Starlight (44 page)

Miles found himself twirling his wedding ring. That little hypocrite—all decorum and indignation until her mouth met his.

Had beastly Sir William given his daughter a plump dollop of cash, she would’ve had the financial means to end their marriage. Miles would’ve gone back to London, alone, solvent enough to keep the family estates intact. But little else remained of her dowry.

Instead, the challenge of Old Man Christie’s bequest offered a one-million-dollar reprieve.
Damn and blast.
Far, far too much money to ignore.

His scant head start aside, during which he’d secured accommodations in Kimberley and completed banking transfers, he and Viv would need to learn quickly: every major player, every aspect of the diamond trade, and even the bloody weather. They were starting near to zero. He should have been terrified but a sharp thrill sped the beat of his heart.

The crack of a whip snapped his attention toward a man sitting atop a heavily laden wagon. The road leading away from the docks, clogged with dark bodies, permitted no room for the vehicle to pass. Burly
and dough-faced, the wagon master wasn’t directing his whip at donkeys, but at people.

“Get off there,” the driver shouted. He threw his weight into the next strike of braided leather.

With relentless clarity, the Cape’s autumn sunshine illuminated every face twisted by concentration and fear. The donkeys continued to bray. The wagon master raised his arm again. Leather sliced through the air, this time striking a tall shirtless man whose dark, scarred back had already suffered the bite of a whip.

“Out of the way, you kaffir scum!”

Across three months, the colony had subjected Miles to many such scenes. Perhaps the difference, on this occasion, could be traced to the bitterness Viv churned in his blood. His arms ached with the need to pummel his fretfulness into submission—or pummel
someone
. The lawlessness of the colony, the otherworldliness of it, gave him permission to do what his tedious title had never permitted: take matters into his own hands.

“Oh, bloody hell.”

He strode into the crowd, abandoning his role as a mere bystander. Fully a head taller than most of the scrambling people, he fixed on the wagon master. Every crack of the man’s whip filled Miles with sizzling indignation. Like most of the British Empire, Cape Colony hadn’t permitted slavery in almost fifty years. That didn’t stop some colonists from treating Africans as they would the lowest animals.

Miles didn’t consider himself a do-gooder, but such a flagrant abuse of power assaulted his most basic principles. It wasn’t sporting and it simply wasn’t British.

He elbowed his way through the throng until the wagon master loomed above him on the bench. Miles quickly climbed aboard, senses centered on his target. The wagon master turned just as Miles balled his fist and let it swing. A satisfying crack of bone rewarded him as his opponent’s nose gave way.

Blood streaked the man’s mangy beard. Narrow-eyed anger replaced his stunned grimace. He reared back the butt of his whip and brought it down like a cudgel. Miles used his forearm to deflect the blow, then retaliated with jabs to the gut.

Foul exhales accompanied the wagon master’s grunts, but his flab seemed to absorb the impact of each punch. Winded, he tottered slightly. His guard dropped. Miles snatched the whip. When the man’s expression bunched around the need to continue the fight, Miles jabbed the butt of the whip against that broken nose. The wagon master clutched his face.

“Are we quite through?” Miles demanded.

His opponent sank onto the bench and nodded once. Rage still flared across his expression but his shoulders caved forward.

“Good.” Miles slowly coiled the whip. “Now, I suggest you notice the situation here. Too many people, for one. Laughably poor engineering. But that’s no excuse for whipping people.”

“They’re bloody kaffirs,” the man said, his voice muffled behind his hands. “Beasts like these donkeys.”

Miles glanced across the sea of faces, more dark than light, and wondered again at the state of the
Cape. Ripe, raw, it perched on the edge of violence. He tasted its bitterness in the air and felt it itching under his skin—a shocking sort of awakening.

“No more beastly than the rest of us,” Miles said.

He hopped down from the wagon.

As the immediacy of the fight seeped from his body, Miles shivered. He eased back into the crowd on legs just shy of steady, intent on returning to the machinery crate. Surely Viv had found her way off that damned clipper by now.

He bumped into a solid wall of ebony flesh and found himself looking up at a man—a rare occurrence. Before him stood the same shirtless African who’d taken one of the wagon master’s cruel strokes. His shaven head gleamed.

“Thank you.” The African’s deep bass was melodic, like the notes of a bassoon. “Boggs is a scourge.”

Miles raised his eyebrows. “A scourge? Nice word.”

“I speak the truth.”

“And I believe you. My hope is that I won’t require his services.”

“Hire a wagon,” the man said. “I’ll drive for you instead.”

Miles studied that dark African face. Every feature was as he’d seen in caricatures and even so-called scientific journals: the wide, flat nose, the large lips, and the fathomless black irises surrounded by white. Those demeaning illustrations hadn’t captured what it was to look upon such a man. Miles found intelligence and a rugged, hard-edged dignity—a refreshing change from the feckless gentlemen who’d comprised his social circle in London.

“You need a work pass,” Miles said.

“Yes, sir.”

Without a work pass, Africans could be subjected to police harassment or expulsion from the city. In Kimberley, the threat of diamond theft tainted all manual laborers, regardless of skin color, but Africans bore the heaviest burden of suspicion.

“Good, because I need reliable workers. I’m returning to Kimberley, if you’re interested.” He held out his hand. “Call me Bancroft,” he said, omitting a significant part of his identity—namely, his title.

The man stared at Miles for a long moment, then shook hands. His grip was strong, his expression intent. “I’m Umtonga kaMpande. But you English seem to find that a challenge.”

“No argument here.”

“Because you have shown the kindness of a friend, I ask that you call me Mr. Kato.”

“That is a kindness in itself, Mr. Kato.”

With nothing more by way of niceties, he turned and strode back toward the
Coronea
, toward Viv, glad to know that the tall African would follow.

Viv
brushed a gloved hand across her forehead and pinned the porter with a hard look. “What do you mean they’ve been
taken care of
?”

The short man, bulky and rippling with menacing muscles, simply shrugged. “Your baggage has been taken care of, ma’am.”

Fear brushed up her spine. Had her things been stolen? Hardly on African soil for five minutes and already a snag. She took a quick breath. “By whom?”

“He said he was your husband. Lord Bancroft.”

She locked her knees against the impulse to sink onto the foot-worn planks of the dock. “My husband,” she whispered.

Of course he would come. She’d been willfully naïve in believing her trip would signal her intention to remain separated.

She needed her belongings. Every last item would be necessary if she were to endure the twenty months that remained of her contract.

She wouldn’t dwell on the immensity of her task, choosing instead to relive the lessons of her father’s many successes. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. Piece by hard-earned piece. In doing so she would find the strength to survive this trial. Deep inside, she would rediscover the tenacity of an urchin who’d once stolen a dying vagrant’s dinner just to quell her own aching hunger—and the resilience on which that quiet girl had depended when her mother was jailed and hanged.

But at present, she needed to find her husband.

She signaled to Chloe Tassiter, her maid, who handed the porter a shilling. “Can you take me to him, please?” Viv asked.

“This way.”

As nimble as a rabbit, he ducked into the crowd, navigating passengers, porters, and incalculable bags and trunks. He jostled to clear a path. The same foot journey without his aid would’ve been terribly difficult, two women consumed by bodies.

Unlike her siblings, Viv had endured the grueling burden of an impoverished youth and the secret
knowledge of her illegitimacy. That meant balancing the strictures of good society with the example of Sir William Christie’s limitless ambitions. She never failed to appreciate when her way was made easier by the privilege she now enjoyed—privilege she would labor ceaselessly to keep.

Good heavens, a million dollars! She’d be able to return to her home in New York, to her life. And she would finally be free of the title she’d learned to wear like a horse harness across her shoulders.

Viv bumped a coop full of clucking hens and bruised her hip. She and Chloe didn’t so much walk as gush toward some unseen destination.

Chloe took Viv’s upper arm and offered a reassuring squeeze. “Courage, my lady.”

Although a servant since her youth, Chloe had never lived as roughly as this.

Viv, however . . . Her body ached with deep recognition. She had once hidden in the shadows of a similar world, her days marked by stealth, fear, and hunger. She breathed its filth and knew its secrets.

“My lady, do you know where we’re going?” Chloe asked.

A shudder wiggled through Viv’s stomach—that sudden, queasy feeling of being taken advantage of. The porter could be leading them anywhere. Suddenly, her husband’s volatility held more appeal than those beastly unknowns.

“I say.” Viv lifted her voice above the din. “Where are you taking us, man?”

“Just there.” The porter nodded toward where a wagon waited along a footpath.

Viv stopped short.

Miles, Lord Bancroft, leaned against one large wheel. Only, she’d never seen him in such a state. Gone was the snide aristocrat, preened to perfection. In his place stood a taut, muscular man whose waistcoat gapped open along a lean abdomen. His neck was bare. He’d rolled his shirtsleeves. A coiled whip dangled from his belt and rested against his hip.

Blinking back the grit and sunshine, Viv struggled to assemble the jigsaw of new impressions. Thick hair he normally tamed with pomade stuck out in spiky disarray. The coffee-dark color was streaked through with lighter strands, kissed by bright midday. Every indecently exposed inch of flesh had assumed a luscious caramel shade. Too much time spent in the sun, her mind argued. But the color suited him—much better than the pallor of genteel boredom and too much time spent in gambling halls.

A taunting grin turned him from merely handsome to maddeningly so.

Miles . . . wearing a whip. He’d turned positively heathen.

Viv tried to tell herself that she didn’t want to see him there, obviously pleased to have taken her by surprise. Yet she could not deny a flush of relief. Confronted with the stomach-sick shock of the Cape, she realized that her will alone would not be enough. Never had she felt more gallingly female.

She needed him. He knew it. And her pride would suffer.

For the sake of that bonus, however, Viv met him at the wagon. “My lord,” she said simply.

“My lady.” Miles bowed, more sarcastic than respectful. “Surprised to see me?”

The hard emotion in his eyes tempted her to recoil. Yes, she’d left him. Her reasons remained strong and valid. No glare, no matter how intimidating, would change her mind.

A fine spray of dried blood formed a ghastly constellation across his rumpled white shirt. That he’d already found trouble was hardly a surprise.

Her attention returned to Miles, to his shirt, to his tanned neck and forearms. To the vigorous width of his shoulders and the ready strength of his thighs. This version of her husband was new. All new—at least on the outside.

“We have tickets for the train to Kimberley,” she said, banishing her fascination. “Can you take us to the station?”

Miles’s grin returned. “We’re all yours, my lady . . . for a price.”

Tender skin chafed beneath her gloves and between her breasts. Better than anyone, she understood that apparent courtesies from her husband would be met with a reckoning. The gleam in his eyes told Viv that the last thing he would demand was money.

Continue reading for an exclusive excerpt from

Diva

The Christies, Book Three

Outside Singleton, Australia
August 1881

A
very
Palmer’s feet hit the frigid wood floor. Only the sound of the dreaded siren could propel his movements so swiftly in the pitch darkness. His heart imitated a locomotive’s chugging rhythm. He grabbed everything by rote. Trousers and shirt. Coat and boots. Gear to protect against the stinging cold.