TOMORROW’S TREASURE
PUBLISHED BY WATERBROOK PRESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.
The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56460-3
Copyright © 2003 by Linda Lee Chaikin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.
WATERBROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chaikin, L. L., 1943–
Tomorrow’s treasure / Linda Chaikin.
p. cm.
1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Social classes—Fiction. 3. Jewelry theft—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.H2427 T66 2003
813′.54—dc21
2002013845
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Part Two Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
About the Author
The righteous man wisely considereth
the house of the wicked.
PROVERBS 21:12
CHAPTER ONE
Summer 1879, Capetown, South Africa
The four white gems of the Southern Cross had just risen from behind Table Top Mountain toward the deep expanse of sky over Capetown Bay. Though the scene usually set her heart humming, Katherine van Buren barely noticed the beauty tonight. Nor could she focus on remembered summer nights on the velvety lawn … for anxiety tightened its grip upon her.
At the baby’s soft whimper Katie turned from the cloistered window of her upstairs bedroom in Cape House and went to the bassinet, gently lifting her three-week-old infant. She smiled down at her little girl, whom she had named Eve—now Evy—and sat holding her in the rocking chair.
“Poor baby, what shall become of us? But do not worry. Anthony will take us far from here. Yes, he will. Don’t cry, my Evy darlin’.”
Katie began to gently hum Brahms’s “Lullaby.” “Your eyes will be amber like mine. Your hair will be tawny gold. But your mouth will be like your father’s … a beautiful, sensuous mouth.” She hummed the lullaby again as she rocked.
The bedroom door opened. Katie looked up and gazed into the face of her guardian, Sir Julien Bley.
He stood tall and darkly forbidding. His complexion was scorched brown by years of trekking the land of South Africa. His one good light-blue eye burned. His jaw was strong, his sideburns tinged with white. He came in boldly and shut the door too quietly. Apprehension darted up Katie’s spine as she grew aware of the tension in the air—much as it was before a sizzling thunderstorm on the African veldt.
She licked her suddenly dry lips and counted the thuds of her heart in her eardrums.
“So, girl.” Julien’s voice was gruff, yet low-keyed, which only added to the devastation of his next words. “You insist on keeping the suckling infant though you are unwed.”
Katie raised her chin, refusing to let him see she was intimidated. She made a small rocking motion with her infant.
“We must make plans, Katie. I have allowed you to keep her longer than is wise. You must be strong and give her up. It is best for her, for you. Your father, if he were alive, would agree with me. He trusted me to care for you, my girl.”
She swallowed, and her arms tightened around her infant. She felt her cheeks turn scarlet at the memory of her godly father, Carl van Buren—memories she had continued to cherish since her arrival here twelve years ago to become Sir Julien’s ward. What would her father think of her now, in her situation? Would he be ashamed of her? Embarrassed by her?
No matter what, he would love her. Though she’d been only six when he had died, she’d known his love for her was deep. And though most of her life before her father’s death was but a hazy memory after so many years under her guardian’s rule, she still remembered him and the religious ways of her Afrikaner people, the Dutch. How shattered she had been, as a small child, upon learning of her father’s accidental death in the mine. The site at Kimberly was the first big diamond find he and Julien had made, and they had formed a partnership that went beyond business to a pact of friendship. After the explosion, her mortally injured father had pled with Julien to take his little Katie as his ward.
She stiffened now in her chair as Sir Julien walked up and spoke down at her. “Look at me, girl. Have you nothing to say for yourself? Must I force the infant’s removal? Can you not see it is best?”
Her anger began to boil. There had never been so much as a word of condemnation for his sons and nephews who fathered the children he so lightly sent away to distant places, never to be seen again. Not this time. She thought and clenched her teeth. Not with my sweet Evy. She drew her infant against her heart.
“Well, girl?”
At his gruff demand, she nodded. “Yes, I have something to say, sir! But ’tis more important to me that you hear what Anthony has to say.”
His tufted brow inched lower over his deep-set, pale eye. “You persist in laying the fatherhood of this child at his doorstep then?”
“He is the father, and no other, I vow ’tis true.”
“You cannot keep the child, Katie.”
Her chin lifted. “Anthony wishes to marry me, and I him. If he had not gone to London—”
“So you persist in deceiving yourself? You gaze too much in the mirror at your pert face and not enough at your books of learning.” He took a turn up and down the floor. “The blame for your misbegotten baby lies in your willfulness.”
She was not willful—She loved Anthony, had believed his promises—
“As for Anthony, I have spoken to him.”
Her hopes brightened. She looked up at him, her knees too weak to stand and face him with any dignity. Evy was beginning to make little crying sounds, and Katie tried to soothe her.
“Did I not tell you this baby is your blood relation?” She did her best to force a merry note to her voice. Surely Anthony would own his own daughter to his uncle? “She will grow up to make you proud.”
“Trying to wheedle me now, are you? It will do no good, my girl. I am doing this for your own fair future. As for my nephew … His marriage into aristocracy is important to the plans of South Africa, and to me. Such tales as laying this child upon my nephew would add to my burden and accomplish little go
od.”
She moaned. Then the unthinkable could be true—that Anthony’s marriage was already arranged to—what was her name? Her feverish brain would not let her think.
“Do you think it gives me happiness to see you mourning like this? Do you think I take fiendish pleasure in sending the child away? Nay! But it is your future too that is at stake. You are like my own daughter. Any marriage I make for you among the diamond families of Kimberly will not tolerate an illegitimate child by Anthony Brewster.”
“Tales?” She took little note of the rest of what he had said. She gazed up at him, her sweet baby cradled close, and while his brows were tufted and cross, there gleamed a small flicker of pity in his return gaze.
“Anthony has denied everything. That does not surprise me. He is grieved you would try to lay this errant birth upon him, yet he has asked I deal with you gently.”
“Of course he would deny it to your face. He fears you! But if you will accept Evy, Anthony will confess how much he loves me, how he wishes the three of us to be together always. Oh, Uncle Julien, can you not see how desperately I want to keep my daughter?”
“You have always been a willful girl bent upon trouble, my dear Katie, yet I have loved you. Part of this tragedy is my fault, I see that now. I should have arranged for you to be married sooner. You became a woman too quickly, and your will and good sense have not kept pace, I fear.”
She managed to stand, despite the trembling that seemed to have taken over her limbs. “He is Evy’s father, I tell you. Evy is a Brewster. Anthony told me he loved me, that he wished to marry me—”
Her voice cracked, and she sank back to the chair, bending her head toward her baby to avoid Julien’s gaze. He doesn’t believe me … He has no feelings for Evy … She’s just another baby—a girl at that—when he wants males to carry on his dynasty.
A sob came from her tight throat.
“Do not be foolish, Katie girl.” He spoke with gruff tenderness. “Even if I knew for a fact Anthony sired this infant, there can be no marriage between you and him. Nay, never.” He walked to the window and looked out. “The Montieth family in London is important to South Africa, to forming a new state. Maybe Cecil Rhodes will call it Rhodesia.”
Katie did not know what he meant, nor did she care at the moment. “South Africa? It is my child I care about.”
Julien turned and looked at the tiny bundle in the pink cover. Then his square jaw set, the muscles twitching. “It’s not a matter of kith ’n kin that’s on my mind right now. It’s that his Lordship Montieth and his daughter, Lady Camilla, will arrive from London, perhaps very soon. Anthony must marry Camilla. I cannot chance having this errant child waiting in the wings.”
Katie looked up, brushing the tear streaks from her cheeks. Who were Lord Montieth and Lady Camilla? And what had they to do with her heartache?
Julien’s face was wiped smooth of any emotion, and his brittle expression refused her any sympathy.
“Anthony will become engaged to Lady Camilla when she arrives here at Cape House. You are going to Europe for a year, and the baby will be adopted out to a loving family. I shall make sure of that much for you.”
Katie’s shoulders straightened, then sagged.
“In a fortnight”—Sir Julien’s level voice brooked no resistance—“Anthony will place a diamond ring on Lady Camilla’s finger.”
This pronouncement had the effect of thunder clapping violently over the roof of Cape House. Katie’s dry lips parted. She could merely stare at her guardian.
He frowned. “The marriage has been planned since Lady Camilla was twelve and Anthony thirteen. They knew one another while he took his schooling in London. Many a holiday he has spent at Montieth Hall. That he told you none of this does not surprise me.” He paced. “But you should have known, Katie, that marriages must be arranged for the betterment of all—yours as well.”
Unable to hold back her surging rage, she screamed, “No! No! Anthony loves me! I will not listen to these lies!”
The startled baby wailed, and Katie embraced her, tears rushing to her eyes. “Hush, hush, sweeting, you’ll have your papa, you’ll see.”
“Stop that, Katie! I must do what is best for everyone concerned.” At her mutinous stare, Sir Julien continued gravely. “With your future at stake we cannot allow a child born out of wedlock to cast shadows on all our paths. You must give the child up. A journey to Europe will give you the maturity to see what is best. At the appropriate time, your marriage will be arranged. Your inheritance in diamonds will insure that some decent son of a government official will look the other way when gossip of a child makes its way into English social circles.”
Katie wept into the baby’s soft, pink cover. Her stomach ached and her pulse throbbed in her temples. She inhaled Evy’s sweet fragrance. I’ll never give you up.
Sir Julien turned away, shoulders oddly stooped, and walked toward the door and opened it. “I’m sorry, Katie girl, this pains me too. But I have no choice.”
As the door opened, Katie saw Inga waiting in the hall. The sturdy Dutch woman held her hands hidden beneath her apron. Her faded gold-gray hair was braided and, as it had been since Katie was a child, coiled around her head like a wreath. Her once-round face and apple cheeks were now sagging and soft, and her small mouth drooped sadly.
“Inga, come in here. Do what you can to comfort Katie.”
The old nanny entered the bedroom, bobbed a clearly uncertain curtsy in Sir Julien’s direction, and then hurried toward Katie to take the baby from her arms. “There, there, Miss Katie, do not cry so, or you’ll be upsetting the baby’s milk. Shall I be seeing to her needs now, miss?”
The nurse’s low voice—the same voice that had soothed so many of Katie’s childhood fears—now filled her with fear. She held onto her baby tightly. What if Inga took Evy away? What if, once Katie relinquished her tiny daughter, Evy would be whisked away to some ship sailing for England or Scotland?
No, she would not let her go.
“I won’t give up my baby!” She met Sir Julien’s stony gaze. “Do you hear me? I won’t! I won’t! And no one can make me!”
An austere Sir Julien Bley left the room.
Katie jumped to her feet, still clutching Evy. “I want to see Anthony! Where is he? I want to talk to him! How dare he lie about Evy?”
Inga moved to lay a calming hand on Katie’s arm. “Master Anthony is not here, miss. He left last night with them diamond buyers from London and he didn’t return. Some say he’s on his way to Angola. Something about emeralds.”
The last of her hope ebbing away, Katie looked down at her baby girl. “Oh, my precious little one. What shall I do? Whatever shall I do?”
One Month Later
Katie’s once-lovely cheeks were hollow and thin. Dark smudges beneath her eyes made them seem a lighter amber. She had made her decision the day after Evy was stolen from her bassinet and taken away from Cape House. I loathe Sir Julien. And Anthony …
She had thought she loved Anthony. Now she felt nothing but revulsion and shame. How could she have allowed herself to make such a mistake with her virtue? She had played the fool, and now what would happen to her baby?
“How dare he steal my daughter and lock me in my rooms?” She mumbled the question aloud. “Am I a prisoner? Yes! That is what I am!” For all her initial banging on her locked door, after two weeks she was still confined to her several rooms in Cape House. She ate little and hardly slept. She would have tried to escape when Inga came to care for her needs, but Sir Julien remained in the house as though he knew her thoughts. Inga worried about her, fussed and wiped sympathetic tears from her sagging cheeks, made her hot milk with honey, tried to cajole her into drinking it, but Katie did not respond.
Sir Julien, too, came to see her, frowning, worried creases around his grave eyes … but still he refused to relent.
“It is too late, Katie girl. She is safe with a loving couple. They are devotees of Christ and will treat your daughter as well as
you yourself could have. Stop your grieving, and get on with a bright future.”
An impotent rage swept her, making her fingers curl into a fist at her sides. “How dare you say that to me? What do you know about how a mother’s heart aches for her infant? What right had you to steal this little soul from me? She was mine, I tell you, mine!” She burst into tears and threw herself in the big overstuffed chair, pressing her head against her arm.
“You leave for Europe in a week.” Sir Julien’s stiff words drifted through her sorrow. “Once aboard ship you will come to your senses. This was not the only child you will have. You will have others—and a husband and name to go with them.”
He left her then, and as the door closed Katie heard the bolt slide into place with solid finality.
She ran to the door and pounded until her hands were sore. “Anthony, I loathe the very memory of your kisses, your wicked lies, the velvety grass that was our bed!”
As the days passed Katie soothed her torn heart with midnight plans and schemes of her own making. “I will escape,” she argued to the four walls. “They won’t stop me. I won’t let them.”
She had decided this morning—today was to be the day. She would gain her freedom. One way or another. She turned quickly as she heard the outer bolt on her door slide back. That would be Inga bringing afternoon tea.
The elderly Dutch woman entered cautiously, as though she did not know if a woman gone mad might attack her. She supported the tea tray on her hip as she closed the door. Katie noticed two flushed spots on the woman’s cheeks. Her small eyes were as bright as polished coins. Sudden hope sparked in Katie’s breast and she took steps toward her old nanny.
“What is it?”
Inga glanced back at the door as if it might suddenly develop ears.
“I shouldn’t tell you this, miss, but if you knew the sweet baby was safe you’d rest much easier now, wouldn’t you?” Her eyes searched Katie’s as though looking to reinforce her decision. “Sure now, you would indeed.”
Katie latched hold of the woman’s arm. “Oh yes, Inga, I would,” she whispered. “What do you know?”
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