by Carrie Lofty
Thirty hot, long, miserable hours after the arrival of an army escort, the string of coaches and supply wagons rumbled within sight of Kimberley. Viv sat next to the window, with Chloe at her side and Miles on the bench opposite. Chloe had yet to speak beyond the bare necessities of communication, but at least she’d nibbled on a few pieces of dried fruit and a biscuit. Although the heat inside the coach edged toward unbearable, she curled along Viv’s arm and clung tightly, as if to a sunken ship’s last piece of flotsam. Her dark hair lay slicked with sweat against her temples and along the nape of her neck.
Viv choked back her concern, as the girl’s misery became a physical mirror to her own internal struggles. Here was Kimberley, a speck of nothing in the middle of nowhere, yet a town that boasted unspeakable wealth and potential. Here would be Viv’s home for twenty months. Miles had done her a service by reinforcing her options in the clearest possible terms: survive and prosper, or return to him a failure. She would need to submit to her marriage without even the leverage of wealth—subject to his impropriety, his wildness, his whims.
Unlike Chloe, who had no recourse, Viv at least retained the luxury of choice. She would simply need to make the same choice every morning, every evening, and every time circumstances urged her to relent. Her father, born in the slums of Glasgow, had provided her with no other example. Neither had her mother, dignified and proud even on her last day drawing breath.
“We’ll get her home and make a room to her liking,” Miles said, his voice unimposing. “Once she sees it’s not all dirt and violence, she’ll come to.”
Wary of his concern, and worse still, of how he’d correctly guessed her unspoken worries, Viv only nodded. She was so used to enduring his polite provocations.
He shrugged gingerly in return, his injured arm none so vigorous as its twin. Eyes closed, utterly indifferent, he behaved as if the sight of Kimberley rolling into view held no special appeal. Was he really so confident in their ability to succeed? Or would his arrogance be their undoing? Against all reason, she wanted it to be more than arrogance. She wanted him to be the man she’d seen at that way station—calm, quick, in command.
His success will be mine.
Then he’d claim his reward.
A shiver wiggled down her back, its heat like fingers slowly stroking from her soles to her scalp. How did one defend against a man who already believed victory a foregone conclusion? If they were to survive and, indeed, to prosper, she would need to establish a few guidelines and erect a few dozen walls. Letting him nettle her for the duration of her stay would only drive her mad. Letting him back into her heart would break her in two.
The coaches rattled down the central thoroughfare as townspeople paused in their activities to watch. Some pointed at the mounted soldiers. Multistory buildings lined both sides. Although new and well maintained, the siding and wooden walkways had been bleached by the wind and sun. Only the signs above each business remained bright with fresh coats of paint, eagerly proclaiming invaluable services or goods.
“Chloe,” she said. “Chloe, my dear, sit up. Look. We’re in town.”
Her maid reluctantly roused. The side of her face was creased where she’d burrowed against Viv’s satin sleeve.
“See?” Viv pointed to one of the garish signs. “A blacksmith, a mercantile, a tea parlor, a dressmaker. There’s the telegraph office and a dry good’s store. Even a jewelry appraiser . . . and another . . .”
She frowned slightly, regarding the scene as she would a child’s scribble—something she was meant to understand but could not. Kimberley was no bigger or smaller than any American frontier town she’d read about in her father’s newspapers, full of cowboys and entrepreneurs and fallen girls. But along that street she counted four jewelry appraisers and eight gemstone brokers.
Miles had perked up. His unexpectedly eager expression matched the one he’d worn on that distant afternoon in her father’s library. His instinct for the unnatural made him a magnet for trouble. Apparently his feigned disinterest could not compete with such prospects.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” he asked, catching her eye. “I’d wager that no street in London boasts as many jewelers in such close proximity. You’ll find it’s quite a town, Viv.”
“So it’s true then, about the diamonds? This isn’t some malicious fiction trumped up by ambitious colonials?”
He smiled broadly. “All true. You’ll believe it when those jewels are out of the shop cases and draped around your neck.”
“We’re here to work.”
“But diamonds are our work.” Leaning back against the padded bench, he appeared far too relaxed in that confined coach. “Wait until you see the Big Hole.”
“The Big Hole? That hardly sounds promising.”
“Like I said, wait and see. It’s . . . staggering.”
Upon arriving at the coach station, Viv stepped out and surreptitiously stretched her stiff legs. Chloe limply followed her into the open air, and Miles waited by her side as the coach’s other occupants bustled away to resume their lives in Kimberley. Adam and Mr. Kato appeared, the former taking charge of Chloe and directing the latter in the collection of Viv’s luggage. Mr. Kato smiled and greeted two other Africans, their language so entirely foreign, full of clicks and sharp consonants. Miles was right. They would pay the man well, not just for his strength but for what he could teach them about the Cape.
“Take everything on to the house,” Miles called to Adam. “We’ll join you shortly.”
Viv raised her brows when they were alone. “We have a house?”
“‘House’ makes it sound insignificant. It’s not small.” He leaned nearer. “Just remember that without me, right now, you’d be asking that coward Haverstock for more than just directions to a suitable hotel.”
“Don’t be facetious. It has no appeal for me, Miles. Never did. I appreciate that I’m beholden to you and that I require your help. Now please, stop beating me with it.”
He tipped his head. “That frustrates you, doesn’t it? Being beholden to me.”
“Yes.”
He smiled, cool and distant, and donned a functional bowler. “Find a way around it, Vivie.”
She licked her bottom lip and tasted salt and dust. He would push and prod, she would fend him off, and they would start all over again. Their months together stretched out like a road dressed with barbed wire and explosives. And after each encounter, she would need to shake off her anger and get on with the task at hand.
One step at a time.
Miles only offered his arm.
She breathed through her nose, as if breathing past a sharp pain, but his heat still made her tense. They’d touched while completely nude. They’d kissed and made love. They’d done things—dizzying, splendid, filthy things—for which she had no names. Those images rushed in, leaving her short of breath. Miles flicked his eyes to where their bodies entwined. His smug half smile spoke volumes. Such an innocent thing, he seemed to say. Just a man and wife standing arm in arm. But Viv felt stripped and vulnerable.
“Now,” he said, as mercurial as the weather, “on to the Big Hole.”
Six
They had a hundred tasks to accomplish in a very short span, but Miles wanted her to see where it began. Where the earth opened beneath the hands of men and gave over untold wealth. The rest was simply the tedium of business. He wanted Viv to understand where the diamond trade started so they could both know it and taste it and smell it. Then they could figure out how to make their business grow.
He led the way through to the north side of town. Viv kept pace with his strides. “You trust me with this?” he asked quietly.
“Leave it.”
“No, I don’t think so. You could manage your father’s business affairs perfectly well without seeing where the diamonds originate. Why humor me?”
“Because you said it was staggering. I want to know what impresses you.”
Like the busiest roadways in London, Kimberley’s streets boasted th
e breadth of humanity, from the poorest itinerant tribesman to the grandest dandy. Miles never would’ve expected to see men wearing this year’s fashions while strolling through such a rough town.
“Besides, my father sent me here. He must have known what it would be like, which means he had faith enough that I might give it a go.”
“There’s always the possibility that he had no intention of your success—for you or for your siblings.”
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said evenly.
“What, contradict you?”
“No. I don’t mind contradictions, if your advice is offered in all seriousness and for the benefit of our enterprise.”
Miles adjusted the set of his hat, angling it against the sun’s strident gold. “Then what shouldn’t I ever do again?”
“Suggest that my father set me up to fail.”
“A bizarre request,” he said. “You can doubt yourself, wonder if you’re up to this challenge, but you can’t stomach thinking that Old Man Christie believed the same.”
“He was a right bastard, but he wasn’t a liar or a cheat.” She kept her face rigidly forward. “I’m through doubting, my lord. And if you’re prepared to use my every admission against me, then consider my ill-advised need to confide in you at an end.”
“I never asked for your confidences, Vivie,” he said, his voice roughened. “In fact, we both know what I desire from you.”
But to Miles’s dismay, she didn’t react. No sharp retort. No telltale twitch of her arm. Panic sent a shiver of fire up through his chest. He could stomach her disdain, and he positively thrived off her anger—but her disinterest?
As a carriage passed, he took the opportunity to look at his wife. Men turned to watch her as she passed, so why shouldn’t he take in his fill, too? Viv sported a navy blue gown with few drapes, pleats, or adornments—one that, despite its practicality, clung to her figure with the diligence of a lover. She tipped her neck at such an angle as to appraise the busy street from beneath the rim of a functional sun bonnet. He could only see her bow of a mouth and the reddened bridge of her nose.
Through the years, he had observed with detached amusement as even the wealthiest and most polished New York socialites were eaten alive by the petty cruelty of London Society. Viv had managed that transition with unaccountable ease. Never a glance or ruffle or hair out of place, unless he tempted her to it. And then she was glorious.
He would have that again—rip away the mask she kept in place for every other man. Because Miles was not every other man.
“Please stop staring,” she said.
“You’re beautiful.”
“You’re a fool.”
“Ah, but you’re enjoying yourself.”
He knew no such thing, of course. Not that it mattered. No sense hoping other stars might align, that they might actually find common ground outside of physical pleasure. They’d never had that much luck.
Walking on, the appearance of the town altered from functional, neatly planned rows of businesses to the disjointed mob of mass housing. Not houses, in truth, but shanties and tents that stretched from horizon to horizon. People of all colors scurried like ants through the fierce maze of corrugated tin and tar paper. Around each campsite women tended fires and watched wayward children. The homey scent of their cooking was overpowered by the stench of humanity piled on itself like heaps of garbage. Flies buzzed, a second noise above the muttering hum of a thousand conversations.
They arrived at the Hole.
Silent now, Miles’s chest filled with foreboding awe. That same sense of wonder overcame him as it had the first time he’d walked to this spot. The crash-pull sound of engines layered over the clamor of the settlement. The strike of metal against rock became a constant throb in his bones. He stopped fifty feet from the drop-off, knowing he’d need to approach the very edge to peer down to the bottom. The tremendous pit looked like a meteor’s impact crater or a great, gaping chasm wrought by an angry god. But it was man-made, where once had been an otherwise nondescript swath of land.
“It’s . . . indescribable,” Viv whispered.
“And it’s where our future begins.”
Viv was looking at what could only be described in biblical terms. It was hell. It was a medieval cautionary tale about sin and the apocalypse filled with plodding, lost souls bent on tasks as unavailing as those forced on Sisyphus.
Crews urged man and horse and donkey to turn pulleys that looked like huge wagon wheels tipped horizontally. With every cranking turn the chains screamed as would patients in Bedlam. Men swarmed around raised buckets and disgorged the mundane contents into dozens of wheelbarrows.
“For twenty years they’ve been lugging dirt out of this hole.” Miles watched her with an attentiveness that itched along her skin. “They take the soil to sifters to sort for the diamonds.”
“How many does it produce?”
“Couldn’t say, in truth. Some say fifteen thousand carats per year.” He pulled off his bowler and scrubbed the back of his head with quick, agitated strokes. She fought the reflexive urge to smooth those tufts back into place. To simply . . . touch. “Bloody amazing, isn’t it, Viv?”
“You’re impressed.” She watched him for signs of his customary disdain but found none.
“Why wouldn’t I be? Ingenuity and sweat and greed made this place.”
“Says the man who was born in a seven-hundred-year-old manor home.”
“Yes, and a man who’s never worked a day.” He smiled into the setting sun. “I know the extent of my sloth. But whereas my ancestors secured my birthright by toil and sweat, so do these men. Only now, we get to see it as it happens.”
Feeling buoyant and scattered, she couldn’t help a smile of her own. “As opposed to contending with the wastrels who will be born to it in generations to come.”
“Precisely. This is the moment of glory, not what comes after.”
This was unlike any sight or experience she’d ever thought to have. For the moment she simply soaked it in. Tomorrow would come the hard work of assessing the state of their financial foundation—firm, wobbling, or fatally pitted with mold.
She toed forward a step, then another, until only a body’s length separated her from a five-hundred-foot fall. Loops and swirls of roads cut by hundreds of wagon wheels decorated the bottom like hopelessly knotted strands of yarn. Men of all colors urged donkeys to pull the carts toward the circular edge, where some roads climbed up in a tedious spiral. When the spiral became too steep for progress, buckets topped by the wagon wheel pulleys waited to complete their strong work.
So many bodies. So many lives. The endlessness of that work slid over her like an airless blanket.
“Is it safe?”
“A side collapse is probably the danger that strikes me as most dreadful.”
“Side collapse? Is that what it sounds like?”
Miles nodded. “Just like. Money gets too tight to buy timber, or men get lazy. They don’t shore up the mines’ sides. Rocks knock loose. Too many and it’s an avalanche without the snow.”
To be pulverized beneath a falling wall of solid granite was worse than anything she could imagine. A ghostly shadow of that crushing pain pinched her ribs. She clawed at the bonnet ribbon tied beneath her chin, needing air.
Miles caught her under one arm and walked her away from the crater. His palm pressed flat between her shoulder blades. The innocent touch was so very different from the passionate kiss he’d demanded while standing atop the plateau bluff. Breathing deeply, she let herself accept the comfort he offered. Just for a moment.
She straightened her hair and huffed out the last of her flustered response. The tangy air smelled like the charge of a dry lightning strike. “All very impressive, but we don’t control the mining interests. Ours is a brokerage house.”
“Correct,” Miles said, arms crossed over his chest. He’d let her go. But when had he rolled up his sleeves? Shadowy hair dusted over cords of muscle and lean tendons. �
��Yet it all begins here. In order to understand the diamond trade, I’ve found that understanding its origins is very important.”
“Why?”
Her wayward husband’s dark eyes had taken on an unfamiliar cast. “Because this wound in the earth was made by digging out one bucket at a time. Countless hands. Years and years of toil. And for what?”
“All for diamonds.”
“This is no ordinary business, Viv. We must remember that.”
A sinister sort of comprehension came over her like a bad dream. Then, at the far side of the Hole, a whistle sounded—followed by another and another, all at different intervals.
“Quitting time,” he said. “Each company insists on keeping their own hours and sounding their own whistles.”
“Charming. And grown men stand at the helm of these companies?”
“They make me look mature.”
“Never say,” she said, but not without a slight smile.
Workers at the pulleys didn’t stop urging their animals into unending circles. One bucket at a time, they rescued their brethren from the planet’s bowels. Only when the last man had scrambled out of that daily hell did Viv shake free of her hypnosis.
She needed out of her corset, needed a bath and a yearlong sleep.
One batch of several thousand men was soon replaced by half as many, all of them carrying weapons instead of axes, shovels, and buckets.
“Guards,” Miles said as if to himself. “All those undiscovered diamonds. Such a charming place Old Man Christie picked for us, isn’t it, Vivie?”
Mention of her father’s challenge returned her thoughts to her siblings. How were Alex, Gwen, and Gareth faring in their distant destinations? All had been assigned such differing tasks, in places as far away and unfamiliar as Kimberley. Mail could be months in coming to Cape Town, then weeks again before reaching her eager mind and lonely heart. Her family, all so inaccessible.