Flawless (6 page)

The British Empire had only just come to an armistice with the Boers. What had Old Man Christie been thinking, sending his daughter to a place that had pulsated with tension for more than a decade? And was Miles doing her any favors by encouraging her to continue? He could’ve pressed his hand and, as her husband, insisted on their return to England. Three months of colonial life had shown him what to expect. But no. He’d been caught up in that bonus and, to be even more blunt, in Viv. Now any return trip would be as trying as the journey onward.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

All well and good, Mr. Shelley. But poetry wasn’t getting them to Kimberley.

Viv stood on the top step of the stage, slowly surveying
her domain. Grinding miles of travel had dimmed the spark of her antagonism, or perhaps she was hoarding her resources against his next foray. Her stamina for ignoring his attentions had increased greatly since they’d lived as husband and wife. She’d looked out the window for hours at a time, just as she stared now at the way station, examining the scrubbed, bare plateau as if it held the key to understanding the universe.

Miles didn’t merit a glance.

Three days.

Three days of sitting across from her, eating with her, watching her. Three days of coming to grips with the magnitude of what they’d agreed to: twenty months as partners. He was awed and humbled by that prospect, even more so than by his marriage vows—likely because he hadn’t spoken his vows in earnest. This bargain was beginning to feel as if he’d staked his soul.

He flicked the whip. Its woven tip licked the earth and snapped with a satisfying crack.

Viv flinched. Her glare burned a hole in his head, but at least he’d claimed her attention. “Must you?”

“I absolutely must. Practice, you see.”

Although Miles presented a hand to aid her descent, she ignored him and slid past in a rustle of silk and lace. Both feet planted on the ground, she gave a little hop to right her bustle and straightened her hat—some monstrosity of fashion that dared the rising wind to rip off its feathers and bows.

If her intention was to prove that she was as
au courant
and senseless as the rest of the moneyed travelers, she was succeeding. But then, she always had when it came to keeping up perfect appearances. In tight, exclusive groups they critiqued their surroundings with obvious distaste, wearing their success and wealth like medieval crests. The lesser folk crowded into the scant shade of the rear coaches, a new sort of peasant to be consumed by a new breed of empire.

The first-class passengers watched Miles with obvious curiosity. Although he should’ve taken part in that show, cultivating the relationships that would aid in making Viv’s brokerage a success, he didn’t feel like relinquishing his anonymity just yet. Once he returned to Kimberley, he would become Lord Bancroft again. For now he was just a man in the desert holding a whip.

Another day and then back to playing Society games. But Viv would be his solace.

Sidling up beside her, he gently encircled her nape with his fingers. “Such a marvelous day for a walk in the park, darling. Aren’t you glad we came?”

She stiffened. The man and woman with whom she’d been conversing both gawked, then made excuses to leave. For his part, Miles couldn’t take his eyes off his wife. The angle of her dainty chin made it appear as if she looked down at him. But in doing so, she revealed the sleek, pale line of her throat. What would she do if he nuzzled her there, right now, for anyone to see?

Slap him. And he’d grin.

But such uncalculated folly would run contrary to his
purposes. He wanted her willing and eager, not on the defensive. So he forced that rogue thought away.

“Walk with me, Viv.”

She slowly pried his hand off of her skin. “Where?”

“Anywhere.”

“No.”

“Afraid?”

She sniffed. “Hardly.”

“All very proper, I assure you,” he said, leaning as close as he dared to the tempting arch of her throat. “I have no intention of accosting you behind the stables.” He straightened and tucked her arm through his. “Besides, my back aches. If you’ve suffered as much as I have in that coach, you’ll appreciate the chance to move.”

She regarded the other passengers, then Miles, as if weighing the relative digestibility of two equally rotten piles of food. “Very well. But put that beastly thing away.”

As Miles coiled the offending whip, she claimed the opportunity to precede him. She turned away from the corrugated iron way station and strolled into the sun. A matched trio of peacock feathers waved like a colorful flag atop her hat. Miles shook his head and followed.

They climbed a small bluff. Bent and warped acacias littered the plain, so infrequent and so isolated—an afterthought from God. Bushweed and devil’s grass pocked the dirt with splotches of dusty brown and gray-green. The afternoon sun stripped them of detail. Lizards darted across the scorched ground and warblers sang from hidden places. Miles squinted but found no animals, other than a few
high-soaring birds of prey. Likely at that hour, beasts such as steenbok and topi—both antelopes of some kind—were sensible and sought shade.

Far, far to the north, a string of clouds the color of fading bruises stretched over a decadently blue sky. Another thunderstorm, it seemed. The unbearably hot months of summer also made up the rainy season, with afternoon cloudbursts a common occurrence. At least he’d learned that much already.

“We are not in England,” he said.

“Nor New York.” With a slow turn of her head, Viv traced the horizon from east to west. A sheen of sweat dampened the divot above her upper lip, while her mouth curved into a look of wonder. Sunshine turned her skin to lustrous gold. “What a startling expanse.”

The camaraderie of that moment, sharing such an unimaginable sight with his cloistered wife, took Miles by surprise. He wanted to ask if she felt it, too—the potential—but that was far too personal. Better if he just left their stalemate as it was, at least until they found some privacy. Then her frozen demeanor would have to go.

Catching her profile out of the corner of his eye, he banked the greedy impulse to toss the bonnet from her head and ravish her down-turned lips. To stand so near after such tedious months tempted him in ways he was unused to resisting, like licking the condensation off a glass rather than drinking the cool water it held.

“I saw her at the train station,” Viv said softly. “That woman and her boys.”

Reluctantly, Miles followed the line of her gaze and found the woman, large with child, seated next to a wagon wheel. Deep lines of exhaustion marred otherwise pleasant, rounded features. A blond bearded man of indeterminate age stood next to her in the wagon’s shadow and handed her a tin cup. Two young lads with their mother’s dark hair chased a lizard through the scrub and thistle, the object of both parents’ unflinching attention.

A thousand questions came to mind regarding their circumstances. Yet Miles’s responsibility was to aid in managing a diamond brokerage, and his desire was to subject Viv to an unhealthy degree of sexual intimidation—neither of which included caring why a family would undertake such a hazardous journey. He snuffed out his curiosity like pinching the flame off a wick.

The last pair of replacement horses was brought out by two burly stock tenders, men who could’ve been striding along the warp of an unfinished schooner in a Liverpool dry dock, knocking lumber and metal into a seafaring vessel. They appeared every inch British laborers, a disorienting contrast to the alien landscape that surrounded them. Only here, in seeing those men, did Miles begin to understand the extent of what it meant to claim the world for Victoria.

Claiming. Just as he wanted to possess his wife.

“I found myself surprised by the appeal of this place,” he said, voice low.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say it has . . . appeal.”

“Grandeur? Majesty? Pick a word, Viv.”

“Perhaps I would, if I didn’t believe it prelude to a jest of some kind.”

“No jest.” Never a man to be denied anything he set his mind to having, he caught her chin. “I just want to know what you think of our new home.”

“It’s menacing.”

He grinned and touched a lock of hair nestled around the lobe of her ear. “No, my dear, you’re thinking of me.”

A startled gasp puffed her sweet breath against his skin. With the conditions so harrowing, he hadn’t shaved in three days—three days when she hadn’t even acknowledged his presence.

She would now. And he would damn well enjoy her while she still belonged to him.

Tension that constricted his ribs, building across days and months and an entire year, flooded into his kiss. Heady, succulent pleasure swept through his brain before settling in his blood. Fire lit him from the inside out. She pushed flat palms against his chest, but he was not done
taking
. Soft lips molded beneath the pressure of his mouth, then to the press of his tongue. She tasted saltier than he remembered, not so sugar sweet and untouchable. This was a woman who would fight him, and on that high desert plateau with the hot wind on his face, he craved her vigor.

She gave it to him, almost reluctantly. Slender fingers slipped from his chest to his biceps and squeezed. Miles seized that invitation and pulled her flush against his aching body. The elegant arch of her back was meant to be held—to be caressed while lying naked across the finest, softest
sheets. He crisscrossed his arms up along her spine. The rigid whalebone of her corset kept him from the bountiful female flesh he desired, just as surely as her manners hid the vibrant woman who kissed with such passion.

He wanted rid of all of it. Strip her bare of every defense. Make her regret that she’d ever thought to leave.

“Miles?”

The breathy quality of her voice quickened his pulse. His rigid cock throbbed with wanting. He desired only to grab a handful of her backside and grind their hips, to make her feel the power of his desire, but her blasted bustle covered her curves like a wire cage. Instead he slipped his tongue along hers, relishing the sharp sensation of her teeth as he dove deeper. Mysterious and hot and sinful, she let him in.

A jolt of victory added strength to his arousal. Viv’s tentative surrender made him feel as if he’d already won the battle, barging past her forged defenses. All for just one kiss—one kiss more than he’d seduced out of his wife in a year.

But then another hard shove.

She edged from his hold, when he’d thought himself capable of holding on to her until evening fell, until her inhibitions gave way beneath cool night shadows.

“Miles!”

More desperate this time, a note of hysteria chilled his aggression. Viv’s face had turned ashen, hazel eyes flaring wide. Had his kiss fostered such a look of horror? He liked that idea no more than he liked caring what she thought.

“What is it?”

Although her reddened lips glistened with the slick aftermath
of their kiss, her expression did not lose its dismay. She lifted a gloved hand and pointed to the north. “There.”

A blast of prescient fear hit him like a furnace door yanked open. The purple stain across the northern sky that he’d assumed to be a cloud formation was, in fact, the dust kicked up by a dozen men on horseback. They rode at full gallop toward the way station. Splinters of sunlight flashed off drawn weapons.

“Run, Viv. Now!”

He grabbed her hand and tugged her down the shallow bluff. Her boots, hat, bustle, and corset—none was meant for a hasty retreat, but she kept pace stride for stride.

“Men on horseback!” Miles shouted over the wind and blood in his ears. “Due north!”

Guards atop the six coaches stood and peered toward the horizon. Understanding flashed across each face with the speed of dry brush catching fire. Armed with a shotgun, the man at the front of the procession began issuing orders. “All passengers, back in the coaches! Now! Men, take positions. Pickford, tell me who the hell those riders are!”

A short ragged-looking youth with ginger hair scurried up a ladder and onto the roof of the way station. He lifted binoculars, but Miles didn’t waste time waiting for the boy’s conclusion.

“Mr. Nolan,” he called. “Your assistance, if you please.”

Adam appeared in an instant. He sighted the loaded chamber of his revolver. “Here, sir.”

Viv was breathless, and she still held fast to Miles’s hand. “Where’s Chloe?”

“Inside the second coach,” Adam said, pointing.

“Find Mr. Kato and come right back.” Gratified by Adam’s lack of hesitation, Miles hurried his wife to the awaiting vehicle.

He elbowed three well-groomed men of means out of the way to push her to the head of the queue. Grumbles were his reward but offered no deterrent. She turned to face him from the coach’s top step. The perfect array of hat and hair had been jostled to the point of ruin—nearly as disheveled as he had desired while they kissed. But that moment had shattered.

“Miles, what are you going to do?”

“Later I’ll tease you about your uncharacteristic concern for my well-being. Now, stay inside.” With the other gentlemen safely aboard, he slammed the door. Adam and Mr. Kato stood waiting. “Come with me.”

Beside the lead coach, the guard with the shotgun was instructing a trio of similarly armed men. Miles recognized them as the brawny stock tenders. “Pickford says they’re renegade Boers. Mismatched uniforms and weapons from the Transvaal’s army. Raiders. Fifteen of them.”

“How many men do you have to defend these coaches?” Miles asked.

Cool blue eyes narrowed as he took in Miles’s appearance. “Who are you?”

“Miles, Viscount Bancroft. You?”

Suspicion slid off the man’s face, replaced by awe. “Wilkes, my lord. Hanford Wilkes. I’m head of security.”

“Former military?”

“The 15th Hussars, my lord.”

“A cavalryman without a horse. Excellent. Now answer me, Mr. Wilkes. How many men do we have at our disposal?”

“Nine, if we count young Pickford.”

“I said men, not children. And I loathe those odds. Do you have weapons enough to arm my men here?”