by Carrie Lofty
Viv blinked. “And how was that managed on such short notice?”
“By paying his manservant incredibly well.” He paused, his smile faltering. “How is Chloe?”
“Much improved. She’ll be up and about tomorrow, I assure you.”
“Good.” Viv caught a glimmer of something unsaid on the man’s deceptively youthful face, but it disappeared too quickly. He was nearly as agile of mind as his master. “Lord Bancroft left a note asking that you meet him at the Ford. Shall I have Jamie hitch the carriage for you, my lady?”
“Yes, please.”
Twenty minutes later she accepted Adam’s hand up into the carriage. Just before young Jamie set off, she couldn’t help her curiosity. “Adam? His Lordship walked to the hotel, didn’t he?”
“Yes, my lady, he did.”
Inside the lobby of the Ford Inn, businessmen sat on fat leather chairs, their heads permanently crooked into the folds of their newspapers. Trails of cigar and pipe smoke lifted toward the ceiling as if from small campfires. Viv paid them only cursory notice. Her attention was immediately snared by Miles.
He leaned against the concierge’s desk, his posture comfortingly familiar in its negligence. As were his garments. Good gracious, they were in civilization now—or what passed for it this far out on the Karoo. He wore the world’s best clothing with silent disdain, much like his title. Although the midnight blue wool suit was classically handsome, he ruined its impeccable cut by leaving the coat unbuttoned. His sloppily tied ascot meant he had attempted the task of dressing without Adam’s help, but the bright white silk accentuated the vibrant caramel color of his tanned skin.
The heathen of their inland journey had been scrubbed clean but not tamed. Any of his peers in London would have been startled, even appalled by his appearance. And yet his grace, his manners, his aristocratic lineage were evident in every polished movement.
Viv couldn’t look away.
Inhaling, she waited until her breath bunched like cotton stuffing in her chest. Memories of how he’d kissed her neck—and how he’d claimed her mouth by the way station—flooded over her in a rush of hot, sticky sensation. She found herself touching the side of her throat, hoping in vain to rekindle that fire. But her kid leather gloves felt nothing like his warm, firm, assured lips.
She didn’t need this. She certainly didn’t want it.
Just another challenge to overcome.
With a refinement borne not of blood but of dedicated years of practice, she crossed the lobby as if meandering through Buckingham Palace. Facing her future in-laws for the first time had been a cause for nerves, as had making polite excuses for Miles’ss failings.
Or languishing in a French prison while her mother awaited the day of her execution.
This was nothing.
Miles noticed her approach. She expected him to straighten and hold his tall, firm body over hers in that harassing manner of his. But he merely bowed. “Good morning, my lady.” Then he addressed his shorter companion. “If that will be all, Constable Mansfield?”
“Yes, thank you for your assistance, my lord.”
“Good. Lady Bancroft and I have business to attend.” He offered his elbow. “Shall we?”
They left the hotel and strolled together along the raised plank sidewalk. Only then did he lean near enough to whisper. “I had to get you out of there.”
“Why? Something dangerous?”
“Oh, yes, Vivie. Me.” His breath warmed her cheek. “You look incredible. I was having crude ideas about hotel room trysts. Best we stay out in the fresh air.”
Then he winked. There in the street in the middle of the day, he had the temerity to look her discomfort in the eye . . . and wink.
Flattered and aghast, both, Viv could only stare at his chiseled profile as they walked. No hat today, which added to his roguish air. His thick hair was due for a cut. Coffee-brown locks streaked with gold curled at the base of his neck and rested along the upper edge of his starched collar. Viv curled her fingers into a fist, fighting the urge to dive down to his scalp and tug. Hard. To kiss him. To revel in the light bronze stubble along his chin and proud jaw.
He was doing this on purpose, as always—mingling propriety with secret overtures.
But for all of his skill at cards, he did not have the patience for tact. His plan was simple enough to read: get her to give in and beg for an end to the thirty-day reprieve. But Viv had plans of her own. Next time Miles threatened her with kisses, she’d kiss him right back. She would make his thirty days as much torture as possible before handing over control.
At least the ill-fitting saintliness the servants had tried to bestow no longer squared. He was the same man, no matter how many trips he took by foot. Her sense of triumph at having been proven right was brought low by an unexpected whisper of disappointment.
“No rejoinder, my dear? I keep baiting you in the hopes of catching something. Perhaps a tasty bit of vitriolic wit?”
“Fresh out of vitriol.”
“You can’t give me the silent treatment forever.”
“I can if you insist on taunts instead of civilized conversation.”
He grinned. “Fresh out of civilized.”
Viv looked him up and down, affecting her least impressed expression of disdain. “So I see.”
Maybe she’d been naïve in entering their marriage with hopes of companionship and mutual respect. She coped as she always had, focusing on what she possessed rather than what she lacked. Her belly was full, her gorgeous gown was new, and Miles had given her a thirty-day reprieve. By then she might be better able to stomach giving him what he demanded—without losing another piece of her foolish heart.
Kimberley was busy in the throes of midday, bleached beneath the sun and swarmed over with the bustle of business. In this part of the city, where shops and patrons did their best to re-create fine metropolitan living, only the distant, dull, metallic thud of a thousand pickaxes hinted that they weren’t strolling through London.
That reminder of the challenges they faced returned her balance. Miles would continue his games, but that was the cost of his partnership. She could endure anything for twenty months, especially if it guaranteed security for the rest of her life.
She cleared her throat. “The house and the staff are all lovely. I’m impressed.”
“Mr. Nolan had a significant hand in the arrangements, I must admit.”
“I’d forgotten his efficiency.”
“He likes revealing himself that way on occasion, but it always winds up to his advantage. Deuced frustrating.”
“I’m glad he agreed to accompany you.”
They came to a stop in front of a modest storefront when he finally looked at her. “Viv, are we on good terms?”
She hesitated. Trust was out of the question, but could she believe that he wouldn’t abuse this tentative closeness? She smiled as pleasingly as she knew how. “What terms?”
“Oh, you’re determined to remain so very polished. There’s little I can do to alter that until we’re alone.” He looked up at the painted sign hanging above the store’s front door. “And although this bears the Christie name, it’s hardly private enough to call home.”
Viv followed the line of his gaze. The sign read Christie Diamond Brokerage House.
A feeling like the tingle of static on a bright winter’s day joined hands with her curiosity. No matter her low birth, she was a Christie. This was her burden. Her right. Her unparalleled opportunity.
Miles opened the door to the brokerage and motioned for Viv to join him. They stood together in a vestibule bounded by two doors—to the street outside, which he closed firmly, and to the inner sanctum of the business. With the city noises muffled behind wood and glass, she and Miles shared the sudden, close quiet of that little entryway. Metal bars crisscrossed the second door like a prison cell.
She shivered. Diamonds. They were a curse of suspicion and fear that no one discussed.
“Can we say that our term
s are . . . good enough?” she asked.
“No, because they’re not. But I need you to trust me. At least in business.”
His seriousness, so unaccustomed, made her take notice. A knee-jerk urge to object was tempered only by his gravity. Had he been jesting or, God help her, winking once again, there would’ve been no end to her protests. But this felt alien and threatening. Those metal bars told Viv that, more than the success or failure of her contract, cooperation could mean their literal survival.
“Tell me more?”
“Nothing yet, I’m afraid,” he said. “This place is going to take a few more weeks to discern. There are new players in town—men I haven’t yet met. We need to know where we stand before we proceed.”
“You can talk to them, yes? At the Kimberley Club?”
“Yes, I plan to. But I need you to do your part as well. For example, I cannot take tea with the other rich matrons and wives. They might be more . . . forthcoming if they’ve heard anything about business matters.”
“Hardly,” Viv said, smiling. “I suspect that a woman entrusted with a business secret would clasp it all the more tightly for fear she wouldn’t receive another.”
Miles took her hand and gave it a squeeze. Such a restrained measure. Viv couldn’t decipher its meaning. Agreement? Amusement? His face held no clues. The lips that had touched her throat with such delicate, demanding intimacy tightened into a stern line.
“Can we agree, then, to share our responsibilities?”
“Divide and conquer.” She was breathless now, unaccountably excited.
“Exactly.”
That excitement reflected back at her. A fierce gleam flashed in his eyes, matching his wild, captivating manner of dress. An untamed aristocrat, just as he’d always been, but this time fueled by undeniable purpose—a purpose she shared.
“Then . . . yes. In this we are in agreement.”
“Good.” He pulled a pair of keys out of his inside breast pocket. “Now, Lady Bancroft, would you like to become better acquainted with your business?”
Nine
Miles unlocked the vestibule door and entered ahead of Viv. The scents of ink and inexpensive cologne were made more pungent by the sun streaming through west-facing windows. But wrought-iron bars stood at attention behind each pane of glass, casting tic-tac-toe boards across the simple plank wood floor. It seemed as much innocuous office as cozy prison.
The lead appraiser stood from his neat rolltop desk and approached. He wore the demeanor of a whipped dog. Miles suspected it came from endless days stooped over a counting table with a glass pressed to his eye, but also from having to tell men that their diamonds contained minute, value-leeching flaws. He was a man entirely on the defensive.
“Lord Bancroft, you are returned to us at last,” he said, his vowels nasal and his consonants clipped. “I heard tell your journey was an eventful one.”
“That it was. And I’m learning anew that Kimberley permits few secrets.” Miles pulled Viv forward with a hand to her lower back. “May I present my wife, Lady Bancroft.”
She smiled graciously. “How do you do?”
“Ah, Christie’s daughter. Here in Kimberley! I am honored, my lady.”
Miles looked on while the man offered a stilted bow. “My dear, this is the head of our appraisal team, Pieter Smets of Antwerp.”
“The diamond capital. Excellent. And you’ll be so good as to show us the ropes, Mr. Smets?”
The Belgian’s silver hair was closely cropped, which accentuated his overlarge ears—ears that waggled distractingly as he spoke. “Right this way, my lady.”
Smets led them past two of his hulking countrymen who played cards on a small round table. Shotguns were propped against their chairs. Heavy pipe smoke lingered around their heads like malformed halos. Viv’s eyes had gone wide, her neck craning as she walked.
“More security,” Miles said under his breath.
“Good Lord. It’s a wonder anyone awakens in the morning. So many precautions against theft.”
“My question is what size their salary must be to keep them from turning into armed thieves themselves.”
“Every decision will reflect back to our profit,” Viv said. “We’ll need to examine every practice and expense we’ve inherited.”
Miles had long suspected that part of her success in London was because of her father’s cunning. Climbing the ladder of social acceptance was very much like acquiring financial capital and applying it with the right combination of tact, daring, and forethought. But to hear proof of her quick mind shot a fantastic jolt up his spine. More truths about the wife he barely knew—the truths she hid beneath a crown of radiant sunshine hair and a docile smile.
With a great deal of reluctance, he pulled his attention away from thoughts of green and gold and sweet cream skin.
The building was shallower than it appeared from the street. Smets’s sleeping quarters were on the floor above, as were years’ worth of business records, but Miles had never ventured upstairs. Putting off the nitty-gritty of doing actual trade—the mere thought of the word “trade” would have sent his aristocratic forebears into conniption-fits—had been convenient enough while awaiting Viv’s arrival. Other than an introductory visit to the office some months previous, he’d happily put off the inevitable.
While wielding a whip and staring across the vast empire of workers, his ability to imagine success bordered on gifted. But he was a child in these mundane matters of business. By contrast, Viv had been raised with one of the century’s great masters in the art of spinning gold out of straw. The Christies had maneuvered into the highest strata. Why not in Kimberley too?
Smets led them to a room the approximate size of a coach’s interior. Little space for splayed elbows and no windows, but from each corner hung an electric lamp. An array of tiny drawers and cabinets lined one wall, all labeled with catalogue numbers. The remaining walls were painted white, which reflected light back toward a central table. Aside from jeweler’s tools and a ream of paper, it was entirely covered in diamonds.
“Here is the heart of our operation,” Smets said. “The sorting room.”
A beatific look smoothed Viv’s features. The electric light made white porcelain of her cheeks, lending an ethereal glow. Parted lips offered a sensual testimony to her wonderment—how Miles dreamed she would appear when anticipating his kiss.
“My God,” she whispered, cautiously stepping toward the table. “Are these . . . all . . . ?”
Smets smiled. “All are diamonds, my lady, if your question is that. Even the worst specimens carry more value than rock. Here we determine that value.”
She glanced at Miles, as if looking for confirmation of what she witnessed. He joined her on one side of the table. Two hundred stones, he guessed. Together in a heap on a swath of black fabric, they formed a priceless, miniature mountain. He wondered how tall and wide the pile of discarded slag would be, those inglorious rocks from which these beauties had been extracted. As tall as him? As tall as the ceiling? The manpower required to excavate such a mass of earth held him in more awe than the diamonds.
“These are not fresh stones, are they?” Viv asked.
Smets raised his brows, the motion of which, of course, tugged at his ears. “Correct, my lady. That’s right, exactly.”
“Fresh?” Miles asked.
“These stones have already been sorted once.” She picked one up, holding it to the lamp at her left. A splintered rainbow sluiced across her face. She flashed a smile toward Miles, as if sharing a secret.
God, he wanted to know what it was. What would open her to him, to prompt that smile again and again?
“The mines are always padding their deliveries with pretty bits of quartz,” Smets said. “We weigh the refuse and charge a fee.”
“For wasting your time?” Miles asked. “I do like that.”
“The task here is to sort the best gem-quality diamonds, called brilliants, and trade them to jewelers all over the world, whe
re the stones will be cut and set. On occasion, we find other gems: emeralds, rubies, lesser stones such as amethyst. The remainder are carbons.” Smets toed a bucket on the floor.
Miles and Viv peered inside. So close, he caught the scent of rosewater and talcum. Wanting only to bury his nose in the delicately arranged strands of her hair, he instead palmed a dozen stones and brought them into the light. All were odious, globular masses, mostly gray, some flaked through with the green of rotten bread.
“These are carbons?” Miles nudged one with his index finger. “How utterly uninspiring.”
“Like coal, they contain the same chemical and structural composition as diamonds,” said Smets. “Only these have not been compressed to the same degree.”
“But they must have some value,” Viv said.
Smets shrugged. “To some industrialists, perhaps. We have thousands of them downstairs. Some brokerages toss them out with the rocks.”
“Then why keep them? Or why not charge for them like you do the ordinary slag?”
“The mine owners argue that their negligible value should offset the time we devote to sorting them.” The appraiser’s scalp shone pale pink from beneath the silver bristles of his hair. “It always seemed a minor point, so we have not pushed. We’ve collected them mostly in deference to your father’s wishes, my lady. He never advocated disposing of anything that might yet prove worthwhile.”
“Yes, that was Sir William,” she said, her expression detached. “Hmm, no windows in here. Security again?”
“Yes, my lady. Security is—as you can well imagine—a priority. Until we match the product with buyers worldwide, they remain the property of the mines that deliver them here for appraisal. Each stone is counted and signed for.” Smets nodded to the room’s only door, which Miles noticed was made of a solid iron. “That door locks, and the walls are reinforced with sheets of metal. The most valuable stones are stored here, while awaiting shipment.” He gestured to the wall of small compartments.