After Innocence (33 page)

The Cape Colony, Africa
—
August 1902

T
he spade dug into the ground. Thump. He ground the blade in deep, tossed up the raw red earth. Then the spade hit again. Thump. He tossed up more dirt, again and yet again. He worked with mindless diligence, his motions automatic, despite the fact that his arms were so tired that every time he lifted the spade, he felt as if he were wrenching them from their sockets. Despite the fact that hours ago the muscles in his back had knotted painfully. Despite the tortured state of his body, he did not stop—as if relishing the self-inflicted agony.

“Why don’t you hire some men?”

Edward jerked. An old man stood not far away, watching him. Edward vaguely recognized him. He was a farmer, except he had nothing left to farm—in the continuing hostilities that spring, his farm had been razed to the ground. Edward seemed to recall hearing that his wife and two sons had also died in the blaze.

Edward knew that something had died inside him, because he felt no sadness for the old man’s horrendous loss. He felt nothing, nothing at all, just emptiness.

Edward dropped his spade. He had been laboring all day long since sunrise, without a moment of respite, and he would not quit until sundown. Now he moved to the shade of a lonely, misshapen tree where he’d left some equipment and supplies. He picked up the canteen and drank sparingly. The old man watched him, did not seem intent on leaving. Edward ignored him.

But the farmer said, “Why don’t you hire help? Got some boys in town who’d be glad for the work.”

“I like working alone,” Edward said brusquely. Not wanting to talk. Not really. Even though it had been months since he’d had a decent conversation with anyone. The last conversation he’d had had been on Christmas eve, with Sofie’s mother. He’d sailed for Africa the next day on a British merchantman.

“Know you can afford it,” the old man said, watching him with hawk eyes. “Everyone knows you’re rich, even though you don’t look it or act it. Except for how you spend those diamonds like they grow in that dirt there.”

Edward picked up his shovel without answering. He had been using small diamonds to barter for the goods he subsisted on ever since he first arrived in southern Africa in February. He’d run out of cash long ago, back in New York, the reason he’d relumed to this small spot of hell on earth in the first place. That was the reason he was there, working his diamond mine. It had nothing to do with anything—or anyone—else.

Still, a representative from the DeBeers company had been in town last week, trying to buy him out. Edward had refused in an act of sheer insanity. DeBeers would pay him a small fortune, enabling him to go home. But just where, exactly, was that? New York? Was home his unfinished Fifth Avenue mansion? Or was it the extravagant suite he could let yet again at the Savoy Hotel? Surely it was not California. He could not imagine returning to Rancho Miramar, where his father lived with Edward’s brother Slade and Slade’s wife and child. And home was not San Francisco, where his mother lived alone. Edward had not seen or spoken with her since his parents had separated more than two years ago.

His gut ached. In fact, his entire body ached, and his temples throbbed painfully as well. There was no point in selling. He had nowhere to go. There was nowhere he even wanted to go. It looked like Hopeville, Cape Colony, Africa, was his destiny, his life.

It certainly was not Paris, where
she
was.

Edward could not believe he’d had such a rude and
monstrous thought. Furious, he turned his back on the old man and stomped back to the dig.

“You’re a strange one,” the old man remarked to his back. “Like torturing yourself, do you?”

Edward ignored him until the old man left. He began to shovel, hard and rhythmic. If he wanted to torture himself, it was his right.

He did not stop to rest, urinate, or drink water again—not until dusk had fallen across the bare, rocky land. It was the time of day he hated most. For during the walk into town, despite the physical exhaustion, his mind was free to wander.

Edward packed up his equipment and slung the rucksack over one shoulder, the spade in his other hand. He walked into Hopeville, using all of his willpower not to think. It was very hard for a man to keep his mind blank. Worse, he now hungered for the old man’s company. It would be better to listen to the old man’s dry comments than to his own burgeoning thoughts.

By the time Edward strode into Hopeville, he was angry. Angry with himself, angry with Sofie, angry with the world.

It was the ultimate irony. He had entered her life to set her free, but he had become enslaved. Because by now she had forgotten all about him, but he could not forget her. Not for a single second of a single minute of a single day. No matter what he did, no matter how he did it.

Edward walked up the main street of town, nodding to an occasional merchant or soldier. Because the train from Kimberley came through Hopeville, the redcoats were a constant presence there. A truce had been signed in May, but there were still sporadic acts of violence and terror committed by radicals on both sides.

The street was wide, quiet, and composed of dirt. It was winter in the Orange River valley, meaning that it was cool but pleasant out. Mud coated everything; rainfall had been heavier than usual. The whitewashed clapboard homes on the outskirts of town were mottled brownish-gray as a result. In the center of town the storekeepers didn’t bother to paint anything white or any other color, anticipating both
the winter rains and the dust of summer. Drab, somewhat ramshackle false-fronted wooden buildings lined the treeless thoroughfare.

Edward had taken a room in Hopeville’s best hotel, a two-story stucco affair. He strode up the brick steps, passed Ihrough the dark wood-floored lobby. He received his key from the dozing clerk, determined not to think about Sofie—desperately determined.

Upstairs, Edward inserted the key in his lock. The door was already open and it swung ajar, causing Edward to reach for his gun, which he withdrew from the back waistband of his pants. Flattening himself against the wall, he waited for the intruder in his room to come forward. The fact that he wallowed in diamonds was no secret.

“Edward?”

Surprised but expressionless, Edward came forward, holding the gun down now. A woman sat up from where she had been lying in his bed.

She smiled, her ebony hair unbound and in enticing disarray. Her skirts were up about her knees, revealing long, shapely, coffee-colored calves. “I’ve brought you something,” she said coyly.

Annoyed, he kicked his door closed with one dusty booted foot. “How’d you get in?”

“A pretty smile,” she whispered, standing and coming to him. She looped her soft arms around his neck and pressed her voluptuous body against his.

Because he had not buttoned his shirt, his chest was bare and he was instantly aware of her hard nipples through the thin silk of her dress. Edward put the gun on the bureau, then took her wrists in his hands and removed them from his neck, which also removed her breasts from contact with his chest. He did not smile. “This is quite a surprise. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Not through lack of trying on my part.” She stared at him. “I’m Helen, and I’ve been trying to catch your eye since February, Edward. Don’t you like women?”

Edward had seen her around. She was the only pretty young woman left in town. In fact, once upon a time he might have found her stunning. He had also been aware of
her advances, which he had ignored. He had lost his desire long ago, on Christmas morning when he’d woken up in bed with two cheap women whose names he didn’t remember and didn’t care to remember, filled with self-disgust.

Helen pressed against him, her own smile gone. “Don’t you like women? Don’t you like me?” she whispered.

Even now, despite eight months of sexual abstinence, despite his body’s obvious physical reaction to her heated curves, he had no real desire to pull her down on the bed. “No. I don’t like women.”

She laughed then, and said, “You may not, but your body seems to feel otherwise.” Edward’s face remained like stone.

She stared, then backed away. “You’re strange. You don’t smile, you don’t laugh. You don’t even talk—not if you can avoid it. I know. I’ve watched you. You work like a man possessed, then gamble in the exact same way. You drink that way, too. You act like you hate everyone.”

Edward turned his back on her, tossing his hat on a chair and stripping off his shirt. His words were so low, she could barely hear them. “I don’t hate everyone. Just myself.”

He did not look at her reflection in the small cracked mirror on the bureau he faced. The floorboards creaked as she crossed the room. He heard her pausing at the door as he unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his fly.

“Who is she?” Helen whispered. “Who’s the woman who broke your heart?”

Edward froze, his jaw tight. Then he regained control and pulled his pants down over his hard hips. He wore thin linen drawers that came to midthigh, revealing as much as they concealed.

“It’s a shame.” The door opened; she paused. “You can change your mind anytime, Edward.”

Edward bent over the washbasin, splashing his face with tepid water.

“You have a letter. From New York City. It’s there on the bureau.” She walked out, closing the door behind her.

Edward stared at Sofie’s bold script, the words blurred and unreadable. His hands were shaking. He was shaking, badly.

I thought you might want to know.

I am expecting a child towards the end of June.

I hope you will not be too shocked.

God! Sofie was expecting a child, and although she hadn’t come right out and said it, she had made it clear that it was his child, and in any case, Edward had counted backwards from June—the child had been conceived at the end of the summer. The child—their child.

I hope you will not be too shocked.

Shocked? Shocked was far too mild to even begin to describe his dumbfounded and furious amazement. Jesus Christ! It was August, August, for God’s sake. Sofie’d had a child. His child. Jesus Christ!

Edward was on his feet. He glimpsed his wild expression in the mirror. He looked like a lunatic. But then, he felt like one, too. God! Why in hell hadn’t she told him sooner? Why in hell hadn’t she told him right away?

And there was no question as to what he was going to do now. Suddenly he had a purpose, a destination, a destiny.

His child was in Paris. His child. Edward was catching the next train from Kimberley. By tomorrow evening he would be in Cape Town, and with a little luck, in a month or so he would be in Paris, too.

And very deliberately, he avoided thinking about Sofie, and about what he would do when he saw her again.

Paris—October 1902

There was no answer at the flat.

Edward stood outside the locked door, his heart pumping hard and fast, even though Sofie was not home.

She was not at home. She and the baby were out. He had come so far, as fast as possible, and it hadn’t been easy getting out of war-torn southern Africa in one piece. Despite the recent truce, signed in May at Vereeniging, Boer gunmen had attacked the Kimberley train, derailing it and delaying it for two days. Several passengers had been killed in the attack, and Edward had narrowly escaped being wounded himself. Once in Cape Town, he had been unable to find a vessel not belonging to the British navy. Without
hesitation, he had spent a fortune in bribes in order to gain a berth on one of Her Majesty’s warships. And that ship had been bound for Dover, not France. All in all, it had taken him six weeks, not four, to arrive in Paris.

And she was not at home. To calm himself, Edward leaned against the wall and searched through the pocket of his suit jacket for a cigarette. Lighting it, he inhaled deeply. His heart rate did not slow.

Dubiously he glanced around. For the first time, he really took in his surroundings. The landing he stood on was made of unpainted, unwaxed, rotting wood. Some of the floorboards were coming up. all were scarred and chipped. The walls were also scarred and peeling and needed painting badly.

The apartment building was old and run-down, and as far as Edward was concerned, it was no different from one of New York’s rat-infested tenements. Indeed, all of Montmartre was nothing but crumbling tenements and decrepit cabarets. Its inhabitants seemed to be pimps, prostitutes, beggars, and thieves. Edward could not believe that she lived there, in such a place, with their child. It had to be a mistake.

Not for the first time, Edward wondered desperately if it was a boy or a girl. The image in his mind was the same as it had been ever since that fateful day in August when he had learned that he was a father. He saw Sofie holding a bundled-up baby, her smile soft and serene and joyous, directed not at their child, but at him.

Tension riddled him the way bullets might. She should have told him sooner, she should have told him immediately. She must have known, or at least suspected, that she was pregnant when she left for Paris last fall. Edward banged harder on the door this time. There was no excuse. And Sofie was not going to beam at him like a besotted fool. She had never been besotted, not where he was concerned. Thinking so. once long ago, had been a vast mistake on his part. No, she would be composed and dignified when they met now, as if they were polite strangers and nothing more. As if she were not the mother of his child, as if she had not ever been his passionate lover.

And what the hell was she doing living in such a hovel? This was not right. A single lady like Sofie could not possibly live here. His child could not live in such a place. Unwed ladies, even radical ones like Sofie O’Neil, even unwed and with a child, lived in fashionable, proper homes with a chaperon and a full staff. Edward banged harder, furiously, on the door.

He inhaled hard, in an effort to control his trembling and his sudden rage. If she really lived here—and this was the address on the letter she had sent—he would see to it that she moved elsewhere, immediately. His child was not going to be raised in poverty and neglect.