Flawless (21 page)

Even in such an inauspicious place, his thoughts turned to her.

He checked his watch and found the hour just past two. So much time to fill before their plans for supper, but so much to do.

Out of curiosity as to Viv’s labors, he sat at the lone chair and opened a ledger. Her handwriting, neat and distinctly feminine, ornamented the page. But the figures were all business.

Diamond prices.

In fact, diamond prices chronicled by week all the way back to the early part of 1874, when Christie had either established or acquired the brokerage. On a second page waited a set of calculations whereby Viv had predicted their eventual profit or loss based on different variables, as well as their probabilities. Had Christie realized his daughter’s capacity? Never one to miss a bargain, Miles suspected that he had.

Their predicament was all there, outlined in Viv’s proper script. She had said the market for brilliants was erratic, but he’d never seen the outcome of that volatility with such precision.

He found the paper and pen for Penberthy, gratified that Smets had secured four more lanterns for the crawl space. Then he bid everyone a good day and headed to the bookstore. His niggling idea would not be quiet.

Jamie Shelby hitched the carriage.
While Mr. Kato quickly gobbled a hunk of buttered bread for his lunch, Viv tucked a red-checked cloth over the gift basket she’d packed for the Penberthy family. Like Miles’ss concerns about offering employment to Ike, Viv mulled how to word her offer of aid. The last thing she wanted was to wound Alice’s pride.

Viv’s own mother had refused charity when it came at too great a price to her dignity, a contrast to her profession that had struck Viv as absurd, even at a young age. To her eight-year-old brain, food was food and coal was coal. Her
clamoring stomach and frozen toes had cared not a whit as to which strangers brought gifts, nor as to their motives.

“Ready, my lady?” Mr. Kato asked.

“Certainly.”

They boarded the coach with Jamie holding the reins. He was a large boy for eleven years, with thick bones and a neck that would only increase in girth and strength as he matured. Mr. Shelby wanted him in the mines, but their spirited housekeeper refused to entertain the idea until Jamie turned thirteen. Even then, she’d said on many occasions, why send a boy into the Hole when he had perfectly respectable—and frankly safer—employment with Viv and Miles? Jamie’s thoughts on the matter remained unknown; the boy hardly ever spoke. But far from being unintelligent, he was observant and quick to perform his duties.

The carriage rattled through town, subjecting Viv, Mr. Kato, and Jamie to pits and wheel ruts enough to loosen teeth.

She grimaced. “I can understand why Lord Bancroft has taken to walking. They’ll have electric lights in town before paved roads.”

“Not everywhere,” Mr. Kato said.

“No?”

He hesitated, squinting ahead toward the downtown’s business hub. “Never mind, my lady. It was impertinent.”

“I insist. Speak freely.” She tilted her bonnet against the sun and tried to catch his eye. The man could be nearly as evasive as Miles, hiding a great deal beneath a crafted exterior. Brawny and dark as midnight skies, he still caught her
off guard by using proper address and words like
impertinent
. “You know how new I am to this place. I wish to know all I can—the good and the bad. The last thing our household and our business needs is to shrink from facts we deem too embarrassing to hear. Please, Mr. Kato.”

He glanced skyward as if the answer might fall down from the tarnished blue. Shifting on the bench opposite, he took a breath that expanded his wide barrel chest. A rifle sat across his lap. Viv should have taken comfort in that measure of security, but like the bars on the brokerage house, it was just another reminder of the danger.

His indecision made her somewhat uneasy. He was an African, yes, and an employee. But he was also a man trying to do right by her. The line between wanting protection and independence was so very thin.

“Town planners decide which improvements to build,” he said quietly. “Those improvements benefit only the rich. Very simple, my lady.”

“But I should think security in the shantytowns would be a priority. Maybe then we would all have fewer locks on our doors and windows.”

“Why waste funds on workers whose wage demands and strikes put the industry at risk?” Mr. Kato shrugged. “On the other side, why live in squalor when businessmen spend more on a week’s liquor than diggers earn in a year?”

“How did you learn all of this?”

“I told you my history. Briefly.”

“Yes, but not every miner and not even every overseer, aside skin color, makes such observations.”

“I like being underestimated, my lady. I suspect you know something of that.”

The sun was already dipping toward the west when they arrived. Mr. Kato helped Viv down, then directed Jamie to take the carriage back to a more suitable area of town.

“Be back for us in an hour,” she said to Jamie. “No dawdling.”

Viv and her now-silent guard walked away from the pitted road and into the shantytown just east of the Hole. At first the conditions weren’t so rough. Although corrugated tin walls would do little to keep out the cold come winter, they appeared in good repair and free of filth. Women formed loose knots of community, chatting over their cooking or mending, watching one another’s youngsters—but almost entirely segregated by color. Of course, they eyed Viv’s progress, but they were neither hostile nor rude. Simply curious. She caught a few awestruck remarks about her gown, made of functional dark red muslin and cut for practicality. Compared to the women who watched her, however, she was dressed like Queen Victoria.

But the modest conditions didn’t hold. As they made inquiries and pressed into the heart of the shantytown, a stench gathered and pressed into her nose. Unwashed bodies. Gutted animals. Human waste. The shacks on the outskirts at least looked upon wide-open spaces and permitted access to fresh air. The walk to dispose of refuse was considerably shorter. The inhabitants of these inner hovels could not claim even those scant luxuries.

Mr. Kato stood close. “My lady, are you sure?”

“If she can stand living here, I can stand an hour’s visit.”

But her stomach was an angered nest of hornets. She wanted to remove a handkerchief from her bag and stem the tide of foul odors. Yet even here, perhaps with more need for comfort, women gathered to share conversation and repetitive chores. Their gazes followed Viv with ever more covetous stares. She certainly wasn’t going to hide behind a swatch of linen, insulting them to boot.

Tensing her back until the muscles between her shoulder blades cried, Viv kept walking. She may as well have been traveling back in time, her every step erasing another day until she was once again a terrified eight-year-old.

I’d forgotten what it smells like.

Other long-buried memories struggled out of dark and distant corners: seeing her mother quickly cover her body with a robe after a sponge bath, but not so quickly as to hide the bruises on her hips and upper thighs; the scent of different men’s cologne on the linens they sorted for wash day; the feel of Viv’s first kiss when one of her mother’s callers had cornered her, his tongue like a hot snake in her mouth.

Mother had beaten him with an iron pipe until the police arrived. They’d arrested the man, yes, only to arrive at the end of their shift to demand payment in tandem.

A shudder kicked through her torso. She fought for breath. Mr. Kato was there to steady her balance, but her will to move had slipped away.

“Lady Bancroft?” came a feminine voice. “My, my, I thought that was you.”

Viv shunted her ghosts aside with as much force as her
mother had used when wielding that pipe. A quick inhale brought the shantytown back into focus. She gently pulled free of Mr. Kato’s concern and greeted Alice Penberthy.

Soon they sat together inside the Penberthy’s one-room shanty. Ike had done well to make it as secure as possible. Shredded paper insulation daubed the cracks and crevices. A small cook stove provided heat, and a neat stack of timber lined the wall opposite the door. The stack took up valuable living space, but Viv knew full well the price of wood in Kimberley. There was a reason Ike Penberthy kept a rifle loaded and hanging above the bed he shared with Alice.

The new baby, a healthy, tiny girl named Samantha, lay sleeping in a cot fashioned out of a fruit crate lined with a beautiful floral quilt. David and John were out playing, making Viv wonder how far they traveled and what they saw of life out in the shantytown. By their age she’d already seen far more than her scant years could interpret.

Alice settled on her stool, smoothing her skirts and fussing just once with the strands of loose hair at her temples. She gave a timid smile and poured tea.

“I’ve come because I wanted to see how you and your family are faring,” Viv said. Then more words spilled out of her even before she could think. “And because I want to help.”

A
lice’s eyes narrowed with obvious
caution. “How do you mean?”

Viv cursed her lack of tact. The conditions of the slum had called to her on an elemental level.
Help them all.
Yet . . . how?

A flicker of her uncomfortable conversation with Lady Galeworth provided the answer.

“I’ve heard it said that there is—or perhaps
was
—a women’s auxiliary to help those wives, mothers, and widows who have fallen on difficult circumstances.”

Alice regarded her with intense frankness. Bearing the scrutiny, Viv calmly sipped her tea, noticing the lack of sweetness. When was the last time she’d taken refreshment without sugar? The twins’ nurse had laughed at her the first time Viv tasted it, there in the Christie brownstone, even going so far as to add more just for the amusement of her amazed reaction.

Seeing the woman’s doubt, Viv continued her pitch. “I noticed clusters of women throughout these shanties, all
of them gathered together to share the work and childcare. That’s what I have in mind, but on a much larger scale.”

“Many hands make light work, and all that?”

Cynicism didn’t sound right coming from Alice, but then, Viv was remembering the woman she’d met on the wagon train. This woman was . . . harder. Her eyes held little of the same spark or vigor. And after only two weeks! How would she appear after a year? Or five? What would happen to the family she and her husband had uprooted?

“Something like that, yes,” Viv said quietly.

“Wouldn’t that be nice.”

She thought the phrase sarcastic, but Alice’s face revealed a flash of wistfulness. “It
can
be done. There exists an element of this population that dearly wants to be seen as worthy. I can turn that into generosity.”

“By playing to their sense of guilt?”

Viv offered a rueful smile. “Not so much that as to their ambition. After all, what’s an entrepreneur? They want to be ladies and gentlemen, but few here know exactly what that entails. I’ll foster a sense of what I learned in London. No grand family goes without pet projects.”

“Sounds like a lot of work, my lady.”

“Initially, perhaps. But then we make it self-sustaining.”

“Is . . . Do you think that’s possible?”

“I don’t know.”

Alice dipped her gaze. “At least you’re honest.”

Viv finished her tea and decided to stop treating the woman like a specimen beneath glass. She would either be a magnificent general or she would flat-out refuse.

“But you need to take the lead on this, Alice. Can you do that?”

After carefully setting aside her cup—porcelain, beautifully painted—Alice stood. She knitted her fingers together in a ball, the first time Viv had seen her agitated.

“We left a lovely little flat in Camborne. Tiny, or so I thought at the time. But neat and sturdy. Ike had bigger dreams for us.” With a glance toward her newborn daughter, she inhaled. “His Lordship came round today to talk to Ike. What was that about?”

Viv smiled despite herself. Long-standing impressions of Miles had altered so greatly that the news came as no surprise. A warm varnish of emotion settled over her heart. No matter what other failings lurked for Viv to find, he would do right by this family.

“Offering him a job, I believe.”

“But . . . why help us?”

Standing, Viv took the woman’s hands in her own. “My father and I weren’t close in the traditional sense. He was not a man to tolerate sentimentality. But I asked him once why he had decided to found an academy for immigrant children. Why
these
fifty students, when there are thousands roaming the streets?”

Alice’s expression had taken on the hopefulness of just such a child. “And his reply?”

“He said, we have to start somewhere.”

In that moment he had revealed a great deal. His relentless financial ambition had been birthed by deplorable conditions Viv would likely recognize. Never before or after had
she felt as close to the remote man who had fathered her, abandoned her . . . then rescued her.

“We can start here, then,” Alice said quietly.

“I think so.” After one quick squeeze, Viv released the woman’s hands. “I’ll be back in a week. If you need anything before then, send word with your husband when he comes in to work.” She ushered Mr. Kato inside, where he deposited the gift basket without word or fanfare. “Good day to you, Mrs. Penberthy.”

“And to you, my lady.”

She turned to leave before Alice either refused or cried; she looked ready to do both.

Fifteen minutes later, Viv and Mr. Kato emerged from the shantytown. Her corset permitted no deep breaths, but she did her best to clear the stink from her lungs.

“You did well by her pride,” he said.

“My husband is still a better judge of people than I am.” She blinked, wondering why she had revealed such a personal observation to an employee.