Lewis sat up and rubbed his face. “The war? Has it started, then?”
The boy leaned against the window frame. “Not officially, but they expect the announcement sometime today. Aunt Edwina has the wireless on in the sitting room, and Cook’s listening in the kitchen. Aunt Edwina has a wager on with my dad that it will all come to nothing. ‘A bloody old windbag’ is what she calls Hitler. I think she’s wrong, though. There is going to be a war.”
“Is that why you’re here, too?” Lewis asked, feeling confused. He couldn’t imagine this elegant boy being sent away from home like a mislaid parcel.
“Edwina’s my godmother,” the boy explained. “Edwina Burne-Jones, she’s called. This is her house. Mummy is certain the Huns will bomb London, and my school with it, so she wants me to stay down here for a bit. Edwina says you come from the Island. My family’s business is there—Hammond’s Teas.”
“That’s just across the street from my school,” Lewis exclaimed with pleasure at encountering something familiar. “Are you a Hammond, then?”
“Oh, sorry.” The boy pushed himself away from the window and came towards Lewis with his hand outstretched. “I should have said. My name’s William. William Hammond.”
KINCAID KNOCKED AGAIN AT GEMMA’S DOOR. There was no response, even though her car was pulled up on the double yellows in front of her garage flat. He’d driven straight from King’s Cross without ringing first, something he seldom did, and now he realized he’d not considered whether he would be welcome.
But the thought of his empty flat was too sharp a reminder of his failed weekend, so he let himself through the wrought-iron gate that led into the Cavendishes’ garden. Perhaps Gemma had gone next door, as she often did.
The walled garden lay in the cool, rose-scented shadow of early evening, and as he made his way along the flagged path that led to the big house, he saw Hazel on her knees in the perennial bed next to the patio. She wore shorts that had seen better days, and a pink tank top that bared her lightly freckled shoulders.
“Gemma’s taken Toby to the park,” Hazel called out. “You’ll have to make do with me for a bit, unless you want to go after them.”
“I think you’ll do admirably. Although you look like you’re working entirely too hard.”
“Dandelions among the daisies,” Hazel said by way of explanation as he sank into a chair on the patio. “That’s the problem with this gorgeous weather. The weeds love it as much as we do.” She wiped her hand across her brow and left a dirty streak. “There’s some lemonade in the jug.” Frowning, she gave him a closer look. “Unless you’d like something stronger. You look a bit done in.”
He took a glass from the tray on the small table, then reached for the silver jug, its frosted surface traced with runnels of condensation. “No, this is fine, really. You’re a marvel, Hazel.”
“Tell that to my child. We’ve had a spectacularly bad day. Tim finally had to separate us and send me outside for a bit of earth therapy.” Sitting back, Hazel drank from the glass she’d placed on the flagstones.
“Oh, come on, Hazel. I’ve never seen you even out of sorts with the children.”
She laughed. “You should have heard me today, screeching like a fishwife at Holly because she refused to pick up the toys she’d deliberately thrown on the floor. Toby came in for his share of it, too, but he can’t push my buttons in the same way. There’s something about your own child.…” Hazel picked up her spade again and thrust it beneath the spiky leaves of a dandelion.
“Doesn’t your training as a psychologist help?”
“Much to my dismay, I’m discovering that understanding children’s behavior intellectually doesn’t always make dealing with it easier.” The dandelion came up with a spray of dirt and she shook what remained from the roots before tossing it into a pail.
“I don’t even have that small advantage.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.
Hazel glanced up at him. “What’s going on? Did you and Kit not have a good weekend?”
“That’s an understatement,” he said with a derisive snort.
Hazel pushed herself up from the flagstones, dusted off her bare knees, and came to sit beside him. “What happened?”
Kincaid looked away. The white lilies in Hazel’s border had begun to glow in the dusk. “I blew it. He was being stubborn and unreasonable, and I just lost it—blurted out that I was his dad, without thinking of the consequences.”
“And?” Hazel prompted.
“He—” Kincaid shook his head. “He was furious. Accused me of lying to him, and told me to bugger off, more or less.”
Hazel nodded. “That’s not surprising. Remember how shocked you were at first? And you’ve turned Kit’s world on end without warning. Not even his mother’s death will have made him doubt his perception of things in the same way.”
Frowning, Kincaid said, “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve made a lie of his life, his image of who he is and how he came to be. Especially now, with Vic gone, that image is all he’s had to sustain him.”
“You’re saying I shouldn’t have told him at all?”
“No.” She touched his arm for emphasis. “Only that you need to understand the depth of the charge you’ve planted. What started the argument?”
“Work. A case came up this weekend—Gemma will have told you—and I couldn’t do what I’d promised. Kit felt I’d let him down. And I had.” He moved restlessly in his chair. “I’d thought that having him live with me was the obvious solution, once he’d had a bit of time to adjust. Now I’m beginning to wonder if my seeing him at all is doing more harm than good.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. But I don’t think you realized the extent of the commitment you made,” Hazel added, sighing. She reached for a box of matches and lit the citronella candle in the center of the table. “You haven’t any experience with that sort of responsibility, and your job makes it doubly difficult.”
“I know. But I still can’t see any alternative to having Kit with me. He can’t stay with the Millers indefinitely, as kind as they’ve been to have him through the school term.”
“No word from Ian McClellan?”
Vic’s ex-husband had returned to Cambridge just long enough to agree to Kincaid’s arrangements for Kit, then he had hightailed it back to his lover. “Not a peep. I assume he’s still enjoying the south of France with his nubile graduate student. But Kit hasn’t given up hoping Ian will send for him.” Kincaid shook his head. “I thought that if Kit learned I was his father, not Ian, it might make Ian’s desertion a bit more bearable.”
“It may, in time. But you’re asking Kit for belief based on nothing but your word. You have no proof.”
He thought of the day of Vic’s funeral, when his mother had taken him aside and told him he was blind not to have seen the resemblance the boy bore to him, or to have calculated the number of months between the time Vic left him and Kit’s birth. His first reaction had been denial; his second, panic; it was only the fear of losing Kit altogether that had made him realize how much he wanted it to be true.
Inside the house the kitchen light flicked on, and he heard the rattle of crockery clearly through the open window. “Kit has more to accept than the fact that he’s my son,” he said slowly. “He blames me for Vic’s death.”
“Duncan, Kit’s a child. He has no other way of resolving what’s happened to him, unless the trial—”
“That’s no help. It may be two years before Vic’s murder comes before the courts. And what if Kit’s right—and I did fail her?”
Leaning forward so that the light shining from the kitchen window illuminated her face, Hazel said forcefully, “You know that’s not reasonable. You did all anyone could have done for Vic.”