Tomorrow's Treasure

The righteous man wisely considereth
the house of the wicked.

P
ROVERBS
21:12

The four white gems of the Southern Cross had just risen from behind Table Top Mountain toward the deep expanse of sky over Capetown Bay. Though the scene usually set her heart humming, Katherine van Buren barely noticed the beauty tonight. Nor could she focus on remembered summer nights on the velvety lawn … for anxiety tightened its grip upon her.

At the baby's soft whimper Katie turned from the cloistered window of her upstairs bedroom in Cape House and went to the bassinet, gently lifting her three-week-old infant. She smiled down at her little girl, whom she had named Eve—now
Evy
—and sat holding her in the rocking chair.

“Poor baby, what shall become of us? But do not worry. Anthony will take us far from here. Yes, he will. Don't cry, my Evy darlin'.”

Katie began to gently hum Brahms's “Lullaby.” “Your eyes will be amber like mine. Your hair will be tawny gold. But your mouth will be like your father's … a beautiful, sensuous mouth.” She hummed the lullaby again as she rocked.

The bedroom door opened. Katie looked up and gazed into the face of her guardian, Sir Julien Bley.

He stood tall and darkly forbidding. His complexion was scorched brown by years of trekking the land of South Africa. His one good light-blue eye burned. His jaw was strong, his sideburns tinged with white.
He came in boldly and shut the door too quietly. Apprehension darted up Katie's spine as she grew aware of the tension in the air—much as it was before a sizzling thunderstorm on the African veldt.

She licked her suddenly dry lips and counted the thuds of her heart in her eardrums.

“So, girl.” Julien's voice was gruff, yet low-keyed, which only added to the devastation of his next words. “You insist on keeping the suckling infant though you are unwed.”

Katie raised her chin, refusing to let him see she was intimidated. She made a small rocking motion with her infant.

“We must make plans, Katie. I have allowed you to keep her longer than is wise. You must be strong and give her up. It is best for her, for you. Your father, if he were alive, would agree with me. He trusted me to care for you, my girl.”

She swallowed, and her arms tightened around her infant. She felt her cheeks turn scarlet at the memory of her godly father, Carl van Buren—memories she had continued to cherish since her arrival here twelve years ago to become Sir Julien's ward. What would her father think of her now, in her situation? Would he be ashamed of her? Embarrassed by her?

No matter what, he would love her. Though she'd been only six when he had died, she'd known his love for her was deep. And though most of her life before her father's death was but a hazy memory after so many years under her guardian's rule, she still remembered him and the religious ways of her Afrikaner people, the Dutch. How shattered she had been, as a small child, upon learning of her father's accidental death in the mine. The site at Kimberly was the first big diamond find he and Julien had made, and they had formed a partnership that went beyond business to a pact of friendship. After the explosion, her mortally injured father had pled with Julien to take his little Katie as his ward.

She stiffened now in her chair as Sir Julien walked up and spoke down at her. “Look at me, girl. Have you nothing to say for yourself? Must I force the infant's removal? Can you not see it is best?”

Her anger began to boil. There had never been so much as a word
of condemnation for his sons and nephews who fathered the children he so lightly sent away to distant places, never to be seen again.
Not this time.
She thought and clenched her teeth.
Not with my sweet Evy.
She drew her infant against her heart.

“Well, girl?”

At his gruff demand, she nodded. “Yes, I have something to say, sir! But 'tis more important to me that you hear what Anthony has to say.”

His tufted brow inched lower over his deep-set, pale eye. “You persist in laying the fatherhood of this child at his doorstep then?”

“He is the father, and no other, I vow 'tis true.”

“You cannot keep the child, Katie.”

Her chin lifted. “Anthony wishes to marry me, and I him. If he had not gone to London—”

“So you persist in deceiving yourself? You gaze too much in the mirror at your pert face and not enough at your books of learning.” He took a turn up and down the floor. “The blame for your misbegotten baby lies in your willfulness.”

She was not willful—She
loved
Anthony, had believed his promises—

“As for Anthony, I have spoken to him.”

Her hopes brightened. She looked up at him, her knees too weak to stand and face him with any dignity. Evy was beginning to make little crying sounds, and Katie tried to soothe her.

“Did I not tell you this baby is your blood relation?” She did her best to force a merry note to her voice. Surely Anthony would own his own daughter to his uncle? “She will grow up to make you proud.”

“Trying to wheedle me now, are you? It will do no good, my girl. I am doing this for your own fair future. As for my nephew … His marriage into aristocracy is important to the plans of South Africa, and to me. Such tales as laying this child upon my nephew would add to my burden and accomplish little good.”

She moaned. Then the unthinkable could be true—that Anthony's marriage was already arranged to—what was her name? Her feverish brain would not let her think.

“Do you think it gives me happiness to see you mourning like this? Do you think I take fiendish pleasure in sending the child away? Nay! But it is your future too that is at stake. You are like my own daughter. Any marriage I make for you among the diamond families of Kimberly will not tolerate an illegitimate child by Anthony Brewster.”

“Tales?” She took little note of the rest of what he had said. She gazed up at him, her sweet baby cradled close, and while his brows were tufted and cross, there gleamed a small flicker of pity in his return gaze.

“Anthony has denied everything. That does not surprise me. He is grieved you would try to lay this errant birth upon him, yet he has asked I deal with you gently.”

“Of course he would deny it to your face. He fears you! But if you will accept Evy, Anthony will confess how much he loves me, how he wishes the three of us to be together always. Oh, Uncle Julien, can you not see how desperately I want to keep my daughter?”

“You have always been a willful girl bent upon trouble, my dear Katie, yet I have loved you. Part of this tragedy is my fault, I see that now. I should have arranged for you to be married sooner. You became a woman too quickly, and your will and good sense have not kept pace, I fear.”

She managed to stand, despite the trembling that seemed to have taken over her limbs. “He is Evy's father, I tell you. Evy is a Brewster. Anthony told me he loved me, that he wished to marry me—”

Her voice cracked, and she sank back to the chair, bending her head toward her baby to avoid Julien's gaze.
He doesn't believe me … He has no feelings for Evy … She's just another baby—a girl at that—when he wants males to carry on his dynasty.