Yesterday's Promise

by Linda Lee Chaikin

  Derwent laughed, and Mornay looked at Rogan. “I can bring you to the Zambezi. How much will you pay for my services, monsieur?”

  “Name your price,” Rogan stated boldly, confident, hiding his immense satisfaction that what he had come looking for was almost his.

  “Fifty thousand pounds. Up front. It is, as you say, a very dangerous trek.” Mornay drew on his cheroot calmly, watching him, a sparkle dancing in his black eyes.

  Rogan emptied his glass of warm beer, looking down at him over the rim. Is he out of his mind? Fifty thousand pounds! Up front? The arrogant goat!

  Rogan tried to look calm. He knew he could not get money from Julien without forming the partnership Julien wanted. And the last thing he would do was play into his uncle’s greedy hand. Not that Rogan was without funds. As an inheritor, he had plenty of shares in the diamond mines at Kimberly, but access before his thirtieth birthday was another matter. Again, Julien held the purse strings, and he held them tightly. Parnell faced the same predicament regarding his inheritance. Rogan would one day have Rookswood, his father’s estate at Grimston Way. But that awaited the time of Sir Lyle’s passing, and Rogan wished not to dwell on it.

  Except for his yearly allotment—of which he had already spent a good portion on a loan for Evy’s schooling and her music school—he hadn’t anything even close to fifty thousand pounds. Yes, he could understand Henry better now, and how he must have felt returning to England after being foiled by his stepbrother from finishing his expedition.

  Rogan was angry that this imperious old bushman would want to lay down such an impediment.

  Well, he’d call his bluff straightaway. Rogan set the glass down firmly on the table, looked Giles squarely in the eyes, and said, “No guide is worth that much. Not even your father, Bertrand Mornay.”

  Mornay’s eyes widened slightly, and he removed the cheroot from his mouth.

  Rogan sensed Derwent moving uneasily in his chair, as though he guessed Rogan’s temper was igniting like a dry grass fire.

  Derwent stood quickly, catching up his floppy hat and jamming it on his head.

  “Say, you’ll surely need to sleep on this, Mr. Rogan. Like you said when we were boys, most decisions can wait till morning.” He looked at Mornay, nodding his head as he did so. “Don’t you think so too, Mr. Mornay?”

  Mornay stood, not looking at Derwent but at Rogan. Mornay looked like a brown wolf with amused black eyes.

  “Then we can meet again in three days, Monsieur Rogan.”

  Rogan looked at him, feeling his jaw set like a rock.

  “Best we be getting back,” Derwent said again. “Alice will have that supper ready for us.”

  Mornay shouted to the Bantu in their dialect, and they came bringing the horses.

  Rogan leaned a hand against the porch post, looking hard at Mornay, trying to read him, then said, “Make it a thousand pounds, and we have an agreement. I’ll leave you to think it over. Au revoir.” He turned, went down the porch steps, and strode to the black. He mounted and wheeled the horse to ride out the gate, raising a small cloud of silty dust. Derwent was quickly in the saddle.

  Rogan cantered out of the yard, and when Derwent caught up a minute later, Rogan drew up under some trees by the path. He gazed back toward Mornay’s bungalow.

  “I don’t understand it,” Derwent said. “He wasn’t this way before. He didn’t charge a tenth of that much when he took Baron Frederick von Kessler on safari. Why, it was almost as if he was making it hard for you on purpose.”

  “He was.” Rogan’s voice was cold. “He’s been bought, Derwent.”

  “Bought?” Derwent looked at him, brows pinched in puzzlement.

  “I’ll wager he’s been bought by Julien. Parnell will tell me the truth this time. I’ll force it from him if I have to.”

  “Mr. Rogan, it’s been a mighty long day, and it’s been a disappointment, to be sure. You’re angry, and they’re all plotting against you, it seems. And this is no time to talk to your brother. I wish you’d come to the house first and sleep on all this. Mr. Parnell will be at the mine in the morning. He comes early. There’s little we can do now, and all our problems will still be there staring us in the face come daylight. And I heard Peter Bartley will be there tomorrow too. What do you say? Will you come over for supper?”

  Rogan knew he had to concede. Another meeting with Parnell in his present heated state would be detrimental to any plans he had for an expedition north to the Zambezi. He needed time to think about all that was happening and try to decide what Julien had in mind. He was hungry and in need of a good night’s rest. He looked toward Derwent and smiled suddenly.

  “You’re right. I’m starving.”

  Derwent laughed, and turning their mounts, they rode off side by side down the track back toward town.

  The first flush of sunset in the western sky was painting the polished rock of distant, brooding hills a rosy gold. Rogan saw a large flock of birds on their way to roost for the night, their colors faded to dark profiles sweeping across the veld. For a few quiet minutes the sunset slowly rinsed the grasses from a pale eggshell green to a colorless shadow, and the new light of a white moon inched above the hills. Somewhere a hyena laughed in the darkness.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Rogan rose early the next morning, saddled his horse, and rode out to the diamond mine. European, African, even American diggers were already there, clambering about the Big Hole under the watchful eyes of guards and overseers.

  Rogan stood on the edge of the giant hole, hands on hips, watching all the activity and thinking of all that had led up to this point. From childhood, the history of the first diamond discoveries was drilled into his thinking until he’d become bored with the familiar saga. Perhaps it was the reason Henry’s mysterious expeditions to find gold rather than more diamonds had caught his fancy as a young boy.

  Diamonds were first discovered in diggings close to the Vaal River in the Boer Republic of the Transvaal, then again, twenty miles away at Colesber, on a rocky flat-top hill the Dutch called a kopje. The kopje, which was “pudding-shaped,” later developed into what was now known as Kimberly. The kopje was now the “Big Hole.” Rogan had heard it said that it became the largest man-made hole in the world. After the diamond discoveries, the revenue of Cape Colony rose five years in a row as thousands of diggers from around the world came to Kimberly to muck the blue mud in search of wealth.

  This was the very region where Sir Julien and his partner Carl van Buren were said to have found the Kimberly Black Diamond, where Carl died in a mining accident, and where Julien lost an eye. Here, too, according to Henry’s diary, was where Sir George Chantry had found the diamond—was it true? Just who had found the Black Diamond?

  The debate between the Boers and the English over who owned the area where the diamonds were found had raged for some years until England managed to gain control. Finally, in 1872, Cape Colony was granted self-rule. What had Heyden said that night in Henry’s rooms? “By all rights the diamonds of De Beers Consolidated belong to the Boer Republics.”

  Heyden… Where was he? The Transvaal, still working in Paul Kruger’s government, no doubt, hating Britain and hoping for war. Rogan hadn’t thought too much about war recently, nor did he wish to waste time doing so. He heard a coach coming on the road. He turned, catching the wind in his face.

  The fancy gilt-edged coach was pulled by four fine horses. The driver looked English, and beside him rode another man, muscled and blond. A guard?

  Rogan narrowed his eyes suspiciously. The door of the coach opened. Parnell stepped out, followed by a young woman who must have been Darinda Bley. Next Sir Julien stepped out and stood, dark and forbidding, his strong features scorched a leathery brown by his hard life in South Africa. Except for the deepening white in his sideburns, he seemed not to have aged since Rogan last saw him. His black eyepatch added to his enigma, and Rogan could imagine the one good eye burning like blue fire. He was staring straight in Rogan’s direction
.

  Arcilla had said he wouldn’t arrive until next week. What happened? Julien had to have left Capetown soon after he did! Had Arcilla told Julien, after all?

  Rogan armed himself for confrontation.

  Surprisingly, it was Darinda who left Parnell and her grandfather and walked toward him, shoulders thrown back. She was young, perhaps Evy Varley’s age. Unlike Evy, Darinda was a brunette. She was tall and slender, and as she came near, he could see pearl-gray eyes that measured him boldly. Her neat skirt and white linen blouse with pleated bodice looked precise and businesslike. No frivolous Arcilla, this woman. Darinda looked capable of anything. Rogan wondered if she took after her grandfather.

  Darinda stopped in front of him, carrying her height well. She looked at him through narrowing eyes with black lashes, a coquettish smile on her full lips.

  “So this is Parnell’s younger brother.”

  Rogan smiled. “So this is Julien’s granddaughter. I hear you’re giving my poor brother a strenuous time.”

  Instead of becoming angry, she laughed. “You’re not like Parnell, are you? He’s afraid to contest me.”

  “Is that what you want, to be contested?”

  Her dark brow lifted, and she scanned him again. “Welcome to South Africa, Cousin Rogan.”

  “Welcome? I wonder…” He gestured his head toward Sir Julien. “Does he have his sjambok with him? Or is that two-hundred-pound guard the whip carrier?”

  “Oh, you mean Jorgen?” She glanced toward the big man who climbed down from beside the driver. “He does get carried away at times…and Grandfather always has a sjambok near at hand,” she stated with indifference.

  “Better tell him I’m no longer a boy.”

  “Anyone can tell that.” Her eyes met his evenly.

  Trouble. He looked away toward Parnell. His brother was glowering as he walked up, and Julien walked into De Beers Consolidated. There would be no confrontation yet.

  “I see you two have met,” Parnell clipped.

  “Unfortunately, just now,” Darinda quipped with innocence to her voice.

  Rogan knew the retort was anything but innocent, and he did not look at his brother. It was apparent that she had some of Julien’s cool determination running in her veins.

  “I’ve heard so much about you, Rogan. Not from Parnell, but from Grandfather.”

  “Then I imagine you carry a derringer in your handbag,” Rogan said smoothly.

  Again, she laughed. “Oh, I always carry a gun,” she quipped. “Any smart woman around here will. I keep telling Arcilla that, but she blanches each time she sees it.”

  “Arcilla is from London,” Parnell said, his voice crisp, and it wasn’t clear whether he was telling her she needed some of the polish of proper British ladies, or defending his sister.

  “She’ll learn,” Darinda said, then turned her attention back to Rogan. “Are you joining Grandfather on the expedition?”

  “No. I came with my own plans.” Yet he wondered if his plans were already being thwarted by his uncle. He thought of Mornay and the money he needed for securing him as his guide.

  “Grandfather needs you,” she said. “You simply must come on the pioneer trek north.”

  “I doubt if Julien needs anyone except you, Miss Darinda,” Rogan said quietly.

  She seemed to like that. “I wish Grandfather recognized that. For some reason he thinks he must have a male heir to run the family diamond business here in Kimberly. So he adopted Cousin Anthony. But Anthony is a Brewster through and through.”

  Rogan wondered what she deemed lacking in the Brewsters. It was Parnell who shed some light.

  “Anthony Brewster doesn’t like confrontation. Business partners walk all over him. He’d much prefer to go off on some safari, not to actually hunt, but merely to take photographs of big game.”

  “It’s Camilla, of course,” Darinda said. “Her mental illness has robbed him of courage.”

  “Bah, Lady Camilla is as sane as you or I,” Parnell countered. “She stays in her bedroom at Cape House because she doesn’t like your grandfather.”

  “Most people don’t like Grandfather,” she agreed soberly and looked at Rogan again.

  “Where’s Peter?” Rogan asked Parnell.

  Parnell showed unease. “At the house. Julien surprised us all, didn’t he, Darinda?”

  “Grandfather always surprises people. And I think he enjoys it. In fact, he wasn’t due here until next week, but something has changed his mind.” She looked at Rogan again. “I suspect it was your arrival. He showed up last night with Arcilla.”

  Then Arcilla must have told him of his arrival. Again, she had disappointed him. But had she mentioned Henry’s map?

  Darinda laughed. “Arcilla is still in bed. How on earth does Peter think she can survive the trek north?”

  “Better ask your grandfather,” Rogan said smoothly. “It is Julien who insists she go. As well she should. A wife’s place is beside her husband.”

  “I always thought so,” she said cheerfully and smiled at Parnell, but there was more taunt in her eyes than sincerity. “Parnell thinks the opposite, don’t you? He thinks a woman should remain safely in Capetown. I’m glad you don’t feel that way, Rogan. Parnell, you have so much to learn from your younger brother.”

  On guard, Rogan warned himself dryly. This woman means trouble. Worse yet, she is very attractive. For Parnell’s sake, I better stay far away.

  “I’ll get Grandfather,” she said suddenly and turned toward the De Beers building where Julien had gone. Either he was in no hurry to confront Rogan, or there was something important he wanted to check in the mining office. Whatever the reason, Rogan felt sure it would not be to his benefit.

  Parnell turned on him angrily when she was out of earshot.

  “Stay away from her, Rogan,” he warned grimly, his face flushed with frustration.

  “Look, you ruddy clod, I’ve no interest in Darinda Bley. Take it easy. All I want is to be about my own expedition, free of Julien and the BSA. Tell me the truth about Mornay.”

  “What?” Parnell now looked distracted, caught off guard. He calmed, straightening his cravat over a watered silk vest. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, slanting his eyes away.

  “Come off it, Parnell. Someone paid him to draw that map. I’ve a good reason to think he was also warned to not hire on as my guide. He asked for a king’s ransom to head up my expedition. It was deliberate.”

  Parnell shook his head, then glanced back over his shoulder toward De Beers. “I was told to hire him to do the map. That’s no secret. I already told you yesterday.”

  “By Julien, no less.”

  Parnell failed to reply, confirming his statement.

  “Derwent and I rode out to Mornay’s bungalow. He’d been warned I was coming. He demanded an unreasonable wage for his services. Derwent tells me Mornay just came back from a safari with a German baron. He didn’t charge the baron a tenth of what he demanded of me.”

  Parnell shrugged impatiently. “I don’t know about that. How could I have warned him? I didn’t know you were here until you walked into my office yesterday.”

  Rogan looked toward De Beers Consolidated Mining Company. “All right, Julien then. But how did he know?”

  Parnell smoothed his hair, which glistened like a polished chestnut beneath the bright sunlight.

  “You should know the answer to that question.” His voice was quiet. “Arcilla’s returned with him. You heard Darinda.”

  Rogan didn’t want to believe Arcilla would betray him like this.

  “She promised to say nothing until I got my expedition together.”

  “Look, Rogan, we know our sister. We know she means well, but she’s…she’s Arcilla. Doesn’t that answer it?”

  It did. But Rogan didn’t want to think of it. Arcilla truly wanted him on the BSA expedition north. She’d made that clear at Capetown. Had Julien caught her returning to the house and forced it out of her? Yes, that had to have be
en it. Arcilla would have been no match in a confrontation with Julien. He could be quite intimidating. She might admit the truth and then make an excuse for her failure in doing so. The worrisome thing was the map. Had she told Julien that he might be led to the gold by Henry’s map, which Rogan had found?

  “Julien’s coming now,” Parnell said. “Excuse me. I don’t want to be here for this. I’m going to my office to find Darinda.” He turned and walked briskly across De Beers Street to the three-story edifice.

  Rogan waited for his uncle by marriage as he walked toward him. For a moment Julien stood there measuring him. What Julien thought could not be discerned from his stoic face. Yet Rogan could sense a controlled anger as his uncle stared at him with his one eye.

  “You’ve thrown aside the family’s wishes and indulged your restless nature, I see. I should have known a year in London with Anthony was too much to expect from your adventurous sort. Henry, that’s who you’re like. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Honoria—”

  “Don’t say it, Julien,” Rogan cut him off in a deadly quiet voice. “One word about my mother, and I’ll live up to your insults and flatten you.”

  Julien’s mouth slipped open. He glared at him. Then the dark eye glinted like the mysterious diamond itself. His lower lip pulled into a smile.

  “Yes, you would, all right. You’d enjoy it too, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Julien gave a snort of laughter. “I won’t give you that satisfaction, my boy. Come. We need to talk business.”

  He turned his back and strode toward the edge of the Big Hole, where countless workers continued their busy activity. The wind caused his jacket to flap like crows’ wings. No matter the weather, Julien always wore English black and fastidious white Irish linen shirts.

  Rogan watched him a moment, then followed him to the rim of the mine. He didn’t wait and took the initiative.

  “Was it you who warned Mornay not to work for me?”

  Julien took a gold case from his pocket and removed a slim Turkish cigarette. He lit it, cupping his hands against the wind.