The Diamond Hunter Page 35

  She visibly swallowed, filled with fresh emotion. Trust Joseph to be doing something so generous.

  ‘Clementine, that could be anyone making up those lies,’ Reggie pleaded.

  ‘It’s no lie.’ She sniffed again . . . but these tears were the last, she decided.

  ‘How can you possibly trust it? Will Axford wouldn’t know to whom he was talking on the telephone.’

  ‘Yes, but I do, Uncle Reggie. You see, no one but Joseph One-Shoe and I know about the Dog Star oath, or that I laughed about him disappearing when he used to sit at the Big Hole with his blanket. Only he could say those things, and that is presumably why he mentioned them, to ensure that I understood these were his words and they could be trusted.’

  Uncle Reggie looked back at her aghast, and for the first time that she could remember he had nothing to say for himself: no quick rejoinder, no immediate and plausible excuse. And so she filled the silence as the atmosphere finally broke.

  ‘Uncle Reggie,’ she said, standing to smooth the crinkled silk of her dress. ‘This is hard but I ask no forgiveness, as I would think less of myself if I didn’t say this. You will leave this house tonight – my house; I’m sure you can find a room at your club. Please leave your key behind because you will have no further use for it. You are no longer welcome here or at Woodingdene, although I will grant you a fortnight to travel north and pack up anything and everything that is yours. Take nothing, though, that was in the house before you arrived. We have an inventory, as you are aware, so it is all easily checked but hopefully it will not come to that.’

  ‘Clem . . .?’

  ‘I shall make contact with Sir Jeremy and I shall pay whatever debt is outstanding to the bank from my personal funds. Are there other debts?’

  He nodded miserably.

  ‘How much is involved?’

  ‘Perhaps a thousand pounds.’

  She blinked with irritation. ‘Leave details of that on my bureau, and rest assured I shall also make good on that debt immediately. I will send a reliable messenger with the cash. I need only a name and an address.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to leave, Uncle Reggie. Isn’t that clear? Leave me, leave London, leave Northumberland . . . leave England, for all I care.’

  ‘And go where?’ He looked frightened.

  She shook her head sadly. ‘Go to Paris. Or Switzerland. You can reconnect with your mother. You’ve spoken about it often enough.’

  ‘Darling, I have a terminal illness. Dr Brayson can confirm this.’

  Clem’s shock spiralled. She could feel trills of panic rising but still she knew she must harden her heart further. ‘I feel desperately saddened to learn this now but it changes nothing.’

  He looked at her as though she had just arrived from the moon. ‘Clem, I’m telling you that I’m dying.’

  ‘So was my father when you left him. I forgive you everything – the theft of the diamonds, the lies about them, even trying to sell them as your own – but not this. You left him to die in the dirt. You lied about Joseph, letting me believe him dead all these years.’

  ‘It would have changed nothing had I raised the alarm about your father.’

  ‘Uncle Reggie, you turned your back on his calls for help. And that’s what I am doing to you. Plus, you threatened Joseph One-Shoe. I can only imagine how cruel you were to him. As we have heard, your threats had no effect. His decision was as pure as yours was clouded.’

  ‘Clem, I don’t know what to do. I’m lost.’

  ‘That is not my problem. I am giving you a chance to make a new life for yourself instead of going to prison – I’m sure none of your sins could be categorically proven by a good lawyer anyway, so go free, Uncle Reggie. Walk away from your mess and live without fear of creditors in what time you have left.’

  ‘You’re really throwing me out of your life?’

  ‘I am. I’ve always owned it all, Uncle Reg, I’ve just never exercised my right to that claim until now. You have no further part to play in the Grant family businesses. You are now simply returned to the status of the bastard son of my grandfather . . . and may I say, you’ve lived up to everything you’ve told me he ever thought of you.’

  Clem didn’t believe she had ever said anything so hurtful, or ever would again. She wanted to rush upstairs and bathe, wash her mouth, her hair, scrub herself clean of this day and its ugliness.

  ‘You will regret this,’ Reggie said, pointing at Will. He stormed towards the door, turning to glare at Clem. ‘And so will you, my darling girl.’

  ‘Uncle Reg?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You still have my diamonds, I believe.’

  Will waited with her until they heard the front door slam. She winced at the sound, which heralded the moment her life had changed once again. There was more unpleasantness ahead.

  He still looked at her astonished, though none the wiser. ‘Are you all right? Can I fetch you some brandy?’

  She stared at the handkerchief, still folded around the diamonds. ‘No, but thank you.’

  ‘Are you all right, Clem?’

  ‘I am. Strangely, I feel clear-headed.’

  Will took his chance and knelt before her. They both knew it was inappropriate for him to remain here with her unchaperoned, but these were not ordinary circumstances. ‘What can I do for you?’

  She searched his lovely face and dropped her own bombshell. ‘You can leave too.’

  He frowned as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean follow Uncle Reggie out of the door – and my life.’

  Will blinked, shocked. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, let me be transparent, then, as tonight is all about clarity. I am grateful to you, Will, truly I am, and I admire your pursuit of the truth. In this you are honourable. However, it has made you the architect of the pain I feel this day. If you had only left well alone – as I pleaded – my life could have followed its trajectory. I was so happy. I was not suspicious of my uncle. I had plenty to look forward to and I’d just met this wonderful man, with a romantic soul and I knew he could make me content. I wanted to marry him, raise a family with him, grow old beside him looking at the stars. But he ruined all of that because his personal crusade was more important than the love that had sprung up between us.’

  ‘Clem . . . please . . . I —’

  ‘I know, I know, Will. This was done for my benefit, this was done to protect me . . . you sound like Uncle Reggie. You both only ever had my best interests in mind but all you’ve done is bring me pain. Uncle Reggie’s a good man too, Will. He’s just not as pure of heart as you are. The fact is, thanks to the two of you and your actions, all I have left is an incredibly valuable diamond and no family. That’s precisely how it was when I was a child, and so the years since then have been for nothing.’ She gestured around the room. ‘Here I sit, as empty and dashed as I was when I was seven, except this time, Will, I’m an adult, and I am not rudderless or without means. I can make decisions and act on them as I choose. No one controls me or ever will again.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to find Joseph One-Shoe again and hug the only man I completely and utterly trust.’

  Will looked entirely beaten. ‘I cannot bear it that you feel nothing for me now.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘But there’s no hope for us?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They say time heals, and maybe in a year we may meet and discover that we still have much in common, including our mutual fondness.’

  ‘I will never love anyone as I love you.’

  ‘Oh, you might, Will. And you are free to do so, as I plan to focus on nothing but my own contentment. Right now that does not include you.’ She sounded hard but she needed to be strong if she was going to leave behind the two men she loved, this time in England. Unlike the two men in Africa, who’d had no agenda but love, Reggie and Will h
ad hurt her, and they needed some time in a different sort of desert. They both needed to understand that there was a price to pay for inflicting this pain on her.

  ‘I shall wait for you . . . and hope you’ll forgive me.’

  She leaned in and kissed him gently. ‘Know that I do admire your strength and the courage it took for you to follow your own path. I just cannot find the peace I need in the situation your convictions have wrought.’

  He still looked stunned but a stoicism was pushing upwards within him, just as a diamond funnel had to push to the earth’s surface. She could see it battling to the fore and knew he would be all right.

  ‘Goodbye, Will.’

  Part Three

  33

  KIMBERLEY, CAPE COLONY

  February 1895

  The attendant balanced a large tray expertly on one hand as he paused to tap the glass of the barometer. His eyebrows lifted and he nodded, glancing out the window of the first-class train carriage before continuing a dozen more steps to Miss Grant’s stateroom.

  He knocked at the door and waited, carefully adjusting the tea cosy so that it fully covered the pot beneath. Miss Grant liked her tea hot enough to scald and he liked to please his special guests.

  ‘Come in,’ she said from within. ‘Good morning, John.’ She beamed as he eased his way through the narrow opening.

  ‘I’m not sure that it will be for you, Miss Grant. Looks as though we are aiming for nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit.’

  ‘Phew,’ she said, fanning herself with a grin. ‘Africa is punishing.’

  She didn’t look in the slightest bit uncomfortable to him. In fact, she appeared positively cool in her pale linen. She was a beauty, almost ethereal. Hair not Titian, like the paintings he’d seen in a book left behind by a traveller, but unmistakably coppery when the light hit it just right, as it was doing now. He had surely lost his silly heart to her during this trip – it was a wonderful warm and pleasant feeling, but she was so far above his social status that there was no point entertaining such boyish thoughts. Besides, he wanted to keep his job, but dreaming never hurt, did it?

  He noticed no ring on Miss Grant’s left hand and wondered why someone so lovely and effervescent was not being followed around by a pack of suitors. She made him smile every day, and had responded to railway staff with only good manners, making her the most popular traveller on this journey. He was glad she was his responsibility; he was the envy of the other private attendants.

  ‘May I set out your morning tea here, Miss Grant?’ He looked towards the small table in her compartment.

  ‘Please do. I’m parched and you make it just how I like it. I shall miss you.’

  ‘We aim to please, Miss Grant.’

  She inhaled. ‘Smells like rain in the air.’

  He stood and frowned gently at her accurate prediction. ‘Have you been to Africa before, Miss?’

  ‘I lived here as a child.’

  That took him unawares. ‘Do you mean here, as in . . .?’

  She grinned. ‘As in Kimberley – yes, indeed, when it was called New Rush. I used to run around the Big Hole.’

  ‘Good grief, Miss Grant. Then you will know what our thunderstorms can be like.’

  ‘I love them! The Zulus believe that the Lightning Bird descends from the thundering skies and will be found wherever the lightning strikes. Some even say it will lay an egg at the exact point of the strike. To some it equates to evil, but I think of it as the bird’s beautiful plumage that lights up the sky.’

  He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘I’ve never heard that before and I came to Africa nearly twenty years ago.’

  She laughed. ‘I was taught by a Zulu.’

  He made a sound of incredulity. ‘I like being surprised by passengers, Miss Grant. Let’s have your tea before it cools. Would you like me to pour?’

  ‘I’ll let it steep a little longer, thank you, John. I can do it. How long do we have?’

  He pulled out his fob watch. ‘In just under one hour, Miss Grant, we shall arrive at the Kimberley railway station.’

  ‘Kimberley was a camp site in the wilderness when my family first came; it was not much more than a shantytown when I left, although it was obvious even back in the 1870s that it was growing fast. I am pinching myself that a train is bringing me into an actual town.’

  He smiled. ‘A sprawling one, Miss Grant, with all modern conveniences.’

  ‘I am looking forward to the surprise.’ She smiled, and he took her nod as his cue to leave.

  ‘I’ll knock when we’re five minutes out.’

  Clem knew the train’s passengers had likely been discussing her lack of husband or family chaperone. There had been some raised eyebrows on the first night – from the women, especially – as it became clear that she was travelling alone. She wanted to shake these short-sighted people by the shoulders and impress upon them that unless people like her were brave enough to flout archaic rules, women would never have escaped the chastity belts of medieval days, let alone the bustles and tight corsets of yesteryear.

  Oh heavens, but she relished wearing no corset – it felt so good to climb into light cottons and linens with only a few petticoats. Clem felt helplessly smug at escaping England in its coldest of months. February could be brutal up north, but even London had been frozen to stillness on the day of her departure. There had been no one to wave her off at the dock, nor had she cared; it was surely easier to leave England’s shores knowing no one would miss her, or so she’d told herself.

  Will had tried contacting her several times but she had not accepted his telephone calls. His letters had been read but remained unanswered; she’d ignored them at first, deciding initially that she did not need his apologies or promises of love gnawing away at her resolve. But she’d capitulated and secretly enjoyed his letters, which she had been relieved to find were not full of ardent declarations. Instead they were affectionately chatty. It had taken all her courage to banish him, because she loved him. There was no easy way to shake that bond; only time and distance could make it recede.

  Uncle Reggie, by contrast, had to all intents disappeared. She had not heard a word from him, and there had been no sightings of him in London. She had to presume he’d taken her advice and cleared off to the Continent. He had nothing to fear, though, for all of his debts had been taken care of; she had also made sure that some money was put into a private account for him so he would not want for anything.

  ‘Is that wise, Miss Grant?’

  ‘I think so, Sir Jeremy,’ she’d said to the banker, retrieving her gloves and slowly putting them back on now that the distasteful business of settling Reggie’s debts from her private fortune had been concluded.

  ‘You really want to give him more?’

  ‘He’s family. And I love him, Sir Jeremy. I just don’t want him in my life or meddling with the family’s business affairs. With this money to draw upon, he can travel safely and with the security of knowing he’s not a pauper.’

  ‘Well, Miss Grant, if you want my advice —’

  ‘I shall certainly ask for it when I do, Sir Jeremy,’ she said, smoothing the last finger into her glove. ‘You’ve been very kind, thank you.’

  The look on his face was priceless. It gave her fresh confidence that in this world run by men, with all its unwritten rules that women had to follow, she was going to make a contribution to change. Not permitting Sir Jeremy to patronise her, and in making sure he understood that the bank provided a service to her and not the other way around was just another in a line of footsteps that walked her away from the domination of men. Word would soon get around the old boys’ network that Clementine Grant was a woman who would not be manipulated.

  Clem thought about the two young girls arriving into her care later this year. She would teach them about not fearing an independent life and to chase their dreams. She’d already made provision for Sarah, using her influence and personal funds to ensure that the Nightingale School at St Tho
mas’s Hospital already had her enrolled. The name Dolly appeared nowhere on the paperwork and she knew Sarah would go on to fulfil the faith Clementine had in her.

  Clem poured her tea, admiring the gilded china. Sunlight glinted on the rich design encircling the plate, cup and saucer, and covering the spout of the teapot. She wondered if the 22-carat gold had been mined in southern Africa. Probably. There was a new gold rush underway after two prospectors had discovered nuggets in Witwatersrand about seven years earlier. She’d read that the Cape Colony was probably going to shift its principal focus from farming to mining its mineral wealth, and it had the potential to become the world capital of gold production. She shook her head, imagining all the women being dragged to different parts of Africa as their men joined the gold rush, just as her father had leapt into the diamond rush. It had killed her mother, and more women would die for the greed of gold.

  She sighed and let her mind drift. Nothing had changed in the Karoo Desert, it seemed. The wilderness was timeless. Extending to the horizon was the endless plain she remembered from her childhood, when she’d put her hand up to shade the glare of the huge and powerful sun hanging in a sprawling sky. She’d squinted, trying to pick out something, anything, in the distance. Nothing. Of course, as an adult she could now appreciate the beauty of the arid landscape, which covered almost half of the colony’s surface and she’d read it yielded a wealth of unique flora and herbs, so much so that naturalists jested the meat from the animals of the Karoo was “spiced on the hoof”.

  Over the course of its journey the train had snaked its way through gorges that cut across a vast ancient seabed, colonnaded with towering, flat-topped hills that to her appeared blue from a distance. Heat haze made them wobble, and by night Clem had loved looking again at a sky bursting with glittering stars that lit the darkness where nocturnal animals tiptoed and highlighted the scarred tracks trodden by millions of springbok on their migration.