The room was in semidarkness. He hadn't bothered to light the brace of candles Bryony had set on the table. The only light came from the mellow glow of the setting sun filtering in through the lace curtains at the French doors.
A soft mew of surprise from the doorway brought his head around. Bryony paused just inside the room. She
had waited until it was almost dark before she ventured to come clear his place from the dinner table. He supposed she hadn't wanted to risk running into him.
She stood with her arms wrapped around her waist, and stared at him as if he were the greatest beast imaginable. Her eyes were dark and bruised-looking in a pale face.
He looked at her long and hard, then he raised the glass to his lips and drained it. "How ill-mannered of me," he said, rolling the empty glass between his fingers. "I should have vacated the room by now."
She didn't say anything. He sloshed the last of the port into his glass and let his gaze rove slowly over her. She was wearing her old brown work dress. The apron she had tied about her small waist was stained with water from the dishes she'd been washing, and she had a servant's mobcap perched on her head, hiding her beautiful hair.
He frowned at it. "Why do you always wear those ugly caps?"
"Because you told me to."
Had he? What a stupid thing to have done. "Well, stop wearing them."
"Yes... sir," she said. But she made no move to take the thing off.
He stretched slowly to his feet, his glass in his hand. She skittered backward, closer to the door. He let out a harsh laugh. "What in the hell do you think I'm going to do to you, anyway?"
She was breathing quick and heavy. He watched the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, and he wished... he wished he was the kind of man she obviously thought he was, so he could do to her what he wanted to do to her.
She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I don't know. I don't know what you're capable of."
He swore crudely and turned away from her to stand
beside the French doors. The yard below lay quiet and empty in the fading light.
He wasn't proud of what he'd had to do today, but he was damned if he was going to justify it to her or anyone else. However much he himself might hate the lash and what it did to a man, it was a part of the society in which he lived. If he was to keep control of his motley crew of thieves, footpads, and Irish rebels, then he couldn't be seen to shrink from using it when it was undeniably called for. He'd secured the lightest sentence he could for his men, and he'd made sure the lashes were laid on easy with the oldest cat available. And he'd stood there and watched every damned stroke fall.
He raised his glass and drank from it, letting the heady fumes of the wine wash away the metallic stench of blood that seemed to cling about him still. When he lowered his glass and glanced behind him, she was gone.
He took to leaving the homestead in the morning without breakfast, chewing on dried beef as he rode out to his fields. She made her first butter and her first cheese, but she was unable to take much pleasure in it, and if he enjoyed the new additions to his diet, she didn't know because they no longer spoke.
In the evenings he stood outside, smoking a cheroot and staring off down the valley, while she put his dinner on the table and quietly left the room. After dinner she washed the dishes on the veranda with only Simon for company. She tried to tell herself that the happy babble from the baby in his blanket-lined packing case was enough; she didn't miss the restless, disturbing presence of the baby's father.
But as she lay awake in her bed at night, listening to his boot heels scrape across the stone flagging of the veranda as he came back up from checking on the horses in his stables, she knew it was a lie.
She ran her hand over the space in the bed beside her, feeling its emptiness, feeling her loneliness. She'd
known from the day she'd first seen him that he was a man who could be cruel when he had to be. And although she hated what he'd done, she was beginning to admit to herself that he'd had to do it.
She'd taken to sending a fresh pitcher of milk every morning over to the huts, for Jennings and Quincy. That afternoon, Quincy had brought the empty pitcher back himself.
He was still pale, and he walked with the studied care of one who knows he'll regret any quick or ill-judged movement. But she'd been stunned to discover that he bore Captain St. John no ill will for the flogging. On the contrary, he was profoundly grateful for having been saved from the hanging he'd been convinced he'd earned. And when she suggested it was wrong to flog one of his tender years, he'd actually gotten mad at
her.
"What are ye saying, then? That I'm not a man? That I can't take the lash? What do ye think? That I cried out? Well, I didn't. I took it like a man, I did. The Cap'n knows what I am, even if ye don't." And with that he stomped off, leaving her with the absurd suspicion that he was actually proud of the healing wounds on his back.
It was a strange, male world in which she lived. She didn't understand it, and in many ways she didn't like it. She rolled over and stared at the door to the dressing room that separated her room from his.
It's not your place to question me.
His voice had been pitched low, so low that none of the men in the yard could have heard what he said. But there hadn't been a one who hadn't stopped what he was doing to watch. She felt a hot tide of mortification wash over her at the memory.
He would never have treated Laura in such a way, Bryony thought. But then, Laura was a true lady. Laura would never have allowed her anger to lead her to confront her husband in the yard, beneath the interested eyes of his men. In fact, Laura probably had never confronted him at all, about anything.
You're not my wife, you're not even my mistress.
His words were like a dagger, piercing her heart. No, she wasn't his wife, and she had refused to become his mistress. She had no claim on him. She was, simply, his servant woman.
A servant who had made the foolish, dangerous mistake of falling in love with her master.
A sob slipped out from some lonely, hurting place deep within her, as she finally admitted the awful truth to herself. It was bad enough that she'd been lusting after the man, but how could she have allowed herself to start loving him? It was all wrong, and she knew it. Nothing could ever come of her love for this man. Men like Hayden St. John did not marry convict women.
And Bryony would never become any man's mistress.
The slab hut stood in the center of its clearing, baking beneath the afternoon sun. Insects hummed in the dusty heat. A pair of black cockatoos cawed at her from a big white gum on the edge of the nearby stand of trees.
"Louisa," Bryony called, shifting Simon's weight to her shoulder as she crossed the sunbaked clearing. "Are you there? Louisa? I thought I— Oh."
Will Carver appeared at the door of his hut. He wore only a dirty pair of canvas trousers stuffed into lace-up boots. His bare, sagging chest and protruding belly were a sickly white and thinly covered with graying dark hairs that glistened with grease from the rib he was chewing. He sucked the marrow from the bone, eyeing her all the while. Then he chucked the bone at a scrawny hen scratching about in the yard and wiped his hands on his pants.
Bryony knew by now that though Louisa carried Will Carver's name, the man had never actually married her. He'd first noticed Louisa when he'd struck the fetters off her wrists on the day she'd been brought on board the transport ship that was also carrying him to his new assignment. It hadn't been a week later that he'd caught
her in a deserted companionway and raped her. But he'd bought her a pretty yellow hair ribbon at the next port, and after they reached Sydney, he'd had her assigned to him. They'd been together ever since.
"I'm sorry," Bryony said, coming to a halt some distance away from him. "I was looking for Louisa."
"She ain't here."
His eyes slid insolently over her. He had a way of looking at her, a way that was different from St. John's other men. Most men saw all transported convict women as whores. Even if they weren't whores when they were sent out here, it was hardly a system designed to protect a woman's virtue. And Bryony knew only too well that whether a woman fell from choice or from ill-usage, it made no difference in the eyes of her world. If a woman wasn't a virgin or a wife, then she was a whore.
But while the other men on Jindabyne might see her as a whore, most of them assumed she was Hayden St. John's whore, and therefore off-limits. With Will Carver, it was different. She didn't think she had anything to fear from him; he had too much respect for the Captain for that. But there was something about the way he looked at her... as if he knew she was off-limits for now, but he was waiting his turn.
She lowered Simon from her shoulder until she was holding him like a shield before her. "It wasn't important," she said, turning to leave. "If you could tell her I—"
"She's at the buryin' ground." His voice stopped her. "It's at the crest of the hill there, just a few hundred feet beyond those trees. Go on, if you like." He nodded toward a stand of ironbark.
"Thank you." She hesitated a moment, then headed toward the trees. He stood in the doorway of the hut, watching her, until she was out of sight.
She followed a well-worn path. Louisa must visit this cemetery every day, Bryony thought with a pang of sadness, to wear the path down like this.
She could hear the woman before she saw her. She was singing, which surprised Bryony because she had never heard Louisa sing before. It was only when she drew closer she realized Louisa was singing a lullaby.
" '... Lay thee down now and rest, may your slumber be blessed...' "
Bryony heard the tinkling of little bells and turned to see Sarah fluttering about beneath the trees, picking flowers. She waved to her, and the little girl smiled and waved back.
" '... Lay thee down now and rest, may your slumber be blessed.' "
Louisa looked up then and saw her, and her face broke into a wide grin. "Why, Bryony. You come to see me babes? I was just fixin' up their beds."
Bryony looked about her. The cemetery had been laid out in a large clearing. Someone, probably Hayden St. John, had recently fenced it in with neat white palings. In one corner stood a large marble monument. Bryony paused before it.
In loving memory of Laura Beaumont St. John, 28 August 1781 to 26 May 1808. Beloved wife of Hayden Seymour St. John. Daughter of—
But she didn't want to read Laura's tombstone. She didn't want to think about a Laura who couldn't hear the wind rustling the gum trees or smell the rich, earthy scent of the long, ripening grass, or feel the warmth of the baby who nestled sleepily against Bryony's neck.
And she couldn't bear to think of Hayden standing here, mourning his beautiful, gentle wife.
She jerked away. There were a few other graves in the cemetery, graves of assigned men who'd never lived to see their sentences expire. But what clutched at Bryony's heart and chilled her soul was the sight of the four tiny graves so carefully tended by Louisa Carver.
They lay in a row, Louisa's babes. There were no marble headstones for these children of a transported Dublin thief, but each had a slab marker with their names
and ages burned deep by a hand that had cared. And each tiny grave was topped with a curious cover of bark and planks that made them look not unlike the crude beds Bryony had seen in Louisa's hut.
The earth around the graves was swept clean. Louisa had brought a broom with her and had been sweeping the graves when Bryony walked up. Bryony thought she must come here every day and sweep, for not a blade of grass grew near them. The ground was as bare and hard-packed as the floor of Louisa's hut.
"This here's me firstborn, Nathan," Louisa was saying. "And here's me Mary, and, beside her, Thomas. And this here is me wee one, me Joseph." There was something about the way she said it, as if she were introducing children who stood there, alive and well. It sent a small shiver up Bryony's spine.
"I had Will cover their beds like this. I didn't like the idea of them sleeping out in the rain. The sun's all right. The sun feels good on yer face. But I couldn't have 'em sleepin' in the rain."
Sarah danced up to them, a flutter of silver bells and sun-streaked hair, to lay a posy on Mary's grave. She'd already gathered flowers for Thomas and Joseph.
"I made sure they were laid out so there's room here for two more," said Louisa, watching her daughter skip off to gather flowers for Nathan. "If anythin' ever happens to me Sarey—"
"Oh, Louisa. You mustn't think of it." Which was a stupid thing to have said, thought Bryony to herself, because how could the woman help but think of it?
"If anything ever happens to me Sarey, I'm just going to walk into that old river down there, and make me bed here, next to me babes."
Bryony stared at the woman beside her in dismay.
She'd always thought of Louisa as being so strong. Louisa had taken the worst that life could throw at a woman, and she'd survived. She'd not only survived; in her own way she'd seemed to flourish.