A Secret, a Safari, a Second Chance

by Liz Fielding

  The moment they arrived at the village the door was flung open and there was Ketty, older now, but arms open wide to embrace her as she jumped down.

  The hug was a long shared moment, the silence filled with memories. Then, they were surrounded by excited children who she entrusted with most of the bags she’d brought. Two she kept.

  ‘This is for you, Ketty. I’ll go and give Mzee his birthday present, then I’ll come and share out the rest.’

  But Ketty was staring at Kit, who had opened up the rear of the vehicle and taken out a couple of cartons of beer.

  ‘Ketty, this is Kit Merchant.’

  ‘The young woman who took care of you when your mother was working?’ Kit put down the beer. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Ketty, from Eve and from James.’

  ‘And I’ve heard much about you, Mr Merchant,’ Ketty said before, with the briefest nod, she ushered the children away. ‘I’ll go and make tea.’

  Eve, too shocked to hide her astonishment at such a cold reception, turned on him and said, ‘What on earth have you done?’

  He shook his head. ‘I have no idea. Let’s go and pay our respects to Joshua Ngei,’ he said, reaching back into the vehicle for the box containing the bottle of whiskey he’d brought with him. ‘If I survive that encounter maybe the frost will melt a little.’

  The old man was sitting with his friends in the shade of a tree.

  ‘Happy birthday, Mzee,’ Eve said, placing her gift in his hands and kissing his cheeks, before wishing him a long life and good health. He opened the package and exclaimed with pleasure at the soft collarless cotton shirt she’d brought him. Then she turned to Kit, who had been standing back a little.

  ‘Mzee, may I introduce my dear friend, Kit Merchant.’

  He gave her a quizzical look before turning to Kit. ‘I know your father,’ he said. ‘I am sorry to hear that he is not well.’

  ‘He sends his warmest greetings with this,’ he said, placing his gift of whiskey on the table beside the old man, ‘and wishes he could be here to drink it with you.’ Then he offered his hand, holding his arm respectfully, bowing as he repeated a traditional greeting.

  Mzee looked at her, as if to check her reaction. Puzzled, she nodded, smiled, put a hand on Kit’s back as if to enclose him within the group.

  ‘Send your father my prayers for his return to health, Mr Merchant,’ he said, accepting Kit’s hand, before he indicated with a gesture that he should sit beside him. ‘We hope to see him here again very soon.’

  Kit caught her hand as she let it drop and gave it a brief squeeze, acknowledging the ‘dear friend’, then took the seat vacated for him next to Joshua Ngei.

  ‘I hear you are a great fisherman, Mr Merchant.’

  ‘My father is Mr Merchant, sir, I am just Kit,’ he said.

  ‘Then open the bottle, Kit, and we will drink a toast to Christopher Merchant.’

  Eve lifted her hand to her mouth.

  She had lived with an image of him in her head for so long. The passionate and tender lover. The man who could make her laugh when laughing was something alien. The man who could make her feel when she was numb. The man who had seemingly abandoned her, but had looked for her.

  The blue-eyed playboy sailor who regularly appeared on magazine covers, always with a glamorous woman at his side.

  A man whose life was the sea.

  The father of her child.

  This skill as a statesman was yet another layer to this compelling man.

  ‘Eve!’

  She turned to see Ketty clutching the handbag she’d given her to her chest. ‘It’s so beautiful! Thank you.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she said, a little shakily, as they turned to walk across to where the rest of her gifts were waiting to be shared out, and she realised that all the women were looking at Kit.

  ‘He is very pretty,’ Maria said.

  ‘He has a great ass,’ one of the older women said. ‘I’d be tempted.’ They all laughed, everyone but Ketty, who just reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  No one would let her help with the cooking, so she and Maria kept the younger children amused until the trust meeting was over. Kit gave her an almost imperceptible nod and she let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding.

  ‘Did Peter tell you we’re building a science lab for the school?’ Maria asked.

  ‘He said, but the workmen were there so it wasn’t safe to go in. I’d like to take a photograph of the plaque you’ve erected to my mother.’

  They were joined by several women who were home from the city for weekend celebrations who wanted to see how the extension was progressing and, having admired that, they all took a nostalgic tour of the classrooms.

  ‘Oh, look,’ one of the women said, looking at the pinboard with photographs of all the pupils in the class. ‘They have a photograph of you when you were here, Eve.’

  Maria took a closer look.

  ‘That’s not Eve. She has green eyes. This is her little girl. Peter said you’d given a picture of her to the children yesterday,’ she said. ‘She is very like you as a child.’

  ‘It’s just the hair.’

  The scent of the sea had warned her of his presence a split second before Kit spoke. Before he reached over her head and took the picture down to look at it more closely.

  ‘This child is the image of my sister at the same age.’

  She turned, her mouth working, but no words coming out. She didn’t have to say anything. One look and he’d known.

  ‘What is her name?’ he asked.

  Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth and it took a moment before she could say, ‘Hannah Rose Merchant Bliss.’

  He glanced at her, a nod acknowledging the inclusion of Merchant. ‘She’s beautiful.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When were you going to tell me?’ he asked, those blue eyes unreadable, his voice even, unemotional. ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’

  The others, at a signal from Maria, had melted away, leaving them alone.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I only came back to Nantucket because my grandmother was sick.’

  The sun, which had lit up the room just moments before, had sunk behind the trees and his face was all shadows. ‘That’s why you dyed your hair. You were hoping I wouldn’t notice you.’

  ‘Your team blog said you were in the Southern Ocean, but I couldn’t take the risk.’

  ‘You actually checked?’ Even, unemotional, frighteningly calm.

  ‘Yes, I checked. I should have been long gone by the time you returned, but Nana died and I had to stay and deal with the cottage.’

  ‘Of course, you told me that she left you her cottage.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘She knew I’d sell it. She left it to Hannah.’

  ‘Why, Eve? Why would you do this? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ she demanded. ‘You meet a girl on a beach, have a one-night stand, then disappear.’

  ‘I told you my name. All you had to do was pick up a phone.’

  ‘And what? Ask for the money to take care of it?’

  He took a step back as if she’d slapped him.

  ‘You weren’t hitting on me, remember? I jumped you and I chose to take responsibility for my own actions.’

  ‘There were two of us in the room.’

  ‘And then you left.’

  He lifted a hand in a gesture at once helpless and exasperated. ‘You know why!’

  ‘Now I know. Then...’ She shook her head, willing him to understand.

  ‘Then you thought I’d had a good time and walked out on you.’ She didn’t want to tell him everything she’d thought. That was enough. ‘Despite that, you chose to keep her,’ he said, his voice softer.

  ‘There was never any q
uestion about that, Kit. Hannah is my joy.’

  ‘What about my joy?’ he demanded. ‘I have a child, a daughter, and you chose to keep her from me.’

  Eve felt as if she was hanging onto reality by her fingernails. She’d been going to tell him, assure him that he didn’t have to be involved, that he could walk away. That would have been better, but only marginally. She hadn’t expected him to be angry. To feel cheated...

  ‘I was going to tell you.’

  ‘Why? Because I saw through your pathetic disguise?’

  ‘Because I’m going to stay in Nantucket.’

  ‘Too damn right you are,’ he said, the cold calm finally breaking down.

  ‘Kit... I was going to tell you, but not here. You’re leaving before me—’

  ‘And you thought I might take her?’

  ‘I didn’t know what you might do.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  KIT BREATHED OUT an expletive and he sat on one of the class benches as if his legs could no longer hold him.

  ‘She’s my daughter, Eve, and I’ve missed so much of her life already. I didn’t even get a say in her name.’

  ‘I named her Hannah after my grandmother, Rose after my mother.’

  ‘She had just died, hadn’t she? Your mother. That’s why you were in Nantucket. Why you looked so lost...’ He shook his head. ‘How on earth did you cope?’

  ‘My mother got the London flat in a divorce settlement from my father. I lived there while I was at uni, and she left it to me, along with some money.’

  ‘I didn’t mean... How did you cope emotionally? With the pregnancy? The birth?’

  ‘I was in the middle of my finals and I didn’t realise I was pregnant until they were over.’ She sat down on the bench opposite him. ‘Truthfully, Kit? I was grieving for my mother, furious with my father and with my hormones shot to hell I might not have been entirely rational at the time, but the promise of a baby felt like a gift and for that I’ll always be grateful to you.’

  ‘Did you have anyone with you? At the birth?’

  ‘The tattoo group rallied round. The one with the dragonfly is Hannah’s godmother. They are scattered all over the world now, but they all considered themselves her honorary aunts and uncles.’

  He took one last long look at the photograph and then slipped it in his pocket as he stood up.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I gave that to the children. I have others you can have.’

  ‘It finally explains the cold shoulder,’ he said, as he pinned it back. ‘Peter saw this photograph and when he brought you back to the lodge yesterday and saw us together, he guessed I was her father.’

  ‘Because you both have blue eyes? That’s a bit of a long shot.’

  ‘He saw my shock when I recognised you and drew his own conclusions.’

  ‘That jibe about the blue-eyed playboy.’ She swallowed down a lump the size of a golf ball in her throat. ‘I thought at the time it sounded personal. I’m sorry, Kit. I’ll explain.’

  ‘No need. It was plain enough for everyone to see what you’d done.’

  ‘I didn’t want a scandal, Kit. My mother’s death was all over the local newspapers. Can you imagine the gossip? My mother was hardly cold in her grave and I was having sex with a stranger on the beach. I was so ashamed—’

  ‘Ashamed?’ For a moment he looked furious then dragged his hand over his face. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t begin to imagine what you were feeling.’

  ‘I was sure you were on tenterhooks waiting for the story to appear in one of the gossip magazines.’

  ‘It would have made a change for one of them to be true.’

  ‘Are you saying they were all made up?’

  ‘I was young and stupid but they were mostly spun out of a grain of truth. No one knows that I’m Hannah’s father?’ he asked. ‘Adding “Merchant” to her name was a bit of a giveaway.’

  ‘I was in London, Kit, and the registrar was too busy to care what I called her. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, she is Hannah Bliss.’

  ‘Not your family? Weren’t your friends curious?’

  ‘A secret shared is no longer a secret.’

  ‘You told them you didn’t know...’

  She shrugged. ‘A Mamma Mia moment.’

  ‘That’s the gossip my sister picked up. That you have a child whose father is something of a mystery.’

  ‘You had your sister check up on me?’

  ‘And chose not to hear what she’d discovered. More fool me. Not to worry, there’s nothing like a wedding to gloss over the secrets of the bride.’

  ‘What bride?’ He didn’t bother to answer. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No way. I’m not... I won’t...’

  ‘I... I... I... This isn’t about you any more, Eve. It’s about putting Hannah first.’

  ‘I do. I have,’ she protested.

  ‘And when she asked why she hadn’t got a daddy? Or hadn’t you thought that far ahead?’

  She’d thought about it. She’d seen her baby’s wrinkled forehead as she’d watched her cousins play with their father, the thought forming in her precious head.

  ‘You can have all the access you want,’ she said.

  ‘You can bet your life I’ll have access,’ Kit said. ‘Until the day you disappear back to London, taking her with you.’

  ‘No!’ she protested. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘You already did.’

  ‘I told you, Kit, I’m going to stay on the island. I’ve got an interview for a job at the high school.’

  ‘And who will look after Hannah while you’re working? Who looked after her in London?’

  ‘She went to an excellent day nursery. She loved it and I’m sure they have such things in Nantucket, so if you think you’re going to marry me and I’ll be a stay-at-home mom, think again.’

  ‘Where are you living?’

  ‘In Nana’s cottage. Hannah’s cottage.’

  ‘I was looking for an address.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ He waited and she said, ‘Wisteria Cottage. It’s in Paston Lane, just across—’

  ‘I know where it is. It’s been neglected.’

  ‘It needs a coat of paint,’ she admitted.

  ‘It needs a complete renovation job. You can’t stay there.’

  ‘I have to. The cat won’t move.’

  ‘The cat?’

  ‘Mungo. They tried to move him when Nana was in hospital, but he wouldn’t eat.’ He was clearly lost for words so she said, ‘I’m working on it. I’m going to rent storage space so that I can clear out all the clutter and then—’

  ‘Why don’t you just get rid of it?’

  ‘The cat?’

  ‘The clutter.’

  ‘The trustees have made it clear that it all belongs to Hannah. Nana and Grandpa’s clothes. Cat-scratched furniture. Fifty years of paperwork...’

  ‘That sounds like a fire hazard. We should get a ruling from the chief.’

  We...

  She pushed the temptation away. It was time to get real.

  ‘You can’t marry me, Kit. You’re in love with Lucy.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I saw you with her at the auction. I can recognise love when I see it. You’re going into partnership with her, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘You weren’t thinking about Lucy when we kissed.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking at all.’

  The corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. ‘That is the effect one hopes to achieve. If it makes you feel better, my brain wasn’t entirely engaged, either.’

  ‘Kit...’

  ‘Is that the only reason you’re saying no?’

  ‘It’s a pretty big one, don’t you think?’

  ‘There’s more than one kind of love, Eve. I’ve known
Lucy since she was a sailing-mad kid. I love her, of course I do, but like a sister.’

  Eve now had a lump the size of a mango in her throat and couldn’t speak.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ Kit asked. ‘Speak now or for ever hold your peace.’

  She shook her head. ‘Maybe we should fly to Vegas and do it on the way home,’ she said, not entirely flippantly.

  ‘You’d deny me that, too? And what about Hannah? Do you imagine our daughter will forgive us if she isn’t a flower girl at our wedding?’

  We... Our... They were such magic words...

  ‘Our daughter is a little young to know that she’s missing anything, but her cousins would be absolutely livid.’

  He nodded as if it were settled. It wasn’t. He’d had a shock, his emotions were in turmoil but once they were home, he’d begin to think straight.

  ‘It’s gone very quiet out there,’ he said, standing up and offering her his hand. ‘Perhaps we should put in an appearance before someone passes out from holding their breath.’ She nodded. ‘It would help if you could manage a smile. If they think I’ve made you unhappy they might feed me to the crocodiles.’

  She laughed, as she was meant to and, with her hand firmly in his, he headed for the door. Outside there was a wide semicircle of people waiting.

  ‘As you will all have realised, Eve has today surprised me with the greatest gift imaginable, that of a daughter. In return I have asked her to marry me and she has made me the happiest of men by saying yes.’ He turned to her, and, eyes hooded to hide his thoughts, and while she was still struggling with what had just happened, he kissed her.

  It was brief, but emphatic and if, as a result, she clung to him just for a moment, while her knees remembered what they were for, it all added to the illusion that this was a happy-ever-after ending.

  The announcement, the kiss, were greeted with a round of applause and then they were all heading back to the centre of the village where fairy lights had been strung in the trees, music was playing and, since it seemed to be expected, Kit took her in his arms and whirled her around the square.

  It looked like one of those perfect moments. Lovers reunited, a wedding to plan, a new life waiting for them.