The Daredevil Snared (The Adventurers Quartet Book 3) (23 page)

Caleb heard the tramp of boots and glanced across to see Dixon accompanying the guard to the barracks.

Katherine rose. With her gaze, she followed the pair; once they’d passed out of sight around the front of the barracks, she caught Caleb’s eye. “There’s still no guard on this side of the compound—shall we eavesdrop again?”

They did, and heard Dubois order Dixon to give Arsene a list of anything and everything he could think of—nails, timbers, tools—that might be required to mine out the diamonds in the second tunnel. “As Arsene is going to have to return to the settlement and contact our mining supplier to get more tools for the women, as those are relatively small and light, I want to ensure the trip is worthwhile.” Dubois’s tone grew colder and harsher—more menacing. “And I do not want your operation to run into any further shortage of tools or other mining supplies.”

Caleb and Katherine listened as Dixon, with apparent enthusiasm, threw himself into ordering more of everything.

Dubois must have waved Dixon and Arsene away; Dixon’s excited chatter and Arsene’s responding grunts slowly faded.

Caleb tightened his grip on Katherine’s hand. “Once around the barracks, then back to the cleaning shed.”

Dixon and Arsene had halted on the porch, with Dixon still very much playing his role. Neither man muted his voice as Caleb and Katherine strolled past.

They continued their circuit of the barracks. Caleb saw Katherine into the cleaning shed, then returned to the mine. He reached the entrance as Dixon strode up. Together, they walked into the mine’s shadows.

The other leaders and several other men were waiting in a group outside the second tunnel’s entrance. “Well?” Hillsythe asked.

“It all went off as smooth as silk.” Dixon tipped his head back toward the barracks, then he turned, and they all watched as Arsene collected his men and they left the porch. After swinging their packs to their backs and hefting their muskets, the mercenaries headed for the gates.

His hands on his hips, Caleb watched Arsene and his men stride out into the jungle. “Katherine and I eavesdropped. Dubois swallowed whole the idea that the tools had broken through normal wear and tear. He dismissed Arsene’s quibbles.”

Fanshawe nodded after the departing men. “So how long will they take—how long will the ladies be able to go slow?”

“Given the list I gave Arsene,” Dixon said, “I imagine they’ll take their usual five days.”

“Good.” Hillsythe glanced around at all the men. “So we should do as planned and appear to work at our usual pace, but divert as much of the ore as we can to our stockpile.”

All the men nodded.

“And,” Dixon concluded, “as we discussed, I’ll approach Dubois this evening and point out that there’s really no sense in having us men working longer hours while the women can’t process the ore, at least not as fast as we’re sending it out. I’ll suggest we adjust our output to keep pace with the women.”

“Will he agree, do you think?” Phillipe straightened from his slouch against the tunnel wall. “I wouldn’t, were I him.”

Dixon grimaced. “It’s worth asking. It won’t affect the overall output leaving the compound, and to date, that’s been Dubois’s overriding concern.”

“One possibly relevant point,” Caleb said. “We heard Dubois tell Arsene to bring back extra hammers and chisels for the women. Is there any chance that, once Arsene gets back, Dubois will order the older girls into the cleaning shed, too—or even order the women to work longer hours, as he’s done with the men?”

Hillsythe, Dixon, Fanshawe, and Hopkins all shook their heads.

“He tried some of the older girls once—it wasn’t a success,” Fanshawe said.

“You can’t smash diamonds,” Dixon said, “but it’s all too possible to unnecessarily shatter them along internal fracture lines. What the women do is clean the raw stones of nondiamond aggregates. Dubois is under strict orders to send out the raw stones unfractured, in as large a size as possible, so the fracturing can be left to the diamond cutters. That way, they get the most out of each raw diamond.”

“When the women are tired, their concentration slips, and so do their chisels, and the fractures mount,” Hillsythe said. “So Dubois can’t overwork the women, and on top of that, they need to work under natural light. Lamplight’s not good enough for what they do.”

Dixon nodded. “And the girls aren’t as careful as the women, not as adept at sensing where the fault lines are and avoiding them, so it doesn’t pay to have them take up cleaning.”

Both Caleb and Phillipe nodded their understanding.

“So for the moment,” Caleb said, hefting his pickaxe, “we continue working steadily, hold back as much ore as we can, and hope Dubois agrees to allow us to slow down.”

* * *

Unfortunately, in this instance, Dubois proved intractably resistant to Dixon’s persuasions.

As Phillipe had foreseen, Dubois was now set on getting all the diamonds out of the mine as rapidly as possible. He insisted that the men continue mining at maximum pace, either breaking rock, shoveling it, or shoring up the next stretch of the second tunnel—with every man working from breakfast until midnight.

Caleb encouraged Dixon to make the best of the situation he could. Consequently, the four older boys who’d worked alongside the men in the mine were sent to clear out the last of the diamonds from the farther reaches of the first pipe. The youngest children continued to gather the ore from under the men’s feet, scrabbling and scrambling over the tunnel’s rough floor, grabbing all the shattered rocks. They then lugged their laden baskets to where several men helped them rapidly sort and remove some of the diamonds for their stockpile, then continued out to the ore pile.

At the pile, the older girls sorted—joined by those women who no longer had tools with which to work.

By the end of the first day, it was evident to all that Dubois’s intention was to run the mining side of the operation to completion—to depletion of the mine—as fast as he could, and if the present lack of cleaning tools meant that resulted in a huge pile of sorted but as yet uncleaned rocks, so be it.

The gathering about the fire pit that evening was decidedly glum.

“So,” Hillsythe said, summing up for everyone, “we’ve created a bottleneck which will soon result in a massive pile of rough diamonds to be cleaned prior to shipping, but Dubois hasn’t allowed us to ease back on the actual mining, yet that’s what we urgently need to do.” He glanced around the faces. “We need to slow down the mining itself.”

Poking at the dust between his feet with a branch, Dixon grimaced. “I tried pointing out that it was safer to keep the diamonds in the rock, and that having a huge pile of rough diamonds just lying there was surely tempting Fate. Dubois just stared at me and said he had faith in his men—that they would put paid to any marauders.” Dixon sighed and looked up, letting his gaze sweep over the faces before coming to rest on the other leaders. “So that’s the outcome—or rather lack of it—from our latest gambit, and I would strongly advise against us trying anything else, at least for a few days.”

Caleb pulled a face. He glanced around, taking in the cast-down expressions, then said, “We might have failed to gain what we wanted, but at least we haven’t gone backward.”

When Hillsythe, Fanshawe, and the others all looked inquiringly at him, he elaborated, “We would have been mining at the same rate—the increased rate—regardless. What we’ve done hasn’t escalated that rate further, and more, we’re diverting part of the increased output to the stockpile.”

He shrugged. “We aren’t in a worse position than we were, and in fact, we’ve improved our position just a little and will continue to improve it by a small amount—the amount of ore diverted to the stockpile—every day from now on.” He glanced around the entire circle, at the too-quiet children, at the women and all the men. “We didn’t get the effect we wanted, but we’re in a position to”—he tipped his head at Dixon—“in a few days, try another tactic to reduce the actual mining.”

Seated beside Caleb, Katherine slipped her hand around his arm and squeezed in support and agreement; he patently needed no encouragement.

Across the pit, she saw Hillsythe’s lips curve slightly, and he gave Caleb one of his tiny nods. “Also,” Hillsythe said, “we now know there’s no benefit in focusing on anything but the mining itself. Nothing else is going to work.”

Caleb nodded. “So that’s what we’ll concentrate on forthwith—slowing down the rate of freeing diamonds from the rock.”

* * *

Later, when Caleb came to fetch her from the tiny porch of the women’s hut where she’d taken to waiting for him to join her for their usual late-night perambulation, Katherine felt no overwhelming need to discuss the mine.

She understood Dubois’s strategy: Extract all the diamonds from the mine as soon as possible and kill the men, who constituted the greatest threat to his mercenary force as well as to his masters. She didn’t need to know more.

They had to find some effective way to slow down the mining.

But that was for tomorrow. For tonight, she needed time and space, and to go to that place she reached only with Caleb.

He strolled up, then held out his hand. She rose from the stool on which she’d been sitting, placed her hand in his, and let him steady her down the two steps to the ground. Rather than release her, he drew her near and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.

They set out strolling slowly, side by side through the dark.

Not that it was completely dark. Moonlight silvered the scene, washing over the open ground so the guards on the tower could still see them.

When they walked and talked during the day, the bustle of the camp was more than sufficient to drown out their words. But in the cool of the night, with only the mine itself in operation and the noise emanating from the tunnel’s mouth deadened by the earth surrounding it, as they circled past the deserted kitchen, the silence was pervasive enough to force her to whisper. Without looking at Caleb, her voice barely a murmur, she ventured, “You’re very good at making people face forward rather than getting dragged down, affected by temporary setbacks.”

That was one trait he possessed that, again and again, came to the fore and buoyed the whole company.

He looked at the ground before their feet. After a moment, he shrugged. “It’s just part of being a captain, I suppose.”

She could have told him that wasn’t true, that there were lots of men who led yet who did not have the indefatigably positive—ready to engage with life with an iron-clad refusal to even contemplate taking a step back—outlook that he possessed. That he communicated so clearly.

Plainly, he viewed the effect he had on others as ordinary and nothing worth commenting upon. She knew better. Despite the way in which it had occurred, she’d come to view his joining the captives as nothing less than an act of God.

And in part because of that, and because of the threat hanging over them, she wanted to use this walk, this time—these next moments—to confirm what might be. To explore and define what lay between them—what it was they had at risk.

What value was theirs to place in the scales of life’s balance.

Survival was one thing. Surviving in order to claim a higher prize was something else again; she was ineradicably convinced that the existence of such a higher prize held the power to strengthen their will to live.

To support them through what was clearly going to be a trying time. A demanding time.

She’d read somewhere that wise monks advocated living in the moment—with one’s entire being focused on what that moment held, on what could be achieved within it—as the true route to happiness. She was determined to give that philosophy a try, especially as, as far as she’d seen, Caleb’s own approach to life held something of that unswerving commitment to the here and now.

Here, she decided, should be the darkness in the lee of the supply hut, where the moonlight tonight did not reach and the angle from the tower meant the guards couldn’t see them. As they drew level with the hut, she tightened her grip on Caleb’s arm and changed their tack.

He glanced at her, but didn’t resist.

She felt his gaze on her face, but didn’t meet it.

With a sense of growing calm, of growing certainty, she steered him into the deep shadows. Then she released his arm, turned and put her back to the hut’s side, reached up and closed her fist about the knotted kerchief he wore looped about his neck, and brazenly drew him to her.

Directly into a kiss.

He didn’t resist. Not in the least. He didn’t, however, reach for her, didn’t close his hands about her waist and draw her to him.

Instead, he set his hands to either side of her head, palms flat to the boards, bent his head, and with his lips meshing and melding with hers, he let her take the kiss where she would. He met her, matched her, but didn’t direct. At her invitation, he savored her mouth, then she boldly returned the pleasure.

And the kiss grew hotter. More intense. More sharply intent.

His lips lured; with artful strokes of his tongue, he beckoned and drew her on, and her hunger swelled, then ignited, transforming into a fiercer force, one that demanded appeasement.

She released the neckerchief and clutched the plackets framing the opening of his light shirt. Fisting her hands in the fabric, she clung as the kiss transmuted into a duel of mating tongues.

And something inside her stirred—some more powerful impulse, a compulsion to seek more of the seductive heat that seemed to emanate from him.

To wantonly bathe in that delicious warmth.

To seize the moment and experience the scintillating frissons of pleasure his touch could evoke.

That something inside her was ancient, knowing. With it flooding her, she simply knew.

Knew what she—and he—needed.

There, in that moment in time.

She came away from the wall, stretched up on her toes, and kissed him passionately. Opened the gates of her inner soul and let all the pent-up yearning out. Let it pour into the kiss.

He straightened, and his hands gripped her waist, then slid farther, and he crushed her to him.