Flawless

by Carrie Lofty

  But starting completely anew was one of her specialties. Entering a French prison with her mother and leaving it an orphan, only to be adopted by William Christie. Or marrying Miles and undertaking the colossal task of winning over London. Those had been changes. This was merely a matter of reading and applying new knowledge. Insects and plants and little antelopes would soon have proper names, and she might even be able to think of the manor as her home.

  Playing house. With Miles.

  No, she was simply resuming her love of gardening. To forget him, if anything.

  But how could she? Right at that moment, he was at the mysterious Kimberley Club, doing God-knew-what in the name of business. Likely, he did what he wanted in the name of his own pleasure.

  She hoped that wasn’t true. He had been the one to suggest a divide-and-conquer strategy, which was perfectly viable in practice. Only, it meant trusting him. He had never been reliable, unless it came to disappointing her quiet hopes. With the town’s most powerful entrepreneurs cloistered in a men’s club, her ability to conduct financial affairs on an equal footing would be radically curtailed. On the docks and at that marauded way station, she’d needed Miles because he was a man. He could protect himself with wit and words and, if necessary, with his fists and a whip. Now even backroom negotiations fell within his domain. Part of her had been unwilling to believe the extent of her dependence.

  Frustrated, she tugged off her gloves and knelt in the center of the twenty-by-twenty-foot patch of ground. The modest plot of land was bordered by a whitewashed wooden fence. There, beneath the gleaming white manor’s grandeur and high, sloped roof, she would have shady cover in the morning. That would mean ample time to work before the sun became too strong overhead. By midday, any plants she cultivated would thrive in full brightness. A perfect arrangement.

  The previous owners apparently hadn’t thought so. They had given up on any attempt at maintaining order. Weeds and tangled vines covered her to the waist, and she couldn’t tell the cultivated plants from the wild ones. The odd bloom, so rare now with autumn’s early push, seemed a useless achievement. But that was how to proceed. A little at a time. Small victories.

  Oh, how she had missed tending her plants, nurturing the floundering ones to health and bringing the healthy ones to full splendor. Turning this patch of land into a garden was within her purview, unlike the challenges of the business, which would demand all of her concentration with no promise of results. Diamond prices were slipping. Everyone knew it. No matter how many times she had looked at the books over the past few days, she reached the same conclusion: the brokerage was failing.

  And Viv had no idea how to stay solvent. That they could fail after investing an eventual two years of hard work was enough to squeeze her heart in a vise.

  Perched just east of town on a slight rise, the two-story manor house overlooked the whole of Kimberley. Neighbors along that same rise were all mine owners, brokers, and bankers, having scouted and claimed the grandest views. Only if she held very still could she detect the constant rattling drone of metal chipping away at rock. It was always there, ceaseless, but less intimidating from such a distance.

  At least she was standing in a derelict garden, not dragging rocks out of the ground with her bare hands.

  I will not fail.

  Although the light was fading, she scrubbed her fingers into the soil. Cool. Sandy on top. A hint of water lurked just beneath the surface—the last vestiges of the summer rainy season.

  A noise caught her attention. She stood upright, hands behind her back as if caught without gloves by her strict governess. “Who’s there?”

  “Mr. Kato, my lady.” He stepped away from the shadows at the base of the manor and into the purpled light. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Forgive me.”

  His skin was so impossibly dark. The bright whites of his eyes glittered. Something about his features or his expression combined to offer the impression of mirth. He was on the verge of chuckling, and Viv felt the oddest impulse to be offended. By an African.

  “I’ll forgive you, but only if you tell me why you did not announce your presence.”

  “Because you are an English lady touching the earth. You took me by surprise.”

  “As you did me.” She brought her dusty hands forward. Dark crescents of dirt lined her nail beds. “Do few English women you know—how did you put it? Touch the earth?”

  “None that I have ever seen.”

  “Are you Zulu?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice impossibly deep. “Half, at least. My father was a Dutch farmer. I took a name from my mother’s people.”

  Another bastard. Like me. Although she would never admit to such a connection, she felt one instantly with this man so unlike any human with whom she’d ever spoken. Much of her experience with him had been of an impersonal nature. He was dutiful and silent, like a painting in the background. Now she was seeing him as if for the first time. That had been happening quite frequently in the Cape. Miles had opened her eyes to more than just his true nature.

  “How do you know English so well?”

  “If a Dutch father is never a part of his son’s life, that son has one of two choices. Love all things Dutch—the mystery of a missing parent. Or rebel against it.” He grinned then, almost laughing at himself. “I chose the latter. Working in Cape Town for a few years helped as well. Lots of English there.”

  “But the lure of diamonds . . . ?”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe just the lure of something different.” He nodded toward her. “I think you know that feeling. His Lordship, too.”

  “I wouldn’t say that at all. I miss my home.”

  Mr. Kato approached the whitewashed fence and leaned against the gate. Perhaps decorum kept him there, which set him apart from Miles. Then again, Miles had clout and influence to spare. He could burn down the Houses of Parliament and come out of the escapade unscathed. This man, this half-Zulu man who bore whip marks on his back, had no such authority to squander. Like Viv, respectability might be all he had.

  “Many people here miss their homes,” he said.

  “I can imagine. So far away from England and the Netherlands.”

  Mr. Kato smiled. “And KwaNongma and KwaZulu. Some from even farther away.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know those places.”

  “Much to the east. People from many tribes were lured here, just like the working men from your countries. A better life.” He shrugged, remarkably calm when discussing the sweep of fate across so many varied cultures. “I came to dig for the stones, but soon I was not allowed to lease the land. Then I was an overseer. But soon that was not allowed either. Cape Town seemed better for a time. I wandered. Now that I have returned, I know I will wander again. For now, this is home. That’s all home can be.”

  His quiet words invited a new melancholy into her heart. Viv breathed more gently for the first time in days. She had time. And in the spring, she would transform this small corner of Kimberley into her own paradise. As with all things, hard work would make it happen. Her father had taught her that, but Catrin, her stepmother, had been the one to show her the enjoyment of one’s endeavors. She had never believed in work simply for its own sake, or for the sake of material gain. If one chose to support an opera company, one attended the premiere. If one chose to plant a garden, one was afforded the privilege of basking in the bright, sweet blossoms.

  Perhaps in all the clamor of arriving in Cape Colony, Viv had lost sight of that simplicity. Yes, she would work hard, and the goal remained a long way off, but there would be little rewards along the way. She knew it.

  “Do you know anything about plants, Mr. Kato? Or the insects that thrive here?”

  “Some, my lady.”

  “Please,” she said, opening the gate. “I should like any place to start.”

  After a silent assessment, he nodded once and joined her in the garden. The spot where she had knelt was nearly the only patch of open soil in the entire enclosure.
“These are weeds,” he said. “See their sharp leaves? You can tell by the smell like pepper, but I do not know its real name.”

  Viv looked around and found most of the garden infested with the prickly invaders. She would need gloves after all.

  “But this.” Mr. Kato knelt next to an inauspicious shrub about one yard high. The plain white shirt he wore stretched across his wide back and seemed to glow in the orange and blue twilight. “This is a sugarbush. Protea, really.”

  “It doesn’t look like much.” The leather leaves were dull green. Nearly black bark covered its stumpy trunk and spindly branches. “Does it bloom?”

  “Not this one. Well, not yet. It needs years to firm its roots before it can be beautiful. And some grow tall as acacias before they open their first flowers.” He looked up at her from where he knelt. “We cannot rush these things. But then the spring comes and the colors come. It will be worth it, my lady. In time.”

  Her decision made, she said, “Mr. Kato, I understand that my husband hired you for matters of business.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Would you consider extending your duties to helping me here?” She knitted her hands together. The new soil did not feel so unfamiliar now. She would adapt and firm up her roots, too. But Mr. Kato only frowned. “Unless, of course, you think the work menial or meant for a woman. I wouldn’t want to insult you.”

  Somewhere during their conversation, she had stopped thinking of him as an African or even, more specifically, as a Zulu. He was a man, just like any other. And most men had inordinate supplies of pride. She knew even less about his mother’s culture than she did about the plants surrounding her ankles. Viv frowned slightly. The last thing she wanted to do was demean him so soon after just having made a tenuous connection.

  “I would be happy to,” he said at last.

  “Then why the hesitation?”

  “Because once again you have done something I have yet to see another Englishwoman do.”

  Rather than correct his assumption that she was, in fact, from England, Viv concentrated on the mystery of her behavior. “And that is?”

  “Talk to me without fear in your voice.”

  Viv exhaled with a tremulous smile. “Perhaps that is because I have known fear, Mr. Kato. And you look nothing like it.”

  He grinned at that, stood, and shook the dirt from his plain homespun trousers. “Miss Louise made pie.”

  Wearing a smile she hadn’t expected, Viv followed the large African up the back porch stairs and into the manor. Sure enough, Louise had made three berry pies. She sat with Mr. Kato, Chloe, and the other servants and ate as she had always wanted to as a child—until her stomach was full and content.

  Eleven

  Miles knew what it was to enter the most exclusive establishments in London, Paris, and New York.

  He had grown up among people who knew how to take luxury for granted. Pampered people in pampered lives, teaching him how to squander without thought. People for whom deprivation meant missing a Season or foregoing a fourth hunting trip to a distant cousin’s Lake District grounds. If money ever became an issue, there were always eligible sons and daughters to be matched with bourgeoisie looking to step up a rung or six on Society’s ladder. His marriage to Viv had been just such an arrangement, designed to keep his father’s earldom solvent.

  Thus it meant little to climb the wraparound verandah of the Kimberley Club, where men in fine silks and this year’s suits sat in small groups around tables inlaid with precious stones. Mild lantern light burnished faces hanging with heavy jowls, affecting suntans that the wealthy tried desperately to avoid. Pipes, newspapers, and tumblers of liquor were abundant, as if they came standard with admission.

  Here, unlike the best salons in Mayfair, the only measure of exclusivity was money. Those who could afford to become members were permitted entrance. The diamond aristocracy.

  Strolling toward the entrance, Miles inhaled the pungent mix of burning tobacco and hair tonic, newspaper ink and rich leather. He missed some of the finery, but not the shiftless hours lost to gambling and half-remembered nights. Since his arrival, he had become too focused on Africa, the business, and Vivie. He would have been with her at that moment, in her bed—bloody hell, inside her—had that been an option. Instead he would play his part. But he did so now with purpose.

  A drink would’ve been nice, though. And a cigar. But she trusted him so little.

  He would honor his promise.

  “Excuse me, sir, but this club is for members only,” said an officious little man. Slightly built and not even as tall as Viv, his fat sideburns sat like caterpillars on his cheeks.

  Miles added an extra dollop of Eton to his words as he said, “You must be new.”

  The caterpillars twitched around a contemptuous sneer. “I’m Morton Crane, personal assistant to Mr. Neil Elden.”

  “Ah, just the man you’re going to introduce me to.”

  Crane sneered as he took in the lax state of Miles’s suit. “If I might have your name, sir?”

  No matter his dislike for the more tedious and restrictive aspects of the nobility, Miles very much enjoyed being able to reveal his title to men such as Crane. The ultimate trump card.

  “My name is Miles Warren Durham, 9th Viscount Bancroft. As for character references, you might consult my father, the Earl of Bettenford. And when he tells you that I’m a sorry, ridiculous sod unfit for human company, then perhaps my wife’s position at the head of the Christie Diamond Brokerage House will suffice. Now send for Mr. Elden so that he might apologize on your behalf.”

  He tipped his silk top hat and brushed past, leaving Crane and his caterpillars in a fit of apoplexy.

  A starched attendant escorted him to a vacant booth. Its dark supple leather embraced Miles and whisked away some of the tension he’d been hoarding. While secluded, the booth’s location allowed every opportunity to see who came and went. He grinned to himself, then waived away a waiter who offered to bring him a drink.

  Other club members eyed him with that familiar combination of curiosity and decorum. The revelation of his purpose and background would be welcomed but never actively sought. After private inquiries, those same men would smile upon their next encounter. The high-class subterfuge made him spitting mad, in part because he was an active participant in the same stultifying rules, the same trite dance.

  He drummed his fingers across the polished tabletop, its wood gleaming with a pale yellow cast. God, he’d known his boredom was slipping dangerously close to complete insensibility, but these past few days made a mockery of all he thought he knew. What he’d already experienced in Cape Colony shone a glaring electric light on the tried-and-true ways of merry old England, revealing ever-widening cracks and scurrying cockroaches. Any endeavor to re-create those same ways here, in a pockmarked wasteland, seemed even more ridiculous—here, where men changed their destinies by unearthing diamonds the size of strawberries.

  Maybe that was the appeal, knowing fate was not set in Kimberley. Fate for him, most recent in a procession of spendthrift viscounts and monstrous earls, had been set since birth. For a second time Miles could claim the opportunity to make himself and his future into something unexpected. Viv had been his first revelation. She’d shown him that life was none so predictable.

  A fair-haired man wearing immaculate evening dress approached Miles’ss table, his gait and posture assured. Built more like a plowman than a banker, he maintained an expression poised in a place of neutral friendliness. He greeted other club members with casual nods but didn’t slow. Youth and rough good looks were to his credit, but new money was new money. White, straight teeth and hair tonic would never disguise that fact.

  “You must be Lord Bancroft,” he said, extending his hand when he reached the booth. “I’m Neil Elden, your servant.”

  Miles stood and bowed, leaving Elden’s hand hovering uselessly in midair. The man must have recognized the extent of Miles’s displeasure because he adjusted his
ascot and offered a conciliatory smile.

  “I’m on the Board of Directors here at the Kimberley Club,” Elden said, “and I make a point of personally welcoming our distinguished members. Forgive me, but I’ve been away in Cape Town on colonial business.”

  Usually one for glib replies, Miles took a rare cue from his father and checked the urge to fill the silence that followed. The Earl of Bettenford would’ve swallowed his own tongue—or the tongue of a three-days-dead hound dog, for that matter—before making social interactions more comfortable for commoners. One only had to look to Viv and Miles’s wedding as an example: the aged earl, nearly bankrupt but flush with aristocratic pride, had refused to drink when Old Man Christie lifted his glass. What an auspicious start that had been.

  If Miles were to maintain the appropriate impression of wealth and entitlement, he needed to cultivate that same callousness.

  “Please forgive Crane,” Elden continued. “He protects this place with a zealotry that deserves its own place of worship. We knew you’d arrived in town, of course—this community is too small for privacy. But, well, appearances can be deceiving.”

  “Indeed.” Miles offered a wide, impervious grin. “Then let’s start again, shall we?”

  Elden slid into his seat with no show of relief; he’d expected to be forgiven.

  “And your wife is the new manager of Christie Brokerage, is she not?” He signaled the bartender, then pulled a cigar case from his breast pocket. Miles declined his offer. “The rumor mill here churns out as many tall tales as the mines produce diamonds.”

  “Yes, she’s been afforded management of the Christie.”

  “As that I own a controlling stake in the Lion’s Head Mine, I am one of your most loyal suppliers. I should like to be apprised of any significant changes to the business model.”