Caleb pulled a face. He glanced around, taking in the cast-down expressions, then said, “We might have failed to gain what we wanted, but at least we haven’t gone backward.”
When Hillsythe, Fanshawe, and the others all looked inquiringly at him, he elaborated, “We would have been mining at the same rate—the increased rate—regardless. What we’ve done hasn’t escalated that rate further, and more, we’re diverting part of the increased output to the stockpile.”
He shrugged. “We aren’t in a worse position than we were, and in fact, we’ve improved our position just a little and will continue to improve it by a small amount—the amount of ore diverted to the stockpile—every day from now on.” He glanced around the entire circle, at the too-quiet children, at the women and all the men. “We didn’t get the effect we wanted, but we’re in a position to”—he tipped his head at Dixon—“in a few days, try another tactic to reduce the actual mining.”
Seated beside Caleb, Katherine slipped her hand around his arm and squeezed in support and agreement; he patently needed no encouragement.
Across the pit, she saw Hillsythe’s lips curve slightly, and he gave Caleb one of his tiny nods. “Also,” Hillsythe said, “we now know there’s no benefit in focusing on anything but the mining itself. Nothing else is going to work.”
Caleb nodded. “So that’s what we’ll concentrate on forthwith—slowing down the rate of freeing diamonds from the rock.”
* * *
Later, when Caleb came to fetch her from the tiny porch of the women’s hut where she’d taken to waiting for him to join her for their usual late-night perambulation, Katherine felt no overwhelming need to discuss the mine.
She understood Dubois’s strategy: Extract all the diamonds from the mine as soon as possible and kill the men, who constituted the greatest threat to his mercenary force as well as to his masters. She didn’t need to know more.
They had to find some effective way to slow down the mining.
But that was for tomorrow. For tonight, she needed time and space, and to go to that place she reached only with Caleb.
He strolled up, then held out his hand. She rose from the stool on which she’d been sitting, placed her hand in his, and let him steady her down the two steps to the ground. Rather than release her, he drew her near and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.
They set out strolling slowly, side by side through the dark.
Not that it was completely dark. Moonlight silvered the scene, washing over the open ground so the guards on the tower could still see them.
When they walked and talked during the day, the bustle of the camp was more than sufficient to drown out their words. But in the cool of the night, with only the mine itself in operation and the noise emanating from the tunnel’s mouth deadened by the earth surrounding it, as they circled past the deserted kitchen, the silence was pervasive enough to force her to whisper. Without looking at Caleb, her voice barely a murmur, she ventured, “You’re very good at making people face forward rather than getting dragged down, affected by temporary setbacks.”
That was one trait he possessed that, again and again, came to the fore and buoyed the whole company.
He looked at the ground before their feet. After a moment, he shrugged. “It’s just part of being a captain, I suppose.”
She could have told him that wasn’t true, that there were lots of men who led yet who did not have the indefatigably positive—ready to engage with life with an iron-clad refusal to even contemplate taking a step back—outlook that he possessed. That he communicated so clearly.
Plainly, he viewed the effect he had on others as ordinary and nothing worth commenting upon. She knew better. Despite the way in which it had occurred, she’d come to view his joining the captives as nothing less than an act of God.
And in part because of that, and because of the threat hanging over them, she wanted to use this walk, this time—these next moments—to confirm what might be. To explore and define what lay between them—what it was they had at risk.
What value was theirs to place in the scales of life’s balance.
Survival was one thing. Surviving in order to claim a higher prize was something else again; she was ineradicably convinced that the existence of such a higher prize held the power to strengthen their will to live.
To support them through what was clearly going to be a trying time. A demanding time.
She’d read somewhere that wise monks advocated living in the moment—with one’s entire being focused on what that moment held, on what could be achieved within it—as the true route to happiness. She was determined to give that philosophy a try, especially as, as far as she’d seen, Caleb’s own approach to life held something of that unswerving commitment to the here and now.
Here, she decided, should be the darkness in the lee of the supply hut, where the moonlight tonight did not reach and the angle from the tower meant the guards couldn’t see them. As they drew level with the hut, she tightened her grip on Caleb’s arm and changed their tack.
He glanced at her, but didn’t resist.
She felt his gaze on her face, but didn’t meet it.
With a sense of growing calm, of growing certainty, she steered him into the deep shadows. Then she released his arm, turned and put her back to the hut’s side, reached up and closed her fist about the knotted kerchief he wore looped about his neck, and brazenly drew him to her.
Directly into a kiss.
He didn’t resist. Not in the least. He didn’t, however, reach for her, didn’t close his hands about her waist and draw her to him.
Instead, he set his hands to either side of her head, palms flat to the boards, bent his head, and with his lips meshing and melding with hers, he let her take the kiss where she would. He met her, matched her, but didn’t direct. At her invitation, he savored her mouth, then she boldly returned the pleasure.
And the kiss grew hotter. More intense. More sharply intent.
His lips lured; with artful strokes of his tongue, he beckoned and drew her on, and her hunger swelled, then ignited, transforming into a fiercer force, one that demanded appeasement.
She released the neckerchief and clutched the plackets framing the opening of his light shirt. Fisting her hands in the fabric, she clung as the kiss transmuted into a duel of mating tongues.
And something inside her stirred—some more powerful impulse, a compulsion to seek more of the seductive heat that seemed to emanate from him.
To wantonly bathe in that delicious warmth.
To seize the moment and experience the scintillating frissons of pleasure his touch could evoke.
That something inside her was ancient, knowing. With it flooding her, she simply knew.
Knew what she—and he—needed.
There, in that moment in time.
She came away from the wall, stretched up on her toes, and kissed him passionately. Opened the gates of her inner soul and let all the pent-up yearning out. Let it pour into the kiss.
He straightened, and his hands gripped her waist, then slid farther, and he crushed her to him.
His lips were afire as much as hers were, the passion in their kiss well-nigh scorching.
Then he pivoted and put his back against the wall, hard hands and steely arms locking her tight against him. His lips ravaged hers, more demanding and infinitely more commanding than before, and she gloried and plunged headlong into the tumultuous maelstrom welling and swelling between them.
Caleb’s head was whirling—a novel occurrence for him. He’d waited, patiently, to see what she wanted, where she would lead them—he’d never imagined it would be into this.
This whirlpool of want that even now threatened to suck him under.
Sensual greed—to touch her, to take the next step—burned beneath his skin.
/> Yet there was something he was missing in this—something that might make sense of her tack.
It took more effort than he’d expected, yet he managed, finally, to break from the kiss—not that he succeeded in parting their lips, so heated and yearning, by anything more than a fraction of an inch.
Eyes closed, he concentrated and managed to utter, “Why?”
He waited—could almost sense the battle she waged to corral her careening wits.
Eventually, she murmured, “Because I need to know.”
Then she kissed him again—pressed the reality of her wants, her wishes, on him again.
Several heartbeats passed before he succeeded in refocusing his wits, then parting their lips enough to ask, “About what?”
“About this.” She leaned into him, caught his face between her palms, and threw her all into making him understand...
Oh. Even as realization dawned, he—the elemental male inside him—was moving to meet her. To meet the demands—now quite clear, insistent, and unequivocal—that she was pressing upon him.
A distant part of his awareness instinctively, protectively, scanned for danger, but they were cloaked in darkness, and the patrolling guards rarely if ever marched close to that spot. As long as they made no sound—as long as he kept his lips locked with hers—they would be safe enough.
She leaned in again, pressing against him, the demand in her kiss enough to scramble what wits he’d retained.
He eased his grip on her waist and sent one palm skating upward to brush, tantalizingly lightly, over the swell of her breast.
Katherine stilled—just for an instant, just long enough to savor the sudden scintillating spiking of her senses—then she dove back into the kiss and urged him on.
And he obliged, closing his hand about the soft mound of her breast and gently kneading.
Only a thin, now nearly transparent chemise and the lightweight fabric of the drab dress supplied by the mercenaries separated his hot, callused hand from her skin, from her yearning flesh.
Nerves she hadn’t known she possessed came alive.
His long fingers stroked, then the pad of his thumb circled her nipple, and she would have sworn flames leapt beneath her skin.
Her breast swelled beneath his hand, her flesh flushed, heated. Her nipple was an excruciatingly tight bud when his wandering fingers returned to caress it.
Artful, repetitive, and far too knowing, his lazy caresses slowly, step by tiny step, drove her on.
Drove her—the passionate self she’d only just discovered—wild.
Until she had to have more—whatever more entailed—and she needed more now, and she wasn’t afraid to beg.
But begging, she realized, had to be accomplished not with words but on this very different plane of communication.
The kiss had turned lazy, too. Despite the effects of his ministrations, despite the compulsive haze overwhelming her mind, she discovered she could still give as good as she was getting. A shift of emphasis, of pressure, a change of intent, and with a nudge, she took control—and the kiss turned sultry.
Hotter, more imbued with welling passion than before.
It was like learning a new language; she hunted for the right expressions to make her needs known.
And realized that the tiller of their engagement, at least at this point, lay—literally—in her hands.
She eased her palms from the beard-roughened planes of his face and boldly set both to his shirt-draped chest. She allowed her hands to rest there for a heartbeat, two, then slowly, with intent, swept them wide, and immediately felt tension invest his muscles and lock his long frame.
With a soft hum in her throat, she set herself to caress, to explore—and through that, to demonstrate her own desires. She located his flat nipples beneath the thin fabric and circled both. Felt the thud of his heart through his rib cage and hers accelerate as she played...
He wasn’t slow.
He let her lead, let her show him, let her fill her mind—her senses—with him, then he reciprocated. He raised his other hand from its position at her waist and closed it about her other breast. And proceeded to send her senses into overload, caressing her breasts in concert, kneading, then tweaking, fondling, then petting, ultimately possessing.
Instinctively, her fingers curled, and her nails pressed into the broad muscles on either side of his chest.
Through the kiss, she sensed his sharply indrawn breath—and inwardly smiled.
They took turns—him, then her—at playing on the other’s senses. Never had she been party to such an exchange. Some distant—very distant—part of her brain suggested that she ought to be shocked, but she wasn’t. She was thrilled, and too honest not to admit it.
More, something in her exulted.
This was right; this was proper. This was as things should be.
At least, between them.
Gradually, however, she sensed him drawing back, retreating from the tumult of the absorbing kiss. Reluctantly, she conceded and eased back from him, allowing their lips to part.
He didn’t immediately set her from him, although he released her breasts—with a reluctance to match hers—and returned his hands to either side of her waist.
He held her as she was, pressed wantonly to him, and from close quarters, from under heavy lids, his eyes met hers.
He didn’t seem to study her eyes, her expression, so much as look into her soul.
Then, softly, his words a whisper in the night, he asked, “Why? Why did you need to know?”
Somewhat to her surprise, she didn’t need to think; her response, the words, leapt readily to her tongue. “Because at some point, we’re going to need to fight, and knowing that this might be ours if we survive to claim it...”
She saw understanding bloom in his eyes.
He held her gaze for a heartbeat more, then he nodded. “You’re right.” There was a whisper of steel in his tone that she hadn’t heard before when he confirmed, “Knowing that makes doing whatever we must to survive that much easier.”
He paused, then he set her back on her feet, captured her hand, and pushed away from the wall. “Come. I’ll walk you back to your hut.”
She walked beside him through the night, satisfied that she’d gained the knowledge she’d sought—and, indeed, more.
CHAPTER 14
The men spent the next day with most of them breaking rock in the second tunnel. The resulting amount of rough diamonds and the ease with which they were mined only served to underscore how urgent was their need of an effective way of slowing the process down.
The gatherings about the fire pit at midday and again in the evening were unusually quiet, tending grim.
Later that evening, while working with Dixon to extend the second tunnel onto a lower level in the hope of gaining access to yet more stones, Caleb sliced open his left palm on an extrusion of exposed diamond. He swore and stepped away from the rock face.
“Let me look.” Phillipe took one glance and said, “No stitches required, but go and get it cleaned. You can’t risk it festering.”
Caleb grumbled, but he knew Phillipe was right. Holding the cut closed with the fingers of his other hand, he turned and made his way past the other men in the second tunnel, clambered over the piles of rock they’d left for the children to cart away in the morning, and finally walked out of the mine.
He looked across the compound to the women’s hut and saw Katherine sitting on her stool. Even before he set out to meet her, she’d realized he was holding his hand and had quit the porch and was hurrying to meet him.
“What have you done?” she asked the instant she reached him.
“Just a cut. It’s not that deep.”
She caught his hand. He allowed her to tug it free and examine the wound. She
snorted. “Bad enough, especially for here.” She seized his sleeve as if afraid he would bolt. “Come to the medical hut and let me take care of it.”
He was entirely content to fall in with her wishes. Aside from his mother, no other woman had wanted to take care of his hurts before; it was, he discovered, rather nice.
Her lips set, she all but towed him along.
The medical hut was dark and full of shadows, but she knew where the lamp and tinderbox were kept. He stood in the doorway of the same room they’d used when he’d first come to the compound while she lit the wick, then set the glass in place.
Golden lamplight bathed the scene, making the room appear cozier than in daylight.
Already busy searching in a drawer, she glanced back at him, then frowned and waved him to the bed. “Sit down.”
The bed was draped with the usual mosquito netting suspended from a hook above; even the hammocks they slept in in their huts were swathed with the stuff. He crossed to the bed, swept the netting aside, and sat on the edge of the well-stuffed pallet.
Apparently satisfied she’d assembled all she would require, she poured water into a bowl, then set aside the pitcher, tipped liquid from a blue glass bottle into the water, swirled it around, then set aside the bottle, picked up the bowl, and carried it to him. “Here. Balance this on your lap.”
He did. Then she crouched before him, took his injured hand between both of hers, and gently dunked it in the water.
He hissed and nearly jerked his hand away, but she’d anticipated his reaction and held tight, keeping his palm submerged. “It’ll stop stinging in a minute.”
Teeth gritted, he said nothing, but sure enough, the vicious sting faded until it was merely pain. “What the devil is that?” he finally managed to ask.
“Believe it or not, it’s a tincture Dubois gave us. The children often get cuts and scrapes. After one of the boys got a badly infected hand, he—Dubois—gave us the bottle. He said it was something the natives used to treat wounds.” She glanced up and met his eyes. “Whatever it is, we’ve found it to be highly effective.”