Every Whispered Word (34 page)

“For the love of—o' course they're goin' to get hungry, ye giant simkin! That's the whole point, ain't it? They stays here an' they can't blow the gab on us on account of they're goin' to be dead!”

Stanley's eyes widened in shock. “We can't do that, Bert! That ain't right! Besides, what would the old toast think?”

“He won't know about it. The scraggy bugger could never pay us what we got here in diamonds, anyway. The way I sees it, we come all the way to Africa on account of her ladyship here didn't have the sense to stay put in London like she was supposed to.” He glowered at Camelia. “I nearly snuffed it comin' over here, an' I've hated every soddin' day in this bloody Poo Moo Lanee since. Now I've found these diamonds, an' I ain't leavin' without them.”

“Actually, I believe Lady Camelia found the diamonds,” Simon pointed out amiably.

Bert sneered. “Well, she won't be needin' them in here.”

“You're right about that.” Camelia tried to sound resigned as she shifted her stance slightly.

Somehow the idea of plunging her blade into Stanley didn't sit well with her. Besides, she reasoned, it was Bert who was the real threat, since he was the one with the pistol. As soon as Stanley moved out of the way, she would whip out her dagger and hurl it at Bert.

But first, she wanted to find out who had hired them. “Who is this ‘old toast' you keep referring to, Stanley?” she asked conversationally, trying to distract him as she moved into a better position for hitting Bert.

“He's the old swell that hired us to follow you,” Stanley explained. “He wanted to know everywhere you went.”

“Is he Lord Bagley, the archaeologist?” Her voice was soft and persuasive as she reasoned, “There's no harm in telling us now.”

“He never gave us no name. He saw me an' Bert one night at the Spotted Dick, an' said he had a lady what needed watchin'. An' then each time we reported to him on what we seen, he'd give us another job to do—like scarin' ye in that alley, or settin' fire to the inventor's house.”

“Those were the actions of men without honor,” Zareb observed disdainfully. “The spirits will judge you as cowards.”

“Here, now, I ain't no coward,” Bert countered, insulted. “We're just a couple o' sharpers tryin' to make a livin', same as everyone else.”

“More like a couple o' filthy scalawags,” declared a low, brittle voice, “who are about to get a hole blasted into their scurvy arses if ye dinna drop yer pistol now!”

“Oliver!” burst out Camelia, smiling. “However did you manage to find us?”

“Now, lass, I may be old, but I can still sense trouble a mile away,” Oliver assured her immodestly as he stepped into the dimly lit burial chamber. “That's what comes from havin' raised the lad here, an' all his brothers an' sisters.” He began to chuckle. “I remember one time they all decided to fleece a wee shop—”

“I'm sure Camelia would love to hear that story another time,” Simon interrupted, deftly relieving Bert of his pistol. “In the meantime, Stanley, I hope you don't mind if I use that rope of yours to tie you and Bert here together?”

“I don't mind,” Stanley said cheerfully, handing Simon the rope. “Just try not to make Bert's lacings too tight—he gets a bit cagged if he ain't comfortable.”

“Ye can't just leave us here to snuff it in this cave!” Bert protested as Simon bound his wrists together. “That's murder!”

“I have no intention of leaving you here,” Camelia assured him.

Bert regarded her in surprise. “Ye don't?”

“Of course not. This tomb is an extremely important find, and it will take years for me to analyze it and remove its artifacts for study and safekeeping. I can't have you two sitting around complaining and getting in my way while I am working here.”

“I wouldn't complain, yer ladyship,” Stanley promised. “If ye like, I could help ye,” he added shyly. “I'm good at liftin' things. I pushed that steam pump o' yours clean over, an' it was awful heavy.”

“Thank you, Stanley. That's very kind of you to offer.”

“What are ye goin' to do with us?” demanded Bert.

“You should be judged by the Khoikhoi chief,” Zareb growled angrily. “He would send you out into the desert with no food or water, and demand that you not come back until you have found wisdom!”

“That seems a little harsh, Zareb,” Camelia mused. “I think I shall be satisfied with turning them over to the police in Cape Town.”

“Camelia!” Elliott rushed into the chamber suddenly, his face flushed and his chest heaving with exertion. “What on earth is going on here?”

“We found the Tomb of Kings, Elliott!”

Overwhelmed with a surge of emotions, Camelia ran over and wrapped her arms around him. After a lifetime of searching, she had finally succeeded in fulfilling her father's dream. She was glad Elliott was there to share the excitement and joy of that moment, although at the same time a painful stab of loss pierced her heart. Her father should have been there with them. She laid her head against the comforting warmth of Elliott's chest and closed her eyes, inhaling a shuddering breath. Somewhere, high above the six glittering stars in the night sky beyond the cave, she was certain her father was looking down upon them and smiling.

“Isn't it magnificent?” she murmured, speaking to her father as much as to Elliott. “It's everything we thought it would be.”

“My God, Camelia—yes, it's wonderful, but all I care about is you!” He closed his arms tightly around her. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.” She brushed away the tears pricking her eyes and managed a shaky smile as she looked up at him. “This is Stanley and Bert,” she continued, gesturing to the pair, who were now safely bound. Realizing Elliott probably required a bit of explanation as to what was going on she continued, “They are the ones who have been giving me trouble both here and back in London. It seems they followed us here, and have tried to undo all our work by destroying the pump.”

Elliott glowered at the two men. “So this is the scum that tore apart your home and stabbed your pillow with that filthy note?”

Confusion seeped over her. Slowly, she extricated herself from Elliott's embrace and regarded him uncertainly. “What did you say?”

“The note you told me about—you said it had been stabbed to your pillow with your father's favorite dagger. Are these the two that did that?”

Her chest tightened as she stared at him.
No,
she thought to herself.
It can't be.
Assuring herself there had to be some logical explanation for Elliott's statement, she quietly pointed out, “I never told you it was stabbed to my pillow, Elliott.”

“Of course you did,” he insisted. “You told me everything that happened.”

“No, I didn't. I didn't want you to know my father's dagger had been used, because I was afraid of how you might react. You knew about its supposed powers, and you knew how much my father loved it. I thought if I told you it had been used to threaten me, you would have done everything you could to keep me from returning to Pumulani.”

“Well, someone here must have told me,” Elliott returned dismissively. “Maybe it was Kent.”

Simon shook his head. “Sorry, Wickham. I've never discussed anything about that night with you.”

“Then I suppose I heard it from Zareb.”

“I do not discuss Tisha's affairs with anyone.” Zareb's expression was hard. “Not even you, Lord Wickham.”

Elliott regarded them impatiently, as if he thought it was patently ridiculous that they were making an issue of something so trivial. “Fine, then, I suppose I heard it from Oliver.”

“I'm sure I never told ye, either, lad.” Oliver's white brows were twisted into a frown. “I know 'tis better to hold yer tongue when ye dinna know from where trouble is callin'.”

Slowly, Elliott's gaze returned to Camelia.

She stared back at him, her silvery green eyes wide and shimmering with fragile hope. He could see she was fighting to keep calm, fighting to maintain the belief that there was some plausible, logical explanation for the fact that he knew about the dagger in the pillow. In that moment he was overwhelmed, both by her fierce desire to guard her faith in him, which had burned in a slow but steady flame from the time she was a little girl, and by the sudden painful realization that he had failed her completely. He hadn't meant to, but that scarcely mattered. What had begun as a heartfelt desire to protect her and make a life for her with him had somehow evolved into this terrible, impossible moment. Shame pulsed through him, tempered with a helpless anger, making him feel bitter and frustrated.

Where had that beautiful young girl who used to look at him with such wonder and admiration gone? he wondered painfully. When had she started to slip away from him, moving further and further beyond his grasp, until finally nothing he said or did or thought aroused anything in her except impatience, or a kind of brittle defiance? There had been a brief time, right after her father died, when Camelia had turned to Elliott for comfort. He had felt her love for him then. He had thought she understood his feelings for her. She had certainly understood how much he loved her after he kissed her in Lord Bagley's garden.

It wasn't enough for her, he realized, feeling something inside him begin to shatter. He had offered her everything he had to give, including his name, his home, his heart.

And still it wasn't enough.

“I'm sorry, Camelia,” he managed thickly. His voice was rough with regret. “I never wanted to hurt you.” There was truth in that, at least. But as he looked down at her and saw the last shreds of her trust slowly disintegrate, he realized it didn't matter. He pulled his pistol from the waistband of his trousers and pointed it at her, fighting to keep his hand steady. “I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to give me the dagger you keep in your boot.”

He watched as she numbly bent and removed the blade, then tossed it on the ground at his feet.

He cleared his throat. “If you don't mind, Kent, I'd like you and Oliver to lay your pistols down over here, and then untie my friends Stanley and Bert.”

“I ain't yer friend,” Stanley protested, confused. “I don't even know ye.”

“Shut yer gob, Stanley—can't ye see his lordship is tryin' to help us?” Bert snapped.

“Why is he tryin' to help us when he don't know us?” wondered Stanley.

“Because I do know you, you stupid, gutless pair of clod pates,” Elliott informed him tersely. “I'm the old toast you keep referring to—although I realize without my customary disguise, crouched like an old drunkard in some filthy corner of the Spotted Dick, I don't particularly resemble the elderly man who employed you.”

Bert stared at him in amazement. “Ye're the old toast?”

“Yes. And I must say, Bert, I am very disappointed to hear about how you planned to rob me of these diamonds—especially since I'm the one who paid for you to be here in the first place.”

“I was just havin' a bit of a joke, yer lordship,” Bert hastily assured him as Simon removed his ropes. “I hope ye ain't thinkin' I was serious!”

“Ye sounded serious to me,” Stanley reflected.

“Shut yer potato trap, Stanley, an' give yer tongue a holiday!”

“Oh, I gets it now—ye was bein' sarky. That's when Bert says somethin' that he don't really mean, only he says it like he does mean it,” Stanley explained to Oliver, who was slowly untying him. He frowned. “It's a bit confusin', for sure.”

“Why, Elliott?” Camelia swallowed hard, fighting to keep the tears glazing her eyes from spilling onto her cheeks. “All those years you worked alongside my father. He loved you like a son, Elliott. He taught you everything he knew. How could you betray him like this?”

“I didn't mean for it to end like this, Camelia,” Elliott assured her. “You've got to believe that. For years I believed just as passionately as your father that the Tomb of Kings existed. But after fifteen years, we weren't any closer to finding it. Workers were leaving. Funding was drying up. And then my father died, leaving an extraordinary amount of debt. Suddenly I had my mother and three unmarried sisters to support, several homes to run, and servants to pay for and bills to be met—and no sufficient source of income to pay for it.”

“That's a hard lot, to be sure,” Oliver drawled mockingly.

“Your father died a year before mine did, Elliott,” Camelia pointed out. “You could have left right away and gone back to England to start your business. You didn't have to stay here.”

“I know. And I planned to. But the night I went to tell your father I was leaving, I found him in his tent examining some diamonds he had found.”

She regarded him in disbelief. “You're mistaken. My father never found any diamonds here at Pumulani.”

“Yes, he did, Camelia. But he didn't want anyone to know—not even you. He was afraid if word got out, the site would be overrun with prospectors fighting to buy or steal a stake from him. And he knew mining Pumulani for diamonds would have destroyed everything here of archaeological significance.”

She shook her head, unwilling to accept what Elliott was telling her. “If what you are saying is true, then what happened to those diamonds in his tent? They weren't among his things when he died.”

“I took them—for safekeeping.”

Oliver snorted in disgust. “Is that what ye call it? In my day, we called that fleecin'.”

“I just needed more time, Camelia,” Elliott insisted, trying to make her understand. “I knew the diamonds were rightfully yours, but I also knew you would see things the same way your father had. I needed time to help you realize the merits of properly mining the land, as opposed to endlessly scraping away every bloody inch of it with little brooms and shovels—and never finding anything of real value.”