Flawless (10 page)

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.

She was almost thankful, then, for Miles. No, she
was
thankful. Nothing would prevent him from transforming back into an insidious fiend once they reached their accommodations. But right then, when he remained both spirited and contemplative in the face of that marvel, she was terribly glad of his presence.

“Come, before it gets too late.”

With the poise of the nobleman he was, and in contrast to his unkempt appearance, he again offered his arm. Viv walked with him back toward town, where he hailed a hackney. The driver turned north. Ambitious stars and a slice of moon shimmered overhead. Night-blooming flowers—she hadn’t realized how greatly her ignorance of the local flora would bother her—offered up the gift of their sweet perfume. Perhaps when all was settled, she could begin a garden in this unusual place.

Anything to make it her own.

On the opposite bench, Miles’s mind was elsewhere. He concentrated on the blackened eastern horizon like a weathered pirate assessing blue Caribbean waters. Where was the spoiled nobleman who’d fed caviar to his hunting dogs on a bet? Or who, at his cousin’s engagement gala, had spent the evening introducing Viv to every foul term for a woman’s intimate places? His whispers. Her answering anger and arousal. Never had an evening dragged on with such anticipation. Alone together that night, he’d repeated those words all over again, but with his mouth nestled between her legs.

And yes, she’d
shattered
.

Soon his focus would return to her, always for his own amusement. He had sparked her to life, every nerve ending bright and awake. Perhaps that explained his innate skill at cards: his opponents simply lost the will to compete.

That evening, they would sleep beneath the same roof for the first time in more than a year. Would he come to her? So soon?

Would she let him if he did?

The cab pulled to a stop. With her fingers in Miles’s palm, she descended and caught her breath. A white manor home gleamed beneath the scant moonlight. Dark shutters—maybe blue, maybe black—bordered a dozen windows, each with six panes of leaded glass. Candles brightened the rooms with glittering friendliness, just as torches lined the perimeter of a gated front garden. On the second story just above the entryway, two French doors opened to a balcony that stretched the entire width of the verandah. Sheer, pale curtains fluttered in the cooling breeze.

“This is home?” she asked.

They stood side by side, his hand on the latch to open the whitewashed gate. “Yes, this is home.”

She hadn’t expected this, the closeness of it all. His softly spoken words were an intimate promise. He didn’t touch her now, but the idea of him twinkled and twisted under her skin.

She swallowed. “Lead on.”

His boots crunched on the gravel walkway. Dark foliage hid in shadows along either side of the path to the front door.

Adam greeted them. He sat on the wraparound porch with a rifle across his lap. “Chloe has been installed in the quarters adjoining your room, my lady,” he said. “And the housekeeper, Mrs. Shelby, has prepared a supper for you. A bath will be ready when you require it in the morning.”

Relief made her weariness even heavier to bear. But she was never the kind to let such weakness show, not when hard-earned manners helpfully took control of her tongue. “Thank you, Adam. Your efforts are much appreciated.”

“His Lordship’s orders, my lady.”

No platitude could rescue her when Miles gazed at her with such utter absorption. She licked her bottom lip. “Then . . . I’ll bid you both good evening.”

“Your bedroom is up the stairs, first door on the left,” he said quietly as she walked away. “I’ll join you there shortly, Vivie.”

Miles had no intention of
letting that be the end of their day. Despite the last time he’d overcome her defenses, behind the staircase at the Saunders’ gala, he wanted their next encounter to be entirely private. Her gasps and breathy pleas would be for him alone. And very soon.

The darkness disguised Adam’s typical blushes and smiles, rendering him the blunt, toughened bastard Miles knew him to be. Therein lay his unspoken value—that, and his gratifying loyalty. Few would ever assume a viscount’s manservant to be a soldier’s son, or that Adam had proven so adept at learning his father’s countless techniques for defense.

“Any problems?”

“None, my lord.”

“Good,” Miles said. “But you need rest. Where’s Mr. Shelby?”

“He’ll be along shortly. He’s . . .” Adam hesitated. “He’s bidding Mrs. Shelby a good night.”

“I envy the man.” Only at Adam’s raised brow did Miles realize he’d spoken that damning doubt aloud. “No matter. The night is young, Mr. Nolan.”

On a gruff farewell, he pushed through the front door and down the corridor. The air inside was slightly warmer. The scent of an extinguished stove—woodsy, tinged with stale cooking smells—invited the return of his fatigue. Up the stairs and down to his bedchamber, Miles pushed the tiredness away while he grappled with the bigger matter.

Vivie was home. His hellfire ridiculous brain couldn’t think anything else. Now . . . what to do with her?

Keep her.

He shook his head once, hard, angrily, and cursed himself a hundred-fold fool. Keeping her wasn’t his objective. If he was going to knock his darling Vivienne down a few pegs, he needed a clearer mind.

He cracked the knuckle of his right thumb, then poured water from a pitcher to quickly wash. For a man used to sleeping until noon and enjoying every sensual pleasure available in England, the demands of the previous few days—nay, months—had taken an insidious toll.

But more than he craved his vices, he wanted to
conquer
—an echo of the medieval warrior who’d wrested ancestral lands from dastardly cousins or half-bestial Celts in order to found his noble line.

There were diamonds to be yanked from the ground, diamonds to be assayed and graded, diamonds to be sold. A list of competitors as long as his leg awaited their subjugation. There was a future to be won. Unlike everyone else in Kimberley, he and Viv didn’t need to earn much—just a penny of profit and they’d secure that million-dollar bonus.

But Miles wanted to win big.

Why? Why this urge? It was as irrational as the urge to take off at a run. Gentlemen didn’t run. They didn’t sweat and they didn’t get dirty. They didn’t concern themselves with the workings of mines and counting houses and the trade of precious gems. But
here
they did. Maybe that was the appeal, as much as the freedom and the danger. Here in Cape Colony, the rules had been turned upside down. He enjoyed the vertigo.

And Viv.

Toweling off and donning a clean shirt, he promised to win big with her as well. Yes, they would prevail against her father’s posthumous scheme, but Miles wasn’t going to hand her the independence she craved, not without fair compensation. When it came to what her body desired, she was one of the most hypocritical people he’d ever met. He planned to remind her of that, repeatedly, until she ceased to be the needle gouging his chest.

Starting tonight.

V
iv perched on the edge
of the settee in her bedroom. She knew she should move. But she remained very still and, as if watching herself from afar, silently laughed at her absurd situation. Once she might have been considered one of the most capable children in Paris. And she had certainly been regarded as an accomplished addition to London Society, a feat quietly acknowledged as all the more impressive because of Miles’s rebellious ways. That she could host a splendid tea for the Duchess of Colemont, her smile never wavering as they discussed his latest all-night card game, had deserved all the celebrations due a conquering hero.

For fifteen years she’d labored to learn the rules of propriety, etching them onto her person—the very essence of what it was to be Vivienne Christie Durham, Viscountess Bancroft. The strictures had pinched and strangled at first, like a corset laced to the point of pain.

But what would she be without them?

The fact of her shameful parentage would escape the vault of family secrets. Her dear siblings knew, and they’d
rather die than do her harm. Otherwise, with their father’s death and with the death of his second wife, Catrin, four years earlier, the door to Viv’s true past had closed. To everyone else who breathed, the simple story was best left unquestioned. In the summer of 1863, during the tumult caused by the War Between the States, William and Catrin Christie had decided to adopt an eight-year-old girl. Perhaps Catrin could no longer bear children. Perhaps they did so out of Christian charity.

No one dared suggest that they did so out of obligation to a condemned French can-can dancer and her bastard daughter. With the largess of the dowry they’d received, even Miles’s parents had never asked. But as an adopted child, she had always been the object of speculation. What blood did she carry in her veins? As a result her efforts to blend in—no, to excel—held a sharp edge of desperation.

Don’t be found out.

She’d almost told Miles. Once. Her desire to believe in him ran that deeply. On the night of the Saunders’ gala, he had waltzed her around the ballroom until she couldn’t take a breath without pulling his dizzying scent into her body.

Whisking Viv behind the grand staircase, he had pushed her against the cool marble wall and lifted her skirts. His warm, smooth palm had muffled her sounds of pleasure. Inside her, around her, whispering harsh, blunt words, he had taken what she willingly gave.

Viv had only needed his love.

Had Miles spirited her home to continue that fiery
seduction, she would have been his. Forever. No matter his failings. She would have confessed everything.