He paused as if calculating, then offered, “We can keep going, but only at a very much reduced rate. It’ll be nothing like full production, at least not out of the mine, but luckily the output from the cleaning shed will ramp up as soon as Arsene returns, so the amount of raw diamonds going out to the ship should be unaffected. Regardless, I’ll ensure we stretch the oil out in the best way possible—to yield the most while we wait for more.”
That Dubois accepted the assurance with nothing more than a terse nod was a testimony to how well Dixon had managed to play his role over the past months. Dubois in no way liked the situation, but he’d accepted it.
Dubois swung to face Cripps. A muscle in Dubois’s jaw flexed; through gritted teeth, he said, “Go to the settlement and fetch more lamp oil. A lot more.”
“More lanterns would—” Caleb pressed his lips shut and assumed a look of chagrin.
Dubois had glanced at him. Now he smiled like a shark and turned back to Cripps. “And as the good captain suggests, bring back more lanterns as well.” He paused, then added, “And more food.”
Dubois turned back to survey Caleb. The mercenary captain waited until Caleb looked up and met his gaze before inclining his head. “Thank you for the suggestion, Captain Frobisher.”
Caleb frowned, genuinely puzzled. “And the food?”
Dubois’s shark’s smile returned. “That’s to ensure that, once Cripps returns with the supplies, you and your fellows will be in prime condition to continue the mining at maximum rate.”
He didn’t voice the words, but the warning No more excuses rang in the air.
Caleb shrugged. Lantern in hand, he turned and walked back toward the mine. He’d realized that having more lanterns wouldn’t make any difference to the mining—indeed, they might even help to continue to run the lamp oil down. And more food wasn’t anything to sneer at.
But best of all, his little ploy—his apparent slip of the tongue—had set the seal on Dubois’s conviction that there was nothing peculiar about the lamp oil running low.
That the captives, although affected, weren’t in any way involved in generating the shortage.
As he neared the mine entrance where Phillipe and Hillsythe waited, Caleb smiled—the gesture every bit as sharklike as Dubois’s.
* * *
As had become their habit, Katherine walked with Caleb in the cool of the evening, making a slow counterclockwise circuit of the compound. Harriet and Dixon and Annie and Jed were also strolling, and Gemma, Ellen, and Mary were taking the air in a group with five of Caleb and Lascelle’s men.
There was an unstated feeling of seizing the comfort of each other’s company while they could.
As they neared the medical hut, her gaze on the pair of guards patrolling the perimeter beyond the heaps of discarded ore, Katherine murmured, “Has Dixon made any estimate of how slow we’ll be able to go?” She glanced at Caleb’s face and amended, “Whether we’ll be able to stretch the mining out long enough?”
He shook his head. “He and the rest of us spent all afternoon working out our best way forward and, with that in mind, figuring out the best proposition to put to Dubois—meaning the one most likely to support the fiction that the mining is going forward as fast as possible given the lack of oil, but that in reality will result in the fewest diamonds taken out of the rock. We decided we should use what little oil remains to keep one section of the second tunnel—the part closest to the tunnel mouth and most visible to the guards—well lit and operational. That’s what Dixon will recommend to Dubois. However, in addition to that and unknown to Dubois, we’ll send a party deep into the first tunnel with lanterns turned low—they’ll be out of sight and hearing of the guards. There are no diamonds in the rock down there, but we’ll use the ore they generate to thin out the diamonds produced from the second deposit. We’re planning to divert as many of the diamonds as possible into our stockpile while still sending out a reasonable concentration of stones in the broken rock, enough to keep Dubois or anyone else who checks the output appeased.”
She nodded. “I can see that will stretch things out, but will it be for long enough?”
“Probably not by itself. But given what we have in the upper level, Dixon is hopeful that once we open up the lower level, which will allow us to continue mining directly along the pipe, we’ll have access to enough stones to see us through. Which is why we’ve acted to keep the concentration of stones going out of the mine as low as we dare, and also why we’ve ceased all work on opening the lower level—Dixon feels we’ll be better served by putting that off for as long as we can.”
He glanced at her, read the confusion in her face, and went on, “There’s a physical limit to how many men can work the rock face in the second tunnel. When Cripps gets back and we return to full production, only just over half the men can work the second tunnel at any time. Now the first deposit is all but mined out, there are more men available. If there was more of the diamond-bearing rock face accessible—”
“Dubois would have you all working all of the time.” She nodded. “So you need to hold back on opening the lower level until a reasonable amount of the upper level is mined out.”
“Or until we’re sure we have enough stones between the upper and lower levels to see us into September.” Caleb grimaced. “But we haven’t yet opened up the lower level sufficiently for Dixon to go down and make an assessment. Once he does, then we’ll know where we stand, and hopefully, we’ll have reason to feel safe.”
She sighed and looked ahead. “It will be a huge relief to be able to feel safe.”
“Indeed.” They’d circled around the cleaning shed. The guards who had been skirting the ore piles had moved on. Caleb glanced around, but no one else was visible, and he and Katherine were presently out of sight of the tower. He detoured toward the steps to the shed.
Katherine glanced at his face, but then only smiled. They reached the steps, and she raised her hem and followed him up.
Wondering if one of the other couples had got there before them, he eased the door open and peeked in. Moonlight pouring through the panels in the roof lit the deserted space. He pushed the door wider, drew Katherine through, then nudged the door shut and set the latch in place.
He turned—and she slipped her arms about his waist and came up on her toes; as he instinctively bent his head, equally instinctively closed his hands about her waist, she offered her lips, and he covered them with his.
Days. They’d known each other for just days, yet sinking into her mouth, savoring her kiss, already seemed so familiar. Already so much a part of him, the natural appeasement of his desires and needs.
In seizing this mission as his own, he hadn’t expected anything like this. He was only twenty-eight; he had years yet before he’d expected to settle down. Declan might have married at thirty-one, and judging by his journal, Robert, a year older, looked set to walk down the aisle very soon. But Royd was thirty-four and had yet to marry, so why should he?
Because she was here, in his arms.
Because she was kissing him, and he was kissing her, and for just these moments, nothing else mattered but her and him and what had grown between them.
And because one couldn’t escape fate, and at some fundamental level, he knew she was his.
He’d known that from the first, and in his usual way, he’d elected not to fight but rather to travel with the tide.
And now she and that tide were tugging him on.
Into a sea of passion.
Katherine wanted—quite what, she couldn’t have said, not in words, but need of a kind she’d never felt before sank claws into her flesh and drove her on. She’d parted her lips and welcomed him in and gloried in her bold confidence—and in his as he claimed all she offered. Sensual hunger grew, his and hers, a complementary compulsion she now recognized.
Her arms lo
oped over his shoulders, she backed and drew him with her, and he obliged. Step by step, she waltzed them across the floor, until her back hit the edge of the raised table and a stool, dislodged, scraped the floor alongside them.
Neither of them broke from the all-absorbing kiss, but one of his hands left her waist. She sensed him tugging the stool closer, then his hand returned, and he gripped her waist and hoisted her up. Her hands sliding to his throat, his jaw, she clutched and held him to the kiss and felt his lips curve against hers.
A second later, he flipped her skirt above her knees, parted her thighs so he could push between, and stepped closer.
Her breath caught in her chest. The sudden play of cooler air on her bared limbs sent awareness prickling over her skin. Sent her nerves, her senses, spiking. Compelled, she shifted her hands to his cheeks, framed his face—and held him steady as she kissed him with an ardor she hadn’t known she possessed.
Or perhaps the flaring passion possessed her—it certainly seemed to drive her, to wield a power all its own. Regardless, he patently welcomed it; with a muted growl, trapped between their lips, he deepened the kiss and met her fire with his own. Yet he let her play, let her enjoy having the ascendency and direct the exchange for several heady heartbeats, but then his lips firmed, and he took control.
He leaned into her, tipping her until her back met the edge of the table.
Then his hands left her waist and rose to close about her breasts, and she stopped thinking, her mind, her wits, overwhelmed by feeling.
By the sensations he so knowingly stoked, that he drew forth, then sent rushing through her.
It might be wanton to so welcome his touch, yet the feel of his hands stroking and caressing and possessing her flesh, even muted by two layers of fabric, sent pleasure and delight coursing through her veins. And when his fingers firmed about her nipples, a delicious thrill spiked and shot straight to her core, igniting a wave of warmth low in her belly.
Caleb sank into the moment, into the pleasure of the exchange, a direct and straightforward foray into delight. Into the myriad little ways he and she could enjoy each other, could—for just those moments—take themselves from this world.
Away from the reality that neither could predict, neither could control, yet both prayed to counter.
To survive so that they could go forward.
He kneaded and caressed and rejoiced in the flaring heat of her response. He angled his head and ravaged her mouth, and her response—so fiery and demanding—nearly rocked him back on his heels. Before he’d even thought, his fingers had found the laces of her gown. A few quick tugs and he’d loosened the bodice enough to peel it down. By touch, he discovered that her fine chemise was held in place by a drawstring—one tug, a little pushing, and he slid his fingers, his hand, over her fine skin and cupped her breast.
They both stilled.
Stunned by the sensual jolt, by the sheer intensity of the tactile impact.
Their lips parted. From beneath their lashes, their eyes met. Just for an instant, they were both caught, flung adrift on a sea of physical feeling. Then her lids fell; a soft moan escaped her lips, and she pressed her breast into his palm.
He dove back into the kiss, and she met him. Her fingers tangled in his hair and then gripped, holding him tight, urging him on.
He needed no urging.
Katherine’s senses were spinning—giddy and drunk on pleasure. She felt flushed, hot, her breasts swelling beneath his hand—hands, now. Oh, God. She wasn’t sure she could cope with so much feeling—so much sensation sparking down every nerve—yet the thud of her pulse drove her on.
His hands were so hot, burning against her skin, yet the fire itself seemed to come from within. Like flames, that hot sensation licked over her flesh, spreading from her breasts over her limbs and washing lower through her body.
She could so easily lose herself in this, with him. Some distant part of her brain was mildly surprised that she felt no shame, not even any awkwardness. This—this closeness, this sharing—simply felt new, with all the attraction of a novel activity. She felt hesitant, but only because she didn’t know what came next, what was appropriate, and was having to rely on instinct to guide her. Yet above all else, this closeness, this sharing, with him, felt right.
In this, with him, she was where she should be.
So she let go. Set her senses free to whirl and dance and savor.
Through the communion of their kiss, Caleb realized her direction and was only too happy to follow. To oblige. The feel of her skin, so silken and warm beneath his callused palms, held the promise of bliss, of glorious satisfaction.
He tightened his fingers about her nipples just enough to distract and focus her attention, then he drew his lips from hers and sent them cruising. Over the delicate curve of her jaw and down the slender column of her throat. He pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the spot where her pulse beat so strongly, so hotly. Then he trailed his lips down over the gentle swell of her breast. Down to where his fingers rolled one tightly furled nipple.
With the tip of his tongue, he circled the tight bud, then gently laved—and heard her breath catch, felt her fingers dig into his skull as her nerves leapt.
He lipped her nipple, then drew it gently into his mouth—and her spine bowed, and her gasp filled the silence.
Inwardly smiling—gloating—he set himself to minister to her senses, to her needs and desires. She made those easy to read, conveyed by the pressure of her fingertips on his skull and by the breathy little moans she uttered.
His own needs, his own desires, welled and leapt, provoked by those evocative sounds. He was fully aroused, his erection a rigid rod restrained beneath his breeches. He shifted, restless, his baser self alive, awake, and intensely aware, but he told himself to forget the temptation her splayed thighs presented.
Easier thought than done, yet despite her ardent responses—despite her open encouragement—he knew acquaintance of mere days was not long enough to even think of ravishing her.
Much less there, in a place of no softness.
Manfully, he quashed all such thoughts, raised his head, found her lips, and reimmersed himself in the kiss. He returned his hands to her breasts, to their worship, and told himself again that, to this point, that was enough.
He hadn’t expected her to disagree, yet as if she’d been privy to his inner argument, she made an incoherent sound; even trapped between their lips and muted by the kiss, it was clearly a sound of protest.
Then she squirmed closer, her thighs parting further, and she freed her hands from his hair and reached for his shirt.
Before he could react—before he realized her intent—she closed her fists in the fabric and hauled it up, then her hands dove under, and her greedy fingers and palms were on his skin—hungry and grasping, claiming and possessing...
Her touch burned with the silver flame of intense sexual desire. He felt seared, energized—shocked into a higher state of passion. Involuntarily, his hands firmed about her breasts, fingers tightening about her nipples—she just gasped through the kiss, and her sweeping, grasping, greedy hands urged him on.
Who was ravishing whom?
Then her hands drifted lower. Oh, no, no, no. Her palms molded themselves to his abdomen, her touch oddly innocent, tentative yet determined. Then with wanton deliberation, she slid those questing hands lower still.
He released her breasts and, without breaking the kiss, shifted back and caught her wandering hands. He found her wicked fingers and twined them—locked them—with his.
He drew her arms out to her sides, pressed their locked hands to the edge of the table—then stepped close again, angled his head over hers, and kissed her with all the searing passion she’d evoked in him. So much more than any other before her.
In that moment, he understood and fully accepted that Fate had br
ought him there—to her, to this.
To this moment of awakening.
To this second in which he finally comprehended what it was to desire, to want, to need, one specific woman.
To the recognition that his destiny lay inextricably entwined with hers.
And that there was no limit to what he would do, what he would give, to protect her. So that ultimately they could and would reach for and seize that destiny together.
He pulled back from the kiss.
His breath was coming in short, shallow pants.
Her lips were swollen, the delectable curves glistening, lush and ripe.
Her eyes, when she raised her lids and looked into his, were huge and passion drenched.
As he watched, her gaze turned quizzical.
He groaned, closed his eyes, and dropped his forehead to hers. “Kate.”
“Caleb?”
He was in pain, and yet... It took serious effort, but he managed to find strength enough to straighten and say, “Not here. Not yet.”
The words were gravelly, but at least they were clear.
Only then did she seem to recall where they were. She blinked and glanced around. “Oh.”
Then she brought her gaze back to his face.
He met her eyes, his gaze steady. “Later.” And just in case she doubted it, even after that incendiary kiss, he stated, “I want you. After we survive this, I want to and will ask you to be my wife. But not here, not yet.”
Kate. Only he had ever called her that—only he had ever seen the woman she was inside. In her head, she used to think of herself as Kate; Kate was the woman she’d expected to be, that she’d thought she could be and should be, but everyone else had always called her Katherine. She’d never corrected them. And since her mother had died, she’d forced herself to be Katherine even in her mind. More formal; more proper and correct.
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