Every Whispered Word (6 page)

Even if he wanted to just abandon everything and run off to Africa with Lady Camelia, he simply couldn't afford to.

“I will make some enquiries and see if I can find someone else to help you,” Simon offered. “I'm sure there is a manufacturer of pumps in London who will be willing to lease you a pump and ship it to South Africa.”

Camelia nodded, trying not to let him see her disappointment. She had already discreetly approached every pump manufacturer in London. They had all turned her down, citing a lack of available equipment or problems with her credit. Camelia knew that was not why they were refusing her.

As suppliers to the monopoly that controlled the pump market in South Africa, they had been instructed not to furnish Camelia with a pump, unless they wanted to see their contracts disappear.

“Thank you. That is most kind.”

Zareb snapped his reins and set the carriage rolling forward. Oscar leapt up to screech at Simon as they pulled away, causing the crowd still clustered nearby to laugh once more.

Simon watched as the carriage ambled down the street before turning and disappearing into the rapidly cooling shadows of night. Finally he turned and began to slowly make his way home, feeling strangely alone.

         

He smelled smoke long before he saw it.

He rounded the corner of his street to see dozens of people crowded before his house, staring in awe at the brilliant orange flames dancing from the windows.

Sweet Jesus.

Dread fisted in his chest. He was vaguely aware of clanging bells ringing in the distance, signaling that the horse-drawn pumps of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade were on their way. A group of about twenty men had formed a line and were swiftly passing sloshing buckets of water to each other. A heavyset man on the end was valiantly heaving them onto the house. The water splattered uselessly against the brick walls, unable to reach the smoke and flames pouring from the rooms within.

“Let me pass!” Simon shouted, fighting his way through the mob of fascinated bystanders choking the smoke-filled street. “That's my house! Let me through!”

“It's him!” yelled someone. “The inventor—Kent! He isn't in the house!”

The crowd gasped and parted, creating a narrow path for him to advance toward his home.

“Always knew he'd burn the bloody place down,” someone muttered as he passed. “What with all those bloody foolish inventions of his.”

“We'll be damned lucky if it's just
his
house,” added another.

“If the wind stirs it'll take the whole street,” snapped someone else. “Just look how high those flames are.”

“We should have thrown you out!” a woman shouted furiously. “Ought to be a law against it, if you ask me.”

Simon ignored them, focusing on the sight of his flaming home. He had always known his neighbors didn't relish having an inventor living in their midst. Especially an inventor with a rather unsavory background. The heat was more intense now, and the air was thick with smoke and ash. A noxious plume of black spewed from the open front door, but the hallway and stairs beyond were dark, indicating the flames had not yet spread there. Simon whipped off his coat and held it to his face as he ran toward the steps leading from the street down to the servant's entrance off the kitchen.

“Don't try to go in!” yelled one of the men passing buckets. “It ain't worth it for a few bloody pieces of junk!”

Simon barely heard him as he looked inside the windows to see his laboratory burning. Squinting against the scorching heat and smoke, he saw the remnants of nearly eleven years' work lying strewn about the floor. His books and papers were burning everywhere, and all of the tables, which had held countless prototypes, works in progress, and assorted flights of fancy, had fallen over. His precious clothes-washing machine, which he had anticipated in just two months would forever revolutionize the way garments were laundered, was lying uselessly on its side. The enormous wash barrel had snapped from its frame and rolled away, leaving the flames to lap at the steel construction of his steam engine.

“Excuse me, sir, but you'd best come away now,” said a voice. “It's not safe to be so close—the windows might shatter any minute. There's nothing more you can do.”

Simon turned to see an earnest young fireman standing behind him. Three horse-drawn pumps had arrived, and thirty-some firemen were clamoring to get set up and start spraying the house with water. Even though they were moving quickly, Simon knew they had absolutely no hope of saving the house, except perhaps for its shell. All they could do was focus on the task of keeping the flames from spreading to the houses beside it.

“Ever hear of a fire knocking over tables and a heavy piece of equipment that weighed in excess of five hundred pounds?”

The fireman regarded him in confusion. “No, sir—not unless there was an explosion of some type.”

Simon cast one last, rueful look into the ruins of his laboratory, fighting to control the helpless fury surging through him.

“Neither have I.”

Z
areb walked slowly toward the dining room, holding the precious envelope in his aged, dark hand.

It had traveled all the way from South Africa, this envelope, and it bore scars, stains and creases that betrayed its long, arduous journey. By horse, by train, and by ship it had come, traveling for nearly four weeks across the rough swells of the ocean as it moved steadily toward them. He held it tighter, wishing he could feel the heat it had once known. He missed the cleansing caress of the hot African sun, which burned like a magnificent circle of molten gold against the brilliant blue sweep of sky. In London the sky was usually veiled with clouds, and a perpetual caul of ugly, stinking smoke hovered everywhere, the result of tens of thousands of coal fires burning from morning to night. All the houses seemed to be built on top of each other, forming an ugly grid of brick and stone that reminded Zareb of a prison, and the people inside confined themselves in dark chambers choked with heavy draperies and overstuffed furniture. There was no space, no air, no light, and from what he could see, no joy in this place called London.

The sooner he took Camelia home, the better.

He found her seated at the dining room table, her head bent, her brow puckered into a worried frown as she contemplated the letter she was writing. Oscar was seated on the table beside her, munching greedily on peanuts and littering the table and carpet with broken shells. The monkey had had little to do except search for mischief and eat since they had come to London. Zareb supposed if he were eating, that at least meant he wasn't getting into any trouble. He only hoped that his little friend didn't make himself sick in the belly, or thicken himself with so much fat that he couldn't move with his typical ease. Camelia's Grey Lourie, a spectacularly vain bird named Harriet, sat perched upon the back of one of the dining room chairs, admiring herself in the oval mirror Camelia had hung from the chandelier for her amusement. The bird squawked and ruffled her feathers as Zareb entered, announcing his presence.

“A letter has come, Tisha,” Zareb told Camelia, calling her by the African name he had given her as a child. “From Mr. Trafford.” He paused a moment, waiting to see if she wanted more.

“And?”

“There is a dark wind blowing.” He would not have told her if she hadn't asked. He disliked burdening her even more. “That is all I feel.”

Camelia nodded. Of course there was a dark wind blowing. These past few months there was always a dark wind blowing, as far as she could tell, so why should that day be any different? She sighed and laid down her pen. Maybe Zareb was wrong. She could not actually remember a time when he had been wrong, but sometimes the things he said were sufficiently vague that they were probably open to interpretation. A dark wind blowing.
Fine,
she said to herself, shoving aside the trepidation tightening in her chest. She accepted the envelope from Zareb and tore it open.
Let's see what the dark wind is bringing me today.

“There has been another accident at the excavation,” she said quietly, swiftly scanning the letter from Mr. Trafford, her foreman. “They've been trying to take the water out by hand, but the site is still flooded, and the walls we created at the southeast end have become unstable. One collapsed suddenly, killing Moswen and injuring four others. Nine more workers quit.”

She laid the letter on the table and swallowed thickly. He had been a good man, Moswen. He had worked for her for only two months, but he had been strong and willing, and he had seemed genuinely pleased when some small artifact was found. Now he was dead because of her. And four others injured. Mr. Trafford did not say how badly they had been hurt, but Camelia could well imagine that the force of a collapsing wall would have been terrible. She raised her fingers to the flash of pain that began to pulse at her temple.

“There is more,” said Zareb. It was a statement, not a question.

Camelia nodded. “The remaining workers are even more convinced now that the site is cursed. They are telling Mr. Trafford they will quit unless I increase their wages, to compensate them for the danger they are bringing upon themselves and their families by working on a cursed site. He has promised them more money will come, as a way of keeping them working until he hears from me. He wants to know what he should do.”

Zareb waited.

“I will write and tell him to offer each of them an additional fifteen percent, to be paid at the end of their contracts.”

“That will not satisfy them, Tisha,” he pointed out quietly. “They are only men, and they are afraid. They fear they may not live until the end of their contracts. You must give them something now, as a show of faith. You must remind them that their loyalty will be rewarded.”

“How can I pay them more now, when I don't even have the money to pay them what I already owe them?”

“You will get the money. It is coming.”

“When? How?”

“It is coming,” Zareb insisted. “You will get it. This I know.”

Camelia sighed. “I appreciate your faith in me, Zareb, but so far I haven't been able to secure any of the help we need to keep the project going. My father's oldest friends have refused to invest any more money in it, because now that he is dead they don't believe I have the ability to succeed where he did not. None of the pump manufacturers in London would agree to provide me with equipment. They said I posed a credit risk, or claimed to not have any equipment available, but I know it is really because the De Beers Company has told them not to deal with me. My last hope was Mr. Kent, and he refused to help me.”

Actually, her last hope had been Simon's drawing, but even that had been a faint one. She did not know of anyone else in London who might be able to build a steam-powered pump who wasn't already employed by one of the manufacturers that were refusing to do business with her. She had not told Zareb that she had stolen Simon's drawing from him. Zareb was a man of uncompromising honor.

However much he loved Camelia and wanted her to succeed, he would not approve of her resorting to common thievery to do so.

“Mr. Kent did help you,” Zareb countered. “He came to your assistance in the alley.”

“I didn't need his assistance in the alley,” Camelia protested. “I had the situation under control.”

Her disheveled appearance when she had reached her carriage had left her no choice but to tell Zareb what had happened with the two men who tried to frighten her the previous day. She had described the incident as a simple robbery by two pitifully inept thieves. She had assured him that they had succeeded in surprising her only because she had not been alert to her surroundings as she walked—a mistake she would not make again. She could not let Zareb think she was in danger. Her old friend already worried about her incessantly, which was why he had refused to let her come to England without him in the first place. He would not have responded well to the thought that someone had hired common thugs to frighten her into abandoning her dig.

He already thought London was filthy, uncivilized, and teeming with barbarians.

“Mr. Kent will come again,” Zareb insisted. “He does not want to, but he will.”

Camelia regarded him skeptically. “How do you know?”

“I know.”

She sighed. She knew she could not question him further without the risk of insulting him. Once Zareb claimed to know something, he clung to his pronouncement with the stubbornness of a lion protecting his kill.

Someone pounded suddenly upon the front door, causing Harriet to squawk in fright and flap low across the dining room table. Startled, Oscar bounded toward Camelia, knocking over her inkwell as he leapt onto her shoulder.

“Oh, no—my letter!” Camelia snatched up the letter she had been writing, watching in frustration as black droplets rained from it onto the scratched surface of the table. “It's ruined.”

Oscar hurled a torrent of blame in Harriet's direction, then buried his face meekly against Camelia's neck.

“This place is not good for Oscar,” Zareb observed. “He feels trapped.” He turned from the room, his magnificently colored robes rustling as he went to answer the front door.

“That's all right, Oscar,” Camelia murmured, stroking the contrite monkey's back. She laid the ruined letter on the table, then pulled a wrinkled linen handkerchief from her sleeve and began to vigorously mop up the ink to keep it from spilling onto the carpet. “It was an accident.”

“Lord Wickham to see you, my lady,” announced Zareb solemnly.

A tall, handsome young man with sandy hair and eyes the color of molasses stepped into the dining room.

“Elliott! How good it is to see you!” Camelia hurried over to him and eagerly clasped his outstretched hands. “Oh, no,” she moaned, looking with dismay at the black mess she had made of his skin with her ink-stained fingers. “I'm so sorry!”

“Don't worry, Camelia.” Elliott quickly withdrew a crisply folded white linen square from his fashionably tailored coat pocket and wiped as much of the ink as he could from his hands, until his skin was restored from black to merely dirty gray. “There, you see? This time I was prepared.” His voice was lightly teasing.

Still clinging to Camelia's neck, Oscar screeched irritably at him.

Elliott frowned. “Oscar still doesn't approve of me, I see.”

“He doesn't approve of many people, actually,” Camelia said, trying to disengage the clinging monkey from her shoulder. “He's worse, here, I think. Everything seems so foreign to him.”

“He's known me for years, Camelia, so I'd hope that I would seem familiar to him.”

“Well, I don't think he likes being closeted in this house so much of the time,” Camelia added, wincing as Oscar stubbornly dug his little fingers into her shoulder. “That's enough, Oscar,” she scolded, pulling his fingers free. “Go to Zareb.” She held him out so Zareb could take him.

Elliott regarded Zareb expectantly, waiting for the servant to excuse himself.

Zareb tranquilly returned his gaze and remained where he was.

“Perhaps we could have some tea, Zareb,” Elliott suggested.

“Thank you, Lord Wickham, I'm not thirsty.”

Elliott's mouth tightened slightly. “Not for you, Zareb. For Lady Camelia and me.”

Zareb turned to Camelia. “Would you like some tea, Tisha?”

Camelia sighed inwardly. The tension between the two men had existed from the time she was a little girl of thirteen, when Elliott had first come to South Africa to work with her father. “Yes, Zareb, that would be nice, if you wouldn't mind making some.”

“Very well, Tisha.” Zareb turned to Elliott. “Would you also like some tea, your lordship?”

Camelia watched as Elliott nodded, evidently satisfied that he had gotten Zareb to do his bidding. Poor Elliott did not understand Zareb's ways, so he could not appreciate that Zareb had, in fact, just offered Elliott tea as a host, instead of bringing it to him as a servant. The difference was subtle.

For Zareb, it was critical.

“You should have listened to me and left him in Africa,” Elliott said after Zareb left the dining room. “I told you London was no place for that old servant. He just doesn't understand how he is expected to behave here.”

“Zareb isn't my servant, Elliott,” Camelia pointed out. “He was my father's friend, and he has devoted his life to looking after me. He would never have let me come to London by myself.”

“He was your father's native servant,” Elliott countered emphatically. “The fact that he and your father established some kind of strange friendship over the years doesn't change what he is. Although I understand he's fond of you, Camelia, Zareb doesn't have the right to influence your decisions. You should never have brought him—or that ridiculous monkey or bird, either, for that matter. It only makes people talk, and I dislike it immensely when I hear the kinds of things they say.”

“I'm not interested in what people say about me,” Camelia returned. “I couldn't leave Zareb behind. And since I didn't know how long we were going to be here, and there was no way of making poor Oscar understand that we would be coming back, I had no choice but to bring him here, too. If I had left him in Africa, he would have tried to follow me and ended up lost.”

“For heaven's sake, Camelia, he's a monkey. How on earth could he get lost in Africa?”

“Even monkeys have homes, Elliott. Oscar's home is with Zareb and me. If we had both left him, he would have felt abandoned, and he would have done everything possible to find us.” Her gaze shifted to the carpet, then snapped back up to Elliott. “Why don't we go into the drawing room,” she suggested with sudden brightness, grabbing his arm, “where we can sit down while we wait for our tea?”

Perplexed, Elliott glanced at the floor.

“Good God!” he swore, leaping away from the orange-and-black snake slithering up his boot. “Camelia, stay back—it could be poisonous!”