"Who lives there now?"
"Nobody, I reckon."
"Do you know if it's for sale?"
The guide looked at Kate and said, "If it is, it'll probably be bought by the son of one of the families already livin' here. The islanders don't take kindly to strangers."
It was the wrong thing to say to Kate.
One hour later, she was speaking to a lawyer for the estate. "It's about the Dreben house," Kate said. "Is it for sale?"
The lawyer pursed his lips. "Well, yes, and no."
"What does that mean?"
"It's for sale, but a few people are already interested in buying it."
The old families on the island, Kate thought. "Have they made an offer?"
"Not yet, but - "
"I'm making one," Kate said.
He said condescendingly, "That's an expensive house."
"Name your price."
"Fifty thousand dollars."
"Let's go look at it."
The inside of the house was even more enchanting than Kate had anticipated. The large, lovely hall faced the sea through a wall of glass. On one side of the hall was a large ballroom, and on the other side, a living room with fruitwood paneling stained by time and an enormous fireplace. There was a library, and a huge kitchen with an iron stove and a large pine worktable, and off of that was a butler's pantry and laundry room. Downstairs, the house had six bedrooms for the servants and one bathroom. Upstairs was a master bedroom suite and four smaller bedrooms. It was a much larger house than Kate had expected. But when David and I have our children, she thought, we'll need all these rooms. The grounds ran all the way down to the bay, where there was a private dock.
Kate turned to the lawyer. "I'll take it."
She decided to name it Cedar Hill House.
She could not wait to get back to Klipdrift to break the news to David.
On the way back to South Africa, Kate was filled with a wild excitement. The house in Dark Harbor was a sign, a symbol that she and David would be married. She knew he would love the house as much as she did.
On the afternoon Kate and Brad arrived back in Klipdrift, Kate hurried to David's office. He was seated at his desk, working, and the sight of him set Kate's heart pounding. She had not realized how much she had missed him.
David rose to his feet. "Kate! Welcome home!" And before she could speak, he said, "I wanted you to be the first to know. I'm getting married."
Chapter 15
It had begun casually six weeks earlier. In the middle of a hectic day, David received a message that Tim O'Neil, the friend of an important American diamond buyer, was in Klip-drift and asking if David would be good enough to welcome him and perhaps take him to dinner. David had no time to waste on tourists, but he did not want to offend his customer. He would have asked Kate to entertain the visitor, but she was on a tour of the company's plants in North America with Brad Rogers. I'm stuck, David decided. He called the hotel where O'Neil was staying and invited him to dinner that evening.
"My daughter is with me," O'Neil told him. "I hope you don't mind if I bring her along?"
David was in no mood to spend the evening with a child. "Not at all," he said politely. He would make sure the evening was a short one.
They met at the Grand Hotel, in the dining room. When David arrived, O'Neil and his daughter were already seated at the table. O'Neil was a handsome, gray-haired Irish-American in his early fifties. His daughter, Josephine, was the most beautiful woman David had ever seen. She was in her early thirties, with a stunning figure, soft blond hair and clear blue eyes. The breath went out of David at the sight of her.
"I - I'm sorry I'm late," he said. "Some last-minute business."
Josephine watched his reaction to her with amusement. "Sometimes that's the most exciting kind," she said innocently. "My father tells me you're a very important man, Mr. Black-well."
"Not really - and it's David."
She nodded. "That's a good name. It suggests great strength."
Before the dinner was over, David decided that Josephine O'Neil was much more than just a beautiful woman. She was intelligent, had a sense of humor and was skillful at making him feel at ease. David felt she was genuinely interested in him. She asked him questions about himself that no one had ever asked before. By the time the evening ended, he was already half in love with her.
"Where's your home?" David asked Tim O'Neil.
"San Francisco."
"Will you be going back soon?" He made it sound as casual as he could.
"Next week."
Josephine smiled at David. "If Klipdrift is as interesting as it promises to be, I might persuade Father to stay a little longer."
"I intend to make it as interesting as possible," David assured her. "How would you like to go down into a diamond mine?"
"We'd love it," Josephine answered. "Thank you."
At one time David had personally escorted important visitors down into the mines, but he had long since delegated that task to subordinates. Now he heard himself saying, "Would tomorrow morning be convenient?" He had half a dozen meetings scheduled for the morning, but they suddenly seemed unimportant.
He took the O'Neils down a rockshaft, twelve hundred feet below ground. The shaft was six feet wide and twenty feet long, divided into four compartments, one for pumping, two for hoisting the blue diamondiferous earth and one with a double-decked cage to carry the miners to and from work.
"I've always been curious about something," Josephine said. "Why are diamonds measured in carats?"