"Manure!" Quincy stared at the malodorous pile heaped up behind the stables, and his handsome black eyes flashed with indignation. "Ye want me to shovel manure?"
Bryony glared right back at him. "Captain St. John left orders you were to help me with the garden two days a week."
"He didn't say nothin' about manure."
"Gardens need manure." She handed him the pitchfork. "Now, load it into the cart so we can get it dug in before it starts raining again."
Quincy's chest rose and fell rapidly, and she knew he hovered on the brink of refusal.
The clatter of hooves on the cobbled yard brought both their heads around. Gideon appeared at the corner of the stables, leading a limping horse. He stopped and threw Quincy a long, searching look. Quincy mumbled something obscene that most fourteen-year-old boys had never even heard, let alone said, and grabbed the pitchfork.
Bryony blew on her numb fingers and hugged her cloak against the cold. It had been unbelievably wet and miserable for weeks now, reminding her more of an English winter than what she expected spring in New South Wales to be. She watched Quincy just long enough to make sure he knew she was serious, then she left the paddock and walked into the stable, where Gideon was unsaddling his gray mare.
"I'm glad you happened to show up when you did."
She stroked the mare's velvety soft nose. "I was afraid for a minute there he wasn't going to do it."
"Sure he'd have done it, even without me," said Gideon, stripping the saddle off the horse's back. "He was just wantin' to make it clear it was a touch beneath him, that's all."
She reached up to straighten the mare's forelock, hesitating. She didn't want to ask, but somehow she couldn't seem to help it. She tried to make the question sound as casual as possible. "No word yet on when Captain St. John is coming back?"
Gideon's eyes met hers over the horse's head. "No." She knew he wasn't fooled. He'd probably seen the way she looked up, anxious, every time someone rode into the yard, every time there was a step on the veranda. He knew she was watching, waiting.
Bryony felt herself blushing and turned away. She hadn't even been told what had taken St. John back to Sydney so unexpectedly. She thought Gideon probably knew, but she'd been too shy to ask.
As if sensing her thoughts, Gideon said, "It can take awhile to get a ship ready to sail."
Bryony whirled back around. "Ship? What ship?"
Gideon was busy working a currycomb over the mare's withers. "The
Lady Laura.
She was running a shipment of coal to India, and she come back earlier than expected. The Cap'n is planning to send her to England next, with a consignment of wool."
"You mean, he
owns
this ship?"
"Aye. The
Lady Laura,
and a couple of others. And when she sails for Britain this time, she's goin' to bring back my Mary and the boys."
"Oh, Gideon!" She threw her arms around him and hugged him, laughing. "I didn't think you'd saved enough for their passage yet."
She knew by now that there was a set amount of work that male assigned servants were required by the government to perform each week, and that honest masters like
Hayden St. John paid their men for any extra work they performed. Gideon worked every extra hour he could, doing everything from hoeing fields to weaving cabbage palm hats. But at something like one shilling for every ten extra hours' labor, it took a long time to save up enough to pay the fares of a woman and two small boys.
"I ain't. But the Cap'n, he's advancin' me the rest."
Bryony buried her face against the horse's warm, fragrant hide. No one had ever set the daily tasks expected of women servants, so there was no way Bryony could hope to earn any money. She'd have to wait until her sentence was expired before she'd be able to start saving for her own passage money back to Britain. "I'm happy for you, Gideon." She straightened up and gave him a tremulous smile. "Really I am."
"Aw, Bryony..." His funny, little-boy face was troubled. "Sure you'll find a way—"
He broke off as a mighty roar erupted from the paddock. Bryony ran to the stable door, then froze.
Will Carver stood beside the manure pile, his hat in the hoof-churned mud beside him. Manure clung to his hair, dropped off his whiskers, splattered his shirtfront. He was shaking his big, ugly head back and forth, like an angry bull, and spitting, as if some of it had gone in his mouth.
"Why, shit, Mr. Carver," came Quincy's gay voice. "I didn't see ye standin' there. Did I get some of this...
shit
on ye?"
Carver threw back his head and growled, his hands clenching into two fists at his side. He was a big man; beside the slim boy he looked massive. "Why, ye ruttin', struttin' little whore's whelp. Ye been a bloody pain in me ass ever since ye was assigned here. Ye know what I'm going to do to ye, boy? I'm going to take those balls yer so proud of and feed 'em to the pigs fer dinner."
The big man swung, his fist catching the boy below the ear and spinning him around to send him sprawling into the mud.
Bryony ran, slipping and sliding across the sodden paddock. She flung herself on the overseer just as he reached down to haul the boy to his feet.
"No!" she cried, hanging onto his arm. "No, don't. It was an accident."
The overseer's face swiveled around to her. She read murder in his eyes.
"Like hell," he panted, trying to shake her off. "Let go of me, ye interferin' little strumpet."
"No. He's just a boy. And you know you're not supposed to strike an assigned servant."
It was true. A master could beat his free apprentice and a husband could beat his wife. A master could work a convict to death or send him to a magistrate to be crippled by a flogging for the most trifling of offenses. But neither a master nor his overseer was allowed to
hit
a convict.
Will Carver's fist closed over Bryony's wrist and squeezed until she almost whimpered from the pain. She released her hold on his arm, and he shoved her back so hard she stumbled and landed with a teeth-rattling
thump
in the mud. He reached again for the boy.
"Don't do it," said Gideon. He stopped beside Bryony and helped her to her feet, but he never took his eyes off Carver. Beneath his freckles, his face was white.
"Ye going to stop me, Irish? Ye? Ha! Yer no bigger than he is." He cast one, derisive glance at Gideon, then turned his back on him to lean over and close his beefy fist around Quincy's shirt and haul him to his feet.
"Don't."
Carver turned around again, an ugly sneer on his face. But the sneer died when he saw Gideon standing there with the pitchfork in his hands, its sharp prongs pointed determinedly at the overseer's chest.
"Ye dare? Ye dare threaten me?" His ugly face was suffused with angry color. Only the old saber cut showed white against his livid cheek. "I'll see ye hanged for this, Irish."
"No, you won't." Bryony slipped her shoulder beneath Quincy's arm when the boy wavered and looked as if he might collapse. "None of you has done anything here you can be proud of. It is all best forgotten."
Carver's bloodshot eyes moved slowly from her to Gideon, then back again. He bent over to pick up his hat and whacked it hard against his thigh to get rid of the worst of the mud and manure.
"I won't forget," he said. "I won't forget." He smashed the hat back on his head and pushed past her toward the barn.
Quincy swayed on his feet, holding himself upright by a sheer effort of will. "It wasn't an accident," he said stubbornly.
"I know," said Bryony. "But it was a foolish thing to do." She hesitated a moment, then gave him one of her rare smiles. "A foolish, deliciously wicked thing to do."
Hayden saw her standing outside the kitchen door when he turned the tired bay into the yard.
She looked as if she'd been gathering something, something she still held in her bunched-up white apron. But at the sound of his horse's hooves squelching through the mud and clattering over the cobbles, she turned.
She wore her ragged old brown dress. Her head was bare, her rich, mahogany hair unbound and tumbling around her shoulders in a wanton riot of curls. Not even the dull light of the overcast day could diminish its brilliance.
He watched her beautiful eyes narrow with hope and expectation. Watched the recognition dawn, watched the joy spill across her face like sunlight across a field after a rain.
She dropped the edges of her apron, sending green leaves flying as she ran toward him across the yard. One of his men shouted, a greeting, perhaps, but Hayden didn't turn. He had eyes only for her.
He swung out of the saddle, aware of a lightness of heart he hadn't known for a long time. She was so beautiful, with her cheeks flushed and her lips parted, and he had missed her so very much. She came right up to him, skidding to a halt at the last minute, and it was only with an effort that he stopped himself from sweeping her up into his arms and twirling around and around with her.
"You're back." Her smile was still brilliant, but trembled slightly now with shyness, with wariness, perhaps, because of all that had happened between them before he left.
"I'm back," he said simply.
Later that evening he sat in a chair on the veranda while he smoked a cigar and watched Bryony beat a broom against a rug hanging over a line she'd stretched between two posts. Beside him, Simon lay on a blanket and chortled happily as he played with the brightly colored string of spools Hayden had brought back from Sydney.
The sky was still overcast, but a warm wind blew from the north, suggesting a change. Hayden tipped back his chair and exhaled a cloud of smoke, then watched it drift away. He'd missed these quiet times with his son.
And Bryony.
His gaze settled on her again. She still held the broom gripped between her hands, but she was just standing there, not moving, looking at him.
She jerked her gaze away and whacked the broom against the rug so hard it almost jumped off the line. "Simon likes those spools you brought him."
"Yes," he said, conscious of the way her hips swayed back and forth every time she swung the broom.
He was hoping she'd look at him again, but she didn't. So he said, "I brought you something, too."
Her head came around, her lips parted in surprise. "Did you? What?"
His gaze fastened on her sweet mouth, and desire slammed into him, hot and savage. He wanted her.
Christ, he ached, he throbbed with his want for her. He'd spent the better part of a month away from her, he'd tried to sate himself with other women, and it hadn't made any difference. He still wanted her.
And if she didn't let him have her soon, he thought he just might die.
"I'll show you," he said.
Bryony swung the broom against the rug again with all her strength, one last time. Behind her, she heard the click of Hayden's chair legs hitting the veranda as he brought it forward and stood up. She heard him go into the house, leaving the French doors open behind him, and she knew even without looking around when he was back. She was that aware of him. It was like an invisible charge that passed between them, powerful and dangerous.
She set aside the broom and turned. He had come right up behind her with a brown paper-wrapped parcel in his hands. A smile played at the corners of his mouth, deepening the creases in his cheeks and making him look almost boyish.
She put out her hands for the package, but he held it just out of her reach, his grin deepening. "You have to finish beating the rug first."
"I have finished the bloody rug." She snatched the parcel from his slack grasp. "What is it?" she demanded, sitting down on the edge of the veranda and tearing at the paper, excitement making her clumsy.
"It's a dress. I owe you one, remember?"
Her hands stilled beneath the onslaught of memories of that first day, when he'd torn her dress right off her. She remembered the sound of the rain, drumming on the roof, and the hiss of wet wood on the fire. She remembered the sight of his long, lean fingers closing over the bodice of her dress, ripping it away. The feel of his hands lying hot and threatening on her bare shoulders.
She remembered other things, too. Like what it felt
like to lay beneath his hard body, and the taste of his mouth, and the warm, insistent pressure of his lips, opening hers. A woman's need curled low and hot within her, and she shoved the memories away almost in a panic, forcing herself to concentrate on ripping away the last of the paper.
She held a dress. But this was no work dress, for a servant. It was a lady's dress, made of the finest fawn-colored muslin, with moss-green ribbons catching its puffed sleeves and high waist. There were shoes, too. Soft, moss-green kid half boots. Delicate, sheer stockings. And a petticoat and chemise of the finest batiste.
It had been so long, so very long since she'd had anything this fine, this beautiful. She hugged the clothes to her, overwhelmed. "I-I don't know what to—"
"Put them on."
She looked up. He wasn't smiling anymore. There was a tautness about his face, a restlessness in his half-hooded eyes. He looked fierce, dangerous. From the huts on the far side of the house, she heard the men calling to one another. Someone laughed, and a hut door closed. The light was fading rapidly from the day. The gum trees down by the river were only dark and mysterious shadows. They were alone, and soon it would be night. She glanced down at the clothes again, and felt chills of fear alternating with hot flashes of anger rush through her body.