Today's Embrace (6 page)

Looking at her husband, she was now quite aware of the manner of man he was—prone to a restless, adventuresome spirit from boyhood. She knew a qualm of fear. Would the day come when marriage, no longer as fresh and exciting, would fail to satisfy and hold him?

Evy had no fear that he would break his commitment of fidelity to her. What she could envision was a day when perhaps his earthy interests would exclude her. She was determined she would show interest in all that held him—his gold mine, the Black Diamond, the map—thinking her energies in those areas would endear her to him.

“Coffee would be stunning about now,” he commented. “I'll need to tell Bertha there's little need to be sending the maids up with pots of tea.”

He ran his fingers through his dark hair in a mannerism she knew well. He did that when musing about a matter that either bewildered or worried him. She was wise enough to know what bothered him now was not Bertha's tea. It was the meeting in London, of course. Whatever was it about?

Patience
, she warned herself.
Don't push him. You know how intolerably uncooperative he can be when you try that
.

“I'll make some coffee, darling,” she said sweetly. “I've everything right here.”

Evy had managed to have a small stove placed in an alcove when they'd first moved into the private suite of rooms. The suite was considered the best in Rookswood, located on the sunny west wing of the mansion, and allowed them a sense of privacy Rogan had wanted. Evy had noted at once that though Rogan loved Sir Lyle and showed him a good deal of respect as his father, they were not close. Rogan had grown up that way, she knew. Lyle, though a kindly man, lived in a world of his own. He often secluded himself inside the downstairs library with his books, where he was working on some mammoth history of Grimston Way and the Chantry ancestors. Lyle had told her he had traced the first Chantry all the way back to the First Crusade in the Holy Land.

The cookstove was perfect for Rogan's unexpected calls for “midnight coffee.” How he ever fell asleep afterward was a mystery, but it didn't seem to bother him. For herself, she made a cup of Belgian chocolate. Learning of her penchant for chocolate, he had sent for the best from Belgium and Switzerland.

A short time later with coffee, chocolate, and a tin of Dutch biscuits on the low table in front of them, Evy sat on the divan beside him to try to conjure from him what had taken place in London.

“How's your coffee, darling?” she asked, again sweetly.

His eyes taunted her. “Do I detect the use of feminine wiles to wrest from a beguiled husband all she wants to know? You look like a curious kitten with glowing eyes sprinkled with green.”

“I've never—” she began, then halted. She hadn't thought of herself as beguiling at all. Then, of course, she'd never been married before, so she was learning new things about herself every day.

She frowned. “Well, then, perhaps I should be completely straightforward. What did Anthony want?”

“It must occur to you that if he had wanted you to know, he would not have requested that I come privately.”

“Surely you're not going to keep whatever it is from me? I never thought you'd be so atrocious as to become one of those husbands who thinks he should keep everything unpleasant from his wife lest she fall into a faint.”

“Let me see—where did I put those smelling salts?” He patted his shirt pocket. “I couldn't bear the torture of you keeping me awake all night pummeling me with questions.”

She gave a laugh. “As if I've ever done so.”

“You're not going to threaten to torture your vulnerable husband with pond ice again?”

She covered a smile, thinking of his tough, muscled torso as vulnerable. “Of course I would, but there's no ice in the pond now.”

“Saved only by the long warm days!”

“Rogan, if you trusted me, you'd share what Anthony told you.”

“ ‘How can you say, “I love you,” when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength lies,' ” he mimicked.

“Oh, Rogan, you're a cad. How can you possibly compare me with that Philistine woman, Delilah?”

His eyes teased her. “Next you'll be asking me to put my head on your lap.”

She lifted a brow. “To talk about the secret of your strength?”

Rogan gave her a ghost of a grin and set his empty cup down, refilling it from the silver urn.

“All right, settle back, my sweet. This is going to take a while.”

She smiled victoriously, kicking off her slippers and tucking her feet up under her. “You may begin, Rogan, dear. I'm all ears.”

He leaned back against the divan, looking up at the ceiling and frowning, as though arranging his thoughts. Finally he spoke: “Tonight, I saw Anthony at the Diamond Enterprise in London. He had a letter
from Parnell with some startling information about Julien and the Kimberly Black Diamond …”

The lightness of their bantering words was left far behind as Rogan explained what he had read in his brother's letter.

Now, something quite sinister seemed to invade the room. Evy could feel the tension in Rogan, and herself as well, as it mounted with the strange tale he told. When he had finished, she leaned forward in amazement.

“What Parnell said about Sir Julien … is true?”

“What reason would my brother have to invent a fabrication? Think! What is it Parnell wants above everything—except, perhaps, diamonds?” he asked wryly.

“I suppose Darinda Bley.”

“There! You're exactly right. And who controls his fate? Julien, obviously.”

“From what Arcilla writes me, Darinda isn't so easily manipulated by her grandfather. She may decide she won't marry Parnell.”

“That, too. She's ambitious and headstrong, that one.”

Evy shot him a glance that scanned him. “You know Darinda well?”

“Well enough.” He leaned forward and poured more coffee into his empty cup.

Evy arched a brow but thought better of making anything of that. It was silly to be jealous of Darinda. Hadn't Rogan left everything in South Africa and returned to Grimston Way as soon as Camilla told him of the accident?

“So you see,” Rogan continued thoughtfully, “Ol' Parnell has no reason in the world to roast Julien over the fire. On the contrary, he has more reason to go on pleasing him as he has these few years. A mistake in my opinion. I hate seeing Parnell licking Julien's shoe leather.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.” Evy frowned. “But it took some courage for Parnell to write that letter to my father. It would seem easier for him to have written you.”

His mouth curved, and he shook his head. He stood, cup in hand, to stretch. “No, I'd be the last one he'd tell about the Black Diamond.”

“But, Rogan—”

“Don't you see? Parnell
fears
Julien. He has for some time now. I noticed that at Kimberly. When I mentioned, half jesting, that Julien would get Henry's map from me over my dead body, Parnell went white. I never saw him look so afraid.”

Evy was horrified. Did Parnell really think his Uncle Julien would
kill
to get what he wanted?

“Then Parnell fears you'd come and confront Sir Julien over the diamond,” she stated. She looked at Rogan quickly. “He mustn't want you in South Africa.”

“Let's say he doesn't want me at Bulawayo.”

Bulawayo had been the kraal of Lobengula, the chieftain of the Ndebele tribe. Since his defeat under the pioneer soldiers, it was now a growing town under the governing hand of the British South Africa Company. The BSA had been established by Cecil Rhodes and his diamond and gold partners after Rhodes had received a royal charter from Queen Victoria to start a trading company north of the Limpopo River.

Rogan and Derwent had joined Rhodes's pioneers for the arduous trek across the sunburnt African velds and crocodile-infested rivers, helping along the way to build Fort Victoria and Fort Salisbury, naming them respectively after Her Majesty and the colonial secretary of that time, Lord Salisbury.

Rhodes's pioneers had spread out to claim their three-thousand-acre tracts, forming a mostly European colony of dedicated farmers and, eventually, their families. To protect them from the lurking Ndebele and Shona, with their sharp and gleaming assegai, Rhodes had also hired about five hundred policemen to guard the pioneers in what was now called Rhodesia.

The farming colony had grown and expanded. Recently, Bulawayo
had been incorporated, after a bloody war with Lobengula, which had defeated his army of fierce fighting warriors called
impis
, under their particular indunas, or what Rogan told her were men of “Zanzi” blood, that is, royal blood.

Evy had known about the war before Parnell's letter. Rogan had told her the lurid tale one night while they lay in their dark bedroom. She had come to look forward to the long conversations they shared and urged him to tell her all about his first trip to Fort Salisbury. He'd told her everything he could remember about Arcilla and Peter on the trek, Alice and Derwent, the men in charge of the trek, and about Rogan's visit to Lobengula's kraal and how they had to sit in the dust with their heads bent during the entire meeting while flies buzzed over their sweating faces and necks. He'd told her about his meetings with the induna who called himself Jube, who'd actually been Jendaya's brother, Dumaka, and lastly he'd told her about the war with Lobengula.

Her vivid imagination ran through the entire raid on Bulawayo as she lay in the dark in Rogan's arms. Lobengula, knowing he was defeated, had fled into the Matopos Hills to the demonic Umlimo, who spoke for the spirit god they worshiped. Whether Lobengula had found the secret cave where the Umlimo lived was not known, but he had found a secret cave somewhere in the Matopos. There, surrounded by his concubines and loyal indunas, he had killed himself by drinking poison.

What was new in Parnell's letter was the Kimberly Black Diamond, and Sir Julien's crazed obsession with it. She knew about Heyden's fixation with it and what he had done to Henry and Uncle Edmund to try to capture it for the Boer war, but she had never thought of the shrewd, tough Sir Julien Bley as so given over to the desire to get the diamond back.

“Do you think Parnell is right? That Sir Julien helped lead the soldiers against Lobengula?”

“Parnell was there with Julien. I don't think Parnell exaggerated Julien's searching Lobengula's hut. That is what he had, you know, a hut, not far from his throne wagon, though I didn't see it.”

In her mind's eye she pictured the giant chieftain fleeing in the midnight darkness with his impis fighting ferociously while he and his indunas, concubines, and wives escaped for the Matopos Hills. There was Sir Julien searching madly through his treasure trove, growing more desperate as the flames grew hotter and the Black Diamond was nowhere to be found.

“Do you have any idea which induna promised him the diamond would be there?”

Rogan considered for a moment, then said, “Someone furious with Lobengula for an injustice. The son of an induna is my guess. Someone who knew Dumaka. That would explain how the person knew enough to come to Julien about the diamond. Someone who also had it in for Dumaka, knowing how he'd taken it from Heyden in the stables and fled with it to Zululand. Then he brought it to Lobengula after the Zulus were defeated.”

“Jendaya?” she asked suddenly.

Rogan looked at her with curious interest. “Why Jendaya?”

Evy spread a hand. “We all know her brother, Dumaka, is against her. Even Heyden said Dumaka was searching for her to kill her because she converted to Christianity. He also insisted she knew where the diamond was. That's why he wanted to bring me to Dr. Jakob van Buren. He thought Jendaya might appear, I think. What if Julien found her first, knowing Heyden believed Jendaya knew where it was?”

“Ah! You may be right. And Jendaya said it was with Lobengula. All quite possible, my dear, but Parnell wrote that Julien kept saying, ‘
He
told me it was here.' ”

“Could she have sent someone else in her place to tell Julien? Would she have gotten married and had a son—”

“Maybe. Good try, darling. Whoever it was convinced Julien he knew what he was talking about.”

“Evidently the diamond
was
there. But Lobengula got away, bringing it with him. If it's true, that is, about his burial.”

“It's true,” he said soberly. “I know something about the Matopos. How sacred they are to the Ndebele, to the Shona, too, for that matter.”

“Yes, their Umlimo.” She shuddered thinking of demons. “Oh, Rogan, it is a good work that Cousin Jakob is doing there, bringing the good news of Jesus to the tribes.”

“Indeed, an unselfish labor, Evy, darling. You may be right about Jendaya being the one. She could have a son. I'll find out when I get there.”

“When
we
get there, you mean.” She untucked her feet from beneath her and stood. “Rogan, you're not going to insist I stay here,” she said, dismay in her voice. “Because I must go meet Cousin Jakob.”

The tensing of his jaw told her he didn't see the urgency as she did.

“It's too dangerous, sweet. Even Parnell recognizes it. He's urged Anthony to appeal to Capetown to send more help to Bulawayo.”

“Surely Sir Julien recognizes the danger from angering the indunas and will curtail his expedition.”

“Ah, you don't know him as well as we do. Julien won't give up on anything he wants unless he's forced. Heyden is just as determined. I'm convinced Heyden's been watching Bulawayo, keeping an eye on Julien.”

“How would he know what Julien's up to?”

“It's Heyden's passion. Any tale circulating about Lobengula having had the diamond will have reached him by now. That's another reason I don't want you anywhere near Bulawayo.”