The Bay of the Nightingales (Collected Works of Essie Summers #28)

That London day was one shock after another for Margot Chesterton. First, she learned from a letter left by her late uncle that, far from her father’s having abandoned his wife and infant daughter, he had never even known his wife was pregnant, due to the malice and dishonesty of Margot’s deceased aunt. Nothing was known of her father save that his name was Francis Nightingale, that he had remarried in Canada, and that twenty years ago he had gone briefly to Akaroa, in New Zealand’s South Island, to search for relatives. Second, she discovered that the evening’s talk on antiques had been replaced at the last minute by a presentation on Akaroa itself, by a Pierre Laveroux, one of its lifelong residents. And third, she saw her fiancé’s meeting with the girl he had once loved — and whom he, very obviously, still loved.

A few weeks and one broken engagement later, Margot found herself in Akaroa, taking a job with a lovely family whose house she was to transform into a living museum, all the while secretly searching for any clue as to her father’s whereabouts — secretly, because for all she knew it would bring nothing but pain to her father if she were to make herself known. But then Pierre Laveroux showed up, hostile and forbidding, for he had learned her true purpose, he knew where Francis Nightingale lived . . . and he was determined to keep her from ever learning her father’s whereabouts!