Flawless (39 page)

Viv’s hands shook as she signed the documents that transferred one million dollars into her name. She had not thought this moment would be so charged—more perfunctory than powerful. But the magnitude of her accomplishment washed over her in a wave of emotion.

Miles brushed a kiss against her temple. “Congratulations, my love.”

She exhaled a heavy breath. So much work. So much to be proud of. And now, such a future awaited them both. “It was quite possibly the most difficult undertaking I’ll ever attempt, but it was worth it. Even without the money, it would’ve been worth it.”

“You both performed admirably.” Delavoir smiled. Such an odd expression for his hawkish face, like seeing
an undertaker laugh. “Now I’ll withdraw until your brothers and sister arrive.” He performed an exacting bow and turned to go. “Oh, my mistake. This is for you as well. From Sir William.”

Viv accepted a folded, sealed letter. Even her father’s scrawled handwriting threatened a new round of overwhelmed tears. She glanced up at his portrait, then opened the heavy stock paper. Miles stood behind her, his forehead bowed to rest on her nape, his fingers gentle on her shoulders. He was nearby, so close, yet giving her the privacy she hadn’t needed to request.

The paper trembled as she read one final message from her father.

My Vivienne,

If I could change one thing in my life, I would return to those months in Paris—or the fateful years that followed. I would have been your mother’s champion. I have never been able to think of her without regret. Pride kept me from offering what she deserved, and you both suffered for it. Please forgive me, my daughter, for the pain you endured because of my mistakes.

You have always been the most deserving girl, so quick and dutifully minded. I can only hope, as I pen this missive, that one day your husband earns your heart. He always struck me as a man in need of a challenge, and you, my dear, were the most challenging endeavor a father could undertake. To love you is to love untapped potential and the thrill of the chase.
Perhaps in tackling the wilds of the beautiful, untamed Cape, you will discover that thrill together.

Be well, my exquisite girl, and be happy. You deserve both and so much more.

Your father,

William

“Good tears or bad?” Miles asked against her cheek.

“Good. So very good.”

She turned in his arms and held on tight. A feeling of incandescent love enveloped her as surely as he did. The million dollars was nothing compared to the miracle of learning her father’s true heart.

Only after Miles forced a gentle distance between them did he find a handkerchief and dry her face. “No more of this now, Vivie,” he said. “Your family will be here soon. I’d rather they catch us in an indelicate position than see you crying.” He kissed her softly. “Shall we wager as to whether Old Man Christie changed their lives, too?”

“Absolutely not. No more wagers between us.”

“What then?”

Instinctively, as her heart had taught her to do, she found his dark brown eyes. Her amusement and happiness were reflected there, and in his guileless smile. “Only love, Miles. Love and trust and forever.”

I have a special place in my heart for Viv and Miles—for their strength, vulnerability, and hard-fought faith in one another. I hope you’ve enjoyed their story of reunited passion!

To complete their happy ending, I knowingly took two liberties with history. Although patents utilizing carbons were issued at the rate of roughly twenty per decade between 1865 and the end of the century, the true value of industrial diamonds was not realized until WWI. Whether a brokerage could have profited by trading carbons as early as 1881 must be left to our willing suspension of disbelief.

In addition, the genuine Kimberley Club was established by Cecil Rhodes three months after Miles’s poker game finale. For a time the club boasted more millionaires per square foot than any building in the world. Twice it was rebuilt following devastating fires. After various concessions toward membership throughout the twentieth century, women were finally allowed to enter through the front door in 1980.

Countless people’s lives were bettered by the opportunities in Kimberley, but very little about the diamond trade has been flawless. In setting Viv and Miles’s story in Cape Colony, I hope I have done justice to the balance between hardship and romance. As with all settings throughout history, both must have existed in Kimberley.

As always, I look forward to your comments! Please contact me by email at [email protected]. I also welcome you to visit
www.CarrieLofty.com
and to follow me on Twitter (@CarrieLofty).

Turn the page for a sneak peek at Carrie Lofty’s next novel

Coming soon from Pocket Books

Glasgow

March, 1881

P
olly Gowan knew the overseers
were looking for her. They always came for her.

She ducked her chin and concentrated on the mechanical arms swishing cotton into cloth. Adjusting the tension of the warp threads, she glanced toward the commotion at the north entrance to the factory floor. One of the overseers, a bulldog-faced man named Rand Livingstone with a taste for expensive clothing, consulted a ragged sheet of paper. A list of names, no doubt.

Christie Textiles had a new master, reported to be the son of the company’s namesake. No one could admit to having met the man, so privately did he keep his own counsel. But a face-to-face meeting was exactly what Polly
sought. Any information she unearthed about his methods and personality would aid the weavers’ union, especially during contract negotiations. They needed to know their new opponent.

And she needed to stay clear of blame for last week’s accident. Several newly delivered looms had been ruined in a small explosion, with three horses killed. Mary Worth had ruined her hand trying to save the poor beasts. Many believed it to be sabotage, including Polly. But the identity of the perpetrator remained a mystery. Far too many mysteries for her liking.

Livingstone may as well have been working from memory, so predictable were his persons of interest. Tommy Larnach, Agnes Dorward, and Les MacNider shuffled toward the door under armed guard. Other workers hustled to take their places at the looms. The day’s orders still needed to be filled. Half the factory floor could be hauled to jail and that expectation wouldn’t change.

When questioned by one of the enforcers, stout old Widow Ferguson pointed a gnarled forefinger toward Polly. But Livingstone was already pushing past workers, his sunken eyes fastened on his target. Yes, he and Polly were very well acquainted.

She banked her apprehension as if throwing water on hot coals. Her best defense was, as always, to be perceived exactly as Livingstone assumed. A little simple. A little cowed.

“Miss Gowan, you’re to come with me.” His voice box must have been damaged during his petty, miserable life. He perpetually sounded as if a strong hand clasped his throat. “You’re on the list.”

“Of course, sir.” But she did not pause in her work. Threads whisked to form cloth—the mechanics of the loom nearly magic, except for the grit and toil and steam they consumed.

“
Now,
Polly.”

She hid the shiver that came at his use of her Christian name. “Only finishing my quota, sir.”

Livingstone yanked her away from the loom. Constance Nells eased into Polly’s space, insuring that the work would not suffer. She deftly maneuvered three machines at once, aided by one of the apprentice weavers. A slight smile tipped Connie’s lips, the only indication that she was amused, too. They had, after all, performed this ballet more than a dozen times. Just enough insolence, without inviting the full wrath of the overseers.

That Connie was also involved in union activities probably would have surprised the likes of Livingston. Studious, tidy, and quiet, with her two wee babes tended at home by her elderly grandmother, she hardly seemed the type.

But Polly . . .

Being the eldest child of Graham Gowan meant notoriety.
His dedication to workers’ rights spanned three decades. Polly’s youth and gender would not protect her forever, especially if the masters discovered that she served as her father’s right hand.

Livingstone prodded her in the lower back. He always touched her more than was necessary. Little pinches and grabs reinforced what damage he could do if the opportunity arose. Polly kept her eyes forward, her jaw fixed. The heavy pulse in her ears rubbed out the looms’ thumping, humming clatter.

Out the front doors, she squinted against the pewter sky. Calton was hardly a pretty area on the most brilliant of days. In fact, spring’s eventual sunshine would only make clear every crack in the tenement sandstone. But when licked by March’s drizzle and cold, buildings stood as dark, hulking shadows amid the ghostly gray. No color. Very little hope.

She and the other suspects—for that’s what they were—shambled toward a constable’s wagon. But they wouldn’t be dragged before civil authorities. No, with regard to factory matters, the masters may as well be God’s representatives on Earth. Or Satan’s.

That no one had yet met the devil of Christie Textiles was enough to make Polly shiver. How could she strategize against a man she had never met?

Her shawl offered little protection against the slinky
late-winter cold. Once inside the wagon, seated on a hard, shallow bench, she huddled closer to Agnes Dorward. The woman’s age was completely indeterminate, a contradiction of smooth skin and gray hair. All Polly knew was that she had four grown children and had lost her only grandchild, a wee baby girl, to cholera during the previous autumn.

Agnes’s closed eyes silently proclaimed her boredom with this routine. Polly shared her fatigue, knowing their destination would be Buchanan Street in the City Centre. All she could hope was that this time, the new Mr. Christie would be there to question them personally.

Les MacNider, however, was full as ever of piss and wind. “They haven’t the right. They never do. And yet we let them herd us along like cattle to the slaughter.”

“Ah, shut your flapping gums, Les.” Hamish Nyman had been arrested at least four times for inciting political discord. He lit a rolled tobacco paper. That sweet, ashy scent quickly filled the enclosed wagon, tensing Polly’s stomach.

“No, I won’t,” Les said. “Polly, take my back on this. Your father wouldn’t stand for such abuse.”

“He has and he would,” she replied. “We all tell our stories, and then we go back to work. No harm done. And no masters the wiser. At least this time they have just cause. Someone really did sabotage those looms. We all know it.”

Hamish’s whip-thin disciple, Tommy Larnach, grinned
at her with the witless abandon of a simpleton. But sparks of intelligence shone from his eyes, as did the fondness born of their shared history. Some of it was very intimate. Not all of it was pretty. Once, back when they were children running loose in the alleys of Calton, Polly had seen him kick a stray dog to death. He’d grinned that exact same way.

“Beats working,” he said. “Anything to keep from finishing my quota.”

Les sneered. “You little pisspot. Do you think those demands disappear when we leave the floor? No, someone else takes up our slack. They work twice as hard while we have to defend ourselves against ever more suspicions.”

“Their fault for being so upstanding,” Tommy said with a shrug.

“Shut it.” Hamish exhaled a long gray billow of smoke. “You’ll wake the old lady.”

“I’m not asleep,” Agnes said, eyes still closed. “How could I be with the lot of you nattering on?”

Polly permitted herself a tight grin. They were unruly, thick-headed, bitter people, but they were
her
people. Even Tommy, as barbarous as he could be, would lie down in front of a team of galloping draft horses if it meant protecting union secrets. His limp was a testament to that when, half a decade earlier, at the mere age of fifteen, he’d taken the fall for her father.

The wagon chugged to a stop. Livingstone jerked the
double doors open, his hand on Polly’s upper arm faster than she could have imagined. She stumbled to the pavement where flint-sharp ice crystals chapped her cheeks. Agnes emerged last, with Les helping her down.

The office for Christie Textiles was a modest affair when compared to some of the masters’ grand places of business. Situated halfway down toward St. Enoch’s Square, the squat four-story building resembled in shape and color the dull bricks used for its construction. Heavy overcast clouds leeched the walls of their deep red. A modest sign hung over the front door.

“The sign’s been painted anew,” Polly said to Agnes.

“New master. It’s little Will Christie’s boy, come home.”

From nipping bites, Polly wore a raw place on her chapped lower lip. Her father’s committeemen collected information like birds building nests. But what they had gathered about Alexander Christie did little to round out his image. Indeed, he was Sir William Christie’s eldest child, born to an English noblewoman who had died during his infancy. Raised in London by his mother’s family, the boy eventually moved to New York City when Sir William remarried a Welsh commoner. Now he taught astronomy at an American university in someplace called Rhode Island, widowed with one child.

But his personality, politics, and plans—even his appearance—were as opaque as the clouds.

“Home,” Polly said, the word brusque. “He was neither born nor raised here.”

Agnes shook her head. “He’s got its blood in his veins, though. No denying.”