Flawless (16 page)

“Do you know anything about plants, Mr. Kato? Or the insects that thrive here?”

“Some, my lady.”

“Please,” she said, opening the gate. “I should like any place to start.”

After a silent assessment, he nodded once and joined her
in the garden. The spot where she had knelt was nearly the only patch of open soil in the entire enclosure. “These are weeds,” he said. “See their sharp leaves? You can tell by the smell like pepper, but I do not know its real name.”

Viv looked around and found most of the garden infested with the prickly invaders. She would need gloves after all.

“But this.” Mr. Kato knelt next to an inauspicious shrub about one yard high. The plain white shirt he wore stretched across his wide back and seemed to glow in the orange and blue twilight. “This is a sugarbush. Protea, really.”

“It doesn’t look like much.” The leather leaves were dull green. Nearly black bark covered its stumpy trunk and spindly branches. “Does it bloom?”

“Not this one. Well, not yet. It needs years to firm its roots before it can be beautiful. And some grow tall as acacias before they open their first flowers.” He looked up at her from where he knelt. “We cannot rush these things. But then the spring comes and the colors come. It will be worth it, my lady. In time.”

Her decision made, she said, “Mr. Kato, I understand that my husband hired you for matters of business.”

“That is correct.”

“Would you consider extending your duties to helping me here?” She knitted her hands together. The new soil did not feel so unfamiliar now. She would adapt and firm up her roots, too. But Mr. Kato only frowned. “Unless, of course, you think the work menial or meant for a woman. I wouldn’t want to insult you.”

Somewhere during their conversation, she had stopped
thinking of him as an African or even, more specifically, as a Zulu. He was a man, just like any other. And most men had inordinate supplies of pride. She knew even less about his mother’s culture than she did about the plants surrounding her ankles. Viv frowned slightly. The last thing she wanted to do was demean him so soon after just having made a tenuous connection.

“I would be happy to,” he said at last.

“Then why the hesitation?”

“Because once again you have done something I have yet to see another Englishwoman do.”

Rather than correct his assumption that she was, in fact, from England, Viv concentrated on the mystery of her behavior. “And that is?”

“Talk to me without fear in your voice.”

Viv exhaled with a tremulous smile. “Perhaps that is because I have known fear, Mr. Kato. And you look nothing like it.”

He grinned at that, stood, and shook the dirt from his plain homespun trousers. “Miss Louise made pie.”

Wearing a smile she hadn’t expected, Viv followed the large African up the back porch stairs and into the manor. Sure enough, Louise had made three berry pies. She sat with Mr. Kato, Chloe, and the other servants and ate as she had always wanted to as a child—until her stomach was full and content.

M
iles knew what it was
to enter the most exclusive establishments in London, Paris, and New York.

He had grown up among people who knew how to take luxury for granted. Pampered people in pampered lives, teaching him how to squander without thought. People for whom deprivation meant missing a Season or foregoing a fourth hunting trip to a distant cousin’s Lake District grounds. If money ever became an issue, there were always eligible sons and daughters to be matched with bourgeoisie looking to step up a rung or six on Society’s ladder. His marriage to Viv had been just such an arrangement, designed to keep his father’s earldom solvent.

Thus it meant little to climb the wraparound verandah of the Kimberley Club, where men in fine silks and this year’s suits sat in small groups around tables inlaid with precious stones. Mild lantern light burnished faces hanging with heavy jowls, affecting suntans that the wealthy tried desperately to avoid. Pipes, newspapers, and tumblers of liquor were abundant, as if they came standard with admission.

Here, unlike the best salons in Mayfair, the only measure of exclusivity was money. Those who could afford to become members were permitted entrance. The diamond aristocracy.

Strolling toward the entrance, Miles inhaled the pungent mix of burning tobacco and hair tonic, newspaper ink and rich leather. He missed some of the finery, but not the shiftless hours lost to gambling and half-remembered nights. Since his arrival, he had become too focused on Africa, the business, and Vivie. He would have been with her at that moment, in her bed—bloody hell, inside
her
—had that been an option. Instead he would play his part. But he did so now with purpose.

A drink would’ve been nice, though. And a cigar. But she trusted him so little.

He would honor his promise.

“Excuse me, sir, but this club is for members only,” said an officious little man. Slightly built and not even as tall as Viv, his fat sideburns sat like caterpillars on his cheeks.

Miles added an extra dollop of Eton to his words as he said, “You must be new.”

The caterpillars twitched around a contemptuous sneer. “I’m Morton Crane, personal assistant to Mr. Neil Elden.”

“Ah, just the man you’re going to introduce me to.”

Crane sneered as he took in the lax state of Miles’s suit. “If I might have your name, sir?”

No matter his dislike for the more tedious and restrictive aspects of the nobility, Miles very much enjoyed being able to reveal his title to men such as Crane. The ultimate trump card.

“My name is Miles Warren Durham, 9th Viscount Bancroft. As for character references, you might consult my father, the Earl of Bettenford. And when he tells you that I’m a sorry, ridiculous sod unfit for human company, then perhaps my wife’s position at the head of the Christie Diamond Brokerage House will suffice. Now send for Mr. Elden so that he might apologize on your behalf.”

He tipped his silk top hat and brushed past, leaving Crane and his caterpillars in a fit of apoplexy.

A starched attendant escorted him to a vacant booth. Its dark supple leather embraced Miles and whisked away some of the tension he’d been hoarding. While secluded, the booth’s location allowed every opportunity to see who came and went. He grinned to himself, then waived away a waiter who offered to bring him a drink.

Other club members eyed him with that familiar combination of curiosity and decorum. The revelation of his purpose and background would be welcomed but never actively sought. After private inquiries, those same men would smile upon their next encounter. The high-class subterfuge made him spitting mad, in part because he was an active participant in the same stultifying rules, the same trite dance.

He drummed his fingers across the polished tabletop, its wood gleaming with a pale yellow cast. God, he’d known his boredom was slipping dangerously close to complete insensibility, but these past few days made a mockery of all he thought he knew. What he’d already experienced in Cape Colony shone a glaring electric light on the tried-and-true ways of merry old England, revealing ever-widening cracks
and scurrying cockroaches. Any endeavor to re-create those same ways here, in a pockmarked wasteland, seemed even more ridiculous—here, where men changed their destinies by unearthing diamonds the size of strawberries.

Maybe that was the appeal, knowing fate was not set in Kimberley. Fate for him, most recent in a procession of spendthrift viscounts and monstrous earls, had been set since birth. For a second time Miles could claim the opportunity to make himself and his future into something unexpected. Viv had been his first revelation. She’d shown him that life was none so predictable.

A fair-haired man wearing immaculate evening dress approached Miles’ss table, his gait and posture assured. Built more like a plowman than a banker, he maintained an expression poised in a place of neutral friendliness. He greeted other club members with casual nods but didn’t slow. Youth and rough good looks were to his credit, but new money was new money. White, straight teeth and hair tonic would never disguise that fact.

“You must be Lord Bancroft,” he said, extending his hand when he reached the booth. “I’m Neil Elden, your servant.”

Miles stood and bowed, leaving Elden’s hand hovering uselessly in midair. The man must have recognized the extent of Miles’s displeasure because he adjusted his ascot and offered a conciliatory smile.

“I’m on the Board of Directors here at the Kimberley Club,” Elden said, “and I make a point of personally welcoming our distinguished members. Forgive me, but I’ve been away in Cape Town on colonial business.”

Usually one for glib replies, Miles took a rare cue from his father and checked the urge to fill the silence that followed. The Earl of Bettenford would’ve swallowed his own tongue—or the tongue of a three-days-dead hound dog, for that matter—before making social interactions more comfortable for commoners. One only had to look to Viv and Miles’s wedding as an example: the aged earl, nearly bankrupt but flush with aristocratic pride, had refused to drink when Old Man Christie lifted his glass. What an auspicious start
that
had been.

If Miles were to maintain the appropriate impression of wealth and entitlement, he needed to cultivate that same callousness.

“Please forgive Crane,” Elden continued. “He protects this place with a zealotry that deserves its own place of worship. We knew you’d arrived in town, of course—this community is too small for privacy. But, well, appearances can be deceiving.”

“Indeed.” Miles offered a wide, impervious grin. “Then let’s start again, shall we?”

Elden slid into his seat with no show of relief; he’d expected to be forgiven.

“And your wife is the new manager of Christie Brokerage, is she not?” He signaled the bartender, then pulled a cigar case from his breast pocket. Miles declined his offer. “The rumor mill here churns out as many tall tales as the mines produce diamonds.”

“Yes, she’s been afforded management of the Christie.”

“As that I own a controlling stake in the Lion’s Head
Mine, I am one of your most loyal suppliers. I should like to be apprised of any significant changes to the business model.”

“Changes?”

“Changes that may affect my revenue-yield.”

“I see,” Miles said. “And I should like the opportunity to come into an industry and learn its pace before being pressed for details. Forgive me if I ignore your curiosity. For now.”

The man blinked, a show of surprise that gratified Miles. Good. He considered it fair return for the half-truths Elden conjured. Something didn’t add up.

A waiter brought a bottle of scotch. Elden played the gracious host, pouring two glasses and sliding one to Miles. Then he lit his cigar and settled back against the stuffed leather bench. “I like you, Bancroft.”

“I can hardly believe that you do. But that’s no skin off my back because I don’t like you either.” Miles circled his finger along the top of his tumbler. He grinned. “At least not yet.”

Elden laughed, but the wariness in his expression was just what Miles had wanted to see. Keeping him off guard might provide time enough to discover why he grated on Miles’s nerves. The oily, rehearsed cadence of his speeches? The earlier assumption that he would be acquitted of any social offense? Or that by any accepted yardstick, he appeared a perfect gentleman?

Miles didn’t believe in perfect gentlemen.

Especially not when Elden was so obviously self-made
and grasping at every opportunity to keep the power he’d amassed in Kimberley.

“Well, aren’t you the interesting chap? No matter, Bancroft. I’ll await official news from the brokerage. I can be patient. And you’re welcome here, as you well know. We can’t afford to let the public think that we’re anything less than a unified front.”

“How’s that?”

“Kimberley is a bizarre little wart, as you’ve probably assessed.” He exhaled smoke, providing Miles with a sudden understanding as to why Viv detested the things. It wasn’t just the smell and the ash, but the arrogance—the theatrics of it. “We have Africans working alongside proper Englishmen.” He smiled. “And women running brokerage houses.”

“Apparently.”

“Society here is a muddle of broken rules and ignored conventions. The least we can do is establish a place of refuge for those of us who deserve our luxuries and our privacy.”

“Interesting,” Miles said. “It appears to me that you pick and choose.”

“Oh?”

Miles pushed the tumbler of scotch toward the center of the table. “My father clings to the old ways, you see. He’s a snobbish prig that way, but his title endows his opinions with more weight than those held by commoners. To his thinking, your use of the word ‘we’ in any context would be cause for offense. And he’d drive a stake through his own heart before taking his scotch with a new money aspirant.”

He stood and matched the brittle, mirthless smile Elden
wore. “Now,” Miles said, “there are a few new faces here tonight that I do not recognize. And since I’m no such stickler for my father’s petty conventions, perhaps you’d be so good as to make my introductions?”

Viv wasn’t consciously waiting up
for Miles. No, that wouldn’t do at all.

But when he arrived home well past midnight, banging open the front door and slamming into his suite across the hall, his dramatics did nothing to disturb her sleep. How could it when she had yet to close her eyes?

Instead she sat propped against her headboard, reading a pamphlet on gemstone grading standards. The lamplight on her bedside table wavered with the puff of a breeze. Outside, cooing quail and guinea fowl—native fauna Mr. Kato had helped her identify—added to the sounds of dry, swishing leaves and the clicking needles of acacia trees. And always the hum of insects. Day and night, they created an unsettling symphony of nature in all its beauty and peril.

She had been resolutely setting the pamphlet aside, ready to unfurl the mosquito netting, when Miles knocked on her bedroom suite door.