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Oti had no idea how she managed to summon what she hoped was a bright smile.
‘Of course. Just tired probably. It’s been another twenty-hour shift.’
Her colleague looked unconvinced, and Oti knew why. Shifts were always long in a camp like this, but she’d never been this down. Perhaps a version of the truth would be better. She tried ramping the smile up a little more.
‘I’m think I’m going to miss this place.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Amelia grimaced, understanding washing over her expression. ‘I forgot you were leaving tomorrow. But you’ll be back in a few months, right? You always are. What is it now, forty months out of the past four years that you’ve been out here?’
‘Something like that.’ Oti forced a laugh, as though she was any normal person looking forward to spending some time back home again. Ironically, another role that she knew how to play.
She hadn’t told anyone that this would be her last mission, any more than she’d told them that she was getting married. It would only invite too many questions that she wouldn’t know how to answer.
Or perhaps it was more that saying it aloud would somehow make it too real.
‘Go and get something to eat, and get your head down,’ her colleague advised. ‘You’ve got a five-hour drive just to the nearest airstrip.’
‘Sure.’ It felt more like an awkward jerk of her head than a nod, but at least Amelia didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.
She felt foolish. But what choice did she have, either about telling her colleagues, or about agreeing to the marriage in the first instance?
You could have said no, a voice whispered in her head, but Oti shut it down quickly.
True, Lukas Woods had asked her if she was sure she knew what she was doing, but declining him had never been a real option. Not if she wanted to save her brother. Her father had made that abundantly clear.
Her father hadn’t earned the title The Odious Earl for nothing, even if no one dared say it to his face. Not even her.
Especially not her.
Shaking her head free of the dark thoughts that threatened to overtake her, Oti watched the young mum-to-be struggle off the bed with the help of her sister and managed another smile at her colleague.
‘I think I might accompany Kahsha just a short way out of camp. You never know, the walking might help the baby to descend and we won’t need to try for a C-section after all.’
It was always possible. And, anyway, if this was to be her last trip out to Sub-Saharan Africa for a while—or ever—then she might as well absorb every last second of it.
Because all she saw for her future were even more fences to hem her in than she’d ever had to endure before.
* * *
As the organist played a virtuosic performance of Bizet’s ‘Farandole,’ Lukas watched his bride being led up the aisle by her father. Though led might be too mild a word for it, given that the man could evidently barely restrain himself. The Odious Earl—a nickname that the man had earned for his pomposity, his gambling and his penchant for young girls barely older than his own daughter—was practically racing to deliver Lady Octavia to her fate.
Not that Lukas cared to look too closely, but he was sure that if he did he would actually be able to see pound signs imprinted in the Earl’s eyes, the older man’s podgy fingers virtually grasping for the hefty sum of money that would be his on conclusion of the ceremony.
Involuntarily, Lukas’s gaze shifted to the taller than average, slightly willowy figure walking beside him with no fewer than seven bridesmaids in tow, although she eclipsed every one of them. An observation which he chose to ignore—along with the inconvenient and somewhat galling way that his body tightened in response.
This marriage wasn’t about love, or even lust. It was about securing the controlling interest in Octavia’s late brother’s company, Sedeshire International, as the latest acquisition for Lukas’s own company, LVW Industries. Preferably before the idiot Earl ran his late son’s company into the ground, as he had been doing in the short time that he’d had his hands on it.
And if marrying the old Earl’s socialite daughter was the price he had to pay for it—along with an eye-watering sum, of course—then Lukas considered it money well spent.
The business was actually a good investment, but the fact that he’d stolen it from right under the nose of Andrew Rockman, the Sixth Earl of Highmount, had been a delicious bonus.
How fitting that this was how Lukas would finally be able to fulfil the vow he had made to himself as a twelve-year-old, the week his mother had been lowered into that black hole in the ground—that he would one day take his revenge on the Rockman family. In particular that he would take his revenge on Rockman, the man who had effectively driven her there, along with Lady Octavia’s father, the man who had helped Rockman get away with his lies.
And, by marrying him, Lady Octavia would unwittingly help him to bring her repugnant father into line.
Yet as Lukas watched their approach closely, he was sure he saw her wobble. The faintest stumble before her father lowered his head to hers and murmured something that looked tender but which Lukas imagined was anything but. His bride-to-be seemed to stiffen her resolve even as a beatific smile graced her full mouth, and her eyes flickered up to meet Lukas’s own.
And something slammed into him.
