The Daredevil Snared (The Adventurers Quartet Book 3) (25 page)

Courtesy of a calendar they’d found in the supply hut, they knew today was the fourth of August. That left at least a month before rescue could reach them. A month during which they had to ensure the mining continued.

The scuff of a boot had Caleb glancing around. He watched as Dixon, brushing his palms on his breeches, came to join him.

Caleb briefly studied the engineer. Unlike Caleb, Phillipe, or Hillsythe, Dixon wasn’t a man to whom fabrication came easily; playing a part was something he had to work hard to pull off. Caleb gave Dixon a moment, then murmured, “Ready?”

His gaze fixed on the mercenaries’ barracks, Dixon nodded. From his breeches pocket, he pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I’ll head for the supply hut. Let me get level with the barracks’ steps, then call and stop me.”

Cripps and two of his men were lounging on stools on the barracks’ porch.

Caleb nodded. “Good luck.”

Dixon hauled in a breath, held it, then walked briskly out of the mine.

He continued across the compound, striding purposefully past the fire pit and on toward the supply hut, his head bent, his attention on the lists in his hand.

Caleb strode out. The lantern swinging from his hand, he broke into a lope. “Dixon!”

Dixon halted—level with the porch steps and directly under Cripps’s and the other two mercenaries’ noses—and swung around. He saw the lantern in Caleb’s hand and frowned. “Another one?”

Slowing to halt before him, Caleb held out the lantern and shrugged. “All those extra hours, I suppose.”

Resigned, Dixon took the lantern. “I’ll fill it. Wait here.”

Caleb cast a glance at the men on the porch. “I’ll wait by the mine.”

Dixon nodded and, returning his attention to his lists, continued toward the supply hut.

Caleb didn’t risk watching him go but swung around and retreated to the mine entrance. He slouched against the beams framing the tunnel mouth and fixed his gaze on the toes of his boots.

He heard movement in the shadows behind him; head bent, he cast a swift glance behind and saw Hillsythe and Phillipe settling to watch. Apparently, they all felt the need to be there to support Dixon, just in case, but exactly what they might do was one part of the charade they hadn’t rehearsed.

As per their plan, after several minutes, Dixon came out of the supply hut, the lantern—its glass reservoir now half full—in one hand. He stuffed his lists into his pocket and, his frown now definite, marched to the barracks.

Dixon went up the steps. He ignored Cripps and his men and went straight to the open doorway; from the first, Dubois had made it plain that he expected Dixon to report directly to him. Dixon knocked on the door frame.

Watching from the mine entrance, Caleb and the others couldn’t see inside the barracks, but Dixon remained on the porch. They knew Dubois was inside, most likely at his desk. In what was plainly a response to a question—almost certainly from Dubois—Dixon held up the lantern. “I just filled this.” Dixon’s words were muted by the distance and barely audible. “Because we’re working longer hours, we’re running through lamp oil more rapidly, but that’s not my point. Has anyone reported that the supply of lamp oil is running low?”

Even from the mine, they heard Dubois’s thunderous
“What?”

A second later, Dixon stepped back and Dubois appeared in the doorway. By the time he stepped onto the porch, Cripps and the other two mercenaries had leapt to their feet. They stood rooted in a stance that, for them, passed for attention.

Dubois’s choler had already risen. He cast a single dark glance at the lantern in Dixon’s hand, then rounded on Cripps.
“What the devil do you mean by letting the lamp oil run low?”
Dubois flung his hands in the air. “Am I surrounded by incompetents? No—not
just
incompetents—I’m also plagued by impatient backers.” Dubois advanced on Cripps and spoke into the man’s face, yet his fury was so rabid his grating tones carried clearly. “I told you of the letter Arsene brought back. More diamonds, they want! Send out more on the ships, they demand! This from those who are paying us—and let me remind you, paying us all handsomely. So now at last, after holding them off and sending excuse after explanation, we are finally in a position to send them all the diamonds they could wish for...and we
run
out of oil
!”

Dubois’s fists clenched and unclenched, then clenched hard again—as hard as his jaw.

Dixon cleared his throat. “Actually, it’s not really any person’s fault—more a failure in logistical planning.” He looked at the lantern in his hand—no doubt so he wouldn’t have to look at Dubois’s furious face as the mercenary captain rounded on him. Dixon’s engineer’s tones were calm and even—an expert explaining to those who didn’t understand. “It’s a combination of things—more men working in the mine, so more lanterns burning. Plus the extension of hours, which means all the lanterns are burning for half a day longer every day.” He shrugged. “Hardly surprising the lamp oil’s run low. Once the decision was made to extend the hours, the last order should have been doubled.”

Caleb pushed away from the frame at the mine’s entrance and walked unhurriedly toward the porch.

Dixon hadn’t actually said it, but given that Dubois issued all the orders, the implication was that the need for more lamp oil was something he—Dubois—should have foreseen and taken care of. That if fault there was, it was his.

Cripps, for one, understood very well; the relief in his face as he—along with his men—looked at Dubois was transparent.

Caleb reached the porch. His gaze on Dixon, he nodded at the lantern. “Can I have that?” With a backward tip of his head, he directed attention to the mine’s entrance, where Phillipe and Hillsythe had come into the open. “We need it to go on.”

“Here.” Dixon moved to the edge of the porch and handed over the lantern.

Caleb took it. The diversion had given Dubois a chance to breathe in—and swallow his ire.

And also to see that the captives’ interest was focused on working the mine and nothing else.

He hadn’t underestimated Dubois. The man’s gaze had shifted from Dixon to Caleb, and then to the pair by the mine. Dubois considered them for a full second, then he turned to Dixon. “How much oil is left?”

Dixon grimaced. “Not much.”

“What can be done with what we have left while Cripps goes to fetch more?”

Dixon considered, then replied, “Because of the longer hours, the lanterns in the mine are running low on a daily basis. The women can’t work under lanternlight, so there’s two lanterns in the cleaning shed we can take for the mine. I’ll check the other huts and see what oil we can draw from there, but I doubt it will be much.” He glanced at Dubois. “We can’t risk mining under insufficient light—that will lead to lots of unnecessarily fractured diamonds, which your backers won’t like. Even opening up the lower level—we need to see what we’re doing, or we’ll risk bringing the mountain down on top of us and the entire mine.”

He paused as if calculating, then offered, “We can keep going, but only at a very much reduced rate. It’ll be nothing like full production, at least not out of the mine, but luckily the output from the cleaning shed will ramp up as soon as Arsene returns, so the amount of raw diamonds going out to the ship should be unaffected. Regardless, I’ll ensure we stretch the oil out in the best way possible—to yield the most while we wait for more.”

That Dubois accepted the assurance with nothing more than a terse nod was a testimony to how well Dixon had managed to play his role over the past months. Dubois in no way liked the situation, but he’d accepted it.

Dubois swung to face Cripps. A muscle in Dubois’s jaw flexed; through gritted teeth, he said, “Go to the settlement and fetch more lamp oil. A
lot
more.”

“More lanterns would—” Caleb pressed his lips shut and assumed a look of chagrin.

Dubois had glanced at him. Now he smiled like a shark and turned back to Cripps. “And as the good captain suggests, bring back more lanterns as well.” He paused, then added, “And more food.”

Dubois turned back to survey Caleb. The mercenary captain waited until Caleb looked up and met his gaze before inclining his head. “Thank you for the suggestion, Captain Frobisher.”

Caleb frowned, genuinely puzzled. “And the food?”

Dubois’s shark’s smile returned. “That’s to ensure that, once Cripps returns with the supplies, you and your fellows will be in prime condition to continue the mining at maximum rate.”

He didn’t voice the words, but the warning
No more excuses
rang in the air.

Caleb shrugged. Lantern in hand, he turned and walked back toward the mine. He’d realized that having more lanterns wouldn’t make any difference to the mining—indeed, they might even help to continue to run the lamp oil down. And more food wasn’t anything to sneer at.

But best of all, his little ploy—his apparent slip of the tongue—had set the seal on Dubois’s conviction that there was nothing peculiar about the lamp oil running low.

That the captives, although affected, weren’t in any way involved in generating the shortage.

As he neared the mine entrance where Phillipe and Hillsythe waited, Caleb smiled—the gesture every bit as sharklike as Dubois’s.

* * *

As had become their habit, Katherine walked with Caleb in the cool of the evening, making a slow counterclockwise circuit of the compound. Harriet and Dixon and Annie and Jed were also strolling, and Gemma, Ellen, and Mary were taking the air in a group with five of Caleb and Lascelle’s men.

There was an unstated feeling of seizing the comfort of each other’s company while they could.

As they neared the medical hut, her gaze on the pair of guards patrolling the perimeter beyond the heaps of discarded ore, Katherine murmured, “Has Dixon made any estimate of how slow we’ll be able to go?” She glanced at Caleb’s face and amended, “Whether we’ll be able to stretch the mining out long enough?”

He shook his head. “He and the rest of us spent all afternoon working out our best way forward and, with that in mind, figuring out the best proposition to put to Dubois—meaning the one most likely to support the fiction that the mining is going forward as fast as possible given the lack of oil, but that in reality will result in the fewest diamonds taken out of the rock. We decided we should use what little oil remains to keep one section of the second tunnel—the part closest to the tunnel mouth and most visible to the guards—well lit and operational. That’s what Dixon will recommend to Dubois. However, in addition to that and unknown to Dubois, we’ll send a party deep into the first tunnel with lanterns turned low—they’ll be out of sight and hearing of the guards. There are no diamonds in the rock down there, but we’ll use the ore they generate to thin out the diamonds produced from the second deposit. We’re planning to divert as many of the diamonds as possible into our stockpile while still sending out a reasonable concentration of stones in the broken rock, enough to keep Dubois or anyone else who checks the output appeased.”

She nodded. “I can see that will stretch things out, but will it be for long enough?”

“Probably not by itself. But given what we have in the upper level, Dixon is hopeful that once we open up the lower level, which will allow us to continue mining directly along the pipe, we’ll have access to enough stones to see us through. Which is why we’ve acted to keep the concentration of stones going out of the mine as low as we dare, and also why we’ve ceased all work on opening the lower level—Dixon feels we’ll be better served by putting that off for as long as we can.”

He glanced at her, read the confusion in her face, and went on, “There’s a physical limit to how many men can work the rock face in the second tunnel. When Cripps gets back and we return to full production, only just over half the men can work the second tunnel at any time. Now the first deposit is all but mined out, there are more men available. If there was more of the diamond-bearing rock face accessible—”

“Dubois would have you all working all of the time.” She nodded. “So you need to hold back on opening the lower level until a reasonable amount of the upper level is mined out.”

“Or until we’re sure we have enough stones between the upper and lower levels to see us into September.” Caleb grimaced. “But we haven’t yet opened up the lower level sufficiently for Dixon to go down and make an assessment. Once he does, then we’ll know where we stand, and hopefully, we’ll have reason to feel safe.”

She sighed and looked ahead. “It will be a huge relief to be able to feel safe.”

“Indeed.” They’d circled around the cleaning shed. The guards who had been skirting the ore piles had moved on. Caleb glanced around, but no one else was visible, and he and Katherine were presently out of sight of the tower. He detoured toward the steps to the shed.

Katherine glanced at his face, but then only smiled. They reached the steps, and she raised her hem and followed him up.

Wondering if one of the other couples had got there before them, he eased the door open and peeked in. Moonlight pouring through the panels in the roof lit the deserted space. He pushed the door wider, drew Katherine through, then nudged the door shut and set the latch in place.

He turned—and she slipped her arms about his waist and came up on her toes; as he instinctively bent his head, equally instinctively closed his hands about her waist, she offered her lips, and he covered them with his.

Days.
They’d known each other for just days, yet sinking into her mouth, savoring her kiss, already seemed so familiar. Already so much a part of him, the natural appeasement of his desires and needs.

In seizing this mission as his own, he hadn’t expected anything like this. He was only twenty-eight; he had years yet before he’d expected to settle down. Declan might have married at thirty-one, and judging by his journal, Robert, a year older, looked set to walk down the aisle very soon. But Royd was thirty-four and had yet to marry, so why should he?

Because she was here, in his arms.

Because she was kissing him, and he was kissing her, and for just these moments, nothing else mattered but her and him and what had grown between them.