her outside on the top set of the stilted hut.

  Daniel sat beside her, barefoot as she was. He didn’t touch her and she hadn’t expected him to. After only a few hours on this scrap of pure paradise they had all relaxed immeasurably. But not relaxed enough for Daniel to take her in his arms and for Karis to murmur her apologies and tell him she hadn’t meant what she had said and she loved him and had only been spurred by jealousy and insecurity and all things mad and bad. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after, but certainly before they left here. They couldn’t return to Levos the way they had left it, angry and hurt with each other.

  ‘He was a womaniser, you know.’

  ‘Who, Fiesta’s father?’ Karis teased.

  ‘Henry Morgan, idiot,’ he laughed.

  Karis took ‘idiot’ as a term of endearment.

  ‘He plied one lovely lady with gifts—silver, crystal and fine china; all that he plundered, he offered her.’

  Karis smiled secretly into the dark warm night. Like somebody else, she recalled, remembering the wondrous beach barbecue under the stars with Fiesta’s treasures.

  ‘All in vain. She spurned him,’ he went on quietly. ‘Said she’d rather die than suffer dishonour at his hands.’

  ‘First of the feminists,’ Karis murmured under her breath. ‘So did the bold pirate win the fair maiden in the end?’

  He reached out and took her hand and squeezed it gently. His voice was low and filled with humour as he said, ‘No. He was so mad he locked her up in a room without a stitch of clothing on her back.’

  Karis was still smiling when, still in shorts and T-shirt, she slid under the thin cotton blanket and lay on her back in the bed next to Josh’s. She stared up at the stars through a hole in the palm-leaf roof, the same stars that Daniel had traded his soul with the gods for.

  He was outside now, dousing the last embers of the fire, under those stars.

  She’d trade her soul to those same gods. Not for the stars, though, but for Daniel to forgive, for Daniel to love her, for it all to be right in the morning or even the afternoon.

  ‘Come on, Josh. Dig deeper. The map says Henry Morgan’s treasure is buried here, where the shadows of two palm trees cross.’

  Josh sat back on his heels, flushed with effort, beads of perspiration breaking out on his brow. ‘I’m tired and the sun keeps moving the cross. Just now it was over there.’

  Karis grinned at Daniel and gave him a look that said, You’ve been caught out.

  ‘Yes, but it’s the three o’clock sun, just here. Let’s dig a bit deeper.’ With Josh’s spade and the old griddle pan they worked feverishly till Josh let out a yelp of excitement.
<
br />   ‘I’ve found it!’

  He pulled the old box out from the sand and opened it. Karis and Daniel sat grinning at him. Karis was in on the secret. While Josh had slept late that morning she had found Daniel digging on the beach. The day before he had noted the time of day two leaning palms had cast a shadowy cross on the sand and marked it with a stick. While he’d buried the box he’d brought with him, obviously having planned all this in Levos before they left, Karis had scratched out a rough map on a piece of flat driftwood that had escaped the fire the night before. They had placed it under the steps, sticking out so that Josh couldn’t fail to see it.

  ‘Shells and a book and a car…and a roti?’ Josh cried. ‘One of Saffron’s rotis. How did that get in there?’

  Karis shrugged. It had been her idea. Josh couldn’t be allowed to think this was really Henry Morgan’s treasure; not that he would—he wasn’t anyone’s fool—but just in case she had suggested the roti for fun.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ Josh exclaimed. In amongst the shells he’d found another box, a slim leather box.

  Karis leaned forward. She hadn’t seen that go in.

  ‘Oh, a watch, a watch!’ Josh cried, his fingers trembling as they scrambled to get the small gold child’s watch out from the bands that held it in place. ‘I’ve never had one. It’s my first.’

  Daniel strapped it to his wrist for him and asked, ‘Can you tell the time?’

  ‘Of course; Kari taught me.’ He peered at the face. ‘It’s…’ He hesitated. ‘It’s ten…no, quarter past two…no, ten past three.’

  ‘Phew, that was close.’ Daniel laughed and held Karis’s eyes. ‘I thought a dismissal might be on the cards,’ he directed at her and she wasn’t offended one bit.

  ‘Something for Kari,’ Josh declared as he picked up a small paper parcel with her name on it from the pile of shells left in the box. He thrust it at her.

  Karis’s eyes widened. She hadn’t seen that go in either.

  ‘Open it,’ Josh urged.

  Karis looked down at the small parcel and grinned. ‘If this is another of Saffron’s rotis…Oh.’ Her heart stopped as she tore off the paper and unpeeled a layer of cotton wool.

  ‘Oh, it’s only an old ring,’ Josh said with disappointment, and got up from the sand. ‘I’m going to get a drink.’

  Before turning away, he hesitated and then put his arms round Daniel’s neck and squeezed him. The gesture took Karis and Daniel completely by surprise.

  ‘Th-thank you for my watch. I…I’m going to wear it for ever.’ He let go and, flushed with embarrassment, ran towards the hut.

  Karis couldn’t see for the film of tears that misted her eyes. She still held the ring in her hands as she knelt by the hole they had dug in the sand. But nothing mattered but what she had just witnessed—a loving son hugging his father.

  ‘Karis?’ Daniel murmured, bringing her out of her happy reverie.

  ‘Oh, Daniel, you’ve made him so happy,’ she breathed. ‘Not just the gift; it was nothing to do with that. He hugged you.’

  ‘I know,’ Daniel said quietly, just a hint of a crack in his voice. ‘Karis,’ he urged. The tears in her eyes cleared and she saw him indicating the ring in her hand. ‘It was my mother’s. I’ve always carried it,’ he told her tenderly. ‘Sorry there’s no box.’

  Uncertainly Karis lowered her eyes and stared at the small ring nestling in the white cotton wool It was exquisite, a tiny sapphire with tiny diamonds sparkling around it. Her eyes misted again, with tears of loss and grief she couldn’t hold back. She bit her bottom lip, almost drawing blood in an effort for control.

  ‘Th-thank you,’ she murmured. Was this his parting gift to her? Her heart thudded desperately. He had what he had come for, his son back and with love and acceptance, and this was his thank-you for her help and now she wasn’t wanted any more. She fought the tearing of her heart with all her might. ‘It’s…it’s beautiful. Every…every time I wear it I’ll…I’ll think of…’

  She scrambled to her feet, her legs hardly able to hold her up.

  ‘Karis?’

  Daniel came up with her, catching at her wrist to stop her rushing away. ‘You’ll think of what?’ he demanded to know.

  Her breath wouldn’t come. She swallowed hard, inwardly praying the tears would stay at bay long enough for her to make her getaway. ‘I’ll…I’ll think of you and…and Josh and…remember.’

  The tears, hot and painful, spilled over. With a sob she rushed away from him plunging the ring into the pocket of her shorts. There was nowhere to run to, no escape. Just the hut where Josh had fled to. She was on the top step before she had her despair under control. She had actually believed they had a chance, had allowed that small nub of hope to swell and pulse more certainly. But there was no hope, only a terrible loss that dragged painfully at her heart. Hastily she scrubbed the tears from her face with the palms of her hands and with her head held high she stepped inside with a smile because she couldn’t let Josh see her distress.

  ‘The treasure was a lovely surprise, wasn’t it? Josh…?’

  Josh was sprawled on the bed, flat out with exhaustion. Karis swallowed hard and stood by the bunk. She must hide her feelings from the boy. He must never know how she felt about his father. They were truly bonded now and once back in the States he would forget he’d ever had a nanny…perhaps they could keep in touch, though. A sob caught in her throat No, they couldn’t; it would be too painful.

  ‘Oh, Josh,’ she moaned softly, and leaned down and brushed the tousled hair from his brow.

  Her heart contracted at the contact and nausea rushed up to her throat. She drew her hand back sharply as if she had been singed. The little boy was burning up.

  ‘Josh,’ she breathed worriedly, dropping to her knees and lifting his head from the bunk. ‘Josh, darling, wake up, wake up,’ she almost cried.

  Josh groaned and flickered his eyes open and then closed them again, the effort too much for him.

  White with shock and panic, Karis flew across the room. ‘Daniel! Daniel!’ she screamed frantically from the doorway.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘HE’S just overdone it,’ Daniel said, crouching by the bunk and soothing his son’s brow.

  ‘It’s more than that,’ Karis insisted, wringing her hands with worry. She knew Josh, knew it was more. ‘He’s burning with a fever, Daniel, burning up.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Daniel said with concern. ‘Josh, how do you feel?’ he asked softly.

  Josh’s eyes flickered open again, barely able to focus on his father’s face. ‘Where’s Kari?’ he murmured.

  ‘Here, Josh, I’m here.’ Karis dropped down to her knees beside Daniel and took the small boy’s hot hand in hers.

  ‘My head hurts,’ he moaned.

  ‘All right, Josh, it’s all right,’ Karis breathed soothingly.

  Daniel and Karis stood up as Josh drifted off to sleep again. Outside Daniel raked his fingers through his hair. Karis was shaking with worry, her own brow furrowed and burning with concern.

  ‘We have to get him back,’ she told Daniel urgently.

  He turned to her, distraught with worry. ‘You think it’s serious?’ he breathed roughly.

  ‘I…I don’t know.’ She rubbed her forehead, trying to think clearly. ‘He was hot yesterday and this morning—’

  ‘I made him dig…he said he was tired…he was tired yesterday—’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Daniel,’ Karis said quickly. It was hers for not seeing the warning signs. Oh, God, she’d been so preoccupied with her feelings about Daniel it had clouded her reasoning on anything else. Josh was sick and she hadn’t seen it.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Daniel said brusquely. ‘Leave all this. Get in the boat. I’ll wrap him up and bring him down to the jetty.’

  ‘What about going straight to St Lucia?’ Karis suggested, panic grasping her ever tighter.

  Daniel shook his head. ‘Too far in an old fishing boat.’

  ‘But there’s no doct
or on Levos,’ Karis cried. ‘Only Saffron’s sister who makes up herbal remedies and—’

  ‘Get in the boat, Karis,’ Daniel ordered thickly and, white-faced, turned back into the hut.

  Karis ran to the jetty where the boat was tied up as fast as her legs would carry her. Her fingers were numb and useless as she struggled with the worn rope.

  Daniel came down the beach with his son in his arms and gently handed him to Karis before leaping in beside her to start the engine. Karis cradled the boy in her lap under the wattled shade of the old boat. Daniel was running the engine so fast she thought it would burn out before they got there. He swung the boat out to sea and the vibration and the swell made Josh sick and Karis knew he was seriously ill.

  ‘Oh, hurry,’ she murmured under her breath.

  Her heart sank as an eternity later they were in sight of the jetty at Levos. The beach was crowded with Fiesta’s guests, windsailing, drinking at the beach bar, laughing. How dared anyone laugh and have fun when Josh was so sick?

  Daniel leapt out of the boat and tied up and then gathered his son protectively into his arms and started running along the jetty, his desperation showing as people stopped and stared, suddenly becoming aware of his urgency.

  From then on to Karis it was all a blur. The next thing she knew they were inside the plantation house, Josh lying weak and fretful on a pink silk chaise longue in the cool, marble-floored reception hall, Daniel shouting to the guests who had swarmed inside, asking if there was a doctor amongst them.

  ‘There’s no doctor,’ Fiesta said calmly. ‘Now everybody out,’ she ordered. ‘This isn’t a circus.’ She slammed the huge front door of the house after them.

  Daniel barked out orders to Fiesta then sat in a chair by the boy, holding his son’s hand. Through a bank of fog Karis heard Fiesta asking for a helicopter over the phone, adding that it was urgent and a medical team was needed as well, and then Fiesta was grasping her arm and urging her to the back of the reception hall to the door that led through to the other rooms and the kitchens.