You could try.
But she didn’t say it. How could she?
She was not the woman for him. She could not wear dresses that looked as if they were made for a coronation and diamonds in her hair. She could not run a house like Ashbarrow. She did not have eighteenth-century ancestors who wrote liberal poetry. Her ancestors had probably not even been able to read, thought Kit, struggling to apply common sense.
Of course he couldn’t marry her. Quite apart from his ancestry, he was an important man. The world needed him, all of him.
But so do I.
She set her teeth. She could not afford to cry while she was driving.
They went the rest of the way in silence.
He roused himself to direct her once they reached the outskirts of London. His voice was quite impersonal. Neither friendly nor unfriendly.
You would have thought they had never made love in the evening sun nor awoken to look at the rising moon. You would have thought they had never touched at all. The distance between them was total.
Kit felt her heart would break and nearly ran a red light.
‘Careful,’ said Philip unemotionally.
She drew a shaky breath and concentrated harder. She got them back to the Notting Hill house in one piece and switched off the engine. The keys rattled as she did so. That was when Kit realised she was trembling, slightly but convulsively, right the way down to her toes. It was as if she had had a bad shock. Which she had in a way, she supposed.
She slid out of the car, not looking at him.
Philip got out and came round to her. He took her bag out of the back of the car but he did not give it to her. He stood holding it, looking down at her. His face was unreadable.
He said, ‘You could come on to the hotel with me.’
Kit shook her head. ‘No, I couldn’t,’ she said sadly.
‘I don’t see what you think you’re going to do for your sister.’
‘Be with her. Hold her hand. Listen. Make her coffee and abuse men.’ It was a valiant attempt at a joke. But not brilliant in the circumstances.
He stiffened.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
She held out her hand for the bag. He did not give it to her.
‘Stay with me.’ It was harsh, sudden, as if it was wrenched out of him without his own volition.
This was awful. Kit looked at him through a mist of gathering tears.
‘I can’t.’
His face wasn’t unreadable any more. He looked tortured.
‘I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t think—’
‘It’s all right,’ she said gently. ‘You never promised me anything. You never even said you loved me.’
He was very pale. ‘I don’t know what the word means. I told you. I—just don’t understand love. I never have.’
Kit stared at him. Her eyes went darker and darker until there was almost no green left in them at all, Philip saw. Her trembling got worse. She was as pale as he.
‘Yes, you do,’ she said almost inaudibly. ‘Only you’re afraid of it. You think it will make you weak.’
He said nothing.
She seized the bag clumsily.
‘I can’t bear this.’ Her voice was ragged. ‘I’ve got to go. Goodbye.’
Philip did not move or speak. He looked as if he was in shock.
Kit wrenched the bag away from him and ran up the front steps as if the hounds of hell were after her.
And out of his life, she thought. And out of his life.
CHAPTER TEN
TATIANA welcomed her with open arms. All disagreements forgotten, she even let the neighbouring cat dance in from the garden and take up residence on Kit’s knee. Tatiana was worried. So worried that she did not notice Kit’s pallor or that she answered her questions mechanically.
‘Lisa sounds terrible. I can’t think what’s happened.’
But Kit could. Kit knew exactly what was going on. Lisa had told her on the phone. It was what had brought her bundling back for London, even before Philip had faced her with the terrible truth about their relationship. Or rather their lack of a relationship.
‘It’s all right,’ said Kit steadily. ‘I’ll look after her.’
It was just as well she was prepared. Arriving from Switzerland, Lisa did not go to the Holland Park house that Nikolai had bought after their marriage. She came straight to the flat.
Kit ran up the stairs as soon as she heard the taxi draw up in the street outside. She flung open the door and tumbled down the front steps to enfold her sister in her arms.
‘Oh, Kit!’
And Lisa, who had fought off school bullies, stiffened her mother’s backbone when Joanne said she couldn’t go on and found ways to pay bills that no one else could have dreamed of—Lisa, the rock—fumbled off her dark glasses and wept on her sister’s shoulder.
‘It’s all right,’ said Kit, gentle but still mechanical. ‘I promise you. It will be all right. Come in and tell me everything.’
She picked up Lisa’s overnight case and urged her indoors.
Lisa sank onto the sofa. She looked ill. More than that, thought Kit, who knew a bit about tears, she looked as if she had been crying for days.
She made her the promised coffee, then sat down beside her.
‘Tell me,’ she said gently. ‘You’re pregnant and Nikolai doesn’t want the baby. Why?’
Lisa shook her head. She seemed drained. ‘I suppose it all started last year. I lost a baby in the autumn.’
‘What?’
‘You thought I had flu. Everyone did. Even me to begin with.’ Lisa swallowed. ‘I lost the baby before I even knew I was going to have one. That’s a laugh, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, Lisa.’
Kit took her hand and held it. Lisa gave her a faint, tired smile.
‘Well, Nikolai was away and when he came back he was furious. He said I wasn’t being sensible. We had a terrible row.’
‘And that was what was wrong at Coral Cove?’ said Kit, enlightened.
Lisa nodded bleakly. ‘For months it didn’t seem as if we could stop arguing. We’d keep starting out to discuss it sensibly. And then one of us would fly off the handle and it would all start again. He said—he said I ought to give up my job. When I said no, he said I didn’t deserve a child. That I wasn’t maternal enough. I said—oh, I said a lot of nasty things. In the end we even stopped sleeping together.’
She drew a shaky sigh. Kit was silent, horrified at the turmoil she had not even guessed at.
‘Coral Cove was supposed to be the chance to sort ourselves out. But Nikolai spent as little time with me as possible.’
‘But—just before I left—you seemed so happy. I thought you were reconciled.’
‘Sex,’ said Lisa harshly. ‘The great illusion.’
Kit flinched.
Lisa did not notice. ‘Then it was back to square one as soon as we disagreed about something.’
‘Me,’ said Kit almost inaudibly.
Lisa shrugged. ‘Whatever. He walked out, you know. Left me there.’
Kit was appalled. ‘Did he know you were going to have a baby?’
Lisa shook her head. ‘I didn’t know myself then.’
‘And now that he does?’
Lisa looked away.
‘He does know, doesn’t he?’ Kit’s voice rose. ‘Lisa, you have told him?’
‘I don’t know how to get hold of him,’ Lisa said defensively. ‘He’s up country somewhere. One of his beastly expeditions.’
Kit bit her lip. ‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Stay here with you?’ Lisa looked up pleadingly. ‘You’ll help me through this, won’t you, Kit? I mean, you’re the maternal one…’
Kit was astonished. ‘Am I?’
‘Of course,’ said Lisa as if it was common knowledge. Her hand twitched in Kit’s. ‘Help me,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’m so scared, Kit.’
And Kit put her arms round her and said, ‘I’ll help you.’
; It was a promise.
In the end it was quite easy. Kit supposed it always was if you knew the right people. Of course, until Philip she never had known the right people.
She did not know which hotel he was staying at in London. But she had a fair idea of how to contact his office, after her skirmish with his address book. Fernando, seeing a chance of redeeming himself in his chief’s eyes, could not have been more helpful. He also told her that Philip was already on a plane.
So he had not even stayed in London for the three nights that were theoretically left to them! Kit tried not to let that hurt. She wanted a means of contacting her brother-in-law, after all.
Philip’s assistant provided that with astonishing rapidity. The address was already in his database.
And, sure enough, that evening Nikolai was on the telephone.
It took him three days to get back. But he was on the telephone every chance he had, from scrubby hotels and ferry stations and airports. By the time he walked in, unshaven and dangerous, it felt as if he had been imminent forever.
Lisa went into his arms like a homing pigeon.
‘My darling, my darling,’ said Nikolai.
And said nothing else for some considerable time.
Kit fled.
It was not just a question of leaving them alone. The look on Nikolai’s face had shaken her. She could not imagine Philip would ever look at her like that. Not that Philip would ever appear anyway with three days’ growth of beard. Or lose control like that, she thought sadly.
Eventually Lisa emerged from her dreamy fog.
‘How clever of you to find him,’ she said, not letting go of Nikolai’s hand. ‘How did you do it?’
Kit muttered. But between them they dragged it out of her.
‘Philip Hardesty?’ said Nikolai incredulously. ‘You had Philip Hardesty’s office in New York jumping through hoops just to get hold of me?’
‘Well, Lisa needed you.’
He exchanged looks with Lisa. ‘That’s not the point,’ he said at last drily.
Kit was puzzled. ‘So?’
‘It sounds as if Philip Hardesty told his people that you were special,’ explained Lisa kindly.
‘Oh.’ Kit flushed. ‘Not that special,’ she said painfully.
More of that wordless communication between husband and wife.
Then Lisa said airily, ‘One of those. I see. A no-commitment kind of guy.’
‘No.’ Kit was surprised at how indignant she felt on Philip’s behalf. ‘No, he’s committed all right. For life. To duty. To his job. He doesn’t think he can ask any woman to share it.’
Nikolai said quietly, ‘And what do you think?’
Kit’s expression answered for her.
Nikolai looked at Lisa again. He said, ‘I think you’ve got to do something about this, Kit.’
The night was loud with jungle noises. Kit heard them with her heart in her mouth. Pelanang did not have Coral Cove’s civilised attitude to the taming of the tropics. This was ninety per cent humidity, with mosquitoes the size of toy helicopters and an airstrip hacked out from tree cover that threatened to block out the stars.
Kit would have been afraid if she hadn’t been even more afraid of what Philip was going to say when he came back from his foray into the guerrillas’ camp and found her. For Nikolai, getting her ticketed, immunised and visa-ed, had provided her with everything except what she was going to say to Philip.
So Kit stayed at Pelanang and tried out various gambits while she waited in the rough settlement.
‘Give me a chance?’ Too pathetic.
‘Marry me?’ Too ambitious.
‘Love me?’ Downright hopeless.
Now it was night. She was too hot to sleep in her corrugated-iron hut and too lonely to bear her own thoughts. So she had walked up the river a little way, keeping her flashlight carefully focused and sticking to the path, in her high-sided boots.
She knew what to do now. She had learned enough jungle lore not to be a danger to herself or anyone else. She had even become quite a pet of the tired administrators running the communications centre. She was pleased with herself for learning the skills and with them for respecting her. But she was still so lonely.
There was only one person who would ever stop her being lonely, thought Kit. And she had not the slightest idea what to say to him.
There was the sound of boots on the mud path. She flinched. Her instinct was to dive into the bushes and wait until this intruder had gone. But she knew that would be foolhardy. Jungle plants could give you a nasty rash, if not worse, and there were poisonous creatures everywhere. So she stood her ground and turned the flashlight on the newcomer.
And…
And…
Philip said, ‘There’s no need to blind me.’
It was him. It was him. So tall, so composed, so elegant—
Kit looked closer. Not so elegant. He had three days’ growth of beard on that immaculate jaw. And not so composed either. Not from the rate at which his chest was rising and falling.
He stopped dead, a little distance from her on the path, and said, ‘Thank God you’re safe, Kit. I’ve been every kind of a fool. If you’d been hurt—’
‘Why should I be hurt?’ said Kit, bewildered.
His laugh broke. ‘Spiders. Snakes. Goddamn man-eating orchids. Hell, how should I know? All I could think of was you here in the middle of the jungle and me not with you. Don’t ever do that to me again, Kit. Please.’
The flashlight fell in her hands. ‘I don’t understand.’
He came up to her then. ‘No. I know. I’m doing this all wrong. Kit, I know I didn’t ask you when I should have done. But marry me.’ He sounded frantic.
Kit stared and stared. Was this cool, controlled Philip Hardesty who weighed every word and always said the right thing, turning up unheralded, on a spontaneous impulse, and blurting out a proposal of marriage?
She said hopefully, ‘You don’t mean that.’
He groaned. ‘Yes, I do. Deep down, I’ve meant it since the moment I met you. Though it’s taken me too long to realise it. Don’t you remember I told you I’d poison any member of my family who tried to marry you?’
‘That was a joke.’
‘Jokes are a way of telling the truth.’
Kit began to tremble.
He took her hands, flashlight and all. ‘Have you ever felt about anyone the way you feel about me?
She cried out. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘I’ve never been fair to you. Doesn’t that tell you something? I’m always fair. I’m fair to tyrants and murderers. Just—not you.’ He touched her cheek fleetingly, as if he was afraid she would push him away. ‘You’re the other half of myself. And I treated you like dirt.’ He sounded furious with himself.
Kit said gently, ‘No, you didn’t. You could see that I’m not up to your standards, that’s all.’
‘Don’t you dare say that.’
‘But it’s true.’ She was distracted by his nearness, by her unpreparedness, by her need. She babbled, ‘I’m not properly educated. I have weird hang-ups. I don’t know my ancestors. And I could never keep a tiara on.’
He held her away from him and stared into her face. In the flashlight her expression was naked. He said incredulously, ‘You really believe that nonsense.’
Kit’s eyes fell.
‘Oh, those eyelashes,’ he said on a shaken breath.
She looked up. ‘What?’
Philip pulled himself together. ‘Your education is purpose-built. By you. Nothing wrong with it. I didn’t notice any hang-ups.’ His eyes glinted wickedly. ‘Ancestors I can live without. You’ll learn to balance a tiara. Anything else?’
Kit said uncertainly, ‘You’re laughing at me.’
‘At you? God forbid.’
And suddenly he was so serious that she flinched.
‘At Ashbarrow—when we were together—I felt complete,’ he said. He did not sound as if he was finding it easy. Philip Hardesty, flue
nt diplomat, was groping for words. ‘You showed me things—things about my own home, places I knew—that I’d never seen before. You made me laugh. And you made me burn. And you made me want to be different.’
Kit was silenced. She felt humbled.
Philip said in a low voice, ‘And I do want to be different, Kit. You were right. I was afraid love would weaken me. I don’t want to be like that any more.’
She did not know what to say. She moved close to him, feeling his dear, familiar body under her hands, and knew that he was hers and she was his. But she still did not know what to say.
He said painfully, ‘Your godmother said something to me, you know. She said, “She always wanted to heal things, my Kit.”’
Kit’s eyes were pricking with tears. ‘R-really?’
He bent his head until his brow rested on her hair.
His voice was a thread. ‘Heal me, Kit.’
The jungle rattled and hissed and sweated all about them. All she could hear was his pulse and hers, their ragged breathing, and their unspoken desire.
She found she knew what to say after all. ‘Do you love me?’
He raised his head and looked deep into her eyes. ‘I love you,’ he said.
‘Then I will marry you.’
‘Oh, Kit,’ he said, dragging her against him so hard that her ribs felt as if they would crack. ‘Sweet, sensible, wonderful Kit. Who would believe I could get this lucky?’
But she was not listening. She was pulling his head down for her kiss—and to tell him what he had not asked.
‘I love you, Philip. I may get worried about you when you’re away. But I won’t let it get me down.’ It was a fierce whisper. ‘And I’ll wear that damned tiara if it kills me.’
He laughed aloud. Then kissed her until her head swam. And then, raising his head, announced to the jungle night, ‘We can handle it together.’
EPILOGUE
IT WAS another of those impromptu Press conferences.
The journalists were pleased. The photographs of the guerrillas who had just rejoined the peace talks looked suitably villainous. The pile of surrendered weapons was impressive. And the chief negotiator was being unusually co-operative for once.
Englishman's Bride (9781460366332) Page 18